Making Of / Timelapse
Boostalgia
Just another normal day doing my taxes in the dining room when suddenly an accidental spill causes an unexpected turn! .. "BOOSTALGIA!"
Software
The technologies I used for this project were Maxon Cinema 4D with Solid Angle’s Arnold Renderer (C4DtoA). The assistance of a seven computer render farm was used to share the load of the high res airplane model. The render farm was a complete requirement for the aspired scale of the project. Arnold is a ‘brute force’ renderer, which means it does no form of caching, while a lot of alternative renderers typically are setup up for various methods of caching by default. Adobe Premiere Pro was used for basic video and sound editing and Adobe After Effects was used to as the compositor.
Camera Tracking
Vicon’s Boujou was used to camera track each movie. In many cases, various sections of the frames were masked out before tracking was done. This was so the tracker would not get confused and attempt to track unwanted, independent foreground elements.
The camera solves were then exported in a format that Cinema 4D accepted. Within Cinema 4D the scenes were setup up with a DIY spherical HDRI setup. This was to allow for the most realistic render from the engine as possible. It would also save a lot of time in post as it would allow for less light and colour grade fixes.
Maxon Cinema 4D
In Cinema 4D the tracked ‘null’ information was used to get the bearing of the scene (particularly the perceived depth) to start plotting out splines for the planes path. This was a fun part of the process. The Cinema 4D projects were set up with the TIFF sequences in the background, so fairly instant feedback was achieved. Also Arnold Renderers IPR window allowed for near instant render preview also.
Adobe After Effects Compositing
After all the scenes were complete and rendered. I used Adobe After Effects to composite the frames into place over the original footage. At this stage we could add things such as Depth of Field, Motion Blur etc. But one key part to the process was making the beautiful airplane renders look bad. Deliberately. Some of the movies that were chosen were not too current and things like focus and lenses were a little softer and sometimes a little dirtier. Even the cleanest modern film like Interstellar and San Andres needed some work as the airplane typically stood out too clear.
It was around this stage that I had realised I had only practiced one composting technique and I felt that it was necessary to add some other sort of narrative or idea to the piece. One looming question that needed answer was, “Where did this airplane come from?” or, “How did it get into all these movies?” At this stage I decided to film a very short story idea of my throwing the airplane into a portal. This idea allowed for many more compositing techniques to be used.
More camera tracking was used for some handheld shots. While other locked off shots were absolutely necessary when working with greenscreen and using a double take method of masking. A heavy amount of rotobrushing was used (including the roto-refine brush After Effects offers) to work with the larger pieces where a greenscreen would not have been feasible. Although a greenscreen was used, but only to assist the masking of the paper airplane for the few frames it was flying and unattached to my hand. Rotobrushing can be quite accurate although not accurate enough to trust with a smaller object in frame like the plane.
Various particle systems were made to emulate dust and “magic” happening when the portal had opened. Also a handful of custom lens flares were made to add to the effect. A custom made, handheld camera script was used to give some emphasis when the action took place.
The time of day that was filmed allowed me to composite the outside window and conservatory from day time to night time using the tracked data and masks. Also some other objects such as the sound recorder and GoPro camera sitting in front needed painted out.
Audio Editing & Processing
An auto edit was pieced together using various online sources. Also an archive of sounds I’ve kept and am fond of over the years was once again dipped into.
A technique that I have used previous was to edit up the one sound source that was recorded but shift (Adobe Premiere’s Slip Tool) the audio around at each camera cut. The apparent chop in the audio gives for a much more logical response to what people are seeing visually. The audio changes were also deliberately left hard and harsh to create a slight uneasiness.
After the basic edit was done, it was apparent that the piece lacked depth or variance. I downloaded a piece of audio from the Nolan show from BBC iPlayer and applied the same sound editing technique mention previous. This added context and a sound reference that a lot of peoples ears would be used to hearing. So when any large changes happens, the viewer would have some awareness of what was happening. For example, speed ups, slow downs, interference of any kind.
The audio was mastered using an EQ, Compressor and Limiter. Also at this stage the audio from the ‘movie’ part of the piece was evenly levelled as older films tend not to have been mastered the same as today’s standards.
