Feasibilty Report

Over the summer I thought a lot about what I wanted to do for my final major project this year. I want to produce something that will showcase my strengths as well as challenge me in the process. This made it very easy to decide that my project will be heavily film and editing based. My passion in this industry is editing, this is what I want to do when I graduate, and I also thoroughly enjoy the production side of a project. As well as doing something I am comfortable with, I also want to push myself and try and expand my knowledge and skills in the visual effects side of things. This means there are certain areas in my project where I will include compositing and subtle visual effects.

I thought about what I enjoy and what influences me, and began thinking about music and fashion. I decided that basing my project on areas of the creative world that I am passionate about will mean that the project will be fun for me, and also means I am more likely to produce something really good. Once I had decided on these loose aspects, I began thinking about how I could tie all the elements in my head together into one piece.

I remembered seeing something on 'Americas Next Top Model' called a motion editorial and thought that it would be a great basis for an idea. The idea of a motion editorial is basically modeling in moving image rather than photography. The designer is able to tell a story about his/her collection through camera angles, facial expressions, movement and music, as well as showcasing the clothes themselves.

I began thinking about contrasting clothing, environments, makeup and hair. I picture soft, floaty, feminine clothing with unusual dark make up and extravagant hairstyles against a hard industrial, urban background. I think that the contrast between the image of the model against the environment will help to tell a dramatic story. When looking around for inspiration, I found the feel I want to create with the look of my models is that of Hilary Swank in Black Swan, something beautiful yet creepy.

I then moved on to the music. I want the music in the piece to heavily influence the feeling of it and therefore started listening to some of my music, looking for inspiration. I finally found it while listening to a song I had recently acquired, 'High for This' by The Weeknd. The song is beautiful and the music is quite dramatic and dark, which fits perfectly with my visual idea.

The next element to work out is what area of visual effects I want to incorporate into my piece. I will most probably shoot some footage using the green screen studio, as it gives me the opportunity to make shots look even more unusual and dark. This is something that I will work out in the early pre-production stages, when creating my storyboards. I was also inspired by Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance' video, in which she was oversized eyes which give her a look that is very unnerving, yet mysterious. I plan on experimenting in an attempt to recreate this look on the girls in my video.

In terms of the resources I plan to use to produce my project, I imagine there will be significantly more hardware used than software. To shoot my footage I will be using a Canon 5D Mk II SLR or Canon 60D camera and tripod, although the tripod may not be used a great deal as I will be shooting a lot of the footage hand held, to create the personal feeling I am looking for. I will also be using hand held lighting to create the perfect light and therefore the perfect mood of the shots. I will be needing hand held lighting rather than kinos and dedos because I will be shooting outdoors for the entire shoot, which means that lighting that require mains electricity is no use to me. As previously mentioned I may want to use the green screen studio at the Workstation for some of my shots, and indoor lighting, as well as the hand held lighting, will be needed to try and create the same lighting as the shots outside, in order for the shots to be consistent. Because of this, when it comes to planning I will shoot the outdoor footage first, so that I know exactly what look I need to recreate in the studio.

When it comes to software, I will not be using a great number of programmes. I will edit in Adobe Premier Pro, as this is the programme I am most familiar with. I will composite and Chroma key in Adobe After Effects and if I am able to create the ‘oversized eyes’ I will be using 3DS Max to model the eyes and will use MatchMover to track the 3D eyes onto the footage. Because I am not confident with 3D and have never tried to create and track eyes onto footage, this aspect may not appear in my final piece, as I will not put something into my piece which I am not 100% happy with.

To conclude, I am extremely excited to work on this project. Putting my interests and passions together with my strongest skills to produce a piece of work that hopefully I can be proud of, is really exciting, albeit a little daunting. I can’t wait to get underway with all of my planning and start producing work towards my final major project piece. I am very pleased with my project plan as I think I have left myself a good amount of time to complete all of the elements. The worst thing I could do, would be to underestimate how long it will take me to do things and with this plan I don’t think I have. I am generally very good at sticking to project plans and hopefully I will be able to stick to this plan, and therefore not put too much pressure on myself, especially in semester 2. Luckily, we have another module this semester that is all about pre production and planning, so I am trying to complete my pre production work for this project at the same time as the work for the other module. This means I am familiar with each stage of the pre production process as we learn about it each week in lectures. If I can keep this up, along with following my plan, I think overall I will be very successful in this module.