Personal Research Project - Artefact 3
The aim of my third artefact was to measure the effectiveness of both the traditional and digital special effect techniques tested in my second artefact. To do this I produced two short 30 second video clips showcasing the two different zombies I had created using prosthetic make-up and with After Effects. I then conducted a survey and recorded a series of focus group discussions in order to see which use special effects people generally preferred. I also included questions to do with realism in film to grasp a better understanding of their views.

For my first clip I produced a short clip showing an actor dressed in prosthetic make-up chasing a girl through the park; my second showed a girl turning on her bedroom light to a CGI zombie hiding behind the door. The prosthetic make-up effect was a fun and easy to film, where applying digital effects was fiddly and time consuming.

My results showed that the majority of audiences definitely prefer realism in horror films. They also generally defined realism in creatures as having human or animal like characteristics that we can relate to and identify with. The vast majority of people also preferred my prosthetic zombie test clip deeming it far more realistic and scary due to the realistic skin textures and filming in live action.

Overall my results show that using traditional make-up techniques is cheaper, faster, easier to work with and overly looks more realistic than using CGI. I think CGI has the potential to provide effective realism however requires highly paid skilled digital artists, more time and a much higher budget. Therefore I have found that traditional special effects

For my next artefact I shall be testing the time, cost and effectiveness of combining the use of prosthetic make-up with CGI to create a similar creature.

Here is the clip I made using a prosthetic make-up zombie:


Here is the clip I made using a CGI zombie:

Client Project Progress
Progress on this project has not been too easy. Adobe Premiere is basically a piece of shit in terms of reliability, its slow and crashes every 10 minutes, or it cuts off the sound for the entire computer leading to restart every 10 minutes. Also despite the client being extremely happy with my work so far it seems I have a lot of changes to be made due to copyright and design issues. I have mainly been using footage from various films and documentaries and at his stage simply mixing them together, I do intend to add more interesting visual effects once the basic design layout is complete and therefore overthrowing the copyright laws, however my work does look a little 'thin' in terms of effort. Therefore I have begun to film more stuff myself for use in the video, starting with footage from Happy Go Lucky itself last Friday. I will continue to capture footage throughout Easter to add to my video as well as adding further visual effects to the final edit.

Also I have begun using Sony Vegas Movie Studio instead of Premiere and it is a dream to use so basically I have a lot to do but am confident the end result should meet its requirement.

Here is the video so far (prior to the alterations that need to be made):

Realism in Horror Films
Through my research I have found that people generally view realism to be one of the most important elements that can be found in modern narrative cinema today. This concept could be seen as rediculous as to why the filmmaker has to cater to the trap of realism, particularly in the horror/fantasy genres which allows an almost unlimited creative license. Realism is used so that we can identify with the characters and therefore go on the same ride emotionally. Some people prefer films to provide realism and therefore emotional intensity so that the film is a more thrilling experience which attacks the senses i.e. fear, sadness, happiness, confusion; where others may prefer films to provide fun and imagination, or even to be artistic and magical.

The question is however, how does an audience justify something as being realistic or not when it does not even exist? When we look at the vast array of creatures that appear in horror movies i.e. zombies, vampires, witches, killer dolls, monsters, giant sharks, gremlins, demons, werewolves, ghosts and mutants; noone has ever seen these in real life. So how does an audience define what creature special effects and appearances are truly realistic when the majority of them do not even exist in the flesh?

The true realism of these creatures is still debatable however they can be subconsciously related to a few main factors:

1. Realism is based on audience assumptions usually produced in modern film or literature. Although there have been numerous differing stories and appearances about mythical creatures from all around the world, people in modern day western society will instantly relate to images of horror creatures portrayed in modern film and literature. For example the modern day appearance of a zombie was set to what it is today through George Romero's imagination in Night of the Living Dead. There had been pictures and stories of zombies prior to this, however he set the standard for what we all relate to today; therefore when an audience watches a zombie movie they would subconsciously base its realism of that mental image of this imaginary creature which was actually created for Hollywood.

2. People may expect the majority of mythical creatures to be more human like in appearance as they can subconsciously relate to them, therefore can be seen as being more realistic. For example noone has ever seen God or aliens but we usually presume that they are of human form so if they were portrayed like this on film we would consider it realistic, where as if God was portrayed as giant penguin with a mohican on film, then probably not.

3. Other creatures in horror and fantasy films can be related to what we know about the animal and psychical world. Numerous horror icons in film are a distorted or magnified representation of things that already exist i.e. Jaws, Chucky the killer doll, The Thing. With these the portrayal created on film using special effects can often be alikened to how they look in real life, and more specifically, their ergonomics. Ergonomics relate to the way in which these creatures move and react in real life i.e. CGI may look unrealistic at times since it does not breathe, move, titch and react naturally as a genuine life form.

I'll will be looking into this deeper and producing a survey to aid my 3rd artefact.

Personal Research Project - Artefact 2
The aim of my second artefact was to measure the time-cost effectiveness of the design processes for both traditional special effect techniques and digital techniques. To do this I decided to create two zombie creatures, one using prosthetics and make-up, and the other using digital technology whilst filming, photographing and timing the processes.

To create my prosthetic zombie I hired my make-up artist friend Zannah for assistance and used liquid latex, nose putty, toilet paper and face make-up to build up an actor’s face. We began by applying a layer of liquid latex and then used toilet paper to create a wrinkly skin texture. We then used a combination of nose putty, latex and toilet paper to modify the actor’s features such as his eye sockets, nose and chin to give a deformed zombie like appearance. Finally we applied white, black, green and red face paint to give the desired look I required. This process took 1 hour and 55 minutes to complete and found it to be a lot of fun.

To create my digital zombie I used Adobe After Effects to create a similar effect on the same actor. This was a more complicated process but only took 1 hour and 40 minutes to apply the desired zombie effect, however it took me an extra 20 minutes to motion track just 2 seconds of footage.

Overall I found traditional make-up special effects to be much more time-cost effective than digital even though the design process took longer. This is because even once the digital effect is complete, the artist still has to carefully motion track or animate every millisecond of footage, where once the make-up effect is complete you simply have to film it.

For my next artefact I shall be evaluating the effectiveness of each special effect by shooting some footage with each and gaining feedback.

Here is the design process footage for the traditional prosthetic make-up technique:


And here is the design process for digital technique using After Effects:

Client Project - Happy Go Lucky test video
Here is a brief sample of the video I am producing for my client Happy Go Lucky. Progress on this has been fairly slow due to the sound cutting out completely every 10 minutes when I use Adobe Premiere and have to restart. I told Simon about this in tutorial and he reminded me to simply record the timecodes for the audio so I know when to alter the video even when there is no sound.
The final version shall be approximately 60 minutes long, include more interesting visuals effects and with tighter editing. I showed this to my client over the weekend and he was so far extremely impressed.