Evil Magic For Beginners

Londude said:
Sweet man what programme did you use? Any adaptors?
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Thanks :)

Boujou, SynthEyes and Real flow, which I didn't know anything about when I shot it. Most shots worked best with Boujou, but shots that required both tracking the background and a moving object was best on SyntEyes.

Maya, which I've never animated in, let alone matchmoved in. I've worked in Maya for about 2½ years but only for still frames really.

Premiere for all editing.

After Effects for all compositing, trapcode particular for all of the blood in conjunction sometimes with real flow/maya blood (the blood pools/splatter on the chest was the only real flow).


No adaptors used. On one shot with the doll jumping on the ground I've used blur effect that was masked out in different places to give the appearance of shallow depth of field.
 
It was fun. Needs work.

The main problem is that it wasn't enough. Both the sound Design and the Music need a major overhaul, and kind of ruined it for me. Not enough drama, not enough, suspense. It should have really pushed the intensity/tension of this scene.

The evil spirits flew into his eyes? It didn't hurt him, they didn't possess him, they just dissapeared into his eyes. What was the point of it?

The voodoo part was cool, but we see the corkscrew move across him, then cut him, yet it seems like she's just stabbing him. Some good sound design would have benefited that scene especially. Something to let us know that she's scraping it heavily across the wood of the voodoo doll. That voodoo doll is wood, and it wasn't convincing that it would cut him if she just rubbed the corkscrew across it. Need sounds that make it seem like she's piercing the wood.

Then the actors needed a bit more out of them. The 'zombie voodoo doll' jumps up onto the girls shoulder, yet she feels nothing, she's not worried despite having read about a zombie doll. Then it stabs her, and it seems like she does nothing, nor even feels it, until she falls.

Then theres the cool sdof rack focus, but it almost looks like the voodoo doll is looking to his side, rather than forward to the guy on the bed... or was it shot breaking the axis? Cause I would assume the doll would look to camera right if not forward. I was confused. So I didn't know why he was freaking out because the doll seemed to look away from him.

The pacing of the film felt a bit slow as well. To get from one thing to another it took a bit of time. The lack of music and sound design didn't help the pacing either. It made it feel slow as well.

Anyways, good job. Great effects. Very fun idea. Needed a bit more to make it great.
 
Jon Starr said:
It was fun. Needs work.

The main problem is that it wasn't enough. Both the sound Design and the Music need a major overhaul, and kind of ruined it for me. Not enough drama, not enough, suspense. It should have really pushed the intensity/tension of this scene.

The evil spirits flew into his eyes? It didn't hurt him, they didn't possess him, they just dissapeared into his eyes. What was the point of it?

The voodoo part was cool, but we see the corkscrew move across him, then cut him, yet it seems like she's just stabbing him. Some good sound design would have benefited that scene especially. Something to let us know that she's scraping it heavily across the wood of the voodoo doll. That voodoo doll is wood, and it wasn't convincing that it would cut him if she just rubbed the corkscrew across it. Need sounds that make it seem like she's piercing the wood.

Then the actors needed a bit more out of them. The 'zombie voodoo doll' jumps up onto the girls shoulder, yet she feels nothing, she's not worried despite having read about a zombie doll. Then it stabs her, and it seems like she does nothing, nor even feels it, until she falls.

Then theres the cool sdof rack focus, but it almost looks like the voodoo doll is looking to his side, rather than forward to the guy on the bed... or was it shot breaking the axis? Cause I would assume the doll would look to camera right if not forward. I was confused. So I didn't know why he was freaking out because the doll seemed to look away from him.

The pacing of the film felt a bit slow as well. To get from one thing to another it took a bit of time. The lack of music and sound design didn't help the pacing either. It made it feel slow as well.

Anyways, good job. Great effects. Very fun idea. Needed a bit more to make it great.
Click to expand...

All good comments, and they have all been bugging me in the process of making the short.

To answer why it is as it is: I had less than two hours of shooting (I couldn't use the camera any longer) and no script. It was basically just a movie for me to "train working with CGI elements", therefore "story" took a big hit.

I didn't want to spend more time on it really though, it's been a year, enough is enough. However, I might spend more time on audio in the future. The goal was to get some good looking CGI intergration, which in my opinion the doll is at least.

The only thing I can say about the reaction of the girl getting stabbed is that I thought of it something like it hit her in the nerves and she gor paralized. But I didn't really have the time to get all the reaction shots that I wanted.

The girls is just to "slow/crazy/phazed" (almost like she is on some sort of downer drugs) to react to the doll (which came to life) and runs up her arm. Really the emphazis should have been the doll getting fed up being tortured and later on fighting back, but I ditched that while shooting. I didn't bother at all about their backstory and exposition as to who these people are...

The ghost should have damaged him as they ran into him, however the shot I took for that didn't come out good enough so I ditched that to :)


The doll looks to the guy, I broke the axis, but I thought it would be OK to break it since there's the table and the girl to re-orient along with.

Anyways the project has been a great experience for me in terms of CGI workflow, pre-production, production and post-production.

Thank you for the comments, I need to hear that stuff to know what to improve for future projects, and for future, story will be the focus, not CGI. :)

I almost feel like an ass for making it so incomplete in terms of story. :)
 
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High1ander said:
All good comments, and they have all been bugging me in the process of making the short.

To answer why it is as it is: I had less than two hours of shooting (I couldn't use the camera any longer) and no script. It was basically just a movie for me to "train working with CGI elements", therefore "story" took a big hit.

I didn't want to spend more time on it really though, it's been a year, enough is enough. However, I might spend more time on audio in the future. The goal was to get some good looking CGI intergration, which in my opinion the doll is at least.

The only thing I can say about the reaction of the girl getting stabbed is that I thought of it something like it hit her in the nerves and she gor paralized. But I didn't really have the time to get all the reaction shots that I wanted.

The girls is just to "slow/crazy/phazed" (almost like she is on some sort of downer drugs) to react to the doll (which came to life) and runs up her arm. Really the emphazis should have been the doll getting fed up being tortured and later on fighting back, but I ditched that while shooting. I didn't bother at all about their backstory and exposition as to who these people are...

The ghost should have damaged him as they ran into him, however the shot I took for that didn't come out good enough so I ditched that to :)


The doll looks to the guy, I broke the axis, but I thought it would be OK to break it since there's the table and the girl to re-orient along with.

Anyways the project has been a great experience for me in terms of CGI workflow, pre-production, production and post-production.

Thank you for the comments, I need to hear that stuff to know what to improve for future projects, and for future, story will be the focus, not CGI. :)

I almost feel like an ass for making it so incomplete in terms of story. :)
Click to expand...

DO NOT feel like an ass. You had 2 hours with the camera and you made the best of it. I'm sure you also learned a lot during the process. It may not be perfect, but you did it and that's something to be very proud of.
 
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