Minor: Lost Boy - Pre-viz

Lost Boy Pre-Viz Screenshot

I thoroughly enjoyed animating and editing the Pre-viz for Lost Boy but especially directing. I learned a lot from doing this especially with camera movements and how a certain shot can really put you into the shoes of that characters emotions to feel what they feel, I found myself constantly questioning why this shot is needed and I ended up filming more shots than was required and had to cut things out. I had a lot more ideas of things that I wanted to happen with them being more amplified and exaggerated such as the cracking screen scene - I originally wanted present Graeme's face to crack and shatter and not the background, I also wanted the malignant figures in the airport to melt into an ocean and have shark fins swim around present Graeme as he rotates in his hellish airport nightmare.. but to get things done I need to be cut throat and think about where I am putting my money as I don't want my ambitious to leave me thwarted.

I enjoyed incorporating cinematic elements into the previz with crane shots and close ups and blending between scenes used to its advantage, being provided with the crane, pan, roll and pitch camera rigs on the tutorial website really helped along with an amazing camera rig called Josh cam which I cannot fathom how helpful it has shown to be, this short video describes how robust this camera rig is and I would advice anyone with dynamic shots to give it a whirl  (its free!)

To get the black outline seen throughout the pre-viz I just slapped on a cartoon effect to all the clips in after effects which I think shows nicely how the film will look with sketchiness of the concept art. The 2D elements of the pre-viz are not as controlled as I would like but they will be in the final film, I do want to add more 2D elements into the film along with impact and smoke effects for the cigarette and when the passport poofs into thin air. I watched Cool World during the Christmas (its on Netflix!) after being advised by Alan which is directed by Ralph Bakshi and I am in love with his style, I have been getting inspiration for 2D smoking effects from this along with the stunning backgrounds which inspired the red and blue sky in the art room scene as I originally had those play blasted with a black sky but I decided to re-playblast them with the new sky as I think it adds more emotion to the scene. 

Cool World Screenshot

Sound is really important to the telling of Lost boy. I got sounds from multiple websites, a great one called Zapsplat as well as getting the Motion Pulse pack created by Andrew Kremer for video copilot which is basically all of the more impactful and base heavy sounds, it really added a different atmosphere and gave it a nice impactful oomph.  

I wanted to work as efficiently as possible with the previz and in doing so I played around with dynamic workflow as  it speeds up your work twofold if not more. Dynamic link basically is an in-between program that works behind the scenes with Premiere Pro and after effects and lets you work on one program while the other updates live, you don't have to be faffing about with importing files - so if you use premiere to edit and dynamic link to after effects to composite as after effects has so much more capabilities for effects and then you can export it out through premiere. I will definitely be using this from now on, unfortunately I did run into some issues where files weren't showing as they did in after affects after linking from premiere so certain chunks of the film had to be edited and rendered in after effects alone and then re-imported back into premiere with the effects. 

Now that I have the general flow going for the shots I am going to start contacting composers to get the sound right for Lost Boy and also create a shotlist.

Premiere Pro Workflow

After Effects Dynamic Link Workflow

Lost Boy Pre-Viz from Graeme Daly on Vimeo.