Immersion Break
With a production that delivered its final cut mere hours before the deadline, an uncommunicative crew, a miraculous cast & logistical troubles; this reflection will focus on what went on during production, but also what went wrong and how could it be fixed for future productions.
Firstly, the idea came about, mostly as a last resort. I had tried getting ideas out of my group to no avail, and I resorted to an idea that I’ve had for a couple months now.
Digressing a bit, the concept of human-centred storytelling helped inform my overall creative process, as throughout the semester, I was able to learn, through Cockatoo CoLab's lectures, about how to write/market for specific audiences, a useful tip for finding niche audiences, which had me thinking about stories that not only I could relate to, but others could potentially relate to also, which somewhat inspired this series concept.
Parasocial relationships, as a psychological concept, had always intrigued me, and I wanted to explore it in a way that I knew how, but I knew it would be difficult to find actors willing to play these characters with the resources and time I had, so I proposed using the VTuber concept, as I've always wanted to explore that side of online creation, with the idea that we didn’t have to film the actors and thus could exaggerate their personalities in a way we couldn't in live-action. I was able to source a royalty-free Live2D model from online Japanese marketplace BOOTH that I felt fit the personality of Melody enough, as commissioning a Live2D model would've been very expensive considering the scale and purpose of the production.
Slowly overtime, our initial group of five ended up gaining more members, largely because these new members had been left with no group for a variety of reasons. This meant, however, I was left with three extra members in which I had no idea what to make them do, as much of the necessary roles were filled.
It was fortunate that Cam Smith had knowledge of the anime culture as well, and I needed a second pair of eyes for the script, so they came on as script editor and was set to help coordinate the production, as they helped chase up other members.
Out of necessity, I made Samira Wang & Shervin Adeli, who were one of the extra members, cast members, having no idea if they could act. Miraculously, when we start our first ADR recording session with Samira, she fell into the role almost immediately. With the assistance of Cam, whose role on this day was translating my directions in a way Samira could understand, she portrayed this idea of a cute, bubbly anime girl perfectly, and I became optimistic that the pilot could work. To ensure Samira felt comfortable in the recording environment (we recorded at the library’s recording studio), the studio happened to have acoustic panels that wrapped around her so we could get better audio and also allow her some privacy. After 2.5 hours of recording, we wrapped all of her ADR.
Day 2 of filming came up. Cam, who was set to be our 1st AD, suddenly became unavailable due to a family emergency, and the location we were set to film at became unavailable due to security issues. My house was the backup location, though the space was small with regards of the equipment and crew necessary to film. The shotlist had to be revised quickly and the location needed to be dressed quickly. Despite this, we managed to get all of the necessary live-action shots filmed (albeit slightly overtime), and this meant post-production could begin.
Visual effects mainly involved the Live2D face tracking for Melody, which I did using Denchisoft's VTube Studio software and, as mentioned, the free Live2D model, which had a variety of pre-rigged emotions and animations. Additional visual effects involved creating fake pages of websites such as YouTube, 4chan & Twitch, using screencaps and "inspect element", and also creating "source elements" like fake interviews/DramaTube videos. Samira Wang and Simon Doumit contributed a fair bit of these elements.
Visual effects mainly involved the Live2D face tracking for Melody, which I did using Denchisoft's VTube Studio software and, as mentioned, the free Live2D model, which had a variety of pre-rigged emotions and animations. Additional visual effects involved creating fake pages of websites such as YouTube, 4chan & Twitch, using screencaps and "inspect element", and also creating "source elements" like fake interviews/DramaTube videos. Samira Wang and Simon Doumit contributed a fair bit of these elements.
We had the scoping presentation early in September, no one except Cam and Brandon arrived. Little to no prior notice. In the end, the final pitching presentation only had Brandon and Shervin attend, due to several members claiming work/life emergencies. In addition, as a last-minute attempt to get everyone to contribute to the final pitch presentation, but as almost none of the team responded to these requests, Samira, Shervin and Brandon offered to help finish the slides/script while I work on the treatment, saving the time and stress that it would've come with.
As a result of this longer-than-expected post-production, our composer Prabhav Ganesh, who was expected to score the film around October, was not able to score the entire film, since a rough cut was not ready by the set deadline. I was responsible for composing/orchestrating the cues that had not been completed by Ganesh, and also sourced from my personal music library spanning 8 years.
We had the scoping presentation early in September, no one except Cam and Brandon arrived. Little to no prior notice. In the end, the final pitching presentation only had Brandon and Shervin attend, due to several members claiming work/life emergencies. In addition, as a last-minute attempt to get everyone to contribute to the final pitch presentation, but as almost none of the team responded to these requests, Samira, Shervin and Brandon offered to help finish the slides/script while I work on the treatment, saving the time and stress that it would've come with.
As a result of this longer-than-expected post-production, our composer Prabhav Ganesh, who was expected to score the film around October, was not able to score the entire film, since a rough cut was not ready by the set deadline. I was responsible for composing/orchestrating the cues that had not been completed by Ganesh, and also sourced from my personal music library spanning 8 years