#80 David Stapp: This Battlefield Cinematic Proves Unreal Engine Is the #1 Filmmaking Tool

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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna say it right here on this podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If bad company three happens, I'm gonna take 1% credit.
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[SPEAKER_02]: My name is David Stapp.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I work for a form studios.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the director of virtual productions.
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[SPEAKER_02]: As we've been diving more and more into Unreal Engine, it made sense to also expand into game cinematics.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I've literally played all the battlefields.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I love this franchise.
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[SPEAKER_02]: This was the project that allowed us to stress test a lot of things.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Man, I get right a book on everything we've learned from this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: From on the power, it's definitely in the fingertips of the indie creators and the small team is so exciting.
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[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things we really wanted to get hands-on with with professional markerless motion capture, and we used this for the stunts, and it worked phenomenal.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There are so many areas I think people would be shocked to know were markerless.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if you took out unreal from this equation, it would even be possible in two months not a chance.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It is opening the doors for small teams to be able to create big stuff.
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[SPEAKER_00]: David, welcome to the VFX process.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's great to meet you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's so crazy because I see you on YouTube all the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And now you look, it's just if I'm watching a YouTube channel, but it's actually you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you also remind me of one of my best friends.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You look like one of my best friends, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I get that a lot.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's funny, like I use the same set up for just like client meetings.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And stuff.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it always throws people for a loop.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I can always recognize the person who recognizes me from YouTube.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen this exact, I've seen this red muted guy, but yeah, this dude before.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Brilliant man.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Can you give us a brief introduction of who you are, and a little bit about your background.
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[SPEAKER_02]: For sure, yeah, so for those that don't know, my name is David Stapp.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I work for form studios.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like the director of virtual production.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So overseeing just all areas of virtual production from like ICV effects to games and amatics.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And my journey is kind of a different one from a lot of people who work in this industry.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So basically, I got started, you know, tentatively way back in like middle schools when I got the bug for like picking up a camera, making movies with your friends, you know, all that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I pursued that all through high school, college.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I turned into a major passion for just storytelling, started working the last decade really in live production, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I have more of a background in film than I do in like VFX and 3D.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I worked as,
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, post-production, you know, as an editor, you know, working in motion graphics, things like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That was kind of like my first calling was in post-production, but then also pursuing directing, cinematography, did a lot of that, you know, got to work on a lot of different things from documentaries to music videos, to commercials, to even like narrative projects, like episodic stuff.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I, along the way, I've always loved doing my own storytelling too, you know, making my own short films and that grew from, you know, making short films in middle school all the way to now, like still finding ways to like challenge myself and tell stories as like a creative outlet, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so then, you know, back in like 2021, there was a studio I was working for.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There was moving into a new space and they were looking at getting an LED wall.
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[SPEAKER_02]: and jumping into ICV effects, virtual production.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And when I heard that, even when there was just like a early thought, I pushed that hard.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I told him, like, hey, I want to do that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's something like I'm very, very interested in.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I remember the first tech demo that Unreal Engine put out.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It was by Epic Games where they were showing a guy on a motorcycle surrounded by walls and then blew my mind when I saw that for the first time.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, then the main delorean came along and made that really popular.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's what then led me to dive into learning those workflows, how to implement all of that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I really became like the key person at that studio to get that off the ground.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But that then led me to using Unreal Engine.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that's was like what I consider like a turning point in my career because all of a sudden I found this software.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Then it enabled me to do a lot of things that I've wanted to do or made it a lot easier to do.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it became like this tool where I'm like, oh man, I now have the ability to tell stories even easier.
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[SPEAKER_02]: because as you get older, you know, this is some wisdom for those young aspiring kids out there who want to make some short films.
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[SPEAKER_02]: When you get married, when you have kids, when you have a mortgage, when you have, you know, yeah, you know, you know, it's like, as all these things start to creep up in your life and they're very important things, you know?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Those are things that are great.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But,
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[SPEAKER_02]: they do make it harder to then go out and like pursue something like making a short film, gathering a crew, gathering cast and doing all these things.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so over the years, I started to find myself doing that less.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I don't blame any of the life events for that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a thing that happens.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It just becomes more difficult.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Your priorities shift.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But then, all the sudden, unreligion was like, this tool is like, whoa, okay, I don't have to go out and find all those people.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I could just make something myself, even if it's just one minute longer, whatever.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And like, I do all the voices and I do all the acting, whatever.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's still something where I can take the idea that's in my head and put it out there pretty easily on my own.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And when the wife goes to bed, you can just go downstairs or into the shed and just do a couple of shots.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's an obsession.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It really, really is.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's kind of a thing that a lot of people in our industry.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's what kind of differentiates those artists that kind of rise to the top.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It is an obsession whether we like it or not.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's something you have to just be completely obsessed with.
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[SPEAKER_02]: my YouTube feed is just nothing but like tutorials and VFX and 3D and all this stuff like 3D short films.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's just like what it's full of because that's like what I love to consume.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so that's been like the last few years.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I started learning Unreal Engine for that studio to like create environments to project an LED walls and that's something I still do today.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The journey of last three years, it's become a full-blown filmmaking tool that can be applied
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so many different industries, everything from previous to like little final pixel game cinematics like things like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it's been a very full circle moment because you know growing up I remember the first time I I literally remember the game.
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[SPEAKER_02]: of the first time I noticed a game cinematic, how it was different from the gameplay because back in the day, a game cinematic's were dramatically different from the gameplay and it was, you know, very jarring to see it first, but literally there was a game, it was a tie-in to a movie, you know, and this is back in the day when movies had video games that came out at the same time to like promote the movie and they had to put these video games together,
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[SPEAKER_02]: So quickly, and it, you know, sometimes reflected in the quality of the game.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It was a tie-in video game for the movie The Punisher, back in like the early 2000s.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a random game.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I remember there's this opening cinematic in it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: that was pre-rendered, it was nice and beautiful and it like blew my mind as like a young kid because I was like, whoa, this looks like a movie, but it's also like 3D and like this is really cool.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it was something that kind of stayed in the back of my head.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Once I started to really dive into what Unreal could do, that's what then opened my eyes just, you know, game cinematics as a whole.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that's when I started really pursue that because I was like, man, I can take my love of these two things
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[SPEAKER_02]: put them together, but also take all the things I've learned over the last 10 years in post as a director, as a cinematographer, and literally put them all together in just like one place, and that's pretty crazy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of hard for, I don't think a lot of people get the opportunity to take like all these different years of their life and just put them into one place.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what's like, got me so excited, just for like where I'm at now, where I can be in the future and stuff, and how to pursue all that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of stories will you tell him back then?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What's your favorite kind of stories to tell?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Back in the seventh grade, just Oscar winning stories.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Let me tell you just a Academy of Warriors.
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[SPEAKER_02]: No, just the most monotonous, a click-day stuff ever.
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[SPEAKER_02]: As it makes used to make stuff with your friends, but over the years, you know, as I got more and more serious about it and like, especially like college and stuff, that's when I actually started to really
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[SPEAKER_02]: think, get wrap my head around the concept of storytelling and character arcs and how to like, you know, structure a story in three acts and all that stuff.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's where it really started to become more kind of professional, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a sucker for action.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think that reflects in a lot of like what I make.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think I love, you know, thrillers action.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And also, you know, very inspired by horror.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think horror is a really fun.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I love things that can, are kind of just like very,
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[SPEAKER_02]: Exciting and kind of like you know, cause an emotional reaction at a people.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not a slow burn kind of guy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I like things that, you know, popcorn movies, you know, I look like, you know, get you excited.
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[SPEAKER_02]: They actually invoke some kind of reaction, some kind of like, you know, you know, reaction in your brain, right, something that's like, oh, that was really cool.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I've never seen something like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh, now I'm scared, you know, stuff like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I do love, you know, creating things that, you know, just have like,
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[SPEAKER_02]: tension, right, or you just have excitement.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the things I always gravitate to when I'm starting to make things, it's just like, how can I give people a reaction?
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[SPEAKER_02]: How can I have people?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Because I've gotten to experience that over the years.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I've been lucky enough to put some of the things I've created in film festivals and actually be in the audience when people get to watch it for the first time.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I remember back in college, I made a...
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[SPEAKER_02]: horror short film is like a zombie short film right of course if you make it know how I feel it's almost got to be in the end right and I remember there was a moment that I was like I want to have like a moment where people like go like oh crap right like oh no something something something about to go down and literally there was like these two people in front of me
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[SPEAKER_02]: where there's this moment where this kind of like jump moment happens and they they literally reacted just like the world is the best feeling in the world when you go out of your way to make audience feel a certain way and you get to actually see that happen.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That is super satisfying.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's that dopamine hit as a filmmaker.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And you're like, yes, got it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that will kind of set up an execution.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Was it to get that reaction that you want to?
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it was basically in this zombie short film.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's the moment where this husband and wife are on the run.
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[SPEAKER_02]: They finally get into this safe house.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But as they get in there, the wife realises that the husband was bit along the way.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Classed, yeah, of course.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And this is one of those where the virus turns very fast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Gotcha.
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[SPEAKER_02]: She's now kind of like locked in the safe house.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And he tells her, hey, you got to shoot me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You don't really have a choice here.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And within a matter of seconds, all of a sudden, he is like standing over her and he has turned.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it kind of has like this like very quick moment to like kind of catch the audience off guard.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, just creates intention.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So always.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's one thing in a zombie series or a zombie movie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that you want to find out early on is how quick did they turn?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's an order you're thinking, okay, is it?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a day or two, or is it, is it coming today?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Real mess.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because it really sets you, sets the audience up for kind of health and they can, you know, breathe a little bit, or oh shit, it's going to kick off again.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's always someone that's got a bit along the way, which is brilliant.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I love that moment and this one that we're going to talk about today David is an amazing fan film called Conquest, which follows the battlefield franchise.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a prequel, would you say?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've literally played all the battlefields since 1942.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I love this franchise and
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[SPEAKER_02]: I will say, I think a lot of people feel the same way that over the past, you know, few versions of the game, the single player has felt like an afterthought, and I say that with love, I'm a huge bad of a fan.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I don't mind dice any eye hearing this, but, you know, like, the single player definitely has not been their focus, and I get it, multiplayer is their bread and butter.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's why most people are playing the game, as for it's incredible, large-scale warfare, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I remember the bad company games like had like one of the best battlefield campaigns ever.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It was just so different.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It was like this like it had a lot of humor injected into it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of like a dark comedy at times and just had these characters that were super fun.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you wanted to actually hear more about their story.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So.
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[SPEAKER_02]: this movie right here kind of is two things it's a spiritual successor to bad company to kind of in its own way it's got a tie in at the end with one of the you know returning characters but it's also selfishly my pitch to EA of like please make bad company 3 that's it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see that in the comments all the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Have a good time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Come on.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Just make it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We want it, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I hope that EA dies if you're listening, please.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Please make it happen.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I'm going to say it right here on this podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If bad company three happens, I'm going to take one percent credit for it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not 100%, I'm going to take 1% credit for that game happening because man, I will be ecstatic if that happens and selfishly, man, I've got a whole idea for a story with the way they could tell, so hey, EA dies if you want me to, you know, I'd be more than happy to sell you my idea for $100, there you go, offer on the table.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've got some comments here that I can open up from.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, you've, you've, I imagine you've read all of them, because when you've written it like this, yeah, man.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's great to have a read isn't it of what the fans are saying?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, people are saying this is about to fill this is amazing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Great job.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Really enjoy the best thing I've seen in a long while.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is so dope.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll have you frying choices, color, action.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We've got the best.
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[SPEAKER_00]: a Battlefield fan film.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If it may be right here, it's an excellent job on that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I should people are looking at it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And also I'll recognize a few of the people, Samsta, VFX.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Congrats on the short film.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We had him on to talk about his last of us fan made film, which is amazing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely man, and he says it was fun to watch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Looking forward to seeing more BTS content about it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll mention that later.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, Charlie Druskell, he is comedy, loads, lots of love, man, and rightly so on that, David.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, can you just tell us about the project, how it came about, and how it all got started?
15:34.400 --> 15:46.891
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so, you know, I've been working at former studios as, you know, overseeing all virtual production, you know, we, we mainly specialize in LED wall, ICV effects, cinema robotics, things like that.
15:47.091 --> 15:49.978
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, we have been looking at.
15:50.414 --> 16:01.798
[SPEAKER_02]: launching a couple new services, you know, we've got a new mocap volume to where we come off for motion capture services, you know, to different industries like VFX, the gaming industry obviously.
16:01.838 --> 16:09.655
[SPEAKER_02]: But then also, you know, as we've, you know, been diving more and more into Unreal Engine and kind of expanding to working with other, you know,
16:09.635 --> 16:10.636
[SPEAKER_02]: artists and things like that.
16:11.197 --> 16:15.182
[SPEAKER_02]: It made sense to, you know, also just kind of expand into game cinematics.
16:16.564 --> 16:25.655
[SPEAKER_02]: Either as, you know, like as a one-stop shop where you can come to us for like a full team or, you know, as a support system where we kind of plug into existing teams, right?
16:26.436 --> 16:31.963
[SPEAKER_02]: We're keeping it very kind of, you know, all a card, however you need us to be plugged in.
16:32.146 --> 16:32.707
[SPEAKER_02]: to that.
16:33.328 --> 16:40.323
[SPEAKER_02]: So that this was the project that allowed us to really stress test a lot of things.
16:40.524 --> 16:47.077
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've had this idea, you know, for a fan film and I was like, well, let's go this route.
16:47.258 --> 16:48.721
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel good about the story.
16:48.801 --> 16:50.745
[SPEAKER_02]: I know we could pull this off.
16:50.725 --> 16:58.937
[SPEAKER_02]: if a few key pieces come into play, which we'll get into, but that would kind of make or break if this would be possible to do.
16:59.017 --> 17:08.330
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, this literally was a way for us to stress test our body motion capture, especially, is kind of like a big thing we focused on a lot in this.
17:08.711 --> 17:11.535
[SPEAKER_02]: We did do, obviously, face motion capture.
17:11.515 --> 17:17.507
[SPEAKER_02]: But I intentionally wanted to really focus on body motion capture, prop tracking, all these different things.
17:18.008 --> 17:26.544
[SPEAKER_02]: And then us do another R&D project to really focus on face, like to really stress test pipelines and even hardware, what we do with that.
17:26.644 --> 17:29.710
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's something that we plan to do on the next one.
17:29.690 --> 17:46.247
[SPEAKER_02]: So this was a great, you know, use case and stress test of our new motion capture volume using opti track cameras, the full suits with the markers, and even markers on props that could be translated to actual, you know, meshes inside of Unreal.
17:46.227 --> 17:52.180
[SPEAKER_02]: And we really just wanted to, you know, stress the pipeline to like the workflow.
17:52.280 --> 17:56.549
[SPEAKER_02]: So like right like, you know, from A to Z, how do we take all of this data?
17:56.569 --> 17:57.751
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we wrangle all of it?
17:57.812 --> 18:05.147
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we get that distributed between artists and how do we get it, you know, to the to the finish line right in any efficient way.
18:05.127 --> 18:17.196
[SPEAKER_02]: right so this was you know with as we're making you know content for the channel you know a lot of the stuff we're creating for that is for you know educational purposes and it's usually just me you know creating those things but
18:17.615 --> 18:23.320
[SPEAKER_02]: This was also a way for us to now start bringing in other people to fill in roles for specialists.
18:23.380 --> 18:28.986
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you can't expect to be the person doing everything.
18:29.286 --> 18:42.979
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's where, and I'll admit this about stuff I've made in the past, especially on Unreal Engine and stuff, where when you try to do everything, things are going to slip in terms of quality and what they could be.
18:43.400 --> 18:46.002
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's potential of what it could be.
18:45.982 --> 18:50.209
[SPEAKER_02]: in terms of like overall fidelity and like just how professional it looks.
18:50.772 --> 18:52.060
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where
18:52.377 --> 18:56.001
[SPEAKER_02]: As we're doing more content for the channel and I was but it's the as we're doing client work.
18:56.021 --> 19:05.411
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we're finding those specialists to plug in to do certain things because, you know, they're just certain roles that I feel like, you know, they need that specialist touch.
19:05.451 --> 19:07.092
[SPEAKER_02]: Like someone who that's what they do, right?
19:07.112 --> 19:07.793
[SPEAKER_02]: Like animation.
19:08.154 --> 19:12.018
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm the first person to tell people, I'm not an animator by any means.
19:12.178 --> 19:20.106
[SPEAKER_02]: So like when it comes to the animating characters, animating faces, there are people who like specialize in that, right?
19:20.609 --> 19:24.656
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're very good at what they do and there's a reason they're, you know, in that role.
19:25.116 --> 19:26.298
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's one of those areas.
19:26.338 --> 19:32.128
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like you, you shouldn't try if, you know, if you're a lighting artist who's pretty good at animation.
19:32.148 --> 19:36.775
[SPEAKER_02]: I think people are going to see that right, you know, they're going to see like all the lighting looks great animation.
19:37.577 --> 19:40.862
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's, it's one of those things I've had to really.
19:41.315 --> 20:06.900
[SPEAKER_02]: remind myself of as I'm doing these projects is you know find those people you know trust your your artist that you bring in you know trust like you brought them in for a reason that's what they do and kind of lean in them it's very you know collaborative right so this yeah this project allows to do all of these things uh to really start bringing an artist you know figuring out literally everything right and putting it all together and man
20:07.015 --> 20:10.942
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I could write a book on everything we learned from this, right?
20:11.022 --> 20:13.267
[SPEAKER_02]: Just, you know, because you have to start somewhere, right?
20:14.269 --> 20:21.622
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's why, you know, doing these projects is so important because the amount you'll learn from it isn't sane.
20:21.863 --> 20:28.956
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, even just like comparing this story from a previous short from a made on the channel, it's like, it's night and day.
20:28.936 --> 20:29.518
[SPEAKER_02]: different.
20:29.939 --> 20:31.563
[SPEAKER_02]: I can terms of quality and stuff.
20:31.643 --> 20:44.599
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and it only gets me excited because of the more and more we do these like I'm hoping to see that kind of you know gap between each one and it's like, oh man, you know one, two years from now I'll look back from what I made and we're on the channel like, yee.
20:44.579 --> 20:56.033
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to imagine how the time isn't it, but that just shows progress and evolution of the team, the skill set, what you've learned, it's always great to look back as cringes.
20:56.834 --> 21:09.810
[SPEAKER_00]: When you look back a few years, it's hard to imagine how the time isn't it that this is what we're putting out now and it's good as we can do at the moment and it shows a lot of growth, which is always exciting to see.
21:09.942 --> 21:27.229
[SPEAKER_00]: And with this kind of cinematic, you know, people, you know, people often assume there's a big studio or at least they use to, you know, what what's the actual reality of like how you're small to small teams or solar characters and making work at this level now because yeah of the tools.
21:27.630 --> 21:35.943
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's kind of wild like when I was looking back on it because, man, it's like a blur right now the two months I spent working on this film and unreal.
21:36.524 --> 21:37.806
[SPEAKER_02]: So we.
21:38.073 --> 21:46.025
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, obviously had a couple days of production and stuff like that, but then once we got past it, you know, we had an environment artist on this project which was really nice.
21:46.606 --> 21:52.656
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was nice to be able to hand off all of that to my environment artist data shot out to data.
21:53.457 --> 22:02.511
[SPEAKER_02]: He did an amazing job just kind of putting together these different areas of this like, you know, war torn and vaded city and then I'll see the military base as well.
22:02.491 --> 22:04.172
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was really nice to be able to hand that off.
22:04.233 --> 22:06.334
[SPEAKER_02]: We had all of that done before actual production.
22:06.835 --> 22:11.959
[SPEAKER_02]: So we could actually have those environments on set to kind of visualize our characters in them.
22:12.480 --> 22:17.164
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if it was just kind of roughly, you know, we didn't have to have like the final placement of where they were in the scene.
22:17.224 --> 22:19.726
[SPEAKER_02]: We kind of just wanted a visual reference for them.
22:19.746 --> 22:23.729
[SPEAKER_02]: And we even put some renderings up on the LED wall.
22:23.769 --> 22:25.491
[SPEAKER_02]: So they kind of see the actors could see.
22:25.531 --> 22:31.536
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a reference of where you are, just to kind of help you stay in that
22:31.752 --> 22:46.994
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, we had an environment artist and then for the actual after production, that's when I was like really getting into, you know, reigning all the data, getting all of everything retargeted and into their sequences and whiting and virtual cinematography and all that.
22:47.735 --> 22:57.810
[SPEAKER_02]: Really, I had, you know, a volunteer who helped with some like simulation and like effects, like Niagara particles and bullet hits and muzzle flashes, things like that.
22:58.550 --> 23:04.379
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I had a compositor, Joe Forder, he helped with compositing some scenes in Nuke.
23:04.860 --> 23:12.412
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had someone Agneska who helped with modifying some of the textures for the many humans to add some dirt, some grimes, some sweat, things like that.
23:13.494 --> 23:18.021
[SPEAKER_02]: And a manual, who's that FX artist, I mentioned, helping out with some of the particle systems.
23:18.081 --> 23:19.263
[SPEAKER_02]: But that was really it.
23:19.383 --> 23:20.465
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything else was me.
23:20.525 --> 23:25.232
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't want it to just be me.
23:25.212 --> 23:33.447
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's what you're doing R&D and when you're working with, you know, volunteers, you know, you'll take the help where you can get it and you just kind of you buckle down.
23:33.588 --> 23:45.390
[SPEAKER_02]: You could head down and you get through it and, you know, the goal is that as we do more of these kinds of R&D projects, we'll kind of grow out that roster, we'll kind of, you know, get even more involvement from people.
23:45.450 --> 23:46.191
[SPEAKER_02]: But
23:46.475 --> 23:48.677
[SPEAKER_02]: We obviously want to be respectful of people's time.
23:48.737 --> 23:50.760
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's that balance, right?
23:50.780 --> 23:56.406
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're working with people who are volunteers, you know, obviously you want to find people who are as passionate as you, because it's a lot.
23:56.766 --> 24:03.834
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a commitment, right, to be able to, you know, do this kind of stuff at the level, even the length, right?
24:03.854 --> 24:06.978
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a six-minute short film that we've pulled off in only two months.
24:07.398 --> 24:08.779
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of crazy, you know?
24:09.140 --> 24:11.502
[SPEAKER_02]: Only a handful of people working on it.
24:11.523 --> 24:12.904
[SPEAKER_02]: And then obviously had
24:13.340 --> 24:21.330
[SPEAKER_02]: good amount of help on the actual like post side of things right as we start getting an editorial and sound design and color grading and things like that.
24:21.811 --> 24:25.635
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where we then had even more help which kind of helped across the finish line.
24:25.675 --> 24:41.455
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, as far as like, you know, the team goes very small, the majority of what you see from like animation cleanup to lighting virtual cinematography, you know, all that kind of, you know, fell on me to kind of take it across the finish line.
24:41.495 --> 24:43.077
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just
24:43.057 --> 24:43.357
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
24:44.459 --> 25:04.701
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and that helped me even identify, you know, more and more roles and I'm like, yep, I'm going to build this role, somebody a specialist and, you know, obviously, because the ultimate goal for me is to be able to, you know, step back as a cinematic director and it's good to have experience in those different roles, because then you're able to speak to it more, right.
25:05.342 --> 25:08.085
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's that's the biggest.
25:08.521 --> 25:22.082
[SPEAKER_02]: thing for me, the biggest kind of value, and it is just, you know, being forced to do roles that I wouldn't want to do, you know, but then being able to have experience in them, being able to speak to them and know, you know, specialist to bring in, right?
25:22.222 --> 25:26.428
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and, and, and, and, and I think that's kind of the beautiful part about Unreal Engine.
25:27.410 --> 25:37.245
[SPEAKER_02]: In my mind, you know, you still don't need these teams of tens, if not hundreds of people, right, to to pull off what you're seeing some students do, and I'm not
25:37.478 --> 25:38.880
[SPEAKER_02]: not knocking that in any way.
25:38.900 --> 25:44.488
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they are putting up some top tier stuff and they usually have teams of a lot of people, right?
25:44.508 --> 25:46.130
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of cooks in that kitchen.
25:46.611 --> 25:59.329
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think Unreal has some pretty amazing tools and features where you don't need teams that large, like a team of like 10 to 20 people in Unreal, like you can do some pretty insane stuff.
25:59.349 --> 26:00.270
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're seeing that.
26:00.290 --> 26:01.172
[SPEAKER_02]: They're all there.
26:01.192 --> 26:04.296
[SPEAKER_02]: There are stuff on YouTube right now that's put together by like,
26:04.276 --> 26:19.483
[SPEAKER_02]: senior people from the industry that are put out like incredible stuff but then there's only like five to ten people you know involved and where certain studios out there that are making some like the trailers you see for the game awards and stuff like that like that's tens of like
26:19.463 --> 26:21.026
[SPEAKER_02]: That's huge teams of people.
26:21.046 --> 26:23.651
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's a really exciting thing about it.
26:23.691 --> 26:37.978
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like we're now starting to get tools and get features and software out there, not just on religion, but other things are cutting out and where it's it is opening the doors for small teams to be able to create big stuff and that's that's so exciting.
26:38.279 --> 26:43.223
[SPEAKER_00]: to his man, the power is definitely in the fingertips of the indicators and the small teams.
26:43.304 --> 26:44.044
[SPEAKER_00]: So exciting.
26:44.545 --> 26:51.431
[SPEAKER_00]: If you took out Unreal from this equation, it would look a lot different when it would even be possible.
26:52.071 --> 26:54.173
[SPEAKER_02]: In two months, not a chance.
26:54.654 --> 26:56.175
[SPEAKER_02]: Not with this size of a team.
26:56.896 --> 27:08.286
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it would definitely take in a much, much larger team with a very efficient pipeline, like an established pipeline of like an established studio, to be able to do that.
27:08.266 --> 27:27.667
[SPEAKER_02]: rendering a time alone would be expending a form and a software that's able to utilize a form, you know, multi thread and all that for rendering, but you know, with unreal, you know, having the, you know, the features that it does, like, lumen and real time, you know, global, global illumination.
27:28.308 --> 27:30.710
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we, we opted to not do path tracing.
27:30.730 --> 27:34.915
[SPEAKER_02]: We just stuck with lumen just for efficiency and show them.
27:34.895 --> 27:40.104
[SPEAKER_02]: What I find myself doing is I art direct aluminum based on what path tracing looks like.
27:40.164 --> 27:44.812
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll switch to path tracing to get reference of shadows and reflections and things like that.
27:45.252 --> 27:48.518
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I switch back over to aluminum and I art direct based on that.
27:48.638 --> 27:52.425
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's kind of like a way that you can get, you know, the best of both worlds.
27:52.445 --> 27:55.470
[SPEAKER_02]: There's still things that path tracing is always going to do better.
27:55.830 --> 27:58.675
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the cost of just
27:58.773 --> 28:00.376
[SPEAKER_02]: really taxing your system.
28:01.177 --> 28:02.859
[SPEAKER_02]: I did the math.
28:02.880 --> 28:08.549
[SPEAKER_02]: If we were to render this entire film and like path tracing with high quality high samples, right?
28:08.589 --> 28:11.493
[SPEAKER_02]: It would have been literal weeks of rendering.
28:12.715 --> 28:13.737
[SPEAKER_02]: Crazy.
28:14.438 --> 28:18.925
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were fortunate enough to have a completely separate rendering system.
28:19.141 --> 28:25.430
[SPEAKER_02]: that we were able to easily queue things up and render them as we were still working in the film.
28:25.530 --> 28:37.147
[SPEAKER_02]: So we had a very efficiently wringering pipeline, but still, just the time we would have spent on just rendering alone with Patreys and would have just been... What an awful, awful, awful, and painful.
28:37.408 --> 28:37.768
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
28:38.189 --> 28:44.057
[SPEAKER_00]: What sets up like a hardware, we used for this project, you said there's a separate place to render.
28:44.358 --> 28:45.840
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that look like hardware-wise?
28:45.922 --> 28:48.827
[SPEAKER_02]: So we had kind of two main workstations.
28:49.327 --> 28:53.654
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, the different artists, we had a composite or we had an environment artist.
28:53.775 --> 29:02.849
[SPEAKER_02]: We were all sharing the project over perforced, you know, a pretty industry-standard revision control software, so that we all had the latest updates, latest versions of the software.
29:03.250 --> 29:04.572
[SPEAKER_02]: But when I also did,
29:05.075 --> 29:20.895
[SPEAKER_02]: At Form Studios, you know, I work remotely here from home in my office, but at Form Studios, we have many computers we use as render nodes and, you know, rendering on LED walls and stuff, but they're also really great for rendering shots, you know, rendering software with the different, you know, GPUs they have in there.
29:20.955 --> 29:24.619
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we actually have a really great partnership with Puget Systems.
29:24.679 --> 29:30.947
[SPEAKER_02]: They make a lot of really great work, you know, workstations for different industries, and they were nice enough.
29:31.484 --> 29:39.676
[SPEAKER_02]: to hook us up with an RTX Pro 6,000 graphics card which makes the best graphics card you've been able to market right now.
29:39.696 --> 29:41.298
[SPEAKER_02]: And it has 96 gigs of VRAM.
29:41.318 --> 29:43.341
[SPEAKER_02]: It's ridiculous.
29:43.642 --> 29:47.187
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were then able to plug that into our Render node.
29:47.707 --> 29:50.311
[SPEAKER_02]: One of our computers at the studio.
29:51.152 --> 29:55.078
[SPEAKER_02]: I have remote access to that machine, and so I set up per force over there.
29:55.919 --> 30:01.064
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what I did is I would just remote in, sync it through Perforce, load it up.
30:01.124 --> 30:03.867
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would create Cues in movie render queue.
30:03.887 --> 30:05.269
[SPEAKER_02]: I would just save the queue, right?
30:05.309 --> 30:08.152
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it opened it up, load that queue and hit render.
30:08.172 --> 30:08.893
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was good to go.
30:09.553 --> 30:15.079
[SPEAKER_02]: So that way I could just have a completely separate, you know, workstation for just rendering.
30:15.119 --> 30:18.202
[SPEAKER_02]: And I could then continue working on my station.
30:19.003 --> 30:21.606
[SPEAKER_02]: And that RTX per 6000 would just
30:21.586 --> 30:28.249
[SPEAKER_02]: chewed through those renders and I mean, my work shit has a 49-y in it, which is nothing to scoff at.
30:28.269 --> 30:32.845
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great graphics card, but having four times the amount of V-RAM.
30:33.331 --> 30:34.633
[SPEAKER_02]: is just ridiculous.
30:34.994 --> 30:42.646
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were seeing like two to three times faster renders like it was reduced heavily.
30:43.166 --> 30:44.589
[SPEAKER_02]: So that made a big difference too.
30:44.689 --> 30:49.917
[SPEAKER_02]: I was able to do not just quicker renders, but way more renders as a result.
30:49.937 --> 31:00.013
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you're always gonna be going back and forth, you know, like doing revisions or this section of the image sequence, I need to re-render these frames because I had to fix something.
30:59.993 --> 31:00.994
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very rare.
31:01.034 --> 31:04.057
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm learning that your first render is your final.
31:05.098 --> 31:08.921
[SPEAKER_02]: There's always things you're going to be tweaking or adjusting or fixing.
31:09.401 --> 31:15.087
[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing that was crazy and that this was probably my favorite part of the whole render pipeline.
31:15.647 --> 31:18.370
[SPEAKER_02]: From there, we used up a thing.
31:18.410 --> 31:19.671
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like open source, I think.
31:19.711 --> 31:30.000
[SPEAKER_02]: It's called Sync Thing and it's this program that you could set up on your computers and you basically just create
31:29.980 --> 31:48.000
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what we did, I had all these EXR image sequences rendering on that Render node computer with that, fancy RTX Pro 6000 GPU, all of those image sequences went to this folder that was synced to a Render's folder on my machine, and it did it in real time.
31:48.981 --> 31:49.822
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have to do anything.
31:49.842 --> 31:57.270
[SPEAKER_02]: So as those Renders were finishing, I timed it within three minutes, I had all the EXRs.
31:57.537 --> 31:59.280
[SPEAKER_02]: brilliant, which is wild.
31:59.300 --> 32:01.122
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was like real time basically.
32:01.142 --> 32:03.385
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's like I was rendering on my machine.
32:04.006 --> 32:16.845
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great because I guess what you were all over look potentially is, you know, you'll remote it into the computer and then to get those renders that you don't want to push them through perforce because you're gonna have to sink like hundreds and hundreds of frames to then everybody to get them.
32:16.865 --> 32:20.871
[SPEAKER_00]: So if everybody sink to that drive, everyone can pick them up straight up and go.
32:21.111 --> 32:21.371
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
32:21.892 --> 32:25.958
[SPEAKER_02]: It was literally as if I was running them all in my room because they were
32:26.225 --> 32:27.286
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to, I'll know that.
32:27.366 --> 32:29.508
[SPEAKER_00]: And sink thing is that it's sink sink.
32:29.528 --> 32:30.209
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, look at that.
32:30.229 --> 32:30.810
[SPEAKER_00]: It's okay.
32:30.910 --> 32:32.131
[SPEAKER_02]: I had never used it before.
32:32.171 --> 32:34.274
[SPEAKER_02]: It was it was crazy.
32:34.714 --> 32:39.879
[SPEAKER_02]: It was it made getting those EXRs so fast within minutes.
32:39.960 --> 32:41.761
[SPEAKER_02]: I had them all locally on my machine.
32:41.781 --> 32:42.422
[SPEAKER_02]: It was great.
32:42.803 --> 32:44.865
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just going to use it going forward.
32:44.885 --> 32:45.345
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, man.
32:45.365 --> 32:45.565
[SPEAKER_02]: Never.
32:45.986 --> 32:49.870
[SPEAKER_02]: I never want to render another cinematic on my computer.
32:50.356 --> 32:54.583
[SPEAKER_02]: Is this so nice not having to wait to the end of the day when you're done?
32:54.623 --> 32:55.504
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, man.
32:55.584 --> 33:01.914
[SPEAKER_02]: Art a render and go to sleep and have nightmares about waking up and it's, you know what?
33:01.934 --> 33:10.107
[SPEAKER_00]: I imagine and it's happened to me and I imagine any, well, most three of the artists prior to not, you know, using real time stuff like that.
33:10.208 --> 33:11.790
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you press that render button,
33:11.770 --> 33:20.404
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've got a white-tool tomorrow, the struggle of getting to sleep or just praying before you got your eyes for the night.
33:20.764 --> 33:23.008
[SPEAKER_02]: You're like, you're reading God.
33:23.028 --> 33:24.150
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no errors.
33:24.971 --> 33:28.657
[SPEAKER_00]: The power of that is just very exciting for filmmakers.
33:28.917 --> 33:31.281
[SPEAKER_00]: Indie filmmakers, it's a game-changing now.
33:31.447 --> 33:45.852
[SPEAKER_02]: 100% and we're starting to see even more like cloud rendering platforms like Oxford, your farm and all these different ones where you can basically have like a virtual second computer to offload and to take care of the rendering while you're working in it.
33:45.912 --> 33:47.976
[SPEAKER_02]: Which it is a game changer like you said.
33:48.036 --> 33:49.759
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean literally not.
33:49.958 --> 33:53.626
[SPEAKER_02]: having to stop what you're doing to let things render.
33:53.906 --> 33:57.855
[SPEAKER_02]: That becomes, that would have added a lot of time to our production schedule.
33:57.915 --> 34:04.148
[SPEAKER_02]: If I had to wait for everything to render on this end, would have taken longer, I wouldn't have been able to work while I was rendering.
34:04.188 --> 34:06.413
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's huge.
34:06.453 --> 34:09.840
[SPEAKER_02]: That's an efficiency must have.
34:10.681 --> 34:16.049
[SPEAKER_00]: But with any of the problems along the way that you had to think on your feet and solve as you go.
34:16.369 --> 34:24.380
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I said, this was an R&D project and we intentionally wanted to try new things in as many ways as possible.
34:24.400 --> 34:26.663
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like, okay, this is the excuse, right?
34:26.723 --> 34:29.207
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what are those things we want to get hands on with?
34:29.247 --> 34:31.030
[SPEAKER_02]: What are those things we want to try out and see?
34:31.470 --> 34:32.492
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we like this.
34:32.552 --> 34:36.237
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's put this as part of our pipeline or nope, that did not work.
34:36.257 --> 34:39.962
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's not use that.
34:39.942 --> 34:45.267
[SPEAKER_02]: wanted to get hands-on with more like, you know, professional, markerless motion capture.
34:46.228 --> 34:50.232
[SPEAKER_02]: There are a lot of different markerless motion capture systems out there.
34:50.272 --> 34:57.799
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of them, you know, you can choose an iPhone, you know, with like, move AI or Marionette or quick magic or, you know, there's so many different ones, right?
34:58.480 --> 35:00.982
[SPEAKER_02]: But they all have their own caveats.
35:01.022 --> 35:09.190
[SPEAKER_02]: They all have their kind of quirky workflows and how to get all that, you know, data into your
35:09.170 --> 35:14.480
[SPEAKER_02]: But now, we've got new systems like Capchuri.
35:14.640 --> 35:22.294
[SPEAKER_02]: Capchuri is this one that I had seen over the last year that actually is capable of plugging in to just existing motion capture volumes.
35:22.314 --> 35:24.799
[SPEAKER_02]: It's using the existing cameras that you already have.
35:25.370 --> 35:40.155
[SPEAKER_02]: And it uses kind of like this AI system that has built in for basically analyzing a skeleton applying everything all the you know all the joints and everything in real time to just someone just standing out in your mocap volume no suit or anything.
35:40.574 --> 35:48.589
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's pretty wild and so we, you know, we're fortunate enough to have some connections of people who have access to that software that we brought them in.
35:48.669 --> 35:50.592
[SPEAKER_02]: These were our friends over at District Cinema.
35:51.093 --> 35:58.667
[SPEAKER_02]: They were nice enough to come on set and actually, you know, literally be kind of like the mo kept technicians when it came to the marker list stuff.
35:58.647 --> 36:01.392
[SPEAKER_02]: And we used this for the stunts in the film.
36:01.452 --> 36:07.542
[SPEAKER_02]: So this kind of had me a little worried and we had some contingencies of like, all right, this is the first time we're trying this.
36:07.742 --> 36:12.931
[SPEAKER_02]: And if this doesn't work, we're going to have to switch over to suits and that's going to slow things down a lot.
36:12.991 --> 36:17.859
[SPEAKER_02]: Because now we have to get everybody in the suit, get all the markers and everything calibrated and all that.
36:17.979 --> 36:18.360
[SPEAKER_02]: But...
36:18.340 --> 36:25.517
[SPEAKER_02]: we were fortunate enough that the marvelous mocap turned out amazing like that there are so many areas in the film.
36:26.018 --> 36:34.037
[SPEAKER_02]: I think people would be shocked to know where marvelous versus optical-based IR, you know, markers and suits, like traditionally.
36:34.017 --> 36:45.758
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think one of the best ones, because we had to kind of figure this out on set, I was like, okay, I have this moment where I need two characters to climb out of a tank because it's about to blow up.
36:45.938 --> 36:48.142
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about to be blown up by a helicopter, right?
36:48.663 --> 36:55.114
[SPEAKER_02]: The solution that we found on set was to have the two actors sitting inside of a scissor lift.
36:55.280 --> 37:00.129
[SPEAKER_02]: And they just literally climb up on the railing and just jump over down to the ground.
37:00.850 --> 37:02.974
[SPEAKER_02]: And it worked phenomenal.
37:03.074 --> 37:08.584
[SPEAKER_02]: Like watching back the capture we got inside of Capturey, it was clean.
37:08.985 --> 37:13.693
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we started them down in the ground and they're a little too pose, right?
37:13.673 --> 37:28.982
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they climb up and get inside of this literal scissor lift and then they had to just act like they open a hatch climb up jump over the railing jump down and literally I only had to do some very minor offsets to where the hands.
37:28.962 --> 37:36.874
[SPEAKER_02]: We're landing so where they look like they were like touching the tank they weren't like clipping through and then just making sure the feet didn't clip Clip through the tank as they were climbing out.
37:36.894 --> 37:37.395
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was it.
37:37.435 --> 37:42.243
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything else you see was literal just raw Markerless motion capture data.
37:42.723 --> 37:43.485
[SPEAKER_02]: No suits.
37:43.525 --> 37:45.448
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just two dudes climbing over us.
37:46.990 --> 37:48.032
[SPEAKER_02]: And it worked beautifully.
37:48.192 --> 37:49.214
[SPEAKER_02]: It worked so good.
37:49.274 --> 37:52.118
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was the the one
37:52.418 --> 37:56.743
[SPEAKER_02]: that I think blew me away of what's possible now with markerless motion capture.
37:56.783 --> 38:15.327
[SPEAKER_02]: And it really does come down to the solver that it has built in, using this kind of AI algorithm to not only identify the body, but also capture and also process and kind of do some live cleanup, like you can in-capture the capture, you can have it reprocess it.
38:15.347 --> 38:19.472
[SPEAKER_02]: And it kind of goes over and looks for any errors or any words or like,
38:19.452 --> 38:25.241
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, the arm got twisted right here and it can fix those things for you and it's pretty insane.
38:25.341 --> 38:40.363
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I think we're only a few years away from where marvelous motion capture systems start to become pretty mainstream and it's going to open up some doors for, or it's just going to make motion capture more efficient.
38:40.343 --> 38:56.631
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, not saying it's going to completely replace, you know, IR, you know, infrared and, you know, markers and traditional suits, but it's, it's pretty insane what it can do now and as we're seeing with all these tools and software coming out these days, how quickly it's evolving.
38:56.881 --> 39:02.489
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it's out of the question that, you know, two, three years from now, it competes.
39:02.889 --> 39:03.430
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll say that.
39:03.951 --> 39:07.656
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we did a test with the marvelous system where we tracked five people.
39:08.477 --> 39:09.358
[SPEAKER_02]: And it held up.
39:09.499 --> 39:10.220
[SPEAKER_02]: It did great.
39:10.320 --> 39:15.447
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was a moment where we were just kind of goofing around where we had like the stunt team.
39:15.427 --> 39:37.182
[SPEAKER_02]: all lined up in a row five people running forward as if they were getting mode down by like an enemy gunner and so they all ran forward and at different times they all did a different death animation just fell to the floor and what that actually gave me was five different animations of soldiers getting shot and falling down just from one take.
39:37.162 --> 39:47.594
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I was able to then parse that and use those and I kind of made like a little library of okay different soldier animations and I need for background characters or you know enemy soldiers getting shot or whatever.
39:47.795 --> 40:04.114
[SPEAKER_02]: And they were called fall 9 soldier death 1 soldier death 2 no that's exactly what we did yeah and I got all that from just one take from five people just running and just falling over and act like the fact that we could do that in like a matter of seconds.
40:04.094 --> 40:05.136
[SPEAKER_02]: that's wild.
40:05.256 --> 40:14.149
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that made creating those libraries very easy, very quick and it kind of gave me just a lot to play with, you know, especially with like background characters and what you see.
40:14.209 --> 40:23.503
[SPEAKER_02]: So we definitely wanted to push that and like the prop tracking, you know, we literally had just kind of like prop guns on set.
40:24.074 --> 40:26.437
[SPEAKER_02]: that we were tracking into the character's hands.
40:27.659 --> 40:31.544
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I think the thing that really pushed everything was the stunts themselves.
40:31.724 --> 40:40.596
[SPEAKER_02]: We had everything from wire-rigged stunts where people were falling off of high ledges on to crash pads.
40:41.737 --> 40:43.219
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was wild.
40:43.239 --> 40:45.723
[SPEAKER_02]: The things they were doing and all of that was markerless.
40:45.763 --> 40:51.330
[SPEAKER_02]: There was not one stuntman, one suit, which was pretty crazy.
40:51.310 --> 41:04.122
[SPEAKER_02]: We were anticipating some stunts we're going to need to switch to the suits just for accuracy and I was so happy that we didn't have to because we were able we basically spent our first day on set.
41:04.304 --> 41:31.932
[SPEAKER_02]: doing all of the scripted dialogue with all of the main characters and then everything else was the second day that was everything that needed to be captured from like just like basic you know NPC kind of movements or you know background characters or soldier enemy soldier you know movements and then obviously key stunts of like oh these two characters get you know blown up by a
41:32.671 --> 41:43.247
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a lot, and it was very ambitious, you know, kind of like our first big go at, you know, capturing motion capture, cleaning that, retargeting to many humans in unreal.
41:44.189 --> 41:47.374
[SPEAKER_02]: It taught us a lot, and it was, it was really great.
41:47.514 --> 41:52.402
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the fact that we were able to capture all of that in just two days is a lot.
41:52.562 --> 41:54.004
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, it's pretty crazy.
41:54.085 --> 41:57.412
[SPEAKER_00]: The headsets, they were Rococo headsets, I see.
41:57.432 --> 41:58.294
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
41:58.314 --> 41:59.958
[SPEAKER_02]: As they were the Rococo headcams.
42:00.058 --> 42:00.299
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
42:00.660 --> 42:05.150
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, just the hardware and what software was capturing the face.
42:05.170 --> 42:09.179
[SPEAKER_02]: So for the for the Facebook app, we actually did two different head rigs.
42:09.199 --> 42:10.782
[SPEAKER_02]: We did the iPhone traditional way.
42:10.802 --> 42:11.183
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
42:11.163 --> 42:14.327
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we also did the one with built-in camera.
42:14.347 --> 42:25.242
[SPEAKER_02]: Just to be able to compare them, because we really want to look at kind of like what we consider are more kind of indie friendly tier when it comes to motion capture for clients.
42:25.262 --> 42:32.192
[SPEAKER_02]: But then the next tech we're experimenting with this part of that new R&D project is stereo champions these.
42:32.172 --> 42:36.016
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're actually getting our hands on a few different headsets for Stereo HMC.
42:36.657 --> 42:43.205
[SPEAKER_02]: To test, we're going to do like a whole deep dive into Facebook app in an episode where we're going to explore multiple hardware setups.
42:43.285 --> 42:44.226
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be really awesome.
42:44.246 --> 42:45.247
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really excited about that one.
42:46.528 --> 42:49.231
[SPEAKER_02]: But this was an excuse to be able to try out both of those, compare them.
42:49.312 --> 42:52.475
[SPEAKER_02]: The vote and camera with the new meta-human animator works great.
42:53.036 --> 42:58.682
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had that just feeding, we had it literally just a USB cable from the head cam straight into the PC.
42:59.043 --> 43:01.065
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's fed in through live link.
43:01.433 --> 43:07.900
[SPEAKER_02]: that was being live-streamed to the metahuman, like in real time, yeah, yeah, which was really great.
43:08.581 --> 43:10.143
[SPEAKER_00]: So is that the head conversion?
43:10.724 --> 43:12.546
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yeah, with the built-in camera.
43:12.686 --> 43:14.208
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you need that into a phone?
43:14.248 --> 43:16.770
[SPEAKER_02]: Engine an Android phone.
43:17.211 --> 43:19.293
[SPEAKER_00]: Into an Android phone, that's it, yeah.
43:19.373 --> 43:20.475
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need it into the Android phone.
43:20.615 --> 43:23.458
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do you get, is that then fed into the computer?
43:23.894 --> 43:33.769
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, it can be so you can either, if you do it through a phone, if you have the built-in camera, it can go into an Android phone, that then streams into a remote studio.
43:34.576 --> 43:41.188
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, or I, I don't know if that's ability to record offline and be imported in, um, you need to phone.
43:41.228 --> 43:41.609
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to.
43:41.649 --> 43:42.451
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to phone.
43:42.831 --> 43:43.072
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
43:43.292 --> 43:43.573
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
43:43.593 --> 43:49.504
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to do, uh, through like Recoco Studio, otherwise, you can just, it just has a USB cable.
43:49.524 --> 43:52.028
[SPEAKER_02]: We just down to like a 75 foot extension.
43:52.710 --> 43:53.271
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
43:53.291 --> 43:57.158
[SPEAKER_02]: And across set into the PC and was just fed straight into unreal.
43:57.138 --> 43:57.999
[SPEAKER_00]: Gotcha.
43:58.019 --> 43:58.280
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
43:58.300 --> 43:59.301
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, interesting.
43:59.321 --> 44:07.573
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the alternative that you could just feed it into the PC and pull up something like OBS and record the camera process it with a whole lot.
44:07.593 --> 44:09.857
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we'll sort of watch this video files.
44:09.877 --> 44:14.083
[SPEAKER_02]: So this was all this was a literal excuse to like show them all of that.
44:14.383 --> 44:14.804
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
44:14.824 --> 44:14.944
[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
44:14.924 --> 44:18.549
[SPEAKER_00]: And the stereo ones, if I just let you two cameras to capture a lot more.
44:18.609 --> 44:22.856
[SPEAKER_02]: Stacked vertically in the different perspectives and it gets you a more accurate solve.
44:23.377 --> 44:26.501
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what we're really excited to show side by side.
44:26.782 --> 44:33.652
[SPEAKER_02]: We're literally going to get some like the top uh, stereo agencies out there compared to like a GoPro, a phone.
44:33.932 --> 44:38.579
[SPEAKER_02]: The Rococo head cam all side by side and show like what are the differences?
44:38.619 --> 44:39.801
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the workflows look like?
44:39.861 --> 44:41.564
[SPEAKER_02]: What is, you know, the price difference?
44:41.624 --> 44:43.767
[SPEAKER_02]: Getting you with all that stuff.
44:43.747 --> 44:58.352
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the only thing apart from that motion capture markless thing that like surprised you in the whole thing like, you know, you mentioned little tools that you discovered along the way, the power of markless, any other things that really stood out.
44:58.853 --> 45:00.456
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there is, I'd say.
45:01.415 --> 45:07.364
[SPEAKER_02]: From a simulation standpoint, when it came to like the explosions, obviously, battlefield is known for its explosions, right?
45:07.905 --> 45:21.627
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've worked with VDB's heterogeneous volumes in the past, which are where you can simulate things like fire and explosions in another software, like Houdini or Imbergen, and then you bring that in as an asset to use inside of Unreal Engine.
45:22.328 --> 45:25.493
[SPEAKER_02]: And that can be a very cumbersome process.
45:25.553 --> 45:26.815
[SPEAKER_02]: Those can be very,
45:26.795 --> 45:28.598
[SPEAKER_02]: heavy files to work with.
45:28.618 --> 45:30.180
[SPEAKER_02]: They can really affect your performance.
45:30.601 --> 45:34.707
[SPEAKER_02]: The workflow for bringing those in is not the greatest, you know, an unreal.
45:34.927 --> 45:43.960
[SPEAKER_02]: But then this was the perfect excuse to find to finally try a new plug-in I had seen called Zebra VDB.
45:44.733 --> 45:47.578
[SPEAKER_02]: And this thing was amazing.
45:47.778 --> 45:50.162
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to use this on like every project.
45:50.182 --> 46:05.526
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, if I have to do any kind of like simulations, like BDB's inside of Unreal, this plugin, it not only helps you import it, it compresses it, and it has like its own kind of like system for how you bring it into the scene, how you can manipulate.
46:05.506 --> 46:12.422
[SPEAKER_02]: it's temperature, it's density, it's scale, all these, you know, different parameters, and how you can even keyframe all of that inside of sequencer.
46:12.923 --> 46:17.835
[SPEAKER_02]: It is leaps and bounds better than then just native tools and unreal.
46:17.915 --> 46:20.481
[SPEAKER_02]: So shout out to Zebra VDB.
46:20.501 --> 46:24.190
[SPEAKER_02]: It made, you know, working with all these different, you know, explosion.
46:24.170 --> 46:28.497
[SPEAKER_02]: assets, uh, way better than what I've had to experience in the past.
46:28.677 --> 46:34.707
[SPEAKER_02]: So I, I literally didn't have a plan for that until we were like, in it, in the truth and unreal.
46:35.168 --> 46:40.076
[SPEAKER_02]: And I finally, you know, you know, came across that and I was like, oh, yeah, I should finally try this out.
46:40.237 --> 46:41.098
[SPEAKER_02]: And
46:41.078 --> 46:41.919
[SPEAKER_02]: It did great.
46:42.140 --> 46:44.203
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was huge.
46:44.904 --> 46:51.754
[SPEAKER_00]: It's great when you come across something like that to prior to that, like planning the concepts, you know, references.
46:52.235 --> 46:57.522
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you just talk us through the process from idea to the final cinematic?
46:57.542 --> 47:00.447
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you storyboard blocking the camera work?
47:00.667 --> 47:07.457
[SPEAKER_02]: For me, it always starts with like one cool vision, like visual.
47:07.640 --> 47:10.888
[SPEAKER_02]: It's usually what starts the whole, it's like the seed, right?
47:11.550 --> 47:19.510
[SPEAKER_02]: So it always starts with something like a really cool visual that I then find and excuse to like, okay, how can I do this?
47:19.851 --> 47:21.956
[SPEAKER_02]: What makes sense to like, where can I fit this in?
47:22.017 --> 47:22.999
[SPEAKER_02]: And so
47:23.283 --> 47:35.184
[SPEAKER_02]: had, you know, this, this visual, you know, classic battlefield of strap and C4 to a Jeep and driving it into like, you know, some kind of enemy vehicle, those the classic battlefield moment.
47:35.325 --> 47:39.492
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like, man, I just wanted to excuse to, you know, put the end of a story.
47:39.532 --> 47:41.275
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, where can we go from there?
47:41.295 --> 47:42.878
[SPEAKER_02]: And obviously, I knew like,
47:43.263 --> 47:46.587
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to go the bad company route.
47:46.807 --> 47:51.392
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that idea, then kind of started to snowball into these other ideas.
47:51.532 --> 47:55.216
[SPEAKER_02]: And I then started to kind of narrow down, OK, who are the characters?
47:55.757 --> 47:58.780
[SPEAKER_02]: And I knew I wanted to do kind of like a new cast of characters.
47:58.800 --> 48:01.223
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I wanted it to be this kind of reveal at the end.
48:01.243 --> 48:04.406
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, now they've written reassigned to be a company, right?
48:04.907 --> 48:07.790
[SPEAKER_02]: So all those ideas started to kind of fall into place.
48:07.830 --> 48:10.553
[SPEAKER_02]: And OK, I know some cool visuals.
48:10.653 --> 48:11.734
[SPEAKER_02]: I know,
48:11.714 --> 48:13.556
[SPEAKER_02]: Roughly the characters I want to do.
48:13.696 --> 48:13.916
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
48:13.936 --> 48:16.760
[SPEAKER_02]: I know the IP I want to tie it to which is bad company.
48:17.240 --> 48:17.560
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
48:17.600 --> 48:24.348
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, if we're tying it to bad company, how can we make it feel like bad company.
48:24.388 --> 48:27.852
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is where, you know, the analysis part comes into play.
48:27.932 --> 48:35.460
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you remember in bad company, their cutscenes are kind of these longer takes where it's kind of like this.
48:35.440 --> 49:02.393
[SPEAKER_02]: handheld war documentary feel and you just kind of feel like you're in the moment with them So we intentionally have you know, I tried to cut as little as possible in certain moments of it Where you're kind of like in the dialogue right where the camera is just kind of like following whatever's happening There's that really great moment where you know that enemy vehicles come in any yells that is teammate You know to use the bazooka and blow up the vehicle and like the camera is just in it with them And it doesn't really cut
49:02.373 --> 49:07.859
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wanted to capture that from the bad company games of the cinematography style.
49:07.959 --> 49:14.426
[SPEAKER_02]: So most of this film is handheld aside from like the dialogue scenes in the military base.
49:14.446 --> 49:16.488
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the way that we can kind of differentiate things.
49:16.548 --> 49:18.570
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, OK, this is a war zone.
49:18.610 --> 49:19.491
[SPEAKER_02]: This is chaos.
49:19.551 --> 49:20.913
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very uncontrolled.
49:21.333 --> 49:23.996
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, this is a military base where it's like a debrief.
49:24.056 --> 49:26.879
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a, you know, these two characters having dialogue.
49:27.180 --> 49:28.141
[SPEAKER_02]: This is controlled.
49:28.201 --> 49:29.342
[SPEAKER_02]: And so,
49:29.457 --> 49:32.782
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where we kind of establish our cinematography styles, right?
49:33.643 --> 49:43.037
[SPEAKER_02]: But I've wanted to feel very bad company style, you know, even then like the way it's written some of the dialogue, you know, kind of just finding ways we can inject humor into it.
49:43.638 --> 49:44.560
[SPEAKER_01]: You owe me beer.
49:45.761 --> 49:45.982
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
49:46.783 --> 49:47.584
[SPEAKER_01]: Put it on my tab.
49:50.129 --> 50:04.607
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's always like this fine line of things feeling silly versus like, you know, how you can inject humor but you're doing it in like a serious way where it's like the main character, you know, Sergeant Winslow is this, you know, straight-laced guy.
50:04.667 --> 50:12.397
[SPEAKER_02]: He thinks he's doing the best job but what he's doing is just, you know, very extreme tactics to get the job done.
50:12.978 --> 50:13.538
[SPEAKER_02]: We stole a tank.
50:14.760 --> 50:15.681
[SPEAKER_01]: That was nice day.
50:19.171 --> 50:22.417
[SPEAKER_02]: That didn't lead to obviously, you know, flesh and out the full story.
50:22.517 --> 50:25.602
[SPEAKER_02]: And then from once you have like, you need all your beats, right?
50:25.622 --> 50:30.450
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to know, okay, here's where we start, here's the middle and here's the end, right?
50:30.470 --> 50:31.792
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's the sequence of events.
50:32.313 --> 50:36.260
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it sequential or do we go out of order or do we start here and go back?
50:36.360 --> 50:40.067
[SPEAKER_02]: So, once you have all that, then it's onto the screen play, obviously.
50:40.087 --> 50:42.090
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where you're really identifying.
50:42.695 --> 50:58.611
[SPEAKER_02]: Your characters, this is where you're making sure all the story beats make sense, are there, you know, setups and payoffs, you know, if you did have a setup is there a payoff, how do you, you know, can make things go full circle and all of that and so that's when.
50:59.047 --> 51:09.278
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you know, the payoff in this really is like the reveal of Haggard, you know, spoiler alert, you know, Haggard at the end of the film, you know, showing up and becoming their new commanding officer.
51:09.318 --> 51:12.020
[SPEAKER_02]: He's the leader of B company and things like that.
51:12.761 --> 51:18.147
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, going through the script, you know, identifying the characters, you know, what are their different roles.
51:18.207 --> 51:26.235
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was important to, you know, obviously identify with bad company or, you know, battlefield as a whole has like their four classes, right?
51:26.215 --> 51:29.021
[SPEAKER_02]: there's the spetty of support, to reconel all of that.
51:29.462 --> 51:32.991
[SPEAKER_02]: And each character kind of has those different roles.
51:33.071 --> 51:44.477
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's the assault, there's the medic, there's the recon, which is the sniper in the scene, there's the engineer who's, you know, dozer, who's always, he's the one literally blowing stuff up throughout the film.
51:44.457 --> 52:04.373
[SPEAKER_02]: So we wanted to make sure all the different roles had representation that's kind of like a core part of the, you know, the game of battlefield and yeah, so we got through there and that's when once you have your script, you now have your characters and you know, I mean people to play those characters and that led to putting out a casting call.
52:04.403 --> 52:28.605
[SPEAKER_02]: was the job at like the mother's battle field IP is a must or no it is helps he's a bonus yeah it is it is a bonus and very much when you're asking people you know volunteer their time of course fine find how you know the most value to give them right yeah hey come on down we'll feed you or we'll give you at let you have some fun play with some really cool technology
52:28.906 --> 52:39.580
[SPEAKER_02]: and make something that hopefully you're proud of and can put in your real and stuff like that, but also this is tied to a franchise, existing franchise if you wanna be a part of that, unofficially, obviously.
52:40.241 --> 52:52.197
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, so that helped being able to find people who are either fans of the battlefield franchise or just gamers in general and have been looking for a way to kind of get experience in motion capture.
52:52.970 --> 52:57.742
[SPEAKER_02]: So, found all the actors and then that's when we actually got connected with a stunt team.
52:57.762 --> 53:04.017
[SPEAKER_02]: I like a stunt team in the Atlanta area called Goodslate Pictures, shout out to Bobby and his team.
53:04.157 --> 53:10.152
[SPEAKER_02]: So, we got connected with them, started picking their brains and we started literally putting
53:10.132 --> 53:11.555
[SPEAKER_02]: some test stunts together.
53:11.595 --> 53:15.462
[SPEAKER_02]: They were they were just all in on this because they again same thing as the actors.
53:15.482 --> 53:20.031
[SPEAKER_02]: They had been looking for in a ways to get experience in the motion capture side of things.
53:20.272 --> 53:23.618
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was a very, it was a very mutual thing there.
53:23.739 --> 53:28.107
[SPEAKER_02]: And so start to work with them, start to kind of figuring out
53:28.087 --> 53:47.530
[SPEAKER_02]: From the script, okay, here are the main kind of stunts we need to start figuring out and Bobby and his team got to work immediately just figuring out okay how do we pull off these stunts how do we make them safe who's going to do what and it really just made it very efficient when you get on set you know pre production is king in any industry.
53:47.510 --> 54:00.346
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, when you're in any kind of entertainment, whether it's film, television, video games, whatever, pre-production is key to make sure you have a successful shoot and then that post-production as as, you know, painless as possible, right?
54:00.366 --> 54:02.409
[SPEAKER_02]: Because pre-production is going to set you up for success.
54:02.549 --> 54:08.636
[SPEAKER_02]: So we had to have every kind of kind of figure it out, kind of know what the schedule is going to look like when do people need to show up?
54:08.656 --> 54:10.058
[SPEAKER_02]: What are we capturing?
54:10.865 --> 54:11.546
[SPEAKER_02]: all of that.
54:11.646 --> 54:27.195
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we got through production and then it was off to the races in, you know, unreal, you know, already had, you know, our characters kind of created, you know, are a metahuman characters and we were able to scan the actors on set, use the mesh to metahuman workflow and try that to their characters.
54:27.215 --> 54:29.700
[SPEAKER_02]: We had some lightness, you know, to them.
54:29.680 --> 54:56.430
[SPEAKER_02]: and uh... already had the environment's created so then it was really just you know those those final touches like lighting and effects and uh... you know really figuring out the pacing and then on to sound design and sound designs really big in the battlefield you know universe we we pulled a lot of different references not only from the battlefield franchise but from different movies war movies and things like that uh... for like the step the sound we wanted to go for for certain scenes
54:56.748 --> 54:58.570
[SPEAKER_02]: to really make it as immersive as possible.
54:58.670 --> 55:03.296
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a process man to go from that first early ideas.
55:03.796 --> 55:06.400
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you then got to figure out, OK, how can all these ideas?
55:06.920 --> 55:09.283
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it always starts with me, at least.
55:09.303 --> 55:10.344
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always started scattered.
55:10.605 --> 55:11.686
[SPEAKER_02]: I always have some visuals.
55:11.946 --> 55:12.927
[SPEAKER_02]: I have some characters.
55:13.228 --> 55:14.970
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe some lines of dialogue.
55:14.990 --> 55:20.276
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's like, OK, I got to find a way to weave all these together, right, cohesively.
55:20.476 --> 55:21.017
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
55:20.997 --> 55:26.264
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you store board any of this and previous was only previous involved?
55:26.304 --> 55:27.825
[SPEAKER_02]: No previous on this one.
55:28.306 --> 55:34.734
[SPEAKER_02]: We did I did do some mood boarding for just you know style and reference and I did do shot listing.
55:34.874 --> 55:43.545
[SPEAKER_02]: You know that's a pretty typical thing I'm doing when we're you know we have certain shots we need to capture especially you know on set we were doing virtual cinematography with a V cam rig.
55:44.268 --> 55:51.403
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had a really talented cinematographer Johnny Phillips on set with us and he was, you know, manning the rig.
55:51.443 --> 55:57.957
[SPEAKER_02]: The number one thing like a lot of different camera setups, you can mimic an unreal without having to capture it on set.
55:58.207 --> 56:02.814
[SPEAKER_02]: but when it comes to handheld, that's one that it is tough.
56:03.314 --> 56:20.439
[SPEAKER_02]: You can do it with keyframes and different noise presets and things like that, but it's hard to beat the real thing when it comes to an actual camera, slung on a handheld shoulder rig and an actual human operator, especially even the weight of the camera.
56:20.459 --> 56:23.244
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why our rig and the behind the scenes of you there was so big.
56:23.784 --> 56:27.690
[SPEAKER_02]: We wanted it to have weight,
56:27.670 --> 56:33.018
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, V cam capture with an iPhone versus capture with a real camera rig.
56:33.419 --> 56:40.190
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a difference like the camera moves too quickly or it's a little shake here than it should be because it's a it's a phone, right?
56:41.011 --> 56:42.012
[SPEAKER_02]: Doesn't have a lot of weight to it.
56:42.073 --> 56:43.254
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got a smaller sensor.
56:43.355 --> 56:45.718
[SPEAKER_02]: It's more susceptible to shake.
56:45.878 --> 56:49.023
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's a lot of there's a lot of preference there.
56:49.083 --> 56:50.005
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very subjective.
56:50.105 --> 56:54.572
[SPEAKER_02]: But we we opted to have kind of like a heavier rig so it had this
56:54.552 --> 56:59.345
[SPEAKER_02]: very cinematic feel to it to emulate an actual cinema camera rig.
56:59.365 --> 57:02.433
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I guess that's like you can't be that immersiveness, can you?
57:02.453 --> 57:08.890
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're reacting to some actors on set and you know, you pan across and you see the bazooka go.
57:09.291 --> 57:11.076
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's it's like being on set.
57:11.275 --> 57:31.633
[SPEAKER_02]: It is, you know, there's big advantage is that because that's where you have to be, you know, to do all that on a real, you have to have experience in cinematography, yeah, but it's also it's a hard thing to just emulate imperfections, you know, there's not like sometimes cinematography looks too perfect and unreal and certain short films you might watch out there.
57:31.753 --> 57:41.282
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's ways you can inject, you know imperfections or you know, oh, maybe, you know, this wasn't a perfect tracking right here.
57:41.262 --> 57:44.808
[SPEAKER_02]: All those things that you get from just a real performance of a cinematographer.
57:44.988 --> 57:52.542
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about making, for realism, injecting, like you say, those imperfections to get rid of, to make it perfect.
57:52.822 --> 57:54.184
[SPEAKER_00]: The perfection is the imperfection.
57:54.605 --> 57:54.846
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
57:55.407 --> 58:06.105
[SPEAKER_00]: Many people that we've spoken to on the podcast, especially in Unreal Engine projects, they sometimes jump in without storyboards and just explore, like,
58:07.047 --> 58:13.515
[SPEAKER_00]: virtually and they come across ideas when they can see the set or, you know, they're exploring on religion.
58:13.575 --> 58:36.463
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's, you know, a similar approach to what filmmaking on using, you know, going on set is like you can plan it, you can store a boardy, but when you there, or you can get a feeling of your environment, for example, nice things come of it and things that you couldn't really plan for and you just roll with it.
58:36.443 --> 58:50.419
[SPEAKER_02]: of what you see in the film and there were times where I would insert you know coverage that we didn't want to have to bother getting on set if they're just very simple kind of like more static angles and stuff like that but there were definitely some times where
58:50.888 --> 58:52.870
[SPEAKER_02]: We were able to find some happy accidents.
58:53.371 --> 59:02.962
[SPEAKER_02]: One of those was the moment when the tank blows up and you see them kind of get thrown, the tank explodes behind them and it's like, as they hit the floor, it cuts the black.
59:03.002 --> 59:04.904
[SPEAKER_02]: You hear that little bit of ringing shell shock.
59:05.424 --> 59:11.872
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's a couple moments of like, the pv of the soldier getting dragged as you see like the tank is on fire.
59:11.912 --> 59:19.140
[SPEAKER_02]: That was not planned because that animation of getting dragged
59:19.120 --> 59:23.830
[SPEAKER_02]: was from us just playing around with the marvelous MoCAP system.
59:24.110 --> 59:28.840
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we had this moment like, okay, we got these two soldiers, one of them gets shot and falls down.
59:29.161 --> 59:35.273
[SPEAKER_02]: The other runs over picks them up and drags them to cover to then start resuscitating them.
59:36.113 --> 59:51.842
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll tell you what, that's probably the other marvelous mocap moment that like blew my mind because it was like flawless the way that they're like hands were interact like they had to hook his hands under the arms to like drag that person.
59:51.922 --> 59:54.527
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like flawless.
59:54.507 --> 59:56.269
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, it shouldn't have worked.
59:56.389 --> 59:57.089
[SPEAKER_02]: It's crazy.
59:57.149 --> 59:59.031
[SPEAKER_02]: Like no suits and it worked that well.
59:59.872 --> 01:00:05.437
[SPEAKER_02]: So I took that and I was like, because I originally was just going to have this moment where cut to black.
01:00:05.797 --> 01:00:12.123
[SPEAKER_02]: You hear some like sounds like echoing like he's like calling out to doze or whatever and then he just gets revived.
01:00:12.583 --> 01:00:14.805
[SPEAKER_02]: But that animation worked so well.
01:00:15.205 --> 01:00:16.987
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I'm just going to input this in.
01:00:17.047 --> 01:00:23.653
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to strap a camera to the chest of the character on
01:00:23.633 --> 01:00:26.576
[SPEAKER_02]: And it worked, oh man, it worked so good.
01:00:26.797 --> 01:00:27.938
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so cool.
01:00:28.679 --> 01:00:33.484
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was one of those moments of just like exploring, seeing how well that turned out.
01:00:33.504 --> 01:00:48.422
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh wow, I might be able to play that here as like the characters getting dragged to cover and then like playing with that and so exploring that with like the camera angle and stuff and getting to showcase more of like the destruction to the tank was a very happy accident.
01:00:48.542 --> 01:00:49.523
[SPEAKER_02]: It was really cool.
01:00:50.077 --> 01:00:50.798
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome, man.
01:00:50.818 --> 01:00:52.941
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exciting when that happens in it.
01:00:53.142 --> 01:00:54.103
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, 100%.
01:00:54.784 --> 01:00:56.426
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned environments earlier.
01:00:56.627 --> 01:00:59.471
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it any like, you know, kick bash elements?
01:00:59.511 --> 01:01:03.657
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you just talk about how those environments swip what's together earlier?
01:01:03.677 --> 01:01:08.605
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so we obviously did use some assets from the fan marketplaces.
01:01:08.625 --> 01:01:10.988
[SPEAKER_02]: There's this really great military base.
01:01:11.028 --> 01:01:13.291
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to say it's by freshcan3D.
01:01:14.493 --> 01:01:18.379
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a really great starting point and we obviously kind of tailored it to fit.
01:01:18.359 --> 01:01:20.421
[SPEAKER_02]: the scene of the military base.
01:01:21.127 --> 01:01:32.860
[SPEAKER_02]: So we used that as a starting point, but then everything else came from cargo by kit bash 3D and we used several different kits to kind of put together this city.
01:01:32.900 --> 01:01:40.168
[SPEAKER_02]: So data, the environment artists, he did an amazing job just putting together these these blocks of this city that's been like invaded.
01:01:40.188 --> 01:01:48.957
[SPEAKER_02]: We wanted like a modern looking city that was invaded by this, you know, this this new military force and.
01:01:48.937 --> 01:02:14.050
[SPEAKER_02]: we wanted it to feel very much like they just kind of showed up and just like laid waste and took over created checkpoints and all this stuff and so now allied forces are having to like push back and like kind of get into the city and you know push back so yeah like all these different I think there's some like warfare and warzone I think there's two different you know packs they have and wreckage and there's all these different ones we were able to pull things from for
01:02:14.030 --> 01:02:27.813
[SPEAKER_02]: destroyed buildings or military checkpoints and all this stuff that just made it so much more efficient to be able to put those together and the beauty of cargoes you have, you know, their whole catalog you can kind of go through.
01:02:27.833 --> 01:02:30.878
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was able as he's working on it, I was able to just take screenshots.
01:02:30.938 --> 01:02:40.273
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh, we could probably use this asset in this one and just kind of send him like notes and references and it made it just so much more collaborative and
01:02:40.810 --> 01:02:45.323
[SPEAKER_02]: being able to put together an entire, like, it's kind of city that quickly.
01:02:45.363 --> 01:02:53.506
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if it's just a few blocks, I mean, it takes time to like, you know, populate all of that with just destruction and effects and all that kind of stuff.
01:02:53.586 --> 01:02:56.254
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that definitely sped that up a lot.
01:02:56.234 --> 01:03:13.085
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that just is another element of Unreal Engine that is, you know, appealable and exciting for filmmakers to know that you could start a short film just from an asset pack that you've bought and thought I'm going to flesh out from there and tell a little story in this asset pack.
01:03:13.386 --> 01:03:16.251
[SPEAKER_00]: I think many people have done that.
01:03:16.383 --> 01:03:32.653
[SPEAKER_02]: That is the thing that I think sets unreal apart from any other DCC out there, you know, is just the availability of pre-made content by other artists out there to be able to quickly bring it in and just start creating.
01:03:32.633 --> 01:03:37.840
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you have pre-made content on the fab market place that could give you an environment in seconds.
01:03:38.361 --> 01:03:53.542
[SPEAKER_02]: You have meta humans built right into the system where you can easily customize them, get clothing from the fab market place or use other tools to apply clothing to them, easily use meta human animator with like a phone or whatever you have to just quickly animate them.
01:03:53.562 --> 01:03:57.848
[SPEAKER_02]: You can animate the body and the face with just a phone or a webcam these days.
01:03:58.199 --> 01:04:05.977
[SPEAKER_02]: So like there is no other software out there that can do that as quickly in my opinion than unreal to be able to just start.
01:04:06.298 --> 01:04:11.150
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why I think like I say this all the time, like unreal is like the ultimate previews tool.
01:04:11.791 --> 01:04:15.600
[SPEAKER_02]: Like how quickly you can throw together just an idea.
01:04:15.732 --> 01:04:16.293
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, sure.
01:04:16.393 --> 01:04:19.016
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, there are generative AI systems out there.
01:04:19.236 --> 01:04:36.354
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you're wanting that more fine tune control, if you, if you are an artist who already kind of knows the fundamentals of how to quickly fit together, man, how quickly you could throw together a shot with a character in the scene and light it and all that, it's, it's insane.
01:04:36.655 --> 01:04:43.562
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what you can do in a day and unreal versus other software, like in Blender or Maya or Houdini or whatever, it's like,
01:04:43.913 --> 01:04:46.097
[SPEAKER_02]: the speed is just insane.
01:04:46.197 --> 01:04:46.838
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is.
01:04:47.119 --> 01:04:58.941
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of references from, you know, your favorite war movies, moments or shots that you took from or was inspired by from other moments was only if that that you can remember that you put into this short.
01:04:59.081 --> 01:05:02.588
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we definitely have to have a lot of references from Black Hawk down.
01:05:03.069 --> 01:05:07.457
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that is a movie that had a lot of kind of similarities in terms of like, you know,
01:05:08.213 --> 01:05:11.358
[SPEAKER_02]: allied forces having to kind of go into this city.
01:05:11.398 --> 01:05:21.976
[SPEAKER_02]: Now that, of course, the setting is a little different, but overall it's like they're on a mission to kind of push in and fight back against the allied force or the enemy forces.
01:05:22.076 --> 01:05:31.572
[SPEAKER_02]: So we definitely pulled some inspiration from that just in terms of like the look of the characters, the way we wanted to light it being kind of like, you know, daytime, daylight setting.
01:05:31.552 --> 01:05:48.332
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, obviously, look back at, you know, battlefield three and four, and obviously bad company, you know, inspiration from that, and then we pulled, you know, inspiration just from other, not even non-more movies, right?
01:05:49.293 --> 01:05:56.462
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a great shootout in the movie Heat from the 90s, maybe, yeah, I think it's in the 90s.
01:05:56.442 --> 01:06:09.302
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but it just has like this, just big booming sound during this shootout and we wanted to really emulate that itself like if you're shooting a gun in a city that has big, big buildings, it's going to reverberate.
01:06:09.362 --> 01:06:12.808
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to have like, you know, this big big sound to it, right?
01:06:12.828 --> 01:06:15.632
[SPEAKER_02]: So we wanted to make sure and Battlefield is definitely known for that.
01:06:25.096 --> 01:06:34.890
[SPEAKER_02]: for those who don't know, they have like their war tapes mode in the latest battle sticks, which allows you to crank the sound and just sounds, it's very immersive sounding.
01:06:35.611 --> 01:06:49.652
[SPEAKER_02]: So I recommend if you play like the single player of Battlefield 6, turn on the VAL mode, and do you go under settings, shoot your audio mode, and there's a war tapes VAL, very aggressive listening, isn't it really good?
01:06:49.632 --> 01:06:57.113
[SPEAKER_02]: But it cranks the sound to where the gunshots just ring out and it really sounds like you are in a war zone.
01:06:57.234 --> 01:07:04.013
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're talking a lot of inspiration from those different things to kind of dial in the look and the sound of the movie.
01:07:04.600 --> 01:07:15.597
[SPEAKER_00]: I love these insights because, you know, everybody, you know, wonders like, how have you doing this or what have you done here to elevate this or where did you get this reference from?
01:07:17.199 --> 01:07:20.144
[SPEAKER_00]: Were there any kind of not cheats because they never cheats?
01:07:20.184 --> 01:07:31.401
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just ways to fill making, you know, like, for example, you know, I guess you're of most efficient techniques to that you can remember on this project.
01:07:31.752 --> 01:07:35.042
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd say we definitely had some systems that kind of sped sort of thing.
01:07:35.063 --> 01:07:41.965
[SPEAKER_02]: So obviously, in a war film, you're going to need a lot of effects like bullet hits, muzzle flashes, shells getting ejected from the gun.
01:07:41.985 --> 01:07:44.553
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were lucky enough to partner.
01:07:44.613 --> 01:07:45.576
[SPEAKER_02]: We had
01:07:45.961 --> 01:07:49.865
[SPEAKER_02]: a really great partner reach out from the fab market place.
01:07:49.925 --> 01:07:52.328
[SPEAKER_02]: He of showgun games, I believe, is the.
01:07:52.809 --> 01:07:54.791
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, I've seen enough showguns.
01:07:54.811 --> 01:08:04.642
[SPEAKER_02]: Got a lot of great like Niagara system and he reached out just randomly, like to see if we ever wanted to like use some of his stuff in return, we would obviously feature that we used it.
01:08:05.143 --> 01:08:11.530
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he had some really great muzzle flash, shell ejection Niagara systems.
01:08:11.510 --> 01:08:21.729
[SPEAKER_02]: that made it so much more efficient to just be able to quickly dial in the look of those gun effects and be able to just quickly put them in the scene, you know, trigger them in sequencer.
01:08:22.451 --> 01:08:23.172
[SPEAKER_02]: It was great.
01:08:23.413 --> 01:08:24.775
[SPEAKER_02]: It just made it so much more efficient.
01:08:24.795 --> 01:08:26.398
[SPEAKER_02]: And just be able to art direct.
01:08:26.619 --> 01:08:27.741
[SPEAKER_02]: The muzzle flash is too.
01:08:28.522 --> 01:08:30.987
[SPEAKER_02]: Because if you ever, you know, see the muzzle flash,
01:08:30.967 --> 01:08:39.877
[SPEAKER_02]: in exterior daytime lighting, it looks very different than if it was like indoors, you know, with no sunlight competing against it, right?
01:08:39.917 --> 01:08:47.726
[SPEAKER_02]: So we definitely wanted to have our muzzle flashes have a very specific look to them where they're a little bit more kind of faded, more saturated because they're being competed with.
01:08:48.306 --> 01:08:52.791
[SPEAKER_02]: With the sun, you have a lot more smoke coming out of the gun because it's being illuminated by the sun.
01:08:52.811 --> 01:08:58.678
[SPEAKER_02]: So he had systems for like all of that and it was
01:08:58.658 --> 01:09:09.871
[SPEAKER_02]: I was very happy that we didn't have to do any gun effects in post, like no compositing after the fact I was, you know, early on, I was debating if we need to do that.
01:09:09.891 --> 01:09:13.782
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, no, I want to see if we can do all of it in engine, in camera.
01:09:13.762 --> 01:09:36.985
[SPEAKER_02]: right and and kind of minimize how much we're having to do we already knew we were going to do certain things like lens flares and you know some additional fire effects for some of the explosions you know in the compositing phase but you know all the gun stuff was all in engine all the bullet hits on the walls and stuff that destruction like the big bridge you know checkpoint explosion all of that was done in engine so
01:09:36.965 --> 01:09:44.912
[SPEAKER_02]: That was really nice because if that all had to then fall into to post would definitely add it a little bit more time in the compositing side and the effect side.
01:09:44.932 --> 01:10:06.870
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that's where again, the system's an unreal can really speed you up, being able to utilize blue prints or Niagara systems or chaos fracturing and chaos cloth and things like
01:10:07.053 --> 01:10:08.394
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just shows the community.
01:10:08.434 --> 01:10:13.919
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that reach out, because, you know, show gun art, you want to use my asset pack.
01:10:14.660 --> 01:10:17.943
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and it's just a great share and share and and I should do it.
01:10:17.963 --> 01:10:20.325
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, people share and mention it.
01:10:20.345 --> 01:10:29.194
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a great way to, you know, show the love for other people's passions and, you know, use and collaborate and things like it's a great man.
01:10:29.574 --> 01:10:31.516
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll give you one more example on that too.
01:10:31.536 --> 01:10:32.497
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, please do.
01:10:32.737 --> 01:10:35.980
[SPEAKER_02]: Of all studios, I reached out to them.
01:10:35.960 --> 01:10:41.606
[SPEAKER_02]: So they have these really great military vehicles that are driveable.
01:10:41.967 --> 01:10:47.153
[SPEAKER_02]: So the tank and the Humvee in the movie are assets from evolve.
01:10:47.593 --> 01:10:50.777
[SPEAKER_02]: And I reached out and was like, hey, can I get my hands on these and use these?
01:10:50.837 --> 01:10:54.240
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I'll obviously feature in the behind the scenes and they were like, yep, let's do it.
01:10:54.281 --> 01:10:55.782
[SPEAKER_02]: They were totally receptive to it.
01:10:56.443 --> 01:11:00.988
[SPEAKER_02]: So literally the tank that the two characters are driving
01:11:01.559 --> 01:11:07.324
[SPEAKER_02]: is me just literally simulating and grabbing it with a game controller and I'm just recording that.
01:11:07.364 --> 01:11:19.595
[SPEAKER_02]: So like, it driving up and then stopping and aiming the gun that's all being controlled by all of you can control the actual that's all being recorded through take recorder.
01:11:20.055 --> 01:11:30.604
[SPEAKER_02]: And then even when it shot the, you know, it shoots the cannon, the side, if you watch the tank when it shoots, the side flaps flap out
01:11:30.584 --> 01:11:34.375
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got this whole mechanic system from when you are doing that.
01:11:34.415 --> 01:11:40.032
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have to animate any of that the only thing I added was the actual Flair coming out of the cannon like the smoke and stuff.
01:11:40.774 --> 01:11:41.556
[SPEAKER_02]: So
01:11:42.059 --> 01:12:04.084
[SPEAKER_02]: just being able to like automate those things and just literally play a game like that's insane and being able to drive the Jeep and enable physics to where it would actually launch up I literally, I was going to say, you definitely definitely drove a 5-year-old, and I even said physics where it hit a ramp and crashed into a helicopter just that's just fun stuff being able to play with that
01:12:04.064 --> 01:12:07.027
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, shout out to Evolve, hookin' us up here.
01:12:07.087 --> 01:12:07.508
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so, mine.
01:12:07.668 --> 01:12:12.793
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a game, those are the things that are advantages of game engines.
01:12:13.354 --> 01:12:19.541
[SPEAKER_02]: And those are things you don't have typically in traditional DCCs like Maya or Blender.
01:12:19.961 --> 01:12:27.689
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they all have their place, but they're just certain things that are gonna be advantages in certain software, and it's important as artists to know those things.
01:12:28.350 --> 01:12:33.075
[SPEAKER_02]: And know what they can and cannot do, because no DCC can do everything.
01:12:33.713 --> 01:12:34.935
[SPEAKER_02]: Unreal cannot do everything.
01:12:34.955 --> 01:12:38.520
[SPEAKER_02]: There are certain things that this software is going to do better than Unreal.
01:12:38.540 --> 01:12:40.283
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just, that's always going to be the case.
01:12:41.024 --> 01:12:47.454
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the top advantages of, you know, Unreal Engine 4 and indeed solo filmmaker?
01:12:47.935 --> 01:12:56.508
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, obviously, you know, like we talked about for being able to do all of your lighting and everything in real time is a pretty game-changing thing.
01:12:56.528 --> 01:13:01.375
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, like me coming into the VFX and 3D world late,
01:13:01.844 --> 01:13:06.610
[SPEAKER_02]: is a very interesting thing because, you know, I come from traditional film production, right?
01:13:06.730 --> 01:13:10.255
[SPEAKER_02]: And I only started with Unreal Engine 5.
01:13:11.036 --> 01:13:16.704
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know the life of none, like real-time global illumination.
01:13:16.764 --> 01:13:21.490
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I see all the struggles people had to deal with, especially with the or more traditional
01:13:21.470 --> 01:13:44.895
[SPEAKER_02]: DCCs and you know, doing more traditional ray traced rendering and stuff like that like I don't know those struggles like I'm very spoiled by this, but I mean it is so crazy how quickly you can iterate your vision like it's so invaluable how quickly me as a filmmaker, I can just throw something together real quick to test a lighting setup or to you know.
01:13:44.875 --> 01:14:13.347
[SPEAKER_02]: See how a certain kind of framing is going to look with a camera and being able to emulate real camera like to emulate the actual sensor and the lens and stuff to get a real world like what does it look like if it's five feet from the character with this lens on it like that's crazy how quickly you can do that so just the real time aspect of unreal is pretty hard to beat And just how easy it is to you know collaborate with other artists and how you know
01:14:13.597 --> 01:14:16.220
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's, it's crazy what a small team can do with it.
01:14:16.240 --> 01:14:26.791
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it really is like, the speed and efficiency of unreal in so many different areas is what allows you to keep your team so lean, right?
01:14:26.871 --> 01:14:31.496
[SPEAKER_02]: But still be able to, you know, achieve insane results.
01:14:31.716 --> 01:14:34.859
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think just also the efficiency of unreal.
01:14:34.879 --> 01:14:41.106
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, unreal is a lot more forgiving when it comes to large complex scenes.
01:14:41.086 --> 01:14:56.389
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, with like just millions and millions of polygons and all this stuff, you know, with different, you know, systems of Niagara and or sorry, no Niagara, but Nanite, you know, things like that, but I mean, there's still an optimization side of every course.
01:14:56.409 --> 01:15:02.498
[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's not the magic bullet when and I, you know, early on I've fallen victim to this where I'm just like, Oh, throw everything in there.
01:15:02.838 --> 01:15:03.159
[SPEAKER_01]: It's boring.
01:15:03.279 --> 01:15:03.920
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter.
01:15:03.980 --> 01:15:07.465
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you can handle all of it, but then when it comes time to render,
01:15:07.445 --> 01:15:11.657
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to start crashing and you still have to be smart and optimized and stuff.
01:15:12.058 --> 01:15:16.189
[SPEAKER_02]: And we very much did that like all the areas of the city are kind of their own maps.
01:15:16.871 --> 01:15:19.318
[SPEAKER_02]: So like there's the back alley where the chained drives up.
01:15:19.338 --> 01:15:20.762
[SPEAKER_02]: That's its own map.
01:15:21.333 --> 01:15:26.698
[SPEAKER_02]: There's the enemy checkpoint where they're kind of like in the front streets and that's its own map, the military base is its own.
01:15:26.718 --> 01:15:30.642
[SPEAKER_02]: So everything's kind of segmented to allow for better performance.
01:15:32.143 --> 01:15:39.290
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but it's still amazing how much you can have on the screen, you know, how dense your scene can be.
01:15:40.672 --> 01:15:51.222
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, obviously every, you know, system is going to or every program is going to definitely want a beefier system, but I think unreal is one of those mission systems that can
01:15:51.202 --> 01:15:53.205
[SPEAKER_02]: be a little more forgiving on the hard side.
01:15:53.866 --> 01:15:55.629
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, give you a little bit more for your book.
01:15:55.649 --> 01:15:57.312
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it does.
01:15:57.392 --> 01:16:04.102
[SPEAKER_02]: I think people, I think there's a lower barrier of entry on the hardware side when it comes to getting into Unrealming.
01:16:04.123 --> 01:16:07.468
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I find I'm doing stuff in Unreal on my laptop.
01:16:07.628 --> 01:16:10.853
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, sometimes just to be able to quickly iterate things or try things out.
01:16:11.494 --> 01:16:11.995
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
01:16:12.953 --> 01:16:18.386
[SPEAKER_02]: Those things, I mean, those three right there are pretty, pretty big, right?
01:16:19.068 --> 01:16:24.702
[SPEAKER_02]: And like we've talked about, there's all these just different features and systems that are an advantage of a game engine.
01:16:25.564 --> 01:16:30.135
[SPEAKER_02]: They just kind of make it very easy to quickly get, I mean, it's
01:16:30.672 --> 01:16:34.239
[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard to beat how quickly you can get to your final vision, right?
01:16:34.259 --> 01:16:44.260
[SPEAKER_00]: What's it like for a coming from a traditional, you know, directive filmmaker on set compared to, you know, open up one real engine?
01:16:45.082 --> 01:16:46.725
[SPEAKER_00]: What was that transition like for you?
01:16:46.745 --> 01:16:47.787
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it like?
01:16:47.767 --> 01:16:51.171
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, I can do so much more or tell so many stories.
01:16:51.652 --> 01:16:53.114
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that was the cool thing.
01:16:53.154 --> 01:17:00.162
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like how you're so easily able to iterate exactly how you would light it on a real set.
01:17:00.182 --> 01:17:12.798
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I can do so much with all the lighting tools and the feedback you get from a real time global illumination system of where you can also art director like just like you wouldn't real life.
01:17:12.858 --> 01:17:15.141
[SPEAKER_02]: And it reacts like it should.
01:17:15.121 --> 01:17:37.973
[SPEAKER_02]: in real time is just crazy like where I can take a light source and you might be getting too much bounce coming from this side and it's illuminating this side because it's actually maybe there's a white wall over there and luminous thing that's like all right this will be bouncing back then I could just put a black card like a flag on set you know it's like a black like a four by four or whatever you know to literally create negative fill
01:17:37.953 --> 01:17:51.760
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I do that in Unreal, I just create a plane, put a black material on it and it does the same thing and it cuts that light down and now I get a nice fall off and I'm literally art directing the light fall off the shadow the contrast like
01:17:53.022 --> 01:18:11.303
[SPEAKER_02]: that's crazy like a free software can do that right like just getting that like when I started doing that early on in Unreal that's where it was like this is the best filmmaking tool ever like this right here is like everything you need to be able to like get a creative vision out there.
01:18:11.443 --> 01:18:12.145
[SPEAKER_02]: So
01:18:12.125 --> 01:18:33.767
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that stuff right there, I stuff I love, you know, just coming from like a cinematography background and being able to play with light, getting to try different color theory and seeing how what color combinations work together and how to really dial it in like from like even from an intensity, like literally using real world values and all that kind of stuff and it's, it's a, it's a playground.
01:18:33.867 --> 01:18:39.212
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a playground and
01:18:39.192 --> 01:18:45.062
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, prior to knowing Unreal Engine, as a cinematographer, someone who's into, you know, lighting, directing.
01:18:45.382 --> 01:18:54.838
[SPEAKER_00]: You learn so much, and then you're going to Unreal Engine, and then you apply that, but also reverse of that is you learn so much about your craft.
01:18:55.527 --> 01:18:58.292
[SPEAKER_00]: in Unreal Engine that's like, oh, I can just sit here and play with this.
01:18:58.532 --> 01:19:10.313
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, actually, for do this, you know, so you were applying things both sides, but it's just elevating and increasing your knowledge, you tall K and you've just got the power at your fingertips to play and explore.
01:19:10.393 --> 01:19:11.635
[SPEAKER_00]: It really is a playground.
01:19:11.655 --> 01:19:14.380
[SPEAKER_02]: 100% yeah, it's great.
01:19:14.545 --> 01:19:24.658
[SPEAKER_00]: was there anything that you tried early on like that you were convinced it's going to work like in your head before you got in there this is going to be fine but then maybe it didn't.
01:19:24.678 --> 01:19:40.198
[SPEAKER_02]: So there are a couple things that did not work out like I did some early tests on the rendering side just to kind of see what advantages would bring us obviously tested path tracing versus
01:19:41.157 --> 01:20:01.239
[SPEAKER_02]: you know what what all we could do in terms of like, you know, with Patrice and you're going to get a more accurate representation of shadows and reflections and even like subsurface scattering, you know, with like on the skin of like a metahuman and things like that, but at the cost of render times, but also there's just, there's a lot more optimization.
01:20:01.559 --> 01:20:04.883
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot less forgiving to you when it comes to path tracing.
01:20:04.903 --> 01:20:06.805
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot more heavy on your, on your scene.
01:20:06.845 --> 01:20:10.489
[SPEAKER_02]: And we found that as we had these kind of like longer,
01:20:10.469 --> 01:20:14.697
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, takes that were hundreds of frames where the camera wasn't cutting.
01:20:14.757 --> 01:20:21.370
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes even thousands of frames if it was like a sequence of stuff where we either, you know, we couldn't render for that long.
01:20:21.470 --> 01:20:28.022
[SPEAKER_02]: If there was like memory leak, it just was like even with a RTX Pro 6,000, we were hitting crashes where it was running out of.
01:20:28.002 --> 01:20:31.988
[SPEAKER_02]: memory because it was just, it was, they were so, 20 frames, right?
01:20:32.048 --> 01:20:37.336
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't efficiently offloading and all this, all this stuff where I was like, I'm not dealing with that.
01:20:37.477 --> 01:20:43.486
[SPEAKER_02]: I would have had to parse things out or only render one shot at a time or even certain shots that were very long.
01:20:43.546 --> 01:20:44.948
[SPEAKER_02]: I would have to literally
01:20:44.928 --> 01:20:54.081
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, do them in sections and now it've been a lot more time on my part to have to kind of babysit the renders and stuff and I was like, no, I'm not going to do that.
01:20:54.161 --> 01:20:56.885
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was a thing I figured out pretty early on.
01:20:56.945 --> 01:21:03.274
[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing, and this was an Unreal Engine 5.6 thing, was the chaos fracture system.
01:21:03.625 --> 01:21:30.578
[SPEAKER_02]: uh... gave me some headaches for sure uh... i've used the cash fracture system the pass for you know certain in a distraction elements things breaking apart and kind of you know triggering those things to you know for like explosions and things i knew that was going to be a big part uh... obviously with battlefield and destruction stuff like that uh... but i found that in five point six there were some weird bugs when it came to not not with the actual simulation part like the actual like
01:21:30.558 --> 01:21:52.482
[SPEAKER_02]: fracturing and blowing things up and like saving that, like caching it using the chaos cash manager feature works just like it should and it played back in sequencer just like it should and I've done this workflow plenty of times at 5.4, 5.5 but then all the sudden in 5.6 it just was working differently and it was
01:21:52.462 --> 01:21:57.031
[SPEAKER_02]: Quite the pain of trying to pinpoint what was causing it.
01:21:57.191 --> 01:22:12.360
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a mixture of like Sometimes it was warm up frames and anti-aliasing settings But ultimately I eventually found out that other people like through forums and stuff were having an exact same issue in 5.6 and they weren't able to find
01:22:12.340 --> 01:22:17.286
[SPEAKER_02]: a real solution when it came to rendering it out using like movie render queue.
01:22:18.107 --> 01:22:23.232
[SPEAKER_02]: I found that for like the bridge explosion I had there's like three shots in the bridge explosion.
01:22:23.252 --> 01:22:25.315
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of like a multi-coverage shot.
01:22:25.355 --> 01:22:26.596
[SPEAKER_02]: Just like they would in movies.
01:22:26.616 --> 01:22:29.499
[SPEAKER_02]: There's always multiple cameras filming an explosion.
01:22:29.560 --> 01:22:31.742
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't sit on one angle for your explosion.
01:22:31.762 --> 01:22:34.986
[SPEAKER_02]: You know there's always going to be multiple angles to cover it.
01:22:35.026 --> 01:22:36.147
[SPEAKER_02]: So I intentionally did that.
01:22:36.608 --> 01:22:40.592
[SPEAKER_02]: I had three angles covering
01:22:40.572 --> 01:23:05.398
[SPEAKER_02]: but then every time it then cut to the next camera all the sudden the simulation either like started over or like cut to way later in the the the cash like it like skipped it was really weird so I had to literally just render out each camera cut as its own shot and that somehow made a whirl but then there was a hole in this breaks my heart we had a beautiful
01:23:05.378 --> 01:23:07.561
[SPEAKER_02]: Jeep fracture.
01:23:07.842 --> 01:23:18.819
[SPEAKER_02]: When it hits the, when the Jeep jumps off the, you know, the ramp, hit the, the helicopter and explodes, I had a whole Jeep breaking apart, spinning and hitting the floor.
01:23:18.899 --> 01:23:19.981
[SPEAKER_02]: It looked beautiful.
01:23:20.061 --> 01:23:21.363
[SPEAKER_02]: The simulation was great.
01:23:22.004 --> 01:23:23.286
[SPEAKER_02]: It wouldn't, it just never worked.
01:23:24.367 --> 01:23:25.089
[SPEAKER_02]: Never worked.
01:23:25.169 --> 01:23:33.782
[SPEAKER_02]: I could not for the life of me, even emulating what settings I had used on the
01:23:33.762 --> 01:23:34.366
[SPEAKER_02]: never worked.
01:23:34.749 --> 01:23:38.997
[SPEAKER_02]: Every time I went to render it out, it like the simulation had already ended.
01:23:39.618 --> 01:23:41.620
[SPEAKER_02]: Or it just wouldn't play, super weird.
01:23:42.201 --> 01:23:44.624
[SPEAKER_02]: And it got to the point I was like, look, I gotta move on.
01:23:44.644 --> 01:23:48.609
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't feel like troubleshooting this anymore for the sake of the film.
01:23:48.649 --> 01:23:52.333
[SPEAKER_02]: Or just gonna have a big, big explosion and it's gonna be fine.
01:23:52.814 --> 01:24:00.203
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was heartbroken when that beautiful simulation of that, all these pieces of this Jeep go crashing down with it.
01:24:01.124 --> 01:24:04.528
[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately, had to be cut just because it just wouldn't work.
01:24:04.788 --> 01:24:05.389
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
01:24:05.369 --> 01:24:13.686
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just imagine if that happened on, let's say you were on set with real explosion, real stunt, amazing stunt and it looked incredible.
01:24:14.368 --> 01:24:25.892
[SPEAKER_00]: What if, you know, the data Wrangler dropped the hard drive in the canal or refer us into it and you couldn't use it, you have to think on your feet and cut it out unfortunately.
01:24:25.872 --> 01:24:28.199
[SPEAKER_02]: That becomes, yeah, very expensive, very quickly.
01:24:28.279 --> 01:24:29.543
[SPEAKER_00]: Very expensive, yeah.
01:24:29.563 --> 01:24:38.228
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guess in Unreal Engine, it would be as sad as it was to not be able to use it you tell the story or remove that from the story.
01:24:38.528 --> 01:24:59.625
[SPEAKER_02]: you have you have kind of like two two paths you either continue troubleshooting it and kind of console until you have until you rip your hair right will you be it off or yeah you just say but is this really necessary to tell the story if if I cut it is anything is there an emotional impact like a thing that was like now yeah it looks cool but it's not
01:24:59.605 --> 01:25:02.728
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it looks cool, but it's only for a couple seconds.
01:25:02.828 --> 01:25:05.671
[SPEAKER_02]: We then cut back to like, continue telling the story.
01:25:05.711 --> 01:25:09.634
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like, if this is what I have to cut, find so be it.
01:25:10.055 --> 01:25:12.077
[SPEAKER_00]: What's he like as a filmmaker, right?
01:25:12.457 --> 01:25:18.923
[SPEAKER_00]: Knowing that you can explore Unreal Engine so much, that it's so tempting to, oh, that looks cool.
01:25:19.003 --> 01:25:19.624
[SPEAKER_00]: That looks cool.
01:25:19.664 --> 01:25:27.351
[SPEAKER_00]: What, you know, how'd you rain it in to not get distracted too much by the bells and whistles of a tool like Unreal Engine?
01:25:28.006 --> 01:25:35.947
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think that's where your prep really comes into play to really know the story you're telling, what are the beats you need to visually tell it, right?
01:25:36.689 --> 01:25:38.775
[SPEAKER_02]: And that kind of gives you your constraints.
01:25:39.633 --> 01:25:51.071
[SPEAKER_02]: I think if you go into it with a way more loose structure, you're going to be very prone to the grand the, the, oh, look at this, oh, this is shining.
01:25:51.111 --> 01:25:51.752
[SPEAKER_02]: I like this.
01:25:52.213 --> 01:25:53.896
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at McPy, like a McPy.
01:25:53.916 --> 01:25:55.839
[SPEAKER_00]: You can all be showing the toys like, yeah, man.
01:25:55.879 --> 01:25:59.785
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you definitely need those creative constraints.
01:25:59.765 --> 01:26:05.943
[SPEAKER_02]: to kind of know the path you're on, what is the ultimate goal you are heading towards, right?
01:26:06.805 --> 01:26:10.456
[SPEAKER_02]: As I think that kept us very kind of tunnel visioned a lot of things.
01:26:11.439 --> 01:26:13.605
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll tell you what, I get an even like
01:26:14.243 --> 01:26:24.859
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's an important thing to also just kind of pay attention to like when moments kind of happen that you didn't expect or like, sometimes less is more.
01:26:24.879 --> 01:26:26.742
[SPEAKER_02]: This is something that I talked about in like behind the scenes.
01:26:26.762 --> 01:26:36.536
[SPEAKER_02]: Like there was a moment where the helicopter after it blows up the tank, it turns and then blows up these like soldiers at this kind of like taking cover.
01:26:37.017 --> 01:26:41.584
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's the moment where we kind of see it from the angle of the character Miller.
01:26:41.564 --> 01:27:04.804
[SPEAKER_02]: And you see this just big explosion just engulf these guys and I originally my original plan is like okay I'm going to have those soldiers get thrown by this explosion this whole like little area where they're taking cover is going to just get blown up chunks of debris you're going to come flying out of the camera it's going to be crazy really chaotic and then all I did
01:27:05.493 --> 01:27:18.973
[SPEAKER_02]: was the first ass I ever got him was the actual explosion, the VDBS and I hit, I simulated it, I played it back and just, and I speed ramped to the explosion to be really instant at first and then it kind of slows down just like a explosion would.
01:27:19.914 --> 01:27:28.447
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I saw that and I added the camera shake, I was like, and I literally just saw the soldiers disappear into this explosion.
01:27:28.487 --> 01:27:30.670
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, that's way more terrifying.
01:27:30.830 --> 01:27:32.833
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like,
01:27:32.813 --> 01:27:34.356
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I should just leave it like that.
01:27:34.576 --> 01:27:40.547
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I need to go do all this other extra work for what, you know, benefit, right?
01:27:40.607 --> 01:27:43.432
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, that was a moment I actually pulled myself back.
01:27:43.452 --> 01:27:45.536
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I think I should just leave it like that.
01:27:45.636 --> 01:27:50.184
[SPEAKER_02]: That is just so much more intense looking than just you just see them disappear.
01:27:50.245 --> 01:27:57.117
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's
01:27:58.733 --> 01:27:59.474
[SPEAKER_02]: That's Amy time.
01:27:59.695 --> 01:28:06.285
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I don't have to spend hours doing all this other animation and throwing these characters and simulating all this stuff.
01:28:07.026 --> 01:28:16.681
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's another thing, too, is having creative constraints, but also having the creative instinct to know when you don't need to do all this extra stuff.
01:28:16.761 --> 01:28:22.210
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes the visual, the simpler visual, worked even more in that moment.
01:28:22.190 --> 01:28:28.937
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's something that, like, as an artist, you kind of have to just be on the lookout for is, when to do more and when to do less.
01:28:30.059 --> 01:28:45.075
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess that's going, you know, when you look at film makers and you hear about them talking like, you know, why, like you, for example, David, why you covered it in one shot or why you chose to cut here or use this type of shot.
01:28:45.055 --> 01:28:53.406
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, like, you know, those long prolonged shots that kind of make the viewer kind of, oh, okay, this was still on this object.
01:28:53.426 --> 01:28:54.367
[SPEAKER_00]: We're still on this for a bit.
01:28:54.387 --> 01:28:55.609
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, what's this doing to my brain?
01:28:55.649 --> 01:28:58.633
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, okay, they want me to do something going on here.
01:28:58.653 --> 01:29:00.335
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, just film making techniques.
01:29:01.237 --> 01:29:01.437
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
01:29:01.557 --> 01:29:04.982
[SPEAKER_00]: To tell stories, simple, simple ways to do that.
01:29:05.302 --> 01:29:09.848
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think, you know, as a filmmaker as an artist.
01:29:10.435 --> 01:29:38.687
[SPEAKER_00]: advice would be analyse these movies, understand the techniques of why I'm being shown this or why this story is told in this way and I think Unreal Engine allows even solar filmmakers to explore that and kind of perfect the craft in like, okay, it's a little exercise, I think it's a great tool as well for, yeah, just telling little stories and doing little things at a time and then before you know you're doing a short film, I think it gives you the power.
01:29:38.870 --> 01:29:58.954
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so many different areas like the visual language of a film and like and like what certain things convey, you know, when you move a camera certain way or when you do a certain angle or certain lens choice, you know, there's everything helps you know, you'll a certain way, you know, there's and that's a thing that's that's the thing I think I see a lot.
01:29:59.390 --> 01:30:22.211
[SPEAKER_02]: when I watch 3D short films, or even cinematics for certain games, there is just sometimes when you can tell whoever was in charge of like composing the shot, like they understand camera language, like the visual language of the camera and what it conveys, like how to move it in a certain moment or how to compose the shot to feature something or make the audience feel a certain way.
01:30:22.531 --> 01:30:24.032
[SPEAKER_02]: Do we want them to feel uneasy?
01:30:24.072 --> 01:30:29.397
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm gonna get really close, and use a wine angle lens, because we want them to feel uncomfortable.
01:30:29.377 --> 01:30:42.964
[SPEAKER_02]: So, that's where it kind of differentiates things for me, as you can kind of tell when somebody understands the visual language of like how to tell a story, and that's where it's really important to collaborate, because it's not
01:30:43.484 --> 01:30:45.227
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't always need to fall on you.
01:30:45.327 --> 01:30:51.817
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have a network or resources or people you know who might be willing to collaborate, bring them in.
01:30:52.018 --> 01:30:54.382
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where it's really important.
01:30:54.402 --> 01:30:58.468
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if you're really talented at animating, right?
01:30:58.769 --> 01:31:02.134
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, then lighting and cinematography might not be
01:31:02.114 --> 01:31:32.121
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're strong suit, right, and so that's where it's, it's important to kind of realize what you're good at and what you're not and that's been my journey these last few years is really just identifying A like what I enjoy obviously it's like that's probably what you enjoy is probably what you're going to be working on the most, but it's also you know pay attention to feedback from people and like what do they point out that they're saying was good about it and like those are the things you have to start paying attention to I learned this very early in life when people start to point out
01:31:32.101 --> 01:31:49.846
[SPEAKER_02]: Certain aspects of things you create like you you did everything in it right you did everything from A to Z You did all the roles, but when they start pinpointing certain things that I really liked this aspect of it Those are things you need to start paying attention to it's like, okay I obviously am doing something right in this area.
01:31:50.027 --> 01:31:51.929
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to pursue this.
01:31:52.110 --> 01:31:58.058
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to like is this something like I really enjoy this something I could be really good at I could then pursue that more
01:31:58.038 --> 01:32:05.988
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's important to like in the near the flip side of that is like where are my areas of opportunity or where I'm not as, you know, not as talented, right?
01:32:06.109 --> 01:32:15.020
[SPEAKER_02]: In like if I'm not as talented as those areas, do I want to be in like it's it's it's it's it's a it's a it's a hard thing to identify at first.
01:32:15.101 --> 01:32:17.684
[SPEAKER_02]: It's because it's it's kind of like a moment of realism.
01:32:17.944 --> 01:32:22.290
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to kind of have yourself like, okay, I want to do this, but I've got some work ahead of me.
01:32:22.642 --> 01:32:24.426
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, to be good at or it's like, I'm not good at this.
01:32:24.847 --> 01:32:35.571
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to be good at this and like how can I find those people that can fill those gaps right and then bang I don't have to do that job anymore and now I have some news just it was like that's what they do.
01:32:35.703 --> 01:33:04.073
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the earlier you can do that in your career, the better, pay attention to that feedback you get from people and really identify specific areas that they're pointing out to you because those are the things I've found to be true of like people like early on in my career, people would point out like editing to me and that's what then made me kind of start really paying attention to editing more like, yeah, I think this
01:33:04.053 --> 01:33:17.168
[SPEAKER_02]: get good at like we'll we'll put more practice more projects and things like that so that's an important thing to pay attention to to wrap up on it and we're talking about voice and things David let's say I'm a
01:33:17.468 --> 01:33:18.109
[SPEAKER_00]: filmmaker.
01:33:18.149 --> 01:33:19.090
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to make a short film.
01:33:19.130 --> 01:33:20.071
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to use Unreal Engine.
01:33:20.091 --> 01:33:23.195
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what I want to do, but again, it's daunting.
01:33:23.535 --> 01:33:24.636
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much to learn.
01:33:24.837 --> 01:33:25.858
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many departments.
01:33:26.438 --> 01:33:27.360
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to build a team.
01:33:27.600 --> 01:33:30.163
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I can't do everything like we've been talking about.
01:33:30.203 --> 01:33:36.030
[SPEAKER_00]: How can I get people to see me?
01:33:36.090 --> 01:33:37.111
[SPEAKER_00]: Want to support me?
01:33:37.572 --> 01:33:41.316
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a, you know, I need social media to push out there?
01:33:41.376 --> 01:33:44.860
[SPEAKER_00]: Like how do I
01:33:45.093 --> 01:33:58.410
[SPEAKER_02]: So the number one thing you can do and this is scary for a lot of people, but you have to put yourself out there and be vulnerable, like you have got no no matter, you know,
01:33:59.133 --> 01:34:06.521
[SPEAKER_02]: the quality of your work, put it out there, immediately, post that prototype, post that quick thing you did in two minutes.
01:34:06.601 --> 01:34:18.914
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, start getting feedback from people, you know, start showing it and it's a thing that a lot of people, they only show it to like maybe close friends and family and those are the people that are not going to give them real feedback.
01:34:18.934 --> 01:34:26.001
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to start getting feedback from the community, from the actual people in the industry, right, because they're going to give you the most insight.
01:34:25.981 --> 01:34:38.219
[SPEAKER_02]: and I've found just from creating content on YouTube and putting my stuff out there, it's helped me grow, but it's also helped me get in front of a lot of people that I wouldn't have in the first place.
01:34:38.259 --> 01:34:44.188
[SPEAKER_02]: It's led to clients that I've come and worked with us and it's led to you know, more and more work.
01:34:44.348 --> 01:34:54.823
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, one of the best platforms for that is LinkedIn and in my experience, it's a great place for you to network with people, be a part of communities
01:34:54.803 --> 01:34:59.971
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, put your work out there for people to see and just, you know, get in the habit of that.
01:35:00.011 --> 01:35:02.695
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything you create, put it out there.
01:35:02.715 --> 01:35:11.308
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and it's something you got a brace for, you know, is receiving feedback, you know, and it might be critical and might be negative.
01:35:11.869 --> 01:35:12.931
[SPEAKER_02]: And those are all things.
01:35:12.971 --> 01:35:14.393
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes you have to cut through the noise.
01:35:14.433 --> 01:35:15.715
[SPEAKER_02]: Some people are just,
01:35:15.695 --> 01:35:16.356
[SPEAKER_02]: be in me.
01:35:16.396 --> 01:35:19.182
[SPEAKER_02]: Some people love to be main, just be a main team.
01:35:19.563 --> 01:35:22.710
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to find that on YouTube, especially people just want to be mean.
01:35:22.730 --> 01:35:23.371
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's fine.
01:35:23.411 --> 01:35:32.590
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to kind of learn to kind of know when to cut through it or, you know, learn to like, pay attention to more of like the actual specific feedback, right?
01:35:32.831 --> 01:35:34.294
[SPEAKER_02]: People tell you all this sucks.
01:35:35.185 --> 01:35:37.508
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they'll just leave that comment.
01:35:37.528 --> 01:35:38.308
[SPEAKER_00]: This sucks, man.
01:35:38.569 --> 01:35:40.090
[SPEAKER_00]: Light is nice, love.
01:35:40.110 --> 01:35:40.491
[SPEAKER_02]: There you go.
01:35:40.891 --> 01:35:42.493
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, all right, cool, thanks.
01:35:42.673 --> 01:35:43.694
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate that.
01:35:43.714 --> 01:35:43.995
[SPEAKER_02]: Cheers.
01:35:44.515 --> 01:35:47.659
[SPEAKER_02]: But then when people actually start from like, oh, though, this could have been better.
01:35:47.999 --> 01:35:52.985
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, okay, they gave me something specific to pay attention to what could be better about it.
01:35:53.005 --> 01:35:55.848
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's something I struggled on earlier.
01:35:55.928 --> 01:35:56.989
[SPEAKER_02]: I still struggle with it today.
01:35:57.029 --> 01:35:57.630
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's be real.
01:35:57.650 --> 01:36:02.155
[SPEAKER_02]: But something I really struggle with early on is taking things personally.
01:36:02.725 --> 01:36:05.169
[SPEAKER_02]: because you pour so much time into this art.
01:36:05.709 --> 01:36:09.355
[SPEAKER_02]: Art is a very personal, passionate thing.
01:36:09.895 --> 01:36:11.217
[SPEAKER_02]: And it can be, it can hurt.
01:36:11.558 --> 01:36:13.260
[SPEAKER_02]: What someone's like, I didn't like it.
01:36:13.781 --> 01:36:15.383
[SPEAKER_02]: And here's why I didn't like it.
01:36:15.544 --> 01:36:18.067
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, that's where you really start to grow.
01:36:18.087 --> 01:36:21.552
[SPEAKER_02]: You really start to learn, like, okay, here's where I can improve.
01:36:21.853 --> 01:36:22.894
[SPEAKER_02]: What can I take away from this?
01:36:22.934 --> 01:36:25.979
[SPEAKER_02]: But every time you create something, you're gonna grow.
01:36:26.459 --> 01:36:32.428
[SPEAKER_02]: No matter what, even if it's the one percent, that's still, you're better off than you were
01:36:32.408 --> 01:36:32.708
[SPEAKER_02]: right?
01:36:33.590 --> 01:36:51.717
[SPEAKER_02]: So, getting the habit of creating stuff, there is literally no excuse to not be creating stuff right now and putting it out there for people to see because that's the only way for you to network with people, to meet people in the industry and it gets easier the more you do it.
01:36:52.405 --> 01:37:03.558
[SPEAKER_02]: The more you put your workout there, the harder of a shell, you can build up to be able to take the feedback, but then to be able to analyze that feedback and be like, okay, how can I adapt now?
01:37:03.639 --> 01:37:05.261
[SPEAKER_02]: How do, where do I go for it?
01:37:05.281 --> 01:37:07.003
[SPEAKER_02]: What do I do with that feedback?
01:37:07.103 --> 01:37:09.245
[SPEAKER_02]: So you've got to put your stuff out there.
01:37:09.285 --> 01:37:11.909
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got to be able to receive feedback.
01:37:11.949 --> 01:37:13.190
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't take it personally.
01:37:14.051 --> 01:37:20.539
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you just, like I said early on, you've got to be obsessed.
01:37:20.519 --> 01:37:48.400
[SPEAKER_02]: have a desire to be better like never don't ever be complacent people who are seniors in the industry they're always working and they're always like looking to be better and looking to make like how can I make something better than the last thing I made right it's like those are the people that are going to excel and you just got to have that that ethic that work ethic to just want to be better right so don't be don't don't get still don't
01:37:49.173 --> 01:37:50.335
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a great piece of advice.
01:37:50.816 --> 01:37:53.500
[SPEAKER_00]: You're only as good as your last piece of work.
01:37:53.540 --> 01:38:03.437
[SPEAKER_00]: And the only reason, the only real kind of thing to compare yourself to should be yourself and as long as I'm doing, this was better than last time.
01:38:03.738 --> 01:38:04.619
[SPEAKER_00]: This was better than last time.
01:38:04.659 --> 01:38:10.489
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll look back and go, well, I've just cloned like a whole hill of things and I've grown so much.
01:38:10.469 --> 01:38:14.394
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy, but I think it's easy to try and compare to all that stuff out there, isn't it?
01:38:14.835 --> 01:38:33.281
[SPEAKER_00]: On the internet like you, you look at it all and you think, ah, I'll never be that good or I'll never, I'll never do that good, but that you should, you should kind of take inspiration and be inspired by it, but like look man, I'm just working on this little project and last week, I did this in this week, I'm doing this now, that's great, that's like lift yourself up, you know.
01:38:34.863 --> 01:38:39.970
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you stop taking things personal when people are just saying stuff like, what was it like for you?
01:38:40.169 --> 01:38:50.273
[SPEAKER_02]: It's something I have to balance, you know, with like when you put your stuff out there, especially on YouTube and you start kind of building up a community and you start getting regular views.
01:38:50.293 --> 01:38:53.942
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're definitely kind of starting to get in front of more of the general.
01:38:54.142 --> 01:38:58.127
[SPEAKER_02]: you know audience general population that aren't necessarily in the same industry as you.
01:38:58.147 --> 01:39:02.492
[SPEAKER_02]: So you start getting kind of external feedback from from people that aren't in the industry.
01:39:02.973 --> 01:39:04.034
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's still valuable.
01:39:04.514 --> 01:39:08.299
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you have to start kind of knowing where the feedback is coming from.
01:39:08.779 --> 01:39:10.962
[SPEAKER_02]: And that kind of helps you know how to adapt for it.
01:39:11.002 --> 01:39:19.512
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to take the feedback I get from people in the industry like on LinkedIn and stuff like that or people that you know obviously know what they're talking about.
01:39:19.793 --> 01:39:23.457
[SPEAKER_02]: You can kind of decipher that in the way they give their feedback.
01:39:23.437 --> 01:39:33.835
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, that's how I kind of know the, the, the, the, the weight of it, I guess, like if somebody from the industry is giving me negative specific feedback, I'm going to take that.
01:39:34.827 --> 01:39:38.492
[SPEAKER_02]: to heart because that's a person who knows what they're talking about.
01:39:38.532 --> 01:39:44.639
[SPEAKER_02]: They're giving me insight, but they're also giving me a way to be better and a way to improve and things like that.
01:39:45.040 --> 01:39:48.124
[SPEAKER_02]: Versus, you know, the person who's like, ah, your lighting can be better.
01:39:48.704 --> 01:39:48.865
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
01:39:49.045 --> 01:39:52.009
[SPEAKER_02]: All they say, and they're like, yeah, yeah.
01:39:52.029 --> 01:39:57.255
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where it's, you sometimes have to be like, okay, that is that kind of kind of can be subjective, right?
01:39:57.295 --> 01:40:01.881
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you might be like really
01:40:01.861 --> 01:40:11.305
[SPEAKER_02]: posting for a gosh, like almost a year and a half now in YouTube, definitely helps because I'm constantly putting out, you know, constant out there, putting out work.
01:40:12.529 --> 01:40:13.491
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
01:40:13.825 --> 01:40:40.862
[SPEAKER_02]: it's something that you you get better with the more and more you put your work out there it's just you just have to get in that habit show them have to every artist that is you know getting more and more work you know meeting new clients it's because they're they have a portfolio and they have a way for people to find that portfolio where they're they're they're publicly putting putting that portfolio out there so that's that's just part of the job you know if you want to get seen don't expect people to come to you
01:40:40.842 --> 01:41:01.855
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that it just is true in the the the VFX, the 3D, you know industry, you know, you have got to go and put yourself out there people are not just magically stumbling across your portfolio and art station like, oh, you should come work for our AAA company, you know, you got to that I'm sure that does happen at some point, but
01:41:01.835 --> 01:41:19.202
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I guess you've got to get to a level where it's like, oh, if you want to like we spoke to Patrick Fordy, like he just food renders It's not so much and he's got such a reputation that he is, oh, if you're not everyone would know him, but if you want to food render Perhaps you guys, so you've got to really
01:41:19.182 --> 01:41:20.303
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we'll be no one.
01:41:20.524 --> 01:41:21.285
[SPEAKER_00]: But you've got to do that.
01:41:21.305 --> 01:41:22.927
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to put yourself out there.
01:41:22.947 --> 01:41:25.390
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you had to put himself out there to give to that boy.
01:41:25.450 --> 01:41:26.352
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, man.
01:41:26.372 --> 01:41:31.158
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's he like with talking about criticism and industry criticism?
01:41:31.358 --> 01:41:40.330
[SPEAKER_00]: Against like you're going up against it, going to a fan like doing a fan made film with a franchise that people will like tear your neck.
01:41:40.310 --> 01:41:51.174
[SPEAKER_00]: off if like what the hell have you done with this phrase or you're going to get that left right in center what was what was that like receiving I imagine receiving comments like that.
01:41:51.715 --> 01:41:56.125
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah yeah so we're we've been really fortunate like
01:41:56.442 --> 01:42:03.594
[SPEAKER_02]: Anything that would be considered like negative feedback has been nothing around the battlefield franchise, which has been great.
01:42:03.674 --> 01:42:08.823
[SPEAKER_02]: That means like we made something that feels like it belongs in that universe.
01:42:09.824 --> 01:42:12.068
[SPEAKER_02]: That was very important to me early on.
01:42:12.088 --> 01:42:19.000
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I want to take as much inspiration from the battlefield franchise, make sure it doesn't feel out of left field, like what is this?
01:42:19.040 --> 01:42:22.045
[SPEAKER_02]: This isn't make any sense in that kind of universe.
01:42:22.025 --> 01:42:34.600
[SPEAKER_02]: So everything, you know, that would be considered negative has just been to very specific aspects of the broad way with either cinematography or lighting or ways certain things animate whatever, you know, it's
01:42:35.170 --> 01:42:38.654
[SPEAKER_02]: That's to me, that's a win, you know what I mean?
01:42:38.694 --> 01:42:50.970
[SPEAKER_02]: If people like, if we're not only getting in front of obviously, you know, our audience on our channel is very much people in the 3D industry, in the gaming industry, in the VFX industry, whatever it is, that's our audience, right?
01:42:50.990 --> 01:42:51.731
[SPEAKER_02]: That's our niche.
01:42:52.251 --> 01:42:56.296
[SPEAKER_02]: But then we're getting in front of like the general population who are just fans of the battlefield franchise.
01:42:56.316 --> 01:42:58.339
[SPEAKER_02]: And those people are chiming in like this is awesome.
01:42:58.359 --> 01:43:03.405
[SPEAKER_02]: We're really, you know, enjoying this as like a piece of that universe.
01:43:03.385 --> 01:43:09.817
[SPEAKER_02]: That's huge because those and the people that are definitely more susceptible to, you know, come at you.
01:43:10.257 --> 01:43:23.441
[SPEAKER_02]: If you make something that feels like it's, you know, I mean, you look at like the reception to the halo franchise and how it's been portrayed like on, you know, in the TV show versus the games, you know, that that community is very outspoken.
01:43:23.501 --> 01:43:24.904
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not that.
01:43:24.884 --> 01:43:34.838
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and I think that's just where you have to have that respect for the source material which in Hollywood seems like a very hard thing to do for some reason.
01:43:34.978 --> 01:43:38.363
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why this is the thing right.
01:43:38.383 --> 01:43:39.965
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about this all the time, I think.
01:43:40.226 --> 01:43:40.666
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
01:43:40.686 --> 01:43:43.310
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, tell me what you think, I might be completely wrong here.
01:43:43.871 --> 01:43:46.875
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's probably many reasons for it.
01:43:46.855 --> 01:43:52.588
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, like, say, for example, big studio making Halo TV series, right?
01:43:52.628 --> 01:44:05.758
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to get some people that, like, this has got all this is great, but do you find that there's so many people that hate on it just because it's made by a big, they've got, what they think they've got endless amounts of money?
01:44:05.738 --> 01:44:08.882
[SPEAKER_00]: not always the case because these shows do have limitations and budgets of course.
01:44:09.323 --> 01:44:09.423
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
01:44:09.443 --> 01:44:17.974
[SPEAKER_00]: But to the average person that just like a little of hay low and they go, oh my what they're done to this show terrible, but then they watch a fan made film with a low budget.
01:44:17.994 --> 01:44:20.217
[SPEAKER_00]: The same's more respect like there.
01:44:20.617 --> 01:44:25.924
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that these stories are different like told different to maybe they prefer the fan story of course.
01:44:25.904 --> 01:44:36.114
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something against, like, respect for the indie filmmakers, which I love, against, like, stick it to the, the man, like, look at a big shoot, it goes, like, fuck them, type of thing.
01:44:36.515 --> 01:44:36.955
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
01:44:36.975 --> 01:44:38.317
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a, is that a culture?
01:44:38.377 --> 01:44:41.340
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you say, or maybe I'm, maybe just in my opinion?
01:44:41.360 --> 01:44:49.108
[SPEAKER_02]: It's way less room for forgiveness, when it comes to people who have millions of dollars.
01:44:49.128 --> 01:44:49.368
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
01:44:49.508 --> 01:44:51.490
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you've had all that money and you still fucked it up.
01:44:51.470 --> 01:45:07.723
[SPEAKER_02]: But really, I mean, if you're going to do this, you better do it right, and I think the thing that so many people do is they take liberties with, you know, IPs, existing properties and they start changing things that
01:45:07.703 --> 01:45:23.046
[SPEAKER_02]: maybe didn't need to be changed or you know taking creative liberties here and there and and it's to the point where people want I mean it's kind of funny how you have source material you have an existing thing that already has all these parameters for like the look, the feel, the lore.
01:45:23.026 --> 01:45:24.449
[SPEAKER_02]: story, right?
01:45:24.490 --> 01:45:26.073
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, just follow that.
01:45:26.194 --> 01:45:28.138
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, and then sometimes they don't do that.
01:45:28.219 --> 01:45:41.170
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's where people become, you know, very unforgiving when it comes to that because there's the expectation that you're a studio, you have the money, there's really no excuse you shouldn't be doing this off for.
01:45:41.150 --> 01:45:50.768
[SPEAKER_02]: giving and and you have to know that you know everybody's going to have a different interpretation of what that big student is going to look like so it's pretty much impossible to please everybody.
01:45:51.028 --> 01:45:51.910
[SPEAKER_00]: I see it's easy.
01:45:51.950 --> 01:45:58.602
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't really place everybody of course that's this big element of that is in the you think you know when people.
01:45:58.582 --> 01:46:01.467
[SPEAKER_00]: like fans, especially like they can smell bullshit.
01:46:01.487 --> 01:46:09.521
[SPEAKER_00]: They can smell if the team don't really care about this role in the universe of this or they overlook this and they've kind of done that.
01:46:09.642 --> 01:46:14.430
[SPEAKER_00]: They can really, they really hone in on details and they get their backs up and go.
01:46:14.410 --> 01:46:17.853
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what you don't that for but again, you can't please everybody, of course.
01:46:18.054 --> 01:46:20.296
[SPEAKER_00]: So Very difficult.
01:46:20.316 --> 01:46:21.857
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I like when you do in a fan film.
01:46:21.938 --> 01:46:37.713
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it can be a you know you put your neck on the line But I think for this one absolutely fans viewers people can just tell the passion the love and the respect for the franchise Which you've clearly pulled off and very well received.
01:46:37.793 --> 01:46:38.274
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you.
01:46:38.294 --> 01:46:39.355
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate that
01:46:39.335 --> 01:46:42.691
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, David, is there any where can people find you?
01:46:42.792 --> 01:46:43.777
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you up to next?
01:46:44.741 --> 01:46:46.932
[SPEAKER_00]: Give us all that plugs, please do.
01:46:47.030 --> 01:46:48.011
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for sure.
01:46:48.111 --> 01:47:02.710
[SPEAKER_02]: So, obviously, you know, our channel virtual production insider on YouTube, we're just doing all kinds of content around everything from virtual production to, you know, game cinematics, especially with a focus on Unreal Engine to motion capture.
01:47:02.750 --> 01:47:07.416
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got a lot of really great content, especially around motion capture coming out early next year.
01:47:07.476 --> 01:47:10.540
[SPEAKER_02]: Our next R&D project,
01:47:10.520 --> 01:47:27.486
[SPEAKER_02]: Can't talk about it too much yet, because this is the one where we're going to be really kind of bringing in some new technology, you know, really focusing on face motion capture and kind of putting together a small team to take things even to the next level beyond this beyond this battlefield short film.
01:47:28.268 --> 01:47:29.409
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm super excited about that.
01:47:29.429 --> 01:47:35.599
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll be kind of announcing more that early next year, but I'm super stoked about it.
01:47:35.579 --> 01:47:36.880
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, so it's been great.
01:47:36.961 --> 01:47:38.462
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you know, form studios.
01:47:39.003 --> 01:47:41.946
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of the the the brand behind all of this.
01:47:42.066 --> 01:47:44.349
[SPEAKER_02]: So you could check out form studios.com.
01:47:44.389 --> 01:47:53.259
[SPEAKER_02]: If you ever want to kind of learn more about our services like from an actual client perspective and yeah, you can also check me out on LinkedIn.
01:47:54.400 --> 01:47:55.301
[SPEAKER_02]: Just David step.
01:47:55.481 --> 01:48:00.507
[SPEAKER_02]: You can look me up connect with me on there, but yeah.
01:48:00.487 --> 01:48:01.690
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a place.
01:48:02.171 --> 01:48:02.753
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome man.
01:48:02.973 --> 01:48:05.820
[SPEAKER_00]: We wish you all the best with whatever you get up to next.
01:48:05.901 --> 01:48:10.933
[SPEAKER_00]: Our eyes are always on new day, David and us with men making other people out there.
01:48:10.973 --> 01:48:14.542
[SPEAKER_00]: So we just want to say thanks for your time and it was great to chat man really well.
01:48:14.623 --> 01:48:15.846
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate you guys having me on.
01:48:15.866 --> 01:48:16.548
[SPEAKER_02]: This has been great.
01:48:16.568 --> 01:48:17.550
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate you.
01:48:17.530 --> 01:48:22.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Brilliant man, and we very much look forward to the behind-the-scenes video that comes out.
01:48:22.759 --> 01:48:24.582
[SPEAKER_02]: It will be coming out the same time as this.
01:48:25.023 --> 01:48:26.165
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so right here.
01:48:26.586 --> 01:48:27.066
[SPEAKER_00]: Brilliant man.
01:48:27.147 --> 01:48:30.372
[SPEAKER_02]: Anybody wants to go check out that full BTS, please go check it out.
01:48:31.113 --> 01:48:31.794
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
01:48:31.815 --> 01:48:32.516
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks David.
01:48:32.616 --> 01:48:33.357
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a pleasure.
01:48:34.018 --> 01:48:35.441
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you so much, guys.
01:48:36.062 --> 01:48:36.563
[SPEAKER_00]: Cheers, David.
01:48:36.583 --> 01:48:37.164
[SPEAKER_00]: All the best, man.
01:48:37.705 --> 01:48:38.526
[SPEAKER_00]: Got to make it easy.