| 00:00 | Zander Brimijoin: We wanted to
make a new end tag for Big Spaceship.
|
| 00:06 | So we had been looking at lot of
documentaries of how they used to do logo
|
| 00:14 | builds in like the 60s and 70s and 80s.
|
| 00:18 | So we decided to make the latest sort
of Spaceship logo build be as if we had
|
| 00:28 | tried to do it in the 70s, using
stop-motion and some like rudimentary
|
| 00:37 | video techniques and sliding acetate
pieces together and like anything that we
|
| 00:44 | could possibly do with old techniques
to kind of like challenge ourselves to do
|
| 00:52 | something, to do something real and
physical and then afterwards, of course,
|
| 01:01 | there's some After Effects involved then.
|
| 01:05 | Joshua Hirsch: Which lead us to one of our most
important purchases in Big Spaceship history,
|
| 01:10 | which is the smoke machine.
|
| 01:11 | Zander Brimijoin: So we just actually bought
this smoke machine here and we are all pretty
|
| 01:17 | excited about it.
|
| 01:19 | The practical use for is
it adds atmosphere to any model.
|
| 01:27 | So if we fill the room with smoke, when
we take the final picture, it will look
|
| 01:34 | as if there is actual more
depth then there is, because --
|
| 01:38 | Jason Hart: Things off in a distance are a
little hazier and but still crisp in the front.
|
| 01:43 | Zander Brimijoin: It's like it's
simulating real atmosphere at a small scale.
|
| 01:48 | This model is for our Big Spaceship end
tag that we've been working on for about
|
| 01:56 | a month and we've been looking
at old movie signatures like --
[00:2:01.04]
Jason Hart: Paramount.
|
| 02:02 | Zander Brimijoin: Paramount.
|
| 02:03 | Phil Sierzega: HBO.
Zander Brimijoin: Right.
|
| 02:06 | So the mountain had like that
that nice Paramount quality too.
|
| 02:10 | Jason Hart: We work on a wide range of
projects and we kind of just finished a large fully
|
| 02:19 | interactive really cool site using
Papervision techniques like that.
|
| 02:23 | So for us, it was a really nice thing
to say, what do you want to work on next,
|
| 02:27 | what do you want to do to sort of
recharge the creativity and just getting in
|
| 02:32 | here working with your
hands really helps you do that.
|
| 02:36 | Zander Brimijoin: There is downtime between
projects and we try to instead of sitting around and
|
| 02:43 | doing nothing or searching on the
Internet, we build things like this.
|
| 02:48 | One of the available materials to us is
paper, because it's cheap and easy for
|
| 02:52 | us to create a large model so we
basically built this mountain here by
|
| 03:01 | washing giant watercolor pieces of
paper and then hot gluing them together in
|
| 03:08 | a big environment.
|
| 03:10 | Jason Hart: We wanted it to be highly stylized.
Sometimes when you're working with models,
|
| 03:14 | you're sort of fighting to try and
find realism, so this way by using
|
| 03:20 | repetitive patterns and things like that,
those kind of techniques kind of just
|
| 03:25 | lend themselves to just being sort
of creative and interesting, more than
|
| 03:29 | trying to provide reality.
|
| 03:32 | Zander Brimijoin: So we're shooting this
mountain on green screen because we're going to later
|
| 03:37 | composite in a hand-painted background.
|
| 03:41 | It's too difficult to set up a
background, a foreground, characters, rocket,
|
| 03:48 | trails, all at once because
everything has to go right.
|
| 03:52 | But with green screen, we can just get
one thing right at a time and then later
|
| 03:57 | composite it altogether.
|
| 03:59 | Jason Hart: And work a piece at a time, so
we'll shoot an entire 15-second stop-motion
|
| 04:05 | piece of the mountain, bring that
under our machines, see how that looks and
|
| 04:10 | then adjust from there saying okay ,well
the rocket would look really cool if it
|
| 04:15 | flew around the right-hand side
and curved in, that kind of thing.
|
| 04:19 | Zander Brimijoin: Originally, when we set this
up the first time, we had to make individual hash
|
| 04:25 | marks underneath the table for every
single rotation that we made and it took about
|
| 04:33 | an hour to do a full table rotation.
|
| 04:36 | Phil Sierzega: Another cool thing to do with
the camera, originally, but which we ended up not
|
| 04:40 | using was using the super fast
shutter speed and just sort of like timing
|
| 04:45 | everything where like you just hold
the button down and we would take like 11
|
| 04:49 | frames and we would just try to match
up our timing at the same time as the
|
| 04:54 | actual camera going off.
|
| 04:56 | That was a lot more experimental and we were
just sort of trying to see what would work.
|
| 04:59 | Zander Brimijoin: This mountain piece is going
to be the focus of our final end tag and
|
| 05:07 | we're going to key out all the green and
not only add backdrops, but add all of the
|
| 05:14 | other elements that we've
animated from rocket smoke trails to --
|
| 05:20 | Jason Hart: Foregrounds coming up,
really just the mountain pushes back in space and the
|
| 05:26 | foreground pulls up into view,
as rockets and explosions fly by.
|
| 05:31 | Zander Brimijoin: So this sort of JPEG sequence
is going to be the kind of like center axis that
|
| 05:38 | everything is going to be composited around.
|
| 05:43 | So we needed to integrate our logo
into our motion end tag, of course.
|
| 05:50 | But since we built mountain out of
paper and all of the environment out of real
|
| 05:56 | materials, we also wanted to make
the logo itself out of real materials.
|
| 06:01 | So our first idea was to make it out of plaster.
|
| 06:05 | So Phil here started
making molds for the plaster.
|
| 06:12 | Jason Hart: And ending before the B.
|
| 06:13 | Phil Sierzega: I tested one of them and it
just did not look good and I actually had already
|
| 06:19 | built most of this before I tested what
it would look like, and then like, we're
|
| 06:23 | going to pour plaster of Paris in here
and it just was not going to have it.
|
| 06:28 | So, we just kept the mold and it ended
up turning out like this and we just used it.
|
| 06:35 | Zander Brimijoin: Yeah. We had
screwed up the molds so badly.
|
| 06:37 | We didn't want to ruin Phil's intricate
work. It took him at least three days
|
| 06:45 | to make these letters by hand.
|
| 06:47 | It ended up, we just started
liking the actual mold, so that's what we're using.
|
| 06:52 | Jason Hart: So we mounted it on board on a
shelf, painted the back green to match the
|
| 07:01 | background green screen
and we just did some hand --
|
| 07:05 | Phil Sierzega: Fly-throughs.
|
| 07:06 | Jason Hart: Hand fly-throughs,
yeah, and took some shots of that.
|
| 07:08 | Zander Brimijoin: So the central paper mountain,
since it's a pull and twist out from the camera,
|
| 07:20 | we needed to also mimic that with the logo.
|
| 07:23 | We figured out sort of a rule that
basically the first time we try something,
|
| 07:29 | it works perfect except for one
fatal flaw and we call it the Magic Shot
|
| 07:37 | because it has life and energy to it,
and then the second and third shots are
|
| 07:42 | us trying to fix the shot.
|
| 07:44 | Phil Sierzega: Reproduce that exactly but --
|
| 07:46 | Zander Brimijoin: But mimic the
first one and those two are awful.
|
| 07:50 | Then the final one, we're all tired,
but we've learned a few things.
|
| 07:57 | That one actually ends up
being the one that we use.
|
| 07:59 | Jason Hart: So we usually started at the bottom,
pulled down off screen, so that when we run
|
| 08:06 | the footage, it comes in from the
bottom of the screen and looks like its just
|
| 08:11 | flying into the face of the mountain.
|
| 08:23 | Phil Sierzega: So we did that a lot, weird
like experimenting with maybe like twisting maybe
|
| 08:27 | and like bouncing around.
|
| 08:29 | Jason Hart: Yeah, we do really have to, like
Zander said, visualize the end result of what
|
| 08:33 | you want and have if it rests
against the back of the mountain, maybe you
|
| 08:36 | wanted to bounce back a little bit and
visualize all that kind of, what you're
|
| 08:41 | going to want in the future.
|
| 08:42 | So trial and error helps too.
|
| 08:43 | Phil Sierzega: It's the kind of stuff that you
can't really see until you put on the computer and
|
| 08:48 | put them together and then
you come back and try it again.
|
| 08:50 | Zander Brimijoin: We found that the people that
are best at moving the things like this logo are
|
| 08:58 | the people that have actually touched
the animation on computer because they
|
| 09:02 | know how things should be easing out
and how things should start and what speed
|
| 09:07 | things should be moving, because we
had like some other volunteers come in.
|
| 09:13 | If you don't have the entire sequence
in your head while you're moving it,
|
| 09:21 | it just doesn't look the same.
|
| 09:22 | Phil Sierzega: When you first get on the
computer, you have an idea of how you want something
|
| 09:26 | to really move or animate and you're like, oh,
|
| 09:29 | let's do it, but then you get in
here and you have like this real object and
|
| 09:33 | you're moving it around and to
actually physically do something and see it in
|
| 09:37 | physical space and then put on the
computer and see how it's represented,
|
| 09:41 | really helps you learn like how things
actually move, because you're like, oh,
|
| 09:43 | I didn't know that it would be this
out of focus or would be too low when it
|
| 09:48 | first comes in. When you actually do it
in physical space, it really helps --
|
| 09:51 | Jason Hart: Flesh out an idea;
|
| 09:53 | flesh out an animation, yeah.
|
| 09:54 | Phil Sierzega: And how it actually
ends up in the final output in the screen.
|
| 09:59 | Zander Brimijoin: Plus like easing in a computer
is just sort of a parameter that you adjust, but
|
| 10:08 | when you're actually easing something
by hand, physically, your muscles are
|
| 10:13 | involved in actually like slowing an
object down and it kind of makes you think
|
| 10:20 | a lot about how to do that also on the computer.
|
| 10:24 | Jason Hart: This is a simple paper rocket that
we made, very crude and rudimentary, but just
|
| 10:33 | we wanted that again, that physical
object, and the way that we shot this is
|
| 10:38 | mounted it through a stick, painted the
stick green, so we could key that out,
|
| 10:43 | then shotted in the 360 view, so that
we could bring it onto the computer and
|
| 10:47 | After Effects and animate it
really however we'd wanted.
|
| 10:49 | Zander Brimijoin: We have been trying to figure
out how to get a rocket to be rotating through a
|
| 10:56 | swivel motion as well as turning at the
same time, we ended up putting it on a
|
| 11:01 | spit where we held these two
sides up on the spit and it would rotate at
|
| 11:08 | the same time as on a turntable,
the turntable would be moving.
|
| 11:13 | So every frame we would move it one
swivel and move it one turn and then we'd get
|
| 11:20 | like a full turn after an hour.
|
| 11:22 | Jason Hart: We tend to like really
complicated movements and they're very difficult to do
|
| 11:27 | with simple paper and a stick, but
they usually work out in the end.
|
| 11:31 | Phil Sierzega: We also wanted like realistic
smoke, since we have a smoke machine, to put
|
| 11:36 | behind the rocket, so we've made the
system of a vacuum hose and smoke machine
|
| 11:41 | and just sort of made an actual smoke trail.
|
| 11:44 | Jason Hart: Yeah we have taken the shots of
the rocket animations, brought them into our
|
| 11:50 | After Effects composition, set them up
the way that we wanted to, and tried to do
|
| 11:56 | some kind of post-production smoke
trails, but they weren't very believable and
|
| 12:02 | it just didn't have the magic
that we were really looking for.
|
| 12:05 | So we decided to come in here and
make it ourselves exactly the way that we wanted.
|
| 12:10 | Zander Brimijoin: Basically, we have to have the
idea of what we'd already done on computer in our
|
| 12:16 | heads and try to move the vacuum hose
in the same vector that we had created on
|
| 12:24 | computer and to create
that right rocket movement.
|
| 12:29 | Then after we were done, we would line
up the rocket with the smoke trail to
|
| 12:36 | create the rocket effect.
|
| 12:38 | In order to create the smoke trail
effect, we needed a concentrated burst of smoke,
|
| 12:42 | so just simply waving the
smoke machine around wasn't going to quite cut it.
|
| 12:48 | So Phil actually had been doing some
things with this vacuum hose, putting
|
| 12:58 | smoke in it and then using it as a nozzle.
|
| 13:02 | We then taped this metal pole on to
the vacuum hose so I would have a way of
|
| 13:10 | directing the smoke trail
without being in the shot.
|
| 13:15 | So this is kind of like loosely
taped on here, but it still works.
|
| 13:32 | Phil Sierzega: So this is a little set that
I've built, where basically towards the end of the end
|
| 13:39 | tag, the mountain turns into a monster
and opens his mouth and sort of finishes
|
| 13:47 | off the piece, so I made this little
mouth contraption and we lit it and again
|
| 13:55 | used the smoke machine to give it
an extra monster effect or whatever.
|
| 14:01 | Zander Brimijoin: But rather than actually
cutting apart the whole mountain and putting this
|
| 14:07 | mouth in the mountain, we found that
it was easier just to pull this one
|
| 14:12 | element out, because it gave us the
flexibility of adding it wherever we wanted
|
| 14:17 | to in the video.
|
| 14:25 | Phil Sierzega: It's actually kind of funny how
shoddy this looks right now compared to what it
|
| 14:28 | looks like on the computer.
|
| 14:30 | So basically, the mouth does a very
simple movement and it just opens up.
|
| 14:35 | When it opens up, the smoke comes
pouring out of it while its backlit, and then
|
| 14:41 | it closes and we take that and
composite it right into the center of the mountain
|
| 14:46 | and that's sort of how we end it.
|
| 14:49 | Zander Brimijoin: We also shot the mountain
tilting as well at the same speed as the mouth
|
| 14:57 | opening, so we had to match up those
two pieces of footage later, the tilt
|
| 15:03 | and this opening.
|
| 15:05 | Phil Sierzega: Basically, as if the mountain,
the top of the mountain were connected here, but
|
| 15:08 | we did it in two separate shots.
|
| 15:09 | Jason Hart: Most of the time we'll take this
footage and then bring it into After Effects
|
| 15:14 | and I think you always end up sort of
remapping it with time a little bit,
|
| 15:18 | changing the animations.
|
| 15:19 | If it bounces a little too much and
it's a little too silly, you kind of cut
|
| 15:23 | things down a little and just --
the software gives you the flexibility to
|
| 15:27 | really change it as much as you want,
but you have this really great, beautiful
|
| 15:32 | source that you are working from.
|
| 15:33 | Phil Sierzega: Working with smoke, it's
actually kind of an interesting challenge, because
|
| 15:38 | if you try to time and remap smoke,
it completely gets warped and doesn't look real.
|
| 15:44 | So mapping the movement of the mountain
tilting with this mouth opening with the
|
| 15:49 | smoke pouring out was an interesting
challenge because you really have to do it
|
| 15:53 | right physically to put it on the computer.
|
| 15:55 | It was an interesting challenge.
|
| 15:58 | Zander Brimijoin: Everything that we shoot gets
color-corrected, masked out, and worked a lot,
|
| 16:09 | like a lot of work goes on the computer to
basically remove all the seams, the wires
|
| 16:15 | and the shoddy tape jobs and
everything and just basically take the beauty of
|
| 16:22 | doing something physically with all of
the kind of mistakes and lighting and
|
| 16:28 | then clean it up as much as possible.
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