I was now working on moving the character ready for the camera switch so I could work around having to find a way to animate them turning and walking up the pavement. The issue was that because the previous movements only used the x axis, I didn't have keyframes set for the other axis locations and I didn't have any for the rotations. This meant I had to go back and redo the keyframes for the location. To make my job easier I screenshotted all frames where I had set a keyframe previously.
Thankfully there were only 4 points so far, making my job a lot easier.
This worked out just as intended and now the character was able to be moved and rotated on any axis, so I could make the location switch for when the camera got blocked.
So next I wanted the character to kneel at the ground as if they were inspecting something on the ground and generally just checking out the area. Something I really wanted is the impression that this character is exploring the area trying to search for something, the audience doesn't get told what but it's there to help encourage the question of 'what happened here'. I then decided that I'd actually improve this by placing a lone teddy bear for the soldier to look at, something that really shows this place was lived in but hastily abandoned for some kind of reason.
Next in the storyline was where I wanted to incorporate the idea of the storm to signify danger. Whereas previously at this stage two of the characters heard a noise that turned out to be nothing, this time the noise would be thunder and it would shut off the power in the city putting the character on edge. I chose an animation where the gun is posed with heavy breathing to show panic, before I slowly make them put down their gun. It's at this point where I made all the lights in the city go red to signify that emergency power is on but more importantly, that this is the same location from the start of the film. I used keyframes to change the lights from white to red and also a similar method to simulate lightning strikes. I also had to make the visible street lamps turn off to leave it in darkness, though I left one at a very low power so the character was slightly visible. Once the red lights kick in is where I wanted to implement my earlier idea of having the character silhouetted against a red background.
Here is the setting for the lights before and after
This is what the silhouette looked like, it really set for a menacing atmosphere.
I decided that from here I'd end the film on a slow zoom into the character's helmet. This is because I felt it would be a good idea to leave how he died up to the audience, they now know the danger he is in and where he is. It felt fitting to end with a cut to black with the camera really focused and close to the character, it makes it feel more intimate and personal in a way. This was actually influenced by my war photography work as that similarly had the camera very close to the subject to invoke a similar feeling. I also decided that when I'd work on the sound design I'd combine the sound of thunder with a gunshot to help give the idea as to what happened. This was it for animating the main scene, I needed to work on the camera next alongside adding rain back into the scene and giving the character their gun but that work would be another day as this alone took a day to complete.
I felt really happy with the progress made so far as I now had the major aspects of the film complete and the rest of it would be relatively simple in comparison. It was great being able to implement aspects from my research and experimentation such as the silhouette inspired by the Starboy album cover and the zoom at the end which was based on my war photography work.