Final Project

After sleepless nights, the Brotherscho final project is finally finished! Total time spent on this was three weeks to develop this "animatic."

We started out with the goal of creating something completely different using a medium rarely seen within the RTF department...Machinima. Utilizing the game Half Life 2, we sought to present a trailer story depicting the untold events of the 7 Hour War where human civilization was completely defeated by technologically superior beings from a parallel dimension. Because the war was a precursor to events of Half Life 2, the events were only mentioned in small snippets through dialogue between the in-game characters. With this information in mind, we were given almost complete creative freedom in regards to our interpretation of the war.

Pre Production
-The first week consisted completely of learning new techniques and software for the project.The project was created within HL: Episode 2 source engine utilizing their provided SDK tools. The cinematography was all recorded by us using system labeled "demo smoother." As we familiarized ourselves with that tool, we also introduced ourselves to the "Faceposer" character choreography software and "Hammer" map making program.

Production
-After we determined we had developed sufficient skills to produce our desired animation, we sought out pre-developed prefab elements to use as characters, props, and maps. Afterwards, each element was meticulously placed and chreographed within their environments with triggers and scripts so that each character would interact with each other with a desired effect.
-For the detailed gestures and lip-sync, they were manually synced with phonems and proper gestures/postures in the Faceposer software and recorded using a greenscreen background. This allowed us to key out the characters so that we can apply other special effects or motion graphics.
Post-Production
-The final composition was a combination of recorded manually scripted events and After Effects motion graphics. Some of the techniques we utilized in AE were 3d movement, kinetic typography, motion blur, color grading, green screen, lighting, glow, wiggler, motion tracking, and sheering effects.
-A total of 6 scenes in the cut utilized green screen and keying.
-About 90% of the sounds were manually mixed and developed by us for the project. Only one scene consisted of in-engine recorded sounds
-Only 3 small scenes in the final cut were pre-scripted events from the original game. All others were manually created through hammer and the engine.
-The final cut consisted of 23 layers within Sony Vegas itself!


Credits:
Chreography/Directing/Cinematography: Alex and Kris Cho
Visual effects: Alex & Kris Cho
Scripting/Editing: Kris & Alex Cho
Graphic design: Kris Cho
Sound Mixing: Alex Cho
Lip syncer: Kris Cho
Sounds: Valve and Brotherscho
Music: X Ray Dog

Voice Acting:
-Female Reporter: Sarah Gonzales
-Male Reporter: Alex Cho
-Resistance Leader: Kris Cho

SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FACEPUNCH STUDIOS COMMUNITY FOR PROVIDING THE MAPS AND PREFABS!

We are fairly happy with the final result and we hope you all enjoy it!

http://vimeo.com/user857439/videos

(We originally created this from scratch exclusively for RTF 344M, but we will also screen it supplementally in RTF351C even after fulfilling our final projects assignment)

Untitled from Kris Cho on Vimeo.

Update:

Acquiring knowledge for new software is coming out trickier than we thought, but we're making great progress. At the moment we have close to 20+ scenes we scripted together and filmed in source demo smoother. We still have additional lip synced scenes from Face Poser requiring importing and some extra after effects graphics to be applied on the video.

Teaser of our work so far:

Untitled from Kris Cho on Vimeo.

Machinima Final Project

PITCH!

So for the Brothers Cho final project, we decided to create an action packed machinima utilizing the Source engine developed by Valve. Our inspiration was with our upcoming employment to Bioware as cinematic desginers, we wanted to practice in-game movie making by utilizing our cinematography, editing, and sound skills. This is the first time we'll be touching this software for filmmaking purposes and we really do hope it turns out well.

Details:
Style: Teaser Trailer
Assets:
1. Source SDK
2. Half Life Orange Box
3. Custom models available from the modding community
4. Demo Smoother
5. Hammer editor
6. Noesis chorography tutorial

The story will revolve around the incidents involving the infamous Seven Hour War described in the game Half Life 2. In this event, humanity was defeated with blitzkrieg speed by the alien race known as the Combine. It will introduce some characters already from the series as well as new ones as they survive and prepare a resistance to combat Earth's new oppressors.

Scene Breakdown:
SEVEN HOURS

Dolly shot of a peaceful town, cloudy

Dolly shot of a wife in house. Low angle shot of wife reacting to thunder in distance. Looks at picture of a man dressed in uniform

Tracking shot of squad heading to chopper (alert). Thunder. One man points towards the skies. Protagonists stares up, pan to sky. Portals erupt...fade to black

Firefight between soldiers and hunters. Fighters fly by, bombing the hunters. Tanks emerges, taking out remainding forces. Fog. Strider emerges and rips into military, blows tanks up. Fade

City burns, title alpha channels (stencil through) Combine sign emerges with symbols moving and creates title: Seven Hours.

example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0KYilMzwfw