Unit 5 Reflective Journal - Lim Lin Year 1 Production Arts for Screen
For the final unit of this year, we had to recreate a shot from a movie using blender, then using green screen add ourselves into the scene. Parasite (2019) was chosen in the end as modelling the flood scene is an interesting challenge and I wanted to try recreating the different elements seen in this shot, especially the lighting effects and water.
For research, I rewatched the movie to find shots that can be used as references from different angles then added these images as reference for the first block out so that the model is proportional to the actual set.
However, many issues were encountered as the focal length used to match closely with the corridor caused the water in the background to appear distorted from the camera view, not matching the reference well.
For the second attempt, I added the reference image in the camera view background instead of a plane so it would easier to check the perspective of the environment. I also stuck to using a 65mm lens as from an interview from Kyung-Pyo Hong, the cinematographer for Parasite, that was what was used for the filming of the movie. Using this focal length, the water level aligned with the reference image.
The main drawback of this lens was the distortion in the background, as the corridor was too long and the items at the back have to be scaled heavily to match with the camera view, but I kept using this since the horizon line of the water is more important and the items in the back are mostly hidden from the view. Using weighted normals helped to give the corridor more accurate shading, which would then be useful for the lighting setup.
I then moved on to modelling the props, starting with the ceiling lights. From a different scene in the movie, the white light came from a ceiling light with one fluorescent tube and the second was a spherical lamp in front of the door.
A separate blender file was used to model the pantry items, as I wanted to use an image reference to model the props easier.
On the main blender file, the floating objects were modelled. I used the main file for these since the space between the objects was important and it will be difficult to readjust after appending.
Later that week we were given studio time to record the green screen footage. The image below was the old block out used as reference for the lighting. The cupboard and clothes in the foreground were also modelled before I redid the scene, I would later on append those to the new file.
Other than the blender scene, I also wanted to create a prop to look like the one the actor in the movie was holding. Using paper mache and acrylic paint, this was made over a cardboard box. I used a picture from the set as reference for its shape. The colour and overall shape was not exact, but I decided to leave as such since it will not be obvious in the actual footage.
After the greenscreen was recorded with the help of the technicians, we were taught how to do compositing on blender.
While the process of modelling small items shown in the scene was straightforward, texturing required some guesswork and research on Korean brands seen in the picture. I was not able to match the same product but found items that looked similar from a distance. For the textures of these props, I used images of related products online, either from the same brand or items that resemble packaging that I cannot recognise from the photo.
To model other props such as the light switches and ornaments, I used other scenes from the movie as reference for modelling and made simple shapes that have the same properties as the actual items.
For the clothes hanging in the foreground and background, I sculpted the shape then used base colours which matched the reference more in the rendered view. As high contrast settings were used for the render, the base colours of the textures used have to be light for them to not appear too saturated or dark in the final render. This also applies to the walls, ceiling, and other large spaces.
This also affected the reflectiveness of certain props such as the frame seen on the left, as adding a glass pane or lowering the roughness of the image texture would result in the object appearing too dark. Hence, I decided to instead opt for increasing the roughness for the value to match with the reference image.
The pipes and cables on the ceiling were then added, along with furniture blurred in the background. I did not add much detail for the obscured props since it was hard to see, and I plan to add depth of field to blur the background. For the view from the door, I used the reference image as texture for the plane.
To recreate water shown in the scene, an ocean modifier is added onto a plane. This was the hardest part of the environment as it was not an accurate fluid simulation but was more suitable for this project. To make the objects float on its surface, each prop had constraints to a different plane with the shrink wrap modifier applied. The influence of the constraint was also lowered so the floating of the props appeared less erratic in the animation.
Various area lights were added across the environment to replicate the cross shape seen in the reference. The radius, strength and colour were done using trial and error to find settings that give the closest result. When setting up the material for the water, the viewport render worked but after using the recommended render settings the scene lighting was heavily affected. I struggled a lot with the material setup as during the first attempt at rendering, the water looked like this image below.
Many changes had to be made, such as redoing the water material, adjusting the scale of the ocean, and changing various settings that caused the simulation to be too rigid. The water setup I first used was based on a YouTube tutorial I watched for the material for the second unit, but it caused many issues with the scale of the noise texture, so a quicker method with principled BSDF was used instead.
This was the setup used to match the render closest to the viewport. The size of the ripples was caused by the ocean modifier, but after adjusting it the floating objects’ speed was too fast and the animation looked unnatural, so the constraints were adjusted accordingly afterwards. After adjusting the water texture, I began timing the flicking of the lights based on the greenscreen footage.
Depth of field was also added to the camera to replicate the blurred background seen in the reference. While this helped to make the background resemble the scene closer, I also should have put less detail on objects that are obscured by the effect, such as the pills in the foreground and washing liquid in the background.
Final touches were then made to the scene by adding more image textures to the items and fixing the bevel of the cupboard for sharper lighting. More lights were also added to the environment to correct dark spots that were not shown in the reference.
Afterwards, sound effects of a thunderstorm were added to the video with Premiere Pro as well as the VFX breakdown. Overall, I was able to learn a lot about VFX and postproduction and thought this was a fulfilling conclusion for our first year. After watching the render, I feel the water physics and chroma key could be further improved, as so I would continue looking into different features of 3d modelling in the following year.
