I had one major goal for this project, trying to push myself outside of my comfort zone more than I had done for my previous pieces of work. I wanted to not only use skills I was more experienced with and implement them into my work, but I also wanted to push the boundaries of what I felt familiar working with. The biggest aspect of my project that strived towards this was the decision to work with 3D animation and using Blender, something I had only briefly touched upon during stage 1 of this year. I can wholeheartedly say that I did this successfully. Using 3D animation was a very arduous task with many issues coming up throughout the duration of this project, especially since I had essentially zero knowledge behind the technicality behind it. I had completed secondary research into the history behind CGI and how it developed over the years but that left me with mostly contextual knowledge, not much in terms of actually working with the program. Despite that I persevered instead of giving up and changing my project completely, and I feel that it paid off. Whilst smaller changes came from my ideas, the base concept from my project proposal remained true to the original concept.
The project proposal helped me a lot throughout the project as it gave me a starting point to help me figure out where I wanted to take my work. It was useful in the sense that I could often refer back to it and compare my ideas and current work to see how they had developed since. The research made for the proposal ended up being a key aspect throughout the project in its entirety and I tried my best to integrate it as such in the outcome. My initial research is how I came up with the concept of exploring suspense, something completely new to me in regard to filmmaking. This, in turn, helped me work towards my goal of pushing myself aside from the use of CGI. I also feel that I was able to effectively put my style and aesthetic into my work, something that is often a quality of my favourite artists and filmmakers. This included striving to create very atmospheric scenes and using bold neon colours.
In terms of my brief, I feel that I managed to achieve my goal of creating atmosphere and suspense in a short film, whilst it may not have been as impactful as my inspirations Alien and 1917 etc. it still felt like a great attempt. I was able to take influence from a range of sources, adapt the aspects that made them successful at creating suspense and find ways to integrate it into my work. The biggest influence being the quote from Alfred Hitchcock:“Mystery is when the spectator knows less than the characters in the movie. Suspense is when the spectator knows more than the characters in the movie.” It was an idea that I tried to keep looking back to consistently throughout the project, I often would refer back to it in my research or posts about the making of the film. My bibliography was very useful for this as I could use it to go back to the sources I previously used and could get a fresh look at the research behind my project. I also often went back to add newer sources of information, even up until the very end of the project. Looking back at the research was particularly useful when looking back at Alien, 1917 and Halo: ODST which were arguably some of the biggest influences on the outcome of my work both thematically and visually.
To make the thought process behind my work as clear and documented as possible I tried making posts for every bit of research, development, experiments and outcomes. I felt that sometimes I unfortunately didn’t keep track of every thought I had, which may have made some alterations or developments less clear in terms of where they came from. Though I still feel that I made a good attempt to do so, creating work such as moodsheets to show my visual development or brief moments of reflection and analysis during the creation of my work. I additionally tried to write my thoughts of research I had made alongside my takeaways and how I could implement them into my work.
If I could revisit and improve my project I would put more time into creating experiments and pieces of work leading up to the final outcome. Whilst I made a lot of research, much of the development came from this and not from the experimentation as significantly as I would have hoped. I feel it would have benefited my project greatly as it would give me more showcases of my thought process and how I came up with different concepts. This also could be said for the final outcome, whilst I tried to experiment with ideas I mostly relied on the one I already had. If I had more time I would definitely have spent some of it dedicated to testing different concepts to see how they affected my film. I also would have tried to add more depth to the narrative through additional scenes and aspects leading up to the climax. Though overall, I was still pleased with the outcome. It was far better than I had anticipated for my first piece of work using just CGI and for one of my first full short films with a major narrative. Even the 3D animation was successful with only some minor mistakes, most of which I managed to notice thanks to my research on the context behind CGI as well as how famous films have successfully use CGI. The suspense was there and it managed to build itself up to a climax that I was really happy with.