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Thursday, February 7, 2008

Critique - Weight



Good start, now you have to do a couple of things.
For presentation there is no need for the split screen, I'd prefer a bigger render.
Scale down the car, it seems pretty big. If you are unsure, then place Hogan inside the car like a driver.
Next I think we need to adjust the camera a bit. Looking at frame 50 or 60 the car is pretty chopped off framing wise, it would be neat to have it fully in frame.
You want to make it clear to the audience what's going on. Since you're working on one shot, you dont' have the benefits of a sequence, people don't know what happened before.
First viewing you see the guy ducking, but you don't know where he is and if the ducking is positive or negative (he could be sneezing, he could look for something on the ground or actually try to cover himself), so like you said, you should add a street, maybe sidewalk or something similar.
Then suddenly the other guy jumps in and then suddenly the car is there. It's all a bit confusing (imagine people who've never seen it). At the end you understand what happened and having the element of surprise when the hero saves the day is a good thing, but let's try to built up the tension, let's milk the moment of the bystander thinking he's going to get crushed.
Zoom out a bit so that the car is more in frame. Maybe add a shadow over teh bystander (some flat geometry with a half transparent shader on it simulating the car shadow). You can then make it bigger and bigger. That way we know something is coming, it's getting big, it's about the crush the guy and then the hero steps in and saves the day.
Now we need to figure what the bystander is doing. Why is the car flying and falling where he is. Who did that? If you had giant imprint of a creature's footprint, that would explain things. With Cloverfield released, it might not be very original, but something similar within the set explaining what's going on would be cool.

Animation wise the hero traveled quite a distence. You don't want to get the sticky landing spiderman feel. Even though he has superpowers, there's still gravity. Is he jumping that far or flying? Right now it's looks like a jump. Have him land and then take a few steps to absorb all the weight.
Wow about this (just thinking/writing out loud, no need to do it like that): The victim (standing pretty much at the center of the frame) is next to a sidewalk which has a wall right next to it. Victim looks up, gets scared, shadow grows from a dot to fullsize, showing that something is falling towards the guy. He tries to escape by taking a few steps onto the sidewalk but is blocked by the wall (ends up more screen left towards the end of frame). In jumps the hero (with those few steps added as mentioned) and gets ready to grab the car (a bit off centre favoring screen right). Car lands and pushes the hero towards the guy on the wall (so the car fall is more horizontal then vertical) but he stops sliding before hitting the victim (adding a bit more tension, "will they make it?" type of thing).
Hero then throws away the car the way you have it. Looks back in a "You're safe buddy." look and jumps/flies away with the victim looking relieved, or fainting or something like that.

Again, just throwing it out there. But it would be neat to have that shot be it's own little story.

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