From the course: Creating a Short Film: 09 VFX Environments

Why did we create this shot?

From the course: Creating a Short Film: 09 VFX Environments

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Why did we create this shot?

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- [Instructor] In this chapter, we're going to switch gears a little bit and we're going to talk about this shot of GalHatan's helmet. Now, it's kind of a real shift form the last chapter and the aerial shot which was almost all live action with CG elements, like a few CG elements. And this is the exact opposite. This is almost entirely CG with a few live action elements in the dust here, but mostly all CG. Now before we dig into that, let's back up a little bit and talk about why this shot was in the movie in the first place. You know, after going through the edit, we realized that we just didn't have too much of an antagonist. There wasn't this really big, ominous threat, so when Galhatan showed up at the end of the movie, it just wasn't that intimidating. If you saw the rough cut in the previous course on editing, you saw that it just wasn't that big of a deal. Initially we kind of wanted it to be a twist, like, oh, it really was real. It really was this big, evil thing, but it was so disconnected throughout the whole film that it just really wasn't. It just kind of came out of left field it felt like at the end. This kind of made it so that we see this helmet, we're here recording his voice over talking about this big impending threat and it just feels a little bit more real. And also, this model of this helmet is just so incredibly amazing and inspiring for me, actually. You know, I made this temporary teaser poster for The Assurance when I got back the helmet from our artist Shaun McNeely who is amazing and he worked way under his regular pay to help me make this model. You can see the type of work that he does. It's just super high level stuff. And he condescended to help with this humble project and the helmet that he made was just absolutely stunning. And so, I made that teaser poster, and I was like, oh, I really wish there was a way that we could kind of, get up and close to that and see all of this gorgeous detail and us playing around with Cinema 4D with it and lighting it and I was just loving the way this came out. So I thought, well, let's just have a scene where, instead of just seeing that initial sketch of a rough draft, let's actually see the helmet in this extra scene here. And this is kind of embarrassing to admit, but this is one of the few times in my filmmaking career where I actually, intentionally, did something that's kind of disingenuous. I mean, you have Galhatan's helmet here on a table with these candles in the background on candle sticks. And it's beautiful, and I love it. But it really kind of doesn't make too much sense if you think about it. We see Galhatan coming out of the Earth, and presumably he lives in the Earth, and so I don't know if he would have a table underground. I don't know. Maybe he would. But, I mean, these candles, if this is his house and he's like, hanging out and watching Netflix or something, I feel like he's taking his helmet off and putting it on the table. These candles are like, the size of a Starbucks or something. So the scene doesn't make too much sense if you overthink it, but it's still one of my favorite CG elements of the entire project and I just love this scene. It feels really organic to me. Like, the lighting and the way the blur kind of evolves through the scene feels very organic and naturalistic. The candles and stuff like that, the flicker. What's really cool is these candles, as we'll talk about, I modeled these candles in Cinema 4D, and then the flames I made with Trapcode Particular, which we'll look at. And you know, I didn't have any tutorials to follow or articles to read, I just kind of figured out how to make the candles and how to make the flicker, and it feels really believable to me. I'm really happy with the way this turned out. So I really hope that you enjoy digging into this scene with me and learned some things as well, cuz it was really a blast to make.

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