This project is very close to my heart also I feel its my best work till date. Its a short thriller movie , virtually produced which essentially spells crazy . The experience of Virtual production is similar for the production part to any other film production but the shoot experience is on zoom . A 2hr virtual shoot preceded iteration on the script , selection of assets on unreal and the previs video .
Writing a script and then seeing it come to life in a visual illustration was awesome, life enhancing . The idea of having a drunk man at an animal farm got the ball rolling .
The script goes as :
Scene 1 : NORMAL ANIMAL FARM (45seconds)
Time: Late morning/early noon (11am)
Location: In the middle of fences, green grass farm, Blue sky, Hills, barn, and cows and sheep in Background. Well nearby.
Sound: Low spatial noises of animals, potentially background music
It is late morning around 11am. The sun is set straight overhead. There are ambient sounds of breeze. Animal noises are distributed spatially. The camera rolls through the scene to focus on the middle aged bald, white guy who has passed out in the middle of the farm.
The man is in a half-sleeping position with his back supported by a couple of wooden logs. Due to bright sunlight he feels strain on his face and he suddenly comes to his consciousness. He wakes up realizing he is in the middle of an animal farm. He tries to see the time, but he is wearing a smart watch whose battery has died. So he can’t know. He checks his pockets. But his phone is dead too. He anxiously looks around and tries to recollect what happened last night. Suddenly he checks his suit’s inner pocket to see there is a vodka bottle in it. He looks at the bottle.
Scene 2 : Transition moment (15 seconds)
Transition:
The camera cuts and zooms in on the label of the bottle, and the world start to shift in front of the man’s eyes. When it pans back up the world is completely different. The man turns around and throws the Vodka bottle on the ground in surprise at the scenery he sees only to realize that he is standing on clouds as the bottle lands.
Scene3 : The dreamy farm (On clouds) (45 seconds)
Time: sunset (4,5pm)
Location: ground become clouds, animals become bigger, barn house, well (keep the items but change the ground + animals)
Sound: https://youtu.be/CZlfbep2LdU
The camera pans for an introductory shot of the new scene. The times changed to late afternoon with an overly vibrant sunset with the sky being yellow. In the scene everything is 10 times bigger and louder than reality. The man looks very confused about where he is because everything is so distorted and disproportionate. The background music turned mythical and intense as the man started walking around, exploring the new location
The man got really anxious all of a sudden because he saw a bunch of huge animals roaring and running towards him. He started running away from the animals towards the massive barn house and he almost tripped.
Scene 4 : Last Ending Scene (Fall in well and realize he was hallucinating.) (20 seconds)
As he catches himself he turns around, only to find the huge cow right in his face. He falls backwards off the edge of the cloud, and as he closes his eyes .Only to wake up to realize that the fall never happened. He opens his eyes and finds himself in a shallow, empty well in the farm, and everything is back to normal again. The scene ends.
Storyboarding flushed life into the script and everyone on the team could picture the story.
The previs was with a meta human with unfolding of all the shots in the unreal environment. The shot sequence was created for the shoot day and the decks were uploaded on to the system of our actor Noah.
The sound was very important for the storytelling aspect as there is no dialogue for the actors . I wanted to play with diagetic and non diagetic conventions as that creates ambiguity amongst the viewers. The shots were independent of each other so to make it into a thrilling story which is connected , sound was needed.
Sound board (that changed alot) :
https://www.figma.com/file/r0zLY2Nr7dA8K069JozxdS/PAF-!?node-id=0%3A1
I thank my instructors/gurus to let me go wild on my creativity making it a brilliant experience . I will like to make a special mention to Sang-jin and Luke Dubois who instilled confidence and allowed me to make something I will like all my life.
here is one version which lacks connectivity and that was the feedback I took and tried to incorporate it in the 2nd video.
Director’s Cut :
My collaborators on this project : Zeal Sheth, Tommy Wu, Eli Sun.
Incredible team , we made something that is special and will always bring a smile our faces.