The Brake-Up

For the second of three machinima project, I was paired up with four new members. Two of them were Computer Science majors and the other two were Film majors like me. It was a pretty good split between majors and would come in handy throughout the partnership.

I was really excited to be working on this project once I heard the pitch for the story. It was really creative and was the only one that really caught my interest. Once the group was created, my two fellow film majors and myself quickly put together a storyboard and showed it to the two CS students. They liked what we planned out and our group quickly got off to a good start.

With an almost even split between the Film and Computer Science majors, we were able to really work well together as we each shared ideas in the field that we're familiar with and help each other out at the same time. For example, the CS students were able to get used to the software we were using so they were a huge help whenever I had trouble with the program and such. In exchange, the film students were able to give them an idea what looks good in a particular scene, what kind of reactions would the character have in a certain situation, and other film related contents. This collaboration was both effective and knowledgeable.

For the division of work, it was divided up between us based on the comfort level with the software. We were each assigned scenes that we are able to complete based on the knowledge of the program as well as the difficulty of what is being animated. For example, the CS students were able to do a scene where the camera is in first-person, giving the illusion you were in the shoes of the main character. I had absolutely no idea how to do that. To be honest, I didn't even know you could do that. Anyways, the work load was divided up equally and the end product turned out pretty good.

Sound and lip-synching worked out pretty well this time around. I honestly think we got lucky because the program was actually cooperative during the lip-synching portion. I was, unfortunately, tasked to be a voice of a character. Not a fan of having my voice recorded.

Personally, it was still a nightmare working with the program. Still randomly does stuff you don't want it to and all other irritating stuff. I was really grateful the two CS students in my group knew the programs because I kept running into a lot of errors during the entire project. The product turned out great but not without a lot of swearing on my part...