Almost at the end, have to put it in After Effects - THANK GOD!!!!

This is probably my last blog for a very very very very long time. After I rendered both of my scenes and fixed a few minor problems (Maya and 3ds problems), i brought all my resources - pictures, audio and whatever I wanted to put into the trailer - into After Effects. I was going to do it is Premier, but I don't know how to use the latest version and i remember it being a very big pain in the ass. I know more about After Effects and it's easier to use (for me). After Effects was a bit gay at first but after kicking it in the balls real hard it started to work. in After Effects i put the scene together slowly but surely and simply. I wanted the trailer to be simple and not too dramatic, I wanted to show a bit of the history and a bit of the crime scene, but I didn't want to give away the whole story. Once I had imported all the files i needed or wanted I started putting everything together - first I put two production logos up - 'A-Z Entertainment' and 'Team FHS Productions', after this i introduced some text showing some of the history of the Prohibition era (not too much, i don't wanna bore everyone to death, it's the last day of uni). Then I introduced a little bit about the underworld and how it made money off illegal booze - this was one slide and it summed it up well, I used a picture of Lucky Luciano, who was the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family.
After the picture I put some text mentioning the date of the St Valentines Day massacre, I wanted this to linger there so people could soak up this info about one of the most horrific days in US history. After this I wanted to put an audio argument (see prev blog for details) over the scene, but after trying this out in a separate program it just didn't fit at all, so i decided to scrap the idea. I wanted to use it, but I didn't have A: enough time to make a new scene for it and B: time to work out if it was even any good. I played the safe option and not use it - from there I brought in the other scene I made in 3Ds max, I realised it ends a bit suddenly and for this I apologise. I had one slight problem - the ending needed a 'coming soon' at the end. I knocked this up; it's not the best, but it works well enough and in 10 minutes time I will not be part of this uni.

Audio script - last minute

This is a last minute thing I came up with as I usually do, I decided it might be a good idea to add an audio track of an argument. I didn't want to use one from a movie, so I wrote one on the train home. It wasn't much, but it's what I have to work with. I may not use it, it will depend on whether it fits the trailer.

Script for Argument
Detective 01 – What happened today?
Detective 02 – What do you mean? We caught some bad guys.
01 – Ya, but I wanted to Capone n’ his men in the act. Not some low-life thugs! I wanted Capone!
02 – Look, we are going around and kicking down doors. We just need to sqeeze these soldiers a bit more.
01 – We aren’t doing it good enough. We should be hitting them where it hurts; their wallets.
02 – What is your problem?! You’ve been in an odd mood ever since the massacre. You ok?
01 – No! Ever since the massacre I’ve wanted to catch them. But we can’t cos we ain’t got enough information on them sons of bitches.
02 – You need to calm down. We were both worried about how far scarface could go. But if there are two gangs in Chicago –
01 – I want no gangs in Chicago, in New York we would – (interrupted)
02 – New York! We’re not in New York anymore This is Chicago, you have to do it the Chicago way. You have to go round knocking down doors goddamnit.

Slow day, but effective

Today's to do list, slow one but it'll be done. Note: writing this on laptop while my scene is rendering (this will take ages so I'm gonna catch up on this thing called blog).

Here is a test shot of the bottles on the table. I'm still messing with texturing and lighting. This also not the opening shot, it's jut a test to get the feel and the look correct. It must be PERFECT! 'Well, in my mind it has to be.


The to do list: (starting to think about all the things i need to get onto the disc).

- CD must readable and well organised otherwise I am fucked
- May do a voice over (will explain this later)
- May include soundbyte from The Untouchables film (will explain later)
- Got to make the text for the scene (moving from 2D to 3D and back)
- Go have subway

The Voice Over

I was thinking about what else to add to the scene, and I was watching a TV show called Las Vegas and at the beginning of a scene they open with a voiceover. A light went on in my head, I thought 'why don't I have a voiceover arguement between two characters about how to get Al Capone. I'm going to look at the arguements in the film and use these for inspiration. I will make up my own arguement.

The Text

I am using 3ds Max to model the text (it's not Maya I know, but fuck it)

First of all I had to find the right font - this took awhile.
The first one i considered was 'Misproject'. This looked good in 2D, but when I tested it in 3D some of the letters wouldn't render properly. After this I tried 'Stereofidelic', which looked ok but there were some problems - the T had an arrow below it, which looked extremely gay. I also considered The Godfather text, but this didn't work in 3D plus it's already been used and I wanted to keep away from the Godfather at all costs. Then I tried 'Simplified Adobe Fix', which was just boring.

I found all these fonts by looking at them in 2D, so when I got to the end of the list and still hadn't found anything I went back and looked at them all again in 3D. While doing this I found 'Kodchiang UPC Bold' - which is a stupid, long name. This works because it is simple, to the point and looks good in 2D and 3D.

Color

I grouped the words 'The' and 'Untouchables' so I could apply a texture to both at the same time. I chose a white-ish grey, it's a universal color and it's easy to put into After Effects.

Background

I decided on a wall texture as the backgound - I got this from the internet, and it was the first picture I clicked on.
I started by putting a plane behind the text, I also put one spot light pointing at the text and the wall so that the text casts a shadow on the wall. When I rendered this it looked ok, but the background looked a bit flat, I thought it would look better if the bricks in the wall were 3D. Whilst attempting I had some problems with the white areas between coming forward when they should have been going backwards. I solved this problem due to my unrivalled prowess and instinctive knowledge of the universe.

Making Bullet holes and adding blood stains (with side order of pizza)

when I rendered one of the wall textures it looked ok, but looking at the photo there are obviously going to be bullet holes and a splattering of blood. You can't really see this on the black and white photo but I decided to add a bit of gruesome detail.

The bullet holes were easy to find - the hard part was finding a good texture for splattered blood. I went to a load of web sites before I found the right one.

Once I had all the source material I opened it in photoshop. To get an idea of how to lay it all out I watched a few films.

Finding Music

I knew I'd have to use music from the 1930s - 40s to create the mood. I have already tried a few tracks in the scene including Sinatra. These did not have the right feel to them. The music for the Godfather has the kind of feel i'm looking for but I can't use it for obvious reasons. I decided to look into the music that has been composed for mob films including the Untouchables.

The mood - the music needs to be somewhere between happy and dull, but with the right level of darkness.

I looked a few soundtracks into the soundtrack for films, but unsurprisingly I found that the musical score for the Untouchables film was best suited to the mood I hope to create.

Of the 13 tracks on the official movie soundtrack only 3 were close to what I wanted:

Track 02 - 'Al Capone'
Track 04 - 'Death Theme'
Track 13 - 'Machine Gun Lobby'

'Al Capone was by far the best one, and most suited to what I want. It builds up in the right way, and I can tie this in with revealing the title in bullet holes on the wall (with a bit of blood).

Making the box

In the scene there are boxes holding illegal bottles of beer. I would have to model these, there was no way around it. The boxes were, fortunately, quite simple to model.

I started with a box shape and made it 50 x 50. I then put the line tool in so I'd know where the lines were. I looked on google for some images to work from. I looked on the Godfather game to see what boxes the game designers had modelled. I saw that they had gone for an old-fashioned wooden crate.

I then extruded to make the box look the way i wanted. I decided not put a lid on the box. Partly because you can't see the top of many of the boxes, and partly because I needed to see the bottles poking out of the top.

Making the bottles and boxes

After taking a break from the chair I decided to do some simpler things. I decided to make the beer bottles and crates that would fill out the scene. First I made the bottles.

In the photo it is hard to tell what types of bottles are on the table. I had to make a judgement call on the bottle shapes. I went with a regular long-necked beer bottle and an old fashioned bottle. The sort you would see with three Xs on in cartoons.

I started with the big bottle. I made this to double check that what I was thinking was the correct way to go. I took a cylinder and modified it, I extruded it into the shape I wanted. This was relatively simple.

After this I moved on to the thin-necked bottle. this was also relatively simple. I found a picture of a long necked bottle, put it to the side-view and copied the shape. After this I needed to find a texture. A bottle is, obviously, transparent. After consulting with tutors etc I found a blend texture; in this texture I put the transparency down and changed it to brown. I didn't add any gleam or sparkle to it as the scene will be dark.

After making a texture for the surface of the bottle I needed a label, but before I could make this i needed to make up a good beer or whisky name. I came up with the following:

'Lucky Johns Irish Cider'
'Bugsy's Wine'
'Montana Lite'
'Goodfella Whiskey'
'Rich's Righteous Whiskey' - hard to say
'Capone's Untouchable Whiskey'
'Al's Sicilian Beer'
'Convict Beer 12091983'
'Joke's Whiskey'
'Las Vegas Special'

I went with Al's Sicilian Beer because it fit better than all the others. It fit the bill. Personal taste I guess.

Initially I planned to base the label design on the design for JD, but this idea changed later.
I wanted something unique - that fitted the scene and didn't look everyday. I also wanted to be quite simple, with no glitz or glamour as the scene is set in the Prohibition era.

Trying to make a chair in 3D (pain in the ass)

Today i decided to model my scene. First I will model the chair, then the boxes and beer bottles. After this I will move on to texturing. Started out with a box shape which widened to make the seat. I then split the box in two and deleted one side. I planned to make one half of the chair and duplicate it.

I began to bevel the sides to make it more realistic. After this I extruded downwards to make the legs. This was a bit of a pain because they didn't look quite right. After extruding again i decided to start over with the legs. I had seen a flaw in my initial chair design and I knew i needed to look more closely at more chairs. The image of my scene only has one decent view of the kind of chair I want.

With the new chair i made the front legs first and worked backwards. I decided to make the back legs and the back of the chair all in one piece. Trying to find the right look to make it feel like a 1930s chair was starting to annoy me.

I made the back legs too thin initially. I had to delete some lines and try again. This still caused some problems.

I then decided to take a break from the chair and come back when I had done some more research, when I will hopefully have a better idea of what I want.

The Book Came In, But I Read Slow

The book arrived on Saturday: express delivery courtesy of mom. I'm not the fastest reader in the world, and thanks to my dyslexia I'm not the best reader in the world either, if there was a competition for reading I would come in dead last. Fortunately this is a book and a subject that I am very interested in; I had seen the film previously but it wasn't a direct translation of the book, unlike the Godfather. I managed to reach Chapter 5 before I had to see Alan today but I know that we can do anything more until I finish the book, which could take a week or two. I don't want to fall behind in this project, I want to be ahead. So far in the book the main characters have been introduced and the first reference to how the trailer could open. The book makes reference to the St Valentine's Day massacre that Capone organised to get rid of the competition in Chicago. I did a built of digging about the St Valentine's Day massacre; The Saint Valentine's Day massacre is the name given to the horrible deaths of seven people as part of a conflict during the prohibition era. The conflict was between two powerful criminal families in Chicago; the South Side Italian Gang run by Al Capone and the North Side Irish Gang run by Bugs Moran.
Al Capone was afraid of Bugs Moran, who’d been gunning for him for 5 years. In retaliation Capone hatched a plan to end the rivalry by killing him.
On February 14 1929 Capone tricked Moran and his men into arriving at S-M-C Cartage Co warehouse on North Clock Street with the promise of a crate of bootleg whiskey. Four of Capone’s men, two dressed policemen, would enter the building and kill Moran and his men.
The plan went off without hitch that morning – 5 members of gang, 1 follower and a mechanic that happened to be at the scene died in a hail of machine gun bullets. They were lined up against rear inside wall of garage and shot to death. Only one man was not at the scene – Bugs Moran himself. Bugs arrived late and saw Capone’s men go in and he fled when the firing started.
While he lay dying Frank Gusenberg was asked ‘who shot you’, to which he replied – in accordance with the Code of Secrecy (or the Code of Silence) - ‘nobody shot me’.
Capone, who was on vacation in Palm Island state Florida, could never be linked to the murders.
As side note – here’s a joke: when the police asked Frank who shot him in the left ass-cheek Frank replied no-one shot me in the left ass cheek. After this, when Frank went home his wife asked him ‘how was your day’, Frank replied ‘worst day ever, I got shot in the ass.’

Still Reading The Book

I saw Alan today, I was a tad late coming in because I screwed up my time, but he understood. I haven't found the book yet because no seems to have it around here, so I had to place a call to the old mother and she has ordered it off Amazon. When I told Alan this he wasn't too impressed, so we agreed to give it until next Friday, and if hasn;t arrived by then I will have to go out and find it. In the meantime we did discuss what type of trailer i should do, and I am going to make a game trailer, but a 'static-shot' trailer. Alan suggested i should look into The Shining's trailer and suggested that I use this as an influenmce. I did tell Alan what I knew about The Untouchables and that I knew Al Capone was one of the main characters in the book. I did start looking into the Chicargo mob, and watched a few documentaris on how Capone ran this mob. I also found a few F.B.I files on Capone and ordered a few more mob books that could give me some more insight into the gangster.

The Day That Alan Liked My Choice!

Today was D-Day on the book that I have chosen, there were a few books that I wanted to do but one stood out above the rest; this was The Untouchables by Elliot Ness. I spoke to Alan about the other books but he wasn't too keen on them as they were more documentary rather than narrative-based. Then I mentioned The Untouchables and he liked the choice. This book has already been turned into a film driected by Brian De Palma. We talked about what angles we could approach the work from; we agreed that it should take the form of a game trailer. We also agreed that I would use the book as a source rather than the film. All I need to do now is find a copy of the book, whcih shouldn't be that ard. I don't know what type of game trailer i will make yet, I need to read the book first.

1st Day of are 15 week project

Today we were given our solo fifteen week project, Alan gave us a brief description of what he wanted to see over the course of the fifteen weeks. He wanted us to pick a book and either make a game trailer/cinematic trailer or both. He showed us saome example of what the industry has made; for example the Godfather was a book and was then made into a film, then EA Games took the film and made it into a video game. This is the process he wanted to see and we had until friday to decide where we were going to take the project.

Friday came around and I had two very solid ideas; one was to do a WWE style pro-mo and combine green-screen with 3D effects and a backstoy of played-out mini-fights. The other idea was to do a mafia game trailer and base it around how Las Vegas was built. I took these ideas to Alan, he wasn't too keen on the WWE idea, so we went with the Mafia idea. He also liked the 'how Vegas was built' idea, but he said I needed to find a book to back up this idea. He says that I have until next Friday to come up with a book and have an idea of what sort of trailer i want to do, so i'm off to look at books.