Western Pigs: Backdrops

It's been a while since I've done a blog entry, been too busy with the film to do a blog entry a day for two days in a row. D: This is for Tuesday. Last Friday we finally got all our green screen scenes done. Today I finished off the backdrops. At first I was nearly done on Sunday, when I realised that I did my backdrops in the wrong video format so I had to start over. That was horrible, but what's done is done. The only thing I can do is to work harder and do it right next time.


I quite liked doing the backdrops, it was quite fun. I liked how they turned out too though there is still room for improvement. I wonder if I should have made the backdrops more realistic though. Making it more realistic would make the characters look more like they are a part of the scene. However, the cons really do outweigh that positive thing about it. Our intention was to make the opening intro of the characters distinctly different from the rest of the film. Which is why the backdrops weren't drawn to look realistic. On the other hand, if we tried to make it realistic, the process would consume too much time and we would never meed the deadline. For a really good realistic backdrop takes me around 6hours to make. Also, I don't think my skills are good enough for that yet, humans can easily detect things that are unnatural. I still do want to improve myself to digitally paint at that level though.


So far we've made some mistakes in this project about not getting the right settings, formats and that sort of thing. With the footage ISO setting was too high so footage was super exposed. Now the format for the backdrops was done wrong the first time. I think before you do anything, read the manual and instructions first, then check that you got everything setup correctly before you begin. Proper preparation is important, so that you don't need to film everything all over again (we didn't have to, but still >.>). Planning and preparation are the prerequisites to a successful project in my opinion. Planning is of utmost importance to control time, but preparation is just as important because all your planning would be ruined if you prepared the situation (e.g. filming conditions, graphic work, etc.) incorrectly.