Final Thoughts

List of things I did

• Made significant contributions to writing and rewriting the script.
• Designed a set of characters for consideration.
• Filmed all the casting call/auditions
• Storyboarded the entire piece with Jared
• Designed the website
• Directed photography for commercial
• Filmed the entire commercial
• 100% of shot clean up for commercial, camera stabilization
• 100% color correction and color grading for the commercial
• Designed a set of stylized graphics to be considered for posters/media
• Helped in table-reading/practice-reads with cast members
• Did several lighting and look development studies for the interstitials
• Filmed entire interstitial animatic (proof of concept)
• Filmed entire interstitials - handled camera, directed lights, came up with solutions to problems on set, actively contributed to staging of the actors and their movements
• Directed photography for the entire piece - made lighting plots and came up with moods for each scene
• 20% of Post production work - did shot clean ups, fog VFX, lightning VFX, lens flares, stabilized camera & added fake camera motions
• Did 100% of the color correction & color grading for the entire piece
• Did 100% Cinemascope bars for the entire piece
• Assisted in exhibition setup on one of the days
• Brought snacks for the exhibition break room

Three things that worked well

• Interstitials - in terms of visual quality, story-telling and continuity, this year's interstitials were on a league of its own. It has definitely pushed the boundaries in every way. Everyone in the interstitial committee was dedicated and worked with the attitude to create the best, which is the kind of attitude that must be encouraged.
• Exhibition - The lighting and mood of the space was quite successful, also the number of attendees and management was noteworthy. I hope next year we can find a better location for the exhibition.
• Scheduling - this was probably the first time in VizaGoGo history that all the production activities happened on schedule, and there was very little rush/crunch towards the end of the production. Everything went on extremely smoothly.

Three things that can be done better

• Publicity & Website - I was very disappointed with how the design for the website and publicity material was actually implemented. The website and publicity material was functional, but it failed to make any impact in my opinion. I feel like both these committees didn't really try to push the boundaries, they just worked with the attitude of "getting things done". From a producer's point of view this attitude is acceptable, but honestly this attitude dosen't really take anything to new levels. Next year it might be better to merge the publicity and website committees, and they need to be encouraged to try new things rather than just sticking to "let's just do what we did last year".
• Creative decisions - I felt that most of our in-class discussions latched on trivial topics that did not focus on the large picture. For instance, we would spend hours deciding where to put the text on a poster and everyone had a useless opinion. I feel that making such trivial creative decisions should be just left to 1-3 creative persons who have a strong creative incline and a background, rather than everyone. In class we must just focus on getting everyone on the same page, and keeping things on schedule, rather than asking for everyone's opinion on everything.
• Organization & Hierarchy - I feel like there should be a single Director for the whole event, who has the final say on the creative decisions. The producer takes care of scheduling and finance, while a strong directorial candidate will make final call on all creative decisions. This approach is more akin to the real world, and having lesser cooks in the creative decision kitchen will improve the quality and make sure that everything goes in one single direction. This is something that every VizaGoGo has lacked so far in my opinion. The whole event lacks direction, and every committee tries to take it in their own unique direction, this results in the whole event just looking like a hotchpotch of random things strung together. Having just one director with a strong vision would ensure that there is consistent quality across all committees and that the theme and style is coherent and obvious throughout the event. Although I was assigned the Art Director post this year, I think it was a completely vestigial role, for two reasons - I already had too many things on my hands and I couldn't focus on meeting with every committee consistently, secondly, my role wasn't clearly defined.

Class Organization Suggestions

I feel that the class can be organized in the following way.

The Exhibition, Publicity & Distribution, Screening and Support committees don't make any decisions. All decisions are made by Director. This organization will ensure that all the students get an equal amount of work load. And here's a rough time line breakdown.

Post Production

For the last few weeks, we've been working on the post production of the piece. This involved several shots that needed VFX or clean up. Jared made a detailed list of all these shots. We split up the list of files based on their importance. We (Jared, Chris, Tyler, Brian, Jacob & I) then organized them into 3 categories - high, medium and low. We went through the list and each voted for the files that we wanted to take up. I took up on several high priority shots and once I waged through them, I took on several medium and low priority shots.

Color Correction & Grading

Once all the compositing was done I went through the entire film and color corrected and color graded every shot manually, one by one. For color grading, I used the lighting plot diagrams I had made earlier and went back to the reference images from various movies that I had in mind for each shot, and tried to achieve the corresponding look and feel for the actual footage. I enhanced the color-mood association for each scene. I also added fake fogs, some lens flare and made minor clean ups wherever I found apt.

Cinemascope Fix

After color grading, I went in and added the cinemascope bars for the entire film. This process involved cropping and reframing each shot. The actual video was shot at 1920x1080 and adding cinmeascope brought it down to 1920x820 making it look more like traditional film. It also helped me get rid of several light stands, and unnecessary elements from certain shots. I also added a few subtle camera movements to exaggerate the comedic effects at certain moments in the acts.

Kaun (1999) - Reference

I feel like some of the shots while I was lighting it, I was subconsciously ripping the lighting and cinematography from this old Hindi movie - Kaun, directed by one of my favorite Indian directors - Ram Gopal Verma. The cold blue outsides seeping into the warm orange interiors, the cheesy acting and the surprise twist in the end of the movie are all common elements between our interstitials and this movie. I also feel the style of music and sound FX from this movie would suit very well for our piece.

Cinematography - Fight Scene

For the final fight scene between butler and Schmidt, I came up with the idea of doing the whole fight scene in a single continuous dolly shot. The actors will fight along the front entrance of the mansion and will move sideways as they fight. For the shot, I also did some choreography on Sunday for this and we did some trial runs with the actors. We plan to shoot this next week. For the shot I have the dolly along the front entrance of the mansion. And the butler and Schmidt will both be fighting with Katanas. I setup the shot so that they look like they are fighting and their swords are clashing when in reality they are far apart and their swords are far away from one another. The way I do this is to use a long lens and shoot near telephoto, so on camera it looks like their swords are clashing. Then in post we can add sound effects that exaggerates this effect.

Shooting Stress

For the last 8 days, we've had shoots that have lasted 8-12 hours almost every other day. We start around 5:00pm and go on till about 3 or 5:00am. And this has been taking a serious toll on my ability to attend my other classes.

For the shoots -- I signed up to handle the camera equipment, direct photography and direct lights. But I have also ended up adjusting lights for majority of the shots, and staging/posing the actors, and then help with moving furniture around in the mansion before and after the shoots - especially since only a small portion of the crew shows up everyday. My active involvement is needed in every single shot -- both in the preparation and execution of the shot, and I get very limited breaks in between takes.

The shoot on Sunday (03/25) was extremely stressful for me. We shot the outdoor car scenes from 12:00pm - 3:00pm. Then we had the most elaborate light setups for the evening shoot -- 2 out door setups, and 2 indoor setups, all requiring the lights to be moved all around the mansion (backyard, foyer, and bedroom). The shoot lasted from 5:00pm - 5:30am. My job became more difficult because the gaffer didn't show up that day. The portion of the crew that showed up tried to fill in for the gaffer, but it was still difficult to manage things. And I was constantly pressured to stay on schedule, which choked my creativity. I had to cut corners and in retrospect I was disappointed that I didn't get a chance to do certain things that I was planning to do for that shoot. The resulting footage looks good nonetheless and I dealt with the situation professionally, and the schedule wasn't affected severely.

But I honestly feel like I have invested more time and effort in the whole shooting process than what was initially assigned to me.

Cinematography - Foyer

For the foyer, I decided to create a film noir look and feel, although I feel it didn't entirely work out since I didn't have a bright enough light to compete against the three 500 W downstairs. I felt that it would suit the scene better, as there was a death involved in this scene -- Rosemary's dead body. For this I made a cookie with black card stock paper, and put it in front of a single coil tungsten. For this I bought a 200 W single coil tungsten and rigged up a light bulb holder using a 20' extension cable and a light socket. For the shoots, since we could not place light stands on the stairs, I got either Cassie or Jacob to become a human light stand and hold the light + cookie in place.

Cinematography - Lightning

I came up with an idea to make the lightning seem realistic. My initial idea was to do it entirely in post, but I quickly realized that it wouldn't look real, and I wanted something that looked professional and cinematic, although I'm starting to realize that not many people in the crew really care for cinematics ;)

So my fool proof idea was to actually flicker the lights. The way that I did this is to use my 105 W CFL as the lightning. I keep this light constantly lit from the direction of the windows. Then I flicker all other lights (2 V Lights and 1 Rifa). Then in post, in the frames where the key lights are off I will bump up the exposure to make it look very bright. Since these frames are only lit by the blue CFL from the side of the windows, they will look like realistic lightning.

Cinematography - Host's Fireplace

This is perhaps my favorite shot. For this shot, I decided to create a fire in the fireplace without using real fire. I bought a 200 W tungsten bulb, and got Chris to wiggle it around in the fire place. I framed the shot so that the bulb was not seen. Then I placed another 100 W bulb in the fire place to constantly light the fireplace. These two lights simulated the fire, and cast shaodws that look like tehre was real fire in the fireplace. I also setup a cold light in front of Tim and wiggled a paper flag in front of it to create more shadows. I used my 105W CFL to setup a rim on Tim's hair to simulate moon light coming in from the windows. I set up the camera to be white balanced at 5000K, so the tungstens in the fireplace looked more orangish (more like fire). Then in post, I comped in a stock footage of fire within the fireplace to make it convincing.

Cinematography - Dining Room

The dining room which is first place where the actual story begins. It is warm, welcoming and cosy. The lighting for this scene was inspired by tv show Downton Abbey and the movie King's Speech.

Cinematography - Car Scene (intro)

For the car scene, I decided to do day-for-night. So we shot it in the afternoon under Sun light. We shot at a curvy road around CS and then went to the Bryan Cemetery to get a entrance gate-like shot. For these shots, I will do post production to make them look like they were shot in the night. This process involves color adjusting and applying filters. Then I will add fake head lights and light reflections, fog and shadows to create a convincing looking night scene.

For the gate scene I will also add fake gates and a mansion board reading "Loftin Manor" to the gates to make it look like the car is entering the mansion.

Cinematography - Mansion Gateway

This space is blue and foggy outside. Knight enters the mansion from the darkness. We enter the mansion along with Knight, and experience what he's feeling -- wondering where we are, why we're here. I feel like the butler is the dominant person in this scene, and he'll be lit in a way to make him look menacing and powerful. Once knight enters the mansion we look at Knight's face from up close, we become Knight as he's led through the door.

For the outdoor car scene I lit the scene with a total of 4 lights. I used fog to create a dense layer behind the car and the subject (Knight) to make a spooky feel. Since the fog machine we had wasn't powerful enough, I will create fog in post production. My lighting plot for this scene is below.

Cinematography

As a cinematographer/DoP, my role is to come up with lighting ideas (keys) for each shot, frame/stage the actors, and compose the shots in a way to tell the story better. I tell the crew (Cassie - gaffer; Jacob, Chris, Brian, Tyler - assistants) where to place which lights and how to position them. I also constantly come up with quick solutions for technical problems on the set (such as positioning dolly rig, alternative ideas to place furniture to better compose the shot, guiding actors what to do in order to better compose the shots). In brief my role is to actually capture the final frames of the film and to make them look beautiful.

I work within the limitations of having to use < 2500 watts of total energy (as allowed by the mansion) and work with limited lights (2 v lights, 2 rifas, 1 Cold light and 1 CFL). I also decide and tell the crew to hold diffusers, reflectors and flags etc. in order to control shadows, highlights and light bleeds.

The way I implemented lighting plots was to go back and watch the animatic repeatedly to decide and come up with lighting and mood concept for each shot.

On a side note -- for this shoot I invested in a 105W CFL light kit, which gives out a nice 5000K (cold bluish) light. I'm using it all over the shoot to create deep blue moon light atmosphere.

There will be three main places within the mansion where most of the story occurs, and in the following days I'll post brief descriptions of the reasoning behind the look and feel of the scenes and the lighting plots for each scene.

Final Shoots

This week we'll be shooting the entire interstitials. I will be responsible for:

• Directing Photography - shot composition, and camera motion
• Cinematography - lighting decisions
• Camera Technique - Setting up and handling Glide cam (steady-cam rig) and dolly

We had the first shoot today that lasted from 7pm - 1am. We'll be shooting almost every night of this week and our shoot sessions will last 8-10 hours each.

Storyboarding

Jared, Cassie and I met up for 6 hours for three days this week and and storyboarded the entire piece. We went over each shot and decided what and how we'll be shooting it. I also made quick notes on how to handle each shot in terms of their technicality and lighting needs.

Mock Shoot

On Sunday we shot a rough animatic/test for the entire piece. I was responsible for camerawork. We also shot remaining parts of the commercial, for which I directed photography and did camera work.

Web Design

Here is the web design I made.

Auditions 1

On Saturday we had the first set of auditions. Two actors showed up and I was responsible for filming their auditions.

Commercial Shoot

On Friday, Jared, Cassie, Jacob, Potter and I shot the commercial at the Astin Manision. I was responsible for directing photography (lighting and camera) work. We got some more help from the enthusiastic German intern/exchange student Lorenz Meyer.

We shot the footage on Canon 5D, and I got a chance to work with the Glidecam from the lab. Although I was not able to get the footage as steady as I had planned for, it was much better and smoother than hand-held or on mono-pod.

Next I'll be working with Tyler to do the post-production work on the footage. Including motion tracking and stabilization, color correction and grading and CG text compositing.

Steadycam

This one seems like the most efficient way to do it.

Mel Brooks

Robinhood Men in Tights

Spaceballs

Unable to embed

We could probably do that gag at 2:19

Dracula: Dead and Loving It!

Dracula introduction scene - at 0:35 Mr Knight's introduction scene could draw something from there.

Quick Shot Tests

Jared, Cassie and I went to the mansion to get some test shots. Cassie shot pictures of all the rooms.

Meanwhile, I shot some mock footage. Most of these shots I have stabilized in post. Also looks like we'll need lot more light than expected if we want to shoot at the night. These test clips were shot at f2.8 at 6400 ISO on the 5D. Ideally we would want to shoot these somewhere around f7.1 at around 100 ISO on the 5D, otherwise the footage will be too noisy.

Projector Setup Shot

Slow dolly in for the projector to start playing, then we dolly into the projected image.

Knight walks in - steady-cam shot

Steady cam tracking as Mr Knight is escorted by the butler into the dining room.

Rosemary Death

Murderer switching weapons, before he strikes Rosemary in the head. She then collapses and falls off the balcony. Murderer hands her the reel just before she falls. Last part of this shot will be in slow-motion.

Lighting Reference: King's Speech

This movie has overall very soft light, and soft shadows. The color correction is more natural and not overly saturated or warm. We can achieve such soft lights and shadows with paper lanterns.

Script Draft 1

The whole interstitial group met over the weekend for several hours and worked on the script. We drafted the entire script, you can view it as a Google Doc or download it as a PDF.

Illustration Style

Here are a few ideas for poster illustrations I made. My idea is to make minimal illustrations of the deaths and interesting moments from the interstitials. We can make 4 posters, Howards death with the baguette, Rosemary's death on the floor, Knight's death with the stake and maybe one poster of the Butler with the mask.

Costume Inspiration

Shooting Schedules

Jared and I developed a detailed schedule for the entire shoot (interstitial and commercial) with pre-production and post-production planning.

Location Scouting - Astin Mansion, Bryan

Jared, Brian and I went to check out Astin Mansion in Bryan. The mansion seems like it would lend itself very well for the piece. It has some decent usable furniture and they've agreed to let us move things around as we need. We can use the space on T/W/TR and Sundays.

We still need to figure out how many lights we'll be using and estimate the total power consumption and make sure their setup can handle it. If not we might have to rent out a generator and buy/borrow a few heavy duty extension cables.

Here are a few quick shots of the mansion.

Front entrance

Dining Hall 1, Pale blue interiors, easier to light up.

Dining Hall 2, might be better for closeup shots, dark wooden interiors might make it work very well for us.

There are a lot of interesting fire-places throughout the mansion.

The rear of the mansion is far more creepier, and has a drive way.

Character Designs

Web design inspiration

forefathersgroup.com Vintage meets modern design - classy, period savvy and fun.

aboard-entrepreneurship.com/ - another clean, elegant retro design.

Here's a post on Retro Style in Web Design.

Here's a guide to make retro web design, it's a bit trivialized but seems like a good place to start

Here's a collection of 1920s style fonts.

More lighting references

Mad Men has excellent lighting and layout. Notice the lighting template - soft and bright key, hard high-angle rim and very little fill. Even on moderately high-key environments they pull off to make the characters look mysterious by letting generous amounts of shadows creep on the side of the faces, all while maintaining good detail and definition in the shadow regions and the eyes.

Another important thing to consider is luminance. The interstitials will be surrounded by bright and saturated student animations, so we need to have high contrast and brightness in the interstitial videos. This will help the viewers eye gets a clean read of the set and characters within the limited amount of time available for establishing shots. Good examples of this are movie trailers, where the contrast is slightly bumped up to make them gel better with the brighter titles in between.

Characters & Rough Script

Very proud of our eight hours long meeting with the interstitial group! Here are character descriptions and a rough script. We're still working on this, and you can see the latest version on our Google Doc.

Characters

The Professor

• A short, bearded bald man in his mid 40s 
• Professor of some kind of advanced science at Yale 
• Works in a field of science related to military, weapons 
• Clumsy; overly knowledgeable but socially very awkward 

Ex-Military Woman

• German military woman in her late 20s 
• Very attractive woman with a heavy German accent 
• Years of military training has made her a hard-ass 
• Interested in the Professor to steal information on weapon development 

Art Student

• Pale white man in his mid 20s 
• Interested in art, music and history 
• Suave, cultured and educated 
• He's attracted to the Ex-military woman 

Teenage Girl

• Teeny bopper in her late teens 
• Was expelled from Yale because of some misunderstanding involving the Professor 
• Chatty, petty and immature 
• She has a big crush on the Art Student 

The Host

• A tall white man in his mid 40s 
• Speaks in a deep demonic voice 

The Butler

• Slithering and mysterious, silent and sneaky Jack! 

Interstitials

Interstitial #1

• Ext. sunset/night Elaborate and cinematic intro with long establishing shots that set the mood and the environment; Perhaps we follow a car on the road as it enters the gates of a rich Victorian mansion; 
• Int. mansion (dining room); the room is lit warmly by a giant chandelier above the dining table; we see four frantic characters seated at the table. The four characters are -- the Professor, the Ex-Military Woman, the Teenage girl and the Art student; They are unaware as to who invited them here, and why they are here; 
• As the chatter continues, the Host enters. He takes the head seat at the table and addresses everyone; He presents everyone a gift on a platter. 
• Camera slowly dollys across the table as the guests open the platter to reveal their gifts; Everyone opens their platter one by one and realizes that they have been handed murder weapons (e.g. pistol, knife, rope, fork, loaf of bread etc). 
• Everyone is confused, and looks at one another; reaction shots 
• The host calms them down and begins to explain 
• As he starts explaining the lights suddenly go off. A loud grunt is heard; Lights come back and the Host is found dead at the table. His face is straight down on his platter. 
• Everyone is frantic; they scream; 
• The light from the thunderstorm outside suddenly reveals the mysterious Butler who is now standing beside the dead body of the Host. The Butler sets up a film projector on the table. 
• The group opens the platter under the Host’s dead body; They find a film reel under the Host's body. They retrieve the reel and clumsily let the dead body fall flat on the table; The reel can is embossed with the Viz Logo; 
• They put the reel into the film projector and precede to play it. An old countdown comes up as the camera zooms into the film and fades into HD quality video displaying student work from The Vizlab. A clue is revealed within the reel, a photo of a room somewhere inside the mansion. 

Interstitial #2

• The reel finishes playing, the camera zooms back out from the film; We are back in the dining room with the guests. 
• The group interprets the clue and head off to find the room shown in the picture they have seen. 
• The guests head down a hallway looking for their destination. The teenage girl is clearly into the Art Student. She keeps trying to approach him and talk to him but he seems enthralled with the Ex-Military Woman and ignores her entirely. 
• She becomes upset and separates herself from the group; She finds her way into a room with a phone in it and precedes to call one of her friends and vent her feelings. 
• Meanwhile behind her a shadow figure approaches. 
• Hand held camera creeps up on the teenage girl; We see a gloved hand holding various weapons, trying to decide which one to use. (Switching weapons similar to a first-person shooter game) 
• We cut back to the group who have just found the next reel in another room. They realize that the teenage girl is missing from the group; They hear a scream and run towards the sound. 
• They find the teenage girl dead in a chair blood running down her face. The Butler walks in with the film projector on a cart and they start up the next film reel. 
• The camera zooms in close to the dead teen’s face/eye and we see the reflection of the reel in it before we cut to see the final countdown as the student work begins. 
• The reel shows another clue, an image of a backpack. 

Interstitial #3

• The reel finishes playing, the camera zooms back out from the film; int. dining room The group realizes that the backpack in the clue was the teen’s backpack. They rush to the living room (??) and empty the backpack to find an envelope. 
• Int. living room In the envelope they find awkward photos of the professor; (Although we never see these pictures, the characters’ behavior suggest that the photos have some nudity/sexuality;) The envelope also has a letter. The Art student starts to read aloud the letter; As he reads the letter, we fade into a black/white still-montage of the Professor’s past; the letter reveals that the professor had relationships with the teenage girl, and that he had a major role in her being expelled from school. 
• After reading the letter, the Art student accuses the professor of murdering the teenage girl; The ex-military woman jumps in the argument to defend the professor; (It is evident that she is trying to win the professor for selfish reasons -- to extract war-weaponry information from him) 
• Tight closeup shot of the Art student as he accuses the professor; medium shot of the professor being clumsy -- he accidents leans over a statue in the room which opens up a secret passage behind the sculpture; Tight closeup of the ex-military woman arguing; Wide shot of the room -- we see that the professor slowly wanders into the secret passage as the other two continue to argue 
• We follow the professor as he wanders into the secret passage; at the end of the passage is a tall stairway; he reaches the top and there he sees a silhouette with a pistol in his hand; The professor trembling with fear walks backwards; He trips and falls down the stairs in an overly dramatic fashion; he continues to walk backwards; he trips over a bear trap on his left foot; he spins around and steps on a rake, which hits him on his face; he trips again and falls on a sword; he realizes that he has a gun in his pocket, he pulls it out and tries to shoot it, but it misfires and shoots his own arm; he looses his arm and blood spurts out; yelling in pain, he continues to walk backward, he trips again and falls out of the window behind him; 
• Int. Living room we see the ex-military woman and the art student still arguing, when we see the professor falling from outside the window. The professor manages to hold on to the window pane and screams, but his screams are not heard through the closed window. He tries to knock on the window but he looses grip and falls down; both the ex-military woman and the art student rush towards the window, but they are too late; they see the professor fall off the window, and down the hill, he rolls and finally falls off the cliff. They all scream; cut on scream to int. dining room; 
• Int. dining room - we see the projector that was playing a blank reel begins to play again, and it makes a few clicking and beeping sounds; cut to living room - As soon as their screams subside, the ex-military woman and the art student hear the clicking and beeping of the projector; they return to the dining room and continue to watch the reel 
• Within the reel they see another clue -- the clue reveals to them where the McGuffin is in the mansion! 

Interstitial #4

• After realizing that neither one of them could be the killer, the Art Student and the Ex-Military Woman decide to put aside their differences and focus on helping each other escape. 
• The clue from the previous reel has led them back to the dining room where they find the McGuffin (What the McGuffin is isn’t important and the audience never finds out what’s been found). 
• As the Art Student discovers the McGuffin, he is impaled from behind with a stake or sword, killing him instantly. 
• As his body crumples to the ground, The Butler is revealed, standing behind him. 
• At this point, The Butler explains his plan to the Ex-Military Woman while they slowly walk around the table in the dining room. They do a full 360 around the table before settling at the positions they started at. 
• The Butler then precedes to pull back a mask revealing himself to be The Host! 
• The final battle commences. There are several stages of the battle involving fist-fighting, karate, guns, and light sabres. 
• Alternate Endings: 
• The Host wins the battle, Ex-Military woman is killed. (what else?) 
• The Ex-Military woman wins the battle, The Host is destroyed. (what else?) 
• After a long and challenging battle The Host and the Ex-Military Woman come to terms. The Host decides to take the Ex-Military Woman under his wing and train her. (more?)

Poster Ideas

Minimal, retro style poster design. The style can also be applied to t-shirt and other media.

Overly cinematic posters, mysterious lighting, and tight close ups of cast members.

Notice in the above image the artificial lighting setup. Spot lights on everyone's faces, makes the poster feel very unnatural and plastic. Might be a good choice if we want it to look and feel very "commercial".

In the above image: more natural lighting, perhaps accomplished with some kinds of large soft boxes. More difficult to achieve but definitely creates a more pleasing look and feel.

Lighting & Set design References

Sherlock Holmes - Lighting, Mood & Color Correction

Notice warm tones created by color correction, no pure whites or colors. Moderately low-key lighting used to create vintage photography mood. Low key setup will work for us better than high-key considering we have access to only a few portable lights at the lab. However, for low-key video we might have to rent out or borrow a better camera than the Lab's T2i (perhaps the 5D if Glen permits)

The Prestige - Lighting, Mood & Color

Similar looking to sherlock holmes, but notice how the lights used in this movie are themselves very warm and not just applied in post processing. Fairly low-key, plenty of atmosphere and volumetric with fog, warm tones to simulate vintage photographs; earthy colored sets; high-contrast and saturation character outfits make them stick out of the background. Generous use of 180 degree dolly shots.

3rd Rock From The Sun - Dial M for Dick

Set design of the mansion. Earthy colored walls and floors, plush furniture, low-hanging large chandeliers. Classic sitcom character silliness and acting.

The Community - Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps

Tasteful silliness in character-setup and acting.

Pitch

Pitch #1:

Failed advertisements for VizLabs that are ripped off famous blockbuster movies.

Pitch #2:

A reality show that closely follows the drama and tension among the vizzers woking on an end of the semester project in the VizLab.

Pitch #3:

Non-narrative abstract expressionistic visuals.

High Concepts

The Real Viz

A reality show in the VizLab goes haywire when one of the Vizzer gets delusional and is unable to tell the difference between reality and animation.
Style: American Psycho meets Ren & Stimpy

How things are made - Vizzers

Documentary showing the making of Vizzers in an inhumane Viz Factory. The documentary unknowingly unlocks one of the biggest government conspiracies.
Style: Food Inc. meets Monsters Inc

Commercials

A series of low-budget commercials for the VizLab and Viz products that are humorous interpretations of famous movie scenes.
Style: Be Kind Rewind