10/29/25

The Technique of Special Effects Cinematography written by Raymond Fielding book, colsulting a few costuming friends, Kaicey Rhan and Bobby Chastain I think creating a mix of a wired bone rig and physical stumps for tracking of the wings is the best bet.
Bobby has graciously offered to help with the construction of making the rig itself! I'm super excited to be collaborating with him on the rig.

10/27/25

Oliva and I blocked out the camera move for shot 2I.2. As it is our proof of concept shot, I was able to use the footage from the test shoot to do a quick composite with the camera movement from unreal. Getting this shot roughly set up really gets me excited for our shoot week 9!

10/23/25

I met today with Molly Intersimone , one of the amazing mentors I had while at my Harbor internship, to get advice on how to shoot some of the more complex elements in the film.

She made a lot of really helpful notes, here are a few of the ones that we plan on implementing into shooting:

- Transparent refrence for consistency of the wings
- As many in-camera elements connecting the character to the bg as possible to keep realisim tied in
- Spine for wing rig, rework the current plan, look at more ways wings have been done in the past, no need to reinvent the wheel

10/19/25

A test of using smart vectors and st maps to get an idea of what we may be able to do for makeup enhancements in nuke of our actress.

This is footage from the test shoot. The fact this works is promising because to matte out the face I am using one of the segmentation tools from Cattery: Face Parsing .

Based upon this working, it means that like I mentioned previously, we will be able to likely use copycat to help with roto and mapping out parts of the fairy to help enhance makeup and removing her from the background from either the greenscreen stage or the XR stage, which is what I am most worried about needing to do.

10/16/25

The right tool to shoot the shots in the best way to set us up for success has been decided on! We are going to be using a Kessler slider that we have access to and are able to hook up whatever camera we get our hands on for the shoot. It has the full ability to change height so we can mount it on c-stands to hold it up and move in time with the actress to get those moving shots we are aiming for.

10/15/25

Over the quarter I have been in conversation with Gray Marshall, the chair of VFX at SCAD asking for his advice as to go about shooting a few of the shots within the limitations that we have as visual effects students.

First as mentioned in the past on this blog, I proposed we could use the motion control kit. The main reasoning for using motion control would be in cases where the camera would need to make repeatable movements. Such as multiple exposure shots, or in what I thought would be our case a running scene that the camera is almost entirely parallel with the actress. After we went over the kit, talked more about the technical side of shooting visual effects plates, he recommended this book:

The Technique of Special Effects Cinematography written by Raymond Fielding. So many of the concepts of visual effects have not changed since they were created and this book is totally a testament to that. I haven't read as much of it as I'd like yet, but a very informative read.

Marshall also graciously reached out to an old colleague of his, Michael Karp who was a motion control operator and now mainly a matchmove artist. He gave great insight that sometimes using a rig like a motion control one can make a shot look out of place. He explained that for shots similar to the ones with the fairy running through the woods (2A and 2L), he would track the camera, and then track the object rather than needing to control the motion of the camera. By parenting the object track to the camera it would naturally nullify a feeling of being out of place in world space. After more research and trying to figure out how to go about these shots, Gray brought up an idea of using a slider rather than a motion control rig. It allows for consistent movement while not needing all of the complexities that come with needing to set up a motion control rig. And in our luck Gracie and I are going to learn how to use it with Gray later today. I'm so excited that we hopefully finally have found the right tool for the project.

10/12/25

Because so many of the shots are going to require roto and keying for some degree, I have been looking into training possibly a copycat model of our actor to help with masking her out in various isntances. I am not 100% sure how to go about it yet, so I have started doing research on how I could go about it. I have been looking at the Foundry's user guide as a jumping off point.

10/9/25

Midterm review was super helpful! We got really construtive feedback on a couple of the shots that we may need to rework in the event we are unable to get certian equipment.

Here is an up to date edit with the changes

10/7/25

Most up to date edit with the test footage!

*This is all super quick comps to just see how the footage looks, additoanlly, Hannah is not our actor as she was unable to be there for the entire test shoot day, but will have her for the actual shoot and when we do a camera and costume test.

10/5/25

Revewing the footage from yesterday made me realise that we really do need more lights in order to be able to light the subject well, along with having a better camera. We want to be able to use the same camera that is on the XR stage (RED Komodo 6K) But the issue that again we are running into is that as VFX students we don't have access to rent out the cameras, so we are in discussion with a bunch of film majors that have certification to use the specific cameras that can work on our project with us.

10/4/25

Shoot day!

All things considered the shoot was productive in terms of what we need to aquire for the next shoot, changing shots / lighting plans. Unfortantley, we ran into quite a few issues while preparing to shoot test shots.

First we didnt have access to the breaker to turn the house lights on for the greenscreen. When we were able to get them turned on, we realised one of the lights was blown out entirely making it difficlt to light the greenscreen evenly, so we had to use a small portion of the stage. Additonally a few of the bulbs for one of the panels was also blown out pictured below

If we were able to rent more lights from the Montgomery cage, or use the Film lighting kits this may not have been as much of an issue. So renting more lights overall for the shoot will be super important to get the shots we need properly lit.

10/2/25

Today myself Gracie , and Hannah met with our planned DP for the shoot this weekend along with the rest of our planned shoots for the project. It was super informative especially for specific bounds we will need to make sure the unreal scene file aspects work with the stage. My main concern for shooting on the XR stage is that regardless of how well lit the shots are shot that the background will need to be removed regardless to properly add in the fairy wings to the talent.

I am going to have to do research as a way to possibly avoid the inevatible of removing the bg regardless for when we shoot on the stage in winter quarter.

10/1/25

Our test shoot is this weekend, so I have been spending most of the time for this project working on the prep material that will be needed such as all of the lighting diagrams for each shot.

I bought a GODOX light, that will be used for light interactions!!! I'm super excited to add it to my On-Set VFX Supervison kit!

Heres the spreadsheet with the information below such as the call sheet, shoot schedule, lighting diagrams, kit checklist and more! Feel free to check it out

9/25/25

Continuing with the development with the tests for Caustics, I now have access to Higx

A point renderer that takes the particle system nuke has to the next level.

The first two iterations based upon gravity, and an animated driving force

A test of one of the stills from the animatic, with the caustics, and the effect masked.

9/17/25

We have been making a plan for shooting each shot that will be on either the greenscreen or the XR stage. Each shot is different, so having the plan of what shots will be needed for comp and all cg assets is essential to the workflow. We now have an instagram for our project, for other students who we will need help from, will be able to get involved, the instagram is: @metamorphosis_vfxthesis

9/15/25

Hannah has updated the animatic here:

9/12/25

I have done a couple of tests with Nukes particle system feeling out how much I may be able to do in comp in terms of additonal effects to save on render times down the pipeline. These are entirely to test to see if it will be possible to create caustics and additonal light/effects in Nuke.

I used Nuke's particle system, the movement is driven on cos, sin and tan waves for the movement.

Here are the first initial tests behind a HDRI for context of transparency

Tests of different sizes without the trails

Another test, smaller with trails

9/8/25

First class! Super exciting to finally be starting 408 after quite a bit of prep and antisipation! Going off of the notes from today, I have come across a few color scripts that were used for the tinkerbell movies, that may be helpful for the team going forward.

9/5/25

For any physical props the character is going to interact with Gaussian Splatting may be the way to go to integrate the cg together. This article: Gaussian Splatting in Superman talks about how Superman used Gaussian Splatting to get more accurate depth, and I believe although we don't have the same amount of resources that the team that made it happen, we can possibly simplify it to make the depth pass work for our needs as needed.

Hannah worked on the storyboards:

The script can be found on Gracies Blog

8/22/25

When researching projects for visual effects students, I found that a main commonality is the lack of movement of the camera. To fix that, I believe using the motion control rig on the shots that are on greenscreen/bluescreen will allow for that fix. I am not sure if the XR has motion control capabilities, but if it does as well then that would help with it too. Additionally, if we are able to take the camera information from the XR stage shots and import it into unreal and nuke with keeping the correct proportions that would allow for the effects integration to be physically accurate along with proper match move!

8/16/25

I have had the privilege of working at Harbor over the summer for an internship, so I asked a few questions that would pertain to the project based upon the constraints and direction we are heading into.

As everyone on the core team is a visual effects artist we will need to branch out to have people from other departments help where we may not be as strong in such as having a camera operator and a director of photography. If we are able to have the backgrounds done for all of the shots, not just the ones that will be on the XR stage before we shoot, it will help the DP (director of photography) light the actress better allowing for a seamless camera match.

7/30/25

As my portion of the project cannot start until filming begins, I have been doing a lot of research on the best ways to shoot the plates that will be on the XR stage and Greenscreen/Bluescreen background depending on the final lookdev.

The main thing I wanted to look into is getting the intergration of the material on the fairy to the effects that will be taking place around her. In order to do that I think we are going to need the costume that she will be wearing as a 3d asset to allow for the accurate intergration on both lighting and texturing.

7/5/25

For my senior project, the theme right now is some sort of dark fairy fantasy world. I will be incharge of compositing and helping to conduct the on set supervison needed for the live action elements.

The people so far on the team are:

Hannah Kim (Director/FX/Lookdev)

Gracie Szymanski (FX/Prodction)

Mia Esparragoza (Enviornment/Lookdev/Lighting)

Benji Hopkins (FX/Lookdev)

Julian Schenker (Unreal Production)

Olivia Westling (Compositing/Editing)

Charlie Ragland (Lighting/FX)