3. Personal
Experience
Personal Experience – Although I can’t say
I’ve had much real life experience with
magic, I am a fan of seeing and reading
about it in fiction. The style of magic I have
chosen to show in my film can be conjured
up from the users fingertips. A lot of magic in
media is channelled through objects such as
wands or staffs however, I personally prefer
the ‘superpower’ style of magic that is seen
from both real magicians (such as Derren
Brown and Dynamo) and fictional sorcerers
(such as Doctor Strange).
4. Google Trends
Google Trends – We can see using Google
trends that over the past 5 years, the interest
in the term ‘Magic’ has slowly decreased.
However, there are occasional spikes in the
chart. Looking at these select dates we can
see that the term ‘magic’ gains popularity
when a piece of media is released depicting
someone using it, especially things like Harry
Potter. This gives me confidence that
although magic isn’t always on the minds of
the audience, they are interested in it when
they see it. However, these films are also very
heavily promoted by the studios that make
them due to their huge budgets and given my
film doesn’t have that, I may need to find
other ways of getting people interested and
aware of the film.
5. Survey
Survey: I created a survey about how people
like to see magic in film. It asked questions
regarding magical instruments (such as
wands and books), wizards and how
audiences like to consume these films. The
results were interesting. They were fairly
even across the board. The polls were often
close in results and this made me realise that
audiences are happy with allowing the
filmmaker to create their own vision when
using magic related content in films. This
reassures me that I don’t have to change my
film, but work toward my goals instead of an
expectation of the general public. However,
the survey was only with a small group of
people so perhaps I could improve by
expanding the people I survey and the
backgrounds they come from to get a wider
idea of what is popular.
6. Practice
• Practice – I opened Abode After Effects,
got out a camera and practiced filming and
editing some effects that I may need in my
film. It was relatively difficult and the final
products had some flaws such as lighting
inconsistencies and some errors with
making the VFXs look 3D however, I
understand where these went wrong, and
how I can fix them for my final film using
real world items such as LED sticks to fix
the lighting. I learnt in the interview with
Wren Weichman that VFXs look better
when you incorporate real world elements
and I saw this in action here.
8. Film and TV
Film and TV – A lot of contemporary fantasy
films (such as Harry Potter or Doctor Strange)
use magic as plot points in their films. It is
used to benefit the person who is casting the
spell so I intend to use it in a similar way in
my film. It is also often a visual spectacle so it
is important to make sure the VFXs look nice
on screen. This will likaly make the film more
of a hit with younger audiences as they are
used to more complex narratives and VFX,
but it may also be a little more confusing for
older generations. Magic films usually have
more complicated narratives due and a lot of
time bending can happen. My film is one
loop and the story can be a bit complicated
so I may need to work on how I edit it to
make the story more clear and thus more
enjoyable to older audiences.
9. Literature
Literature – Magic is a very popular concept
in a lot of fantasy books. Immediately most
people probably think of Harry Potter which
was a hugely popular franchise about young
wizards and witches. It also spawned many
‘copycat’ franchises which also proved to be
popular with audiences (even if they didn’t
have the impact that HP did). This shows that
stories about people with magical powers
can do very well, especially with younger
adults. This helps me see that media related
to magic is still very popular, and that a good
audience demographic to target would be
16-25 year olds as they are the more
interested in this fantasy style.
10. YouTube Tutorials
YouTube Tutorials – For the VFX shots that I
am required to use, I have looked at some
YouTube videos that talk through how to pull
of certain VFXs that may be useful in my film
such as lightning effects and portals. Here
are some videos I looked at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THFEBp
3AK2U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e75M
8-zAFM
11. Portal Tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THFEBp3AK2U
The portal VFX is by far one of them most difficult ones to make look right.
Given you want to make the portal look realistic, it requires a lot of work to
blend the portal into the real world. This tutorial simplifies down some of the
steps using real world help to make the digital effects look better. The team
in this video use a circular green screen which they can key out and replace
with the portal. Here they place the green screen on the ceiling and light it
up using bright LEDs. This makes it all one shade of green making it a lot
easier to key out. They also do the same on the ground and have the actor
jump onto it. I could do a similar thing with the spell book in my film. I’d be
able to place a circular effect around the green screen in post that I would be
able to find from a VFXs assets website and use it to make the portal look like
a magic portal in a similar way they did in the video. I’d also be able to use
camera angles and simple edits to make it look like the book has fallen
through so I wouldn’t need to worry about using VFXs to send the item
through.
12. Lighting Effects -
This video is about a VFXs pack that lets you buy assets to place into After Effects to
make it look like your film has lighting in it. The video talks about several
techniques you can use to make your film look better including having the lighting
VFXs point towards the camera to make it appear more realistic. I am going to have
my character fire spells out of a wand, but one of them will have a lightning
aesthetic so being able to practice using this VFX pack was very helpful. The same
channel also have another video explaining how to make the spell look realistic by
using LEDs to illuminate your actors faces (Link to that video) and they also make a
step by step guide on how to make the effect in Adobe AE. I’ll be able to practice
using this video on the effect so I can master it for when I need it in my final film.
13. Interviews
Interviews - I looked at some interviews with
VFXs artists about how they started and how
they have developed their skills. I looked at
an interview with Wren Weichman from
‘Corridor Digital’ about how he got the
opportunity to work with them and it was
through a lot of practicing at home with a
camera and simple editing software so I
believe that is a good way to practice for my
film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOXeRN
w9XX4
