Myreen Castro.

Reflective Statement

“For one of Studio II’s papers, we are required to craft an augmented reality-based spectacle at a specific location, with a theme of our choice, purely for entertainment purposes.

In Week 1 I formed a group with Reuben Shortland and Dasha Krasnoselskaya, and together we decided to centralise our ideas on a Spooky AUT visual just for the sake of the upcoming Halloween, and calling ourselves AUTerror.

I personally loved the fact that the project was experimental, granting us the freedom to express our common interests creatively, in this case our love for the horror genre. In retrospect, past assignment criteria up until this point require us to be practical, which in turn limits and suppresses some creative juices from flowing. This straightforward brief, however, allows for our imaginations to run wild from ideation through to the development stage and as a result, I, along with everyone else in my group, was in charge of asset creation. The idea I came up with was of an interactive floating hand directing the stakeholder’s eye, as I took the role of its 3D Modeller, Texture Artist and Animator.

The design process isn’t something I haven’t done on past assessments, so I was able to go through production quite quickly, using multiple references and tutorials to ensure the best results. Despite this, I can’t say the model wasn’t a complicated one to get done; with it I was able to not just contribute to the assessment but also improve on my skills and learn to be more efficient in terms of rigging, animating and exporting.

My past experience with 3D led me to finishing my asset earlier on for Reuben, our group’s Unity technician, to put together. I then volunteered to be our group’s Video Editor and managed to take some B-rolls around campus with our prototype, which was probably the most rewarding part of the project for me—seeing my model come to life in AR form.

Early Reviews

“Posthumus: This is a top adventure game, with great concept art, environment, and character design. The style, idea, and concept are excellent! A great introduction to the story, tutorial, clear understanding what the player can and can not do. This is a well-developed game, with good controls, puzzles - a good challenges as the player gets better, so good progression and reward in playing - successful game play and a lot of fun too. This is a proper and good game. JOB very very well done! I love the style, clean and bright. It was filled with great game play, progression, objectives, and mechanics. It looks stunning! Really impressive!” (Britta Pollmuller, AUT, 2017)

Early Reviews

"Curio City - I believe, is a hit. Graphics are not only the old-school blackboard but even colour-free – very “first generation Game Boy”. Awesome! As platform games go, it’s extremely typical; run, jump, collect, complete levels. But while it sounds easy, it’s as tough as old boots to complete. Addictive, challenging and fun, it’s an ideal starting point for retro gaming!" (Britta Pollmuler, AUT, 2017)

The piece is filmed in a documentary style, 30-second long music video, depicting snippets of a day in the life of a verbally abused student—from the moment he wakes up to just before he gets back to bed. (Watch here!)

Photoset

(1) A play-around on the impacts of a childhood bully; my PSA aims to visually communicate the psychological effects through strong symbolism as well as the lens of a real victim. The words attached to the victim in this composition are real and a lot more personal—they are actual insults which my actor (Stephane Meynaert) received in his childhood.

(2) (3) Early concept art, using myself as the model, accompanied by insults thrown at me by my childhood bully.

(4) Storyboard featuring a rough draft of camera shot sequences.

(5) (6) (7) Style Frames, or photoshopped visualisations of some key moments from my storyboard, with improved lighting of my indoor shots as well as enhanced tones showing my overall aim in Post-Production, namely Colour Correction; popping up the blues, greens and yellows

Project Proposal

“The victim’s vulnerability and helplessness is going to be a recurring theme in the short, portrayed in the form of actual insults received by the actor from his childhood—those that stuck with him towards his teens—and achieved through motion graphics. The intent is to make it seem as if they are haunting the victim daily; they are to appear on the bed sheets from when he starts his day, in his mirror reflection when he gets ready in the morning and “tangled” in his hair everywhere else, acting as a figurative representation of unwanted insecurities brought on by the abusive language.”

“This PSA has to be able to capture the likes of a younger audience, meaning a big percentage of them is a generation raised on social media, tending to have shorter attention spans. In order to make my piece successfully convey its message without viewers clicking away, each shot should aim to be as compelling as the next. The cutting will be in sync with a ‘catchy’ trap music, one I will remix, which will bring contrast to the initial melancholic mood carried by the visuals.”

Planned Composited Sequences with reference to Storyboard

“The main Chroma key composited sequence in this piece is a profile shot of my model silhouetted against a positive background, which will be overlaid by another shot that reads, ‘Your words have power—use them wisely’.” A lot of my footage will be composited via Masking in After Effects to achieve ghost-like outcomes:

Shot 3-4 (Invisible hands),  likely to contain two static clips of my actor looking straight at the camera with and without the hands on his face, layered on top of each other Shot 6 (Mirror), with and without the mask, split-screen effect Shot 7-8 (Mirror breaking shot), in addition to rendering a cracked reflection

Project Feasibility

“The source media assets needed are a Nikon D3200 DSLR and a tripod, both of which I own. Location-wise, my piece would be pretty feasible due to the fact that it is not too dependent on the ambience and the viewer’s attention will be drawn more towards the actor. With that said, the main filming locations are a bedroom, bathroom (for mirror shots) and a busy day and night at Auckland; the rest can be filmed during a trip to a park and a beach. Casting wouldn’t be an issue because everyone is bound to have been bullied or name-called at least once in their lives, making it possible for me to generate the insults onto their heads later on in post-production.”

“I was lucky enough to get someone with natural curls, with which I could effectively insert the moving text in and depict a more visually appealing outcome at the same time. The only downside here involves shots that are to be filmed at different times of the day—it will be especially challenging to prevent continuity errors with unpredictable hair.”

Test Shots

Project Background Music

A track called ‘Senses’ (non-copyrighted Original Mix) by Prismo (remixed again by yours truly to fit the 30-second duration), is used as background music for my short. I chose the part of the song where the lyrics repeatedly say, I run away for some time to a universe of senses, what is on my mind… that’s clouding all my senses?  Finding escape from reality echoes the portrayed victim’s mental response to the verbal insults, further reinforcing the effects of bullying on young people.

The clips are cut to the beat of the song, and in ways to make them more audio synchronous, allowing for a catchier tone that can grab attention and hence convey a subliminal message about bullying to hopefully a wider range of audience.

Project Show Reel Examples

References

 Scribble Effect (Adobe AE)

 Text Behind Mask (Adobe AE)