Disillusionment Short Film
For the third DESIGN 6300 Willie Glover and I paired up with a dancer, Menghang Wu, to create a short film utilizing motion capture. This film relates to my thesis thread through exploration of abstract concepts associated with gender.
Final Short Film
Initial Concept
The concept evolved from conversations with Menghang were more abstract movements. Meng shared a video montage of work by Curry Tian as inspiration for movements. I showed her the image from a large painting we viewed on a Columbus Museum of Art trip. Final Girls by Robin F. Williams depicts the classic trope of women in slasher horror movies. The painting features transparent, blood splashed women walking into a glowing sunset.
Final Girls by Robin F. Williams
Description
Prototype
Willie and I decided to collaborate after my initial pitch presentation, as we have a number of overlapping themes and terminology in our shared research in gender. Willie and I created shader tests with free assets to explore how we could achieve the transparent red with yellow from our inspiration. The shader uses the Arnold Rim Shader as a base with the addition of transmission set in a way that the object will be transparent in the middle and yellow around the edges.
We created a 3D prototype of the visuals using movement from the Embodiment short film and free assets we found online.
We gathered together sketches and ideas over the following weeks prior to the motion capture session. We tried to think outside the box about shots and sequences that could explore gender dynamics in unique ways.
Production
The character models were refined in Maya but we did not have them rigged for our motion capture session. Below are some videos from our motion capture session.
From here is was powering through motion builder and Maya to rendering. We created several animatics that we updated as we went through the process. Having worked on Embodiment, the process went faster to get the basis but the motion capture data was more difficult to work with so Willie learned about new ways to key and refine the data.
We created a Shotlist Spreadsheet in order to track our progress and render ranges.
Here are a few renders without the effects added in composite. In Aftereffects glows and chromatic aberrations were added to create a more intense and strange sensation, as body dysphoria was one of the major themes of the piece.