Planning and preparation
Pre-production is the stage of a video production that happens before the filming starts, with the production being the actual filming of the shots and postproduction being the process of editing and adding final effects (Yamdu, n.d.). In my case, the pre-production would be making the environment that I will be filming on and placing 3D assets as props, as well as planning the camera placements, visual effects used and gathering sounds to use for the video.
Here are the production notes that I will refer to when making my video:
- Assets to Import: Trees, plate, mug, bed, shelf, ladder, table, chairs, bushes, branches, bones, skeleton, door, axe, gardening shears, log, torch, stone pillar, stone structures, boulder, grass, materials for assets, path decal
- Sounds to Import: Portal opening, boulder crashing, wind blowing, fire Crackling, leaves rustling, music (something to match the style of the video)
- Visual effects to create: fire (with smoke), portal (with an opening animation), leaves blowing, fireflies
Camera maps
As you can see below, here are the camera maps that I have created. They are very rough sketches and show camera movement on each shot (except shot 12, as I will not be filming that in unreal using the camera system). Every shot that you can see in this camera map will have a rail apart from shots 9, 10 and 11, with shot 11 having a crane instead that will move and lift the camera slightly at the same time. In shot 9, the portal will open at the beginning of the shot and in shot 10 the boulder will fall, whilst the camera will be completely still throughout.
Creating the landscape
I started off the environment creation process by making the landscape first as seen below, followed by making the noticeably larger structures and then adding the textures to them. This would be followed by creating the foliage (such as the trees and bushes) and smaller items/models that I would add into the scene.
