Taking inspiration from the 'Africa Shox, Leftfield and Afrika bambaataa' video by Chris Cunningham I initially want to create a visual effects piece that involves digitally altering the appearance of a person. My first idea is to shoot footage of people walking and then gradually turn them into lego characters or to give the appearance that they are made from lego pieces. This idea would necessitate object tracking, 3dmodelling and animation and obviously good compositing.
The second piece of visual effects work i have taken inspiration from the white stripes video 'fell in love with a girl' the video showcases great visual images of rotoscoped animation of the characters as big Lego figurines. Although the effects and techniques used are not the same as I will be using, the video gives great reference to the final creation of the person in my vfx shot.
I also took inspiration from the Philips comercial 'Carousel'. It shows amazing motion control and wire removal techniques. I initially had the idea to shoot a stready camera track through a shattered Lego man whilst the pieces were suspended in the air. This idea however would become too difficult to produce without a motion control rig and due to budget constraints etc this idea will have to be developed or dropped.
Another visually nice piece that I have taken inspiration from is 'Sommar' by Sebastien Abes. I like the attention to colour matching in the compositing stage. The piece has a great soothing ambient flow which compliments the fluid simualted elements composited into the scene. This piece makes me want to stay away from Hollywood influeced visual effects focusing on high octaine action scenes and focus on something that looks aesthetically pleasing in (and i hate to use this term) an art house way. I also want to take from this piece along with 'Carousel' the great use of fitting music.
