In general, as a director, you have a very good idea of what you want to see in your final video. Camera movement, depth of field, how a line should be delivered by your actor, the list goes on. You know what needs to be communicated in each shot, how the camera angle can help, and what angles you’ll need to shoot in order to edit an engaging sequence together.
Most of these ideas are put together and shown in the storyboards to keep everyone involved in the project informed and aligned with what the final video will look like. However, when producing a video that involves animation you have to spend even more time in preproduction to make sure the team is on the same page. Why? There is a certain freedom in editing a video that is 100% live action that is lost when VFX are involved. The ability to spontaneously cut to a new angle, extend a shot for a few more frames, (and countless other techniques) to easily adjust the timing in your edit is gone. It’s no longer trimming a few frames to cut on that bump in the music here, or adding a few to get some spacing in the dialogue there. If you need to change a shot with VFX involved, it can potentially add a large amount of work for your post-production team. Here are a few examples of integrated VFX and full animation, along with a couple tips on how to avoid any headaches in post-production that can cost you precious time on an edit when your deadline is fast approaching.
2D Animation / Animation Integration
The first shot is an example of a fairly simple animation integrated into shot with complex depth, which is changing throughout.
Granted, the animation itself stays the same but the complexity of movement in the shot can add an extra layer of work if any changes are needed. Say you want to extend this clip for another second. That’s a bit more motion tracking needed to keep the animation in place, along with extra matte creation and key framing for the image as the circle and pipe start to disappear behind the foreground hill. All in all, not a huge deal, but not quite as simple as dragging the clip out for an extra second anymore. Making sure you have as much of this timing worked out before you integrate your animation can save a good chunk of time on the backend! It’s a good idea to put your edit together before you create any final graphics so you know your shot is set as you add in extra visual layers on top. A couple frames of head/tail on the animated video clip is never a bad idea either.
3D Animation / Visual Effects Integration
Here we have a 3D animation of a pipe, which eventually opens up to show “scale” inside the pipe, as well as water and steam flowing through. This gets into how getting the team on the same page from the get go can save time in the end. The more information you can provide to your graphics team the better (same goes for the 2D example above). During the shoot, you’ll need to record the distance to your subject, height of the camera off the ground, focal length, have a good idea of how long of a video clip you’ll need to cover the animation, etc. This isn’t always absolutely necessary, but speaking with your graphics team before hand about everything they’ll need can make it much easier for them to complete the compositing, and focus on the animation. Any unplanned changes in this type of edit can cost you a good chunk of time due to the detail of the animation.
(watch the full video here)
Full 3D Animation
Although this is one of the most fun ways to visually tell a story due to the creative freedom, it also takes the most planning because everything you see in the final video is created from scratch. Every camera movement, lens flare, the movement of your subject, etc is being made in an animation program. As a director, you’ve got to be extremely clear with your post-production team on what is happening in each video sequence. For example – in the clip below – we show a short sequence of water moving through a pipe into an industrial plant that’s building on as the camera tracks the movement.
(watch the full video here)
The original vision was to have the pipe zig zag on the screen, and move up and down to introduce depth to the viewer off the bat. Everything, from how the water moves, to the pipe building over the floor tiles was planned out before hand. What type of motion feels natural? Speed? How far left and right? How high up and down? What’s the minimal number of lines we can use to clearly show a pipe is building, but allow the viewer to focus on the water? If I wrote down every test we did on this one – this post would get extremely long! Although a lot of pre-vis work and testing goes into animation, the point remains it’s a good idea to have all of the details nailed down before creating your final clip. As you can imagine, changes to a final render can cost you hours in animating time along with render time.
To wrap it all up, this isn’t to say you don’t need to plan as much as humanly possible (although we all know sometimes it’s the unexpected shots that are pure magic) before any type of video production, from an interview to full CGI build. It’s just a reminder that the more VFX you plan on using in your video, the more you need to work with your team to make sure your production flow is as smooth as possible. Start small and keep on creating! The more often you work on a particular effect in any video production, the easier it gets, and the further you can stretch your visuals to help tell amazing stories!
-Impavid Digital Cinema is a boutique video production company located in Chicago, IL but we take our services anywhere. We’re here to tell extraordinary stories with exceptional imagery. Need a video made? Holler@impaviddigital.com -
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