Devil in the details (Dev Diary)

Hi all, it's also been awhile since I've did a dev diary type post and catalogue my thought process when it comes to crafting a shot.

So today I'll like to write a bit more about camera and lighting - essentially the work involved as a director of photography in your own project. But first a disclaimer, while I've had a fair amount of experience working in 3D, I'm very far from the best. That said, I'm sure my experiences can shed some light for people interested in this topic. So without further ado;

So, Lenses - The soul of our work, also the main way our audiences perceives the world. Many times I see a render with a 50mm lense slapped on (or worse, 25mm) for every shot, and while that works, it's not quite as effective.

This is one of my favourite render - it uses the scene effectively in many ways. 

1) The wide lense makes the character smaller, and makes him feel more isolated - (relevant in this shot). You instantly feel that he's alone. The thing I wrote above about not abusing the 25mm lense? You want to save it for moments like this.

2) There are foreground elements to introduce depth. They also double as set dressing to hint at his character - evidently he's someone who lets his laundry pile up, but still  conscientious enough to use a basket. 

3) The strong front-lit screen gives a nice contrast to the darker foreground. I made used of a subtle orange/blue light setup so favoured by many filmmakers.

While it's not always possible to achieve this in every shot, it's good to always keep them at the back of your head, essentially trying to tell a story in one image with no text or context. Of course, this is time consuming and finding the perfect angle and lighting would take hours. This shot alone took almost a whole day because it just wasn't telling the right story. 

We're not doing this for every single shot of course, because then the game will never get done!

Here you can see a little bit more on using foreground to introduce depth, but this time our focus on the use of colour.

Starting with the top image with the rock, you'll notice the not-so-subtle difference in colour coming in various direction - red on the left, and green on the right. This theme is repeated when you choose to go down either path - one is bathed in green light and the other is red, (not so) subtly connecting them together.  The green light further accented when you follow down the path and you find our main love interest covered in a thick green rim light as she gets closer to you. (Can't post here due to Patreon rules unfortunately.)

That's it for this dev diary! I try to add little touches here and there to guide the players along and to enhance the story, hopefully if done right, no one will notice it and it simply just adds to the experience. (Unless you're reading it here of course :))

Thanks for reading this, it's been a very rewarding process and I hope to bring more of these to everyone soon! Catch you all next time, I think I can hear the renders finishing.

Have a great week all!

Lemonkey