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THE WINDOW ROOM AND THE STREETS
I created a whole new room to render in one of the introduction scenes part of the Prologue. I worked with an asset pack for windows from the UE Marketplace.
I animated the cameras using guidence from the storyboard and animated the motions of the metahuman with and without IK retargeting animations. I rendered 10 sequences and imported them in the Premiere Pro Project - The Void in order as shots. It took me 1 day to render and order the scene shots.
For animation, I worked with the same workflow I wrote about at the IK Retargeting and Rendering section above. I worked with the Live Link Animation, also, for the face motion. Also, I worked with posing and camera exposure adjustments for this. Adjusted the quality of the Movie Queue Renderer and it took me 7 hours to render everything.
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THE ROOF
I animated the cameras using guidence from the storyboard and animated the motions of the metahuman with and without IK retargeting animations. I rendered 6 sequences and imported them in the Premiere Pro Project - The Void in order as shots. It took me 1 day to render and order the scene shots.
For animation, I worked with the same workflow I wrote about at the IK Retargeting and Rendering section above. I worked with the Live Link Animation, also, for the face motion. Also, I worked with posing and camera exposure adjustments for this. Adjusted the quality of the Movie Queue Renderer and it took me 9 hours to render everything.
FALLING INTO WATER
For falling into water, I used a ''falling into pool animation'' and constructed a scene inside the Ethereal forest where I put a plate with water texture material behing the positioned Metahuman, and put a plate with the window texture material form the Window scene. Then I positioned a camera and recorded a take with the animation. Also, I changed the texture of the body of the metahuman.
I animated the cameras using guidence from the storyboard and animated the motions of the metahuman with and without IK retargeting animations. I rendered 6 sequences and imported them in the Premiere Pro Project - The Void in order as shots. It took me 1 day to render and order the scene shots.
For animation, I worked with the same workflow I wrote about at the IK Retargeting and Rendering section above. I worked with the Live Link Animation, also, for the face motion. Also, I worked with posing and camera exposure adjustments for this. Adjusted the quality of the Movie Queue Renderer and it took me 1 hour to render everything.
THE ETHEREAL FOREST
I imported both the light and the dark version of Helena. I worked with positioning and IK Retarget animation recordings.
I animated the cameras using guidence from the storyboard and animated the motions of the metahuman with and without IK retargeting animations. I rendered 6 sequences and imported them in the Premiere Pro Project - The Void in order as shots. It took me 1 day to render and order the scene shots.
For animation, I worked with the same workflow I wrote about at the IK Retargeting and Rendering section above. I worked with the Live Link Animation, also, for the face motion. Also, I worked with posing and camera exposure adjustments for this. Adjusted the quality of the Movie Queue Renderer and it took me 10 hourS to render everything.
THE MIRROR ROOM
I animated the cameras using guidence from the storyboard and animated the motions of the metahuman with and without IK retargeting animations. I rendered 6 sequences and imported them in the Premiere Pro Project - The Void in order as shots. It took me 1 day to render and order the scene shots. I had a lot of work with the Live Link Face Animation.
For animation, I worked with the same workflow I wrote about at the IK Retargeting and Rendering section above. I worked with the Live Link Animation, also, for the face motion. Also, I worked with posing and camera exposure adjustments for this. Adjusted the quality of the Movie Queue Renderer and it took me 3 hourS to render everything.
THE WHITE ROOM
I animated the cameras using guidence from the storyboard and animated the motions of the metahuman with and without IK retargeting animations. I rendered 6 sequences and imported them in the Premiere Pro Project - The Void in order as shots. It took me 1 day to render and order the scene shots.
For animation, I worked with the same workflow I wrote about at the IK Retargeting and Rendering section above. I worked with the Live Link Animation, also, for the face motion. Also, I worked with posing and camera exposure adjustments for this. Adjusted the quality of the Movie Queue Renderer and it took me 5 hours to render everything.
THE MEMORIES FIELD
The first thing I did was working in MD with the dress simulation and create the dress in a position that I want to see it when I put it in my Metahuman. I exported the mesh and worked on posing and adjustment of clothing.
I animated the cameras using guidence from the storyboard and animated the motions of the metahuman with and without IK retargeting animations. I rendered 6 sequences and imported them in the Premiere Pro Project - The Void in order as shots. It took me 1 day to render and order the scene shots.
For animation, I worked with the same workflow I wrote about at the IK Retargeting and Rendering section above. I worked with the Live Link Animation, also, for the face motion. Also, I worked with posing and camera exposure adjustments for this. Adjusted the quality of the Movie Queue Renderer and it took me 5 hours to render everything.
MIXAMO ANIMATIONS
The animations that I used from mixamo are crawling, walking, running, falling, falling in pool, standing up, idle pose, opening door and sitting on a chair.
The download was standard and it was part of the IK Retargeting process.
THE VOID
In the final environment - The Void, I worked on the character posing and overall scene setting up. I put the blood on the flor - it is a textureasset from Quixel Bridge. I used assets from the Megascans library - the Roman Statues and I only changed their textures, added lighting, ordered them to look like the way I want it. I exported the body of the metahuman and deleted it's roots and connected the mesh in Blender, exported it, put it in the UE5 scene and changed the texture to Silver Steel. The final thing I did was to put the crown.
I animated the cameras using guidance from the storyboard and animated the motions of the metahuman with and without IK retargeting animations. I rendered 6 sequences and imported them in the Premiere Pro Project - The Void in order as shots. It took me 1 day to render and order the scene shots.
For animation, I worked with the same workflow I wrote about at the IK Retargeting and Rendering section above. I worked with the Live Link Animation, also, for the face motion. Also, I worked with posing and camera exposure adjustments for this. Adjusted the quality of the Movie Queue Renderer and it took me 8 hours to render everything.
music / sound / dialogue
RECORDING A VOICE OVER
SOUND DESIGN
MUSIC ARTISTS
As I mentioned in the Pre-Production, the style of the animation is different and a bit dramatic, so I reached out to one of my favourite artists to ask them about permission to use their work. So,
ARTIST 1 / Skeler.
Skeler.'s social media
YouTube
Spotify
Twitter
SoundCloud
Chosen song: Arcadia
ARTIST 2 / NVRLUV
NVRLUV's social media
YouTube
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
Bandcamp
Chosen song: In Txuch
DIALOGUE AND VOICE OVER
Renee Boissier is the voice over behind the main character. Cristopher Bailey is the main Sound Designer behind the whole film.
How I found them is a good question. My course leader - Jay Shin gathered my whole class to meet with music and acting students and to present them our projects. The goal was to find 2 people to collaborate with about 'The Void'.
I spoke with Renee and 5 other voice actresses and after meeting I sent them all emails with description, including a Dialogue Brief Document and an Audio Document including the whole information about the project. I asked intentionally from each of the actresses to record some basic audio voice overring part of the dialogue in their own way.
At the end, Renee was the most passionate one, I really loved her voice, how professional she is in her work, the control of her voice and the overall charisma she has. She was positive to collaborate with me and we arranged couple of meetings online and talked about for an hour, going through detailed explanation about the character and each line of the dialogue including the scenes, what is the character's persona etc.
I created couple of documents for Renee and the Sound Designer because we booked a slot in one of the basement studios B3 in the University of West London, St. Marry's Campus and went there on 1st of June to record the whole Dialogue for the film and the trailer. Also, we worked on a couple of additional sounds such as different types of breathing and anxiety expression. Renee is a real professional because we were done for 2 hours, we almost record everything at once and all the 3 of us were very happy with the results!
Audio and Dialogue Brief Document
Helena - Dialogue Breakdown Document
We also used the Storyboard Document, the Script document and I Printed several times each document including highlighting each different component in different colour, because I wanted to make sure both Cris and Renee are understanding everything and I was with them to guide them the whole time.
Images from the day
SOUND DESIGN
For the sound design, I am working with Cris Bailey, a second year music student who is very passionate and professional in his workflow, he can be trustworthy and I am very happy that we can collaborate. We spoke on the gathering event and he was very impressed by my work, and I was very happy that someone can understand me and my vision. He also was positive for collaboration and we straight away started.
We are currently meeting regularly online and always share progress in our work, I had a couple of meetings where we talked about the overall sound design in each scene, what mood to create and how the sound can be put in order to be perfect for each shot. It has been very easy to work with Cris because he knows exactly what I need and I am always there to guide him and we can really talk deep about our work and understand each other.
He created a whole sound library for the film and both me and him worked on the whole sound editing and implementing to the footage. We met at the University Campus and both worked on the film.
We put the foliage sounds first, sounds like the nature, machinery, footsteps, etc. Then, Cris cut down the whole dialogue and we put the whole dialogue inside the film. I created an excel document sheet about the Timing and each dialogue line, this helped me and Cris to be more oriented and fast with our work.
Dialogue Timing Document
POST-PRODUCTION
VIDEO COMPOSING
EDITING / COLOUR / FINAL EXPORT
SOUND DESIGN
ROUGH EDIT
What is the purpose of creating a video composition? First of all, the first composition is the storyboard, of course. After I was done rendering everything which took me 8 days in total, I needed to set up and put all the shots needed for creating the film. So, my technique was that I used the Storyboard as guidance and started going through all of the shots without looking at which shot in which the environmental project was.
After each rendered shot, I was importing in a separate folder each of the shots and ordered them in a way where I will easily access them and created my source tree.
Each shot was imported in Adobe Premiere Pro which I used for the whole composition and put it in the right place as it is in the Storyboard.
CUT EDIT
This type of edit is when you go through all the shots and start cutting off all the material that you do not like and start placing in the slider the material you only like. This is what I did, after finishing with all the shots imported, I started cutting and placing only the material I liked. FOr example, if I had a shot with the timing of 15 seconds, I can delete 10 of them and keep the best 5 seconds of it. Yes, it is very tough as sometimes, I was deleting entire shots that worked rendering like 2 hours.
TIMING EDIT
This part was really tough for me, the timing is something that I honestly struggle with because I like things to move either too fast or too slow, so it took me 4 hours to work only on the timing. What I did with the timing was that I was reordering scene shots, working with speed and duration, and rerendering the adjusted material later. This can be tricky as sometimes you can slow down a shot and it can start acting not natural and smooth. That is why I wanted to make sure I am doing the right thing and taking my time.
FINAL EDIT WITH TRANSITIONS
The final editing was when I put all of the video transitions and effects. People expect to put a lot of different transitions between shots but honestly, the less the better. That is why I mainly used film dissolve, fade in and out to black and whiand te, zoom and in, out. I wanted the story to be followed, not the viewer to be able to see cool transitioning and no content inside the shots. It took me 3 hours.
FINAL COLOUR EDIT
The final colour edit was interesting because it is the same as working on the colour correction of a photo in Photoshop, but the difference was I had more than 100 shots to work on. It took some time but this was one of the smooth parts of the film. It took me 2 hours and I worked on curves, exposure, contrast, colour, etc.
FILM EXPORT
The export I did in Adobe Media Encoder in 2k resolution.
WARNING IMAGE
Before the begining of the film, I created a Warning image about Photosensitivity because I know there might be people who are not going to be able to look at the film or have very sensitive eyes, condition, or don't want to risk. I consider the safety first! It is more important than a footage!
THE PROCESS
SOUND AND DESIGN
The SFX, Foley and Sound Design are done entirely by Christoper Bailey, the music student from the University of West London I am collaborating with. He has done the whole Sound Design for the film and the trailer.
Cristopher and I worked numerous hours a week to create the sound part of the void. He created a whole library of sound and SFX for the film, worked with the tracks from the Music artists I connected with and he did everything fast, efficient and professional.
After we spoke for the first time and he was positive about collaborating with me, we used to call each week to see at which stage I am and what tasks to give him while I was working on the visuals. I sent him all of the documents needed - Audio Brief Document, Script, Storyboard, Dialogue Breakdown. I tried to organise my work as much as I can, and to be able to give him all of the information needed to start.
During the last week of the project, we used to call and talk every day and everyone was doing their job perfectly! He was huge support for me, a great person, and very professional and I am glad he is part of this project!
CHRISTOPHER BAILEY's social media
LinkedIn - Christopher Bailey
Instagram
Facebook
the void
TRAILER
THE TRAILER / INFORMATION
The trailer of the film production was one of the key features for my Final Major project and my Video Showreel. I created something completely different than the original film as I wanted to give a room for thought after each viewer watched it. The main goal is to be intense, smooth and simple.
DOCUMENTATION
The documentation for the trailer is only a written document containing information about the mini script of the trailer, dialogue and to give overall conclusion how it is supposed to look like.
The document:
RENDERING SHOTS
As I wanted the shots to be different, I worked with Unreal Engine 5 and rendered a couple of shots and placed them in a folder called ''Trailer Video Material''.
VIDEO EDITING
The video editing went nice and smoothly, I worked with the timing, video and text transitions, video cut and colour edit.
SOUND AND MUSIC
The SFX and Sound Design are done by Christopher Bailey and the dialogue is acted by Renee Boissier.
The processof creating
FINAL TRAILER VIDEO
the void
FINAL CREDITS
THE FINAL CREDITS
The final credids were done with the help of Endcrawl - Perfect Credits for Film and TV.
Link to Endcrawl: HERE
The website gives you a lot for it's free features. You are having a sheet where you can add things in sections to your end credits. You schedule a Zoom meeting with a person who gives you a full overview of Endcrawl and answers your questions. There is also support system where you can contact people with questions. The site is amazing and I was able to create my credits very fast and easy.
All the information for my credits I had from my Project Plan and all the documents with positions inside of them. Also, I did research about the construction of the credits.
Final Credits Video
the void
SHOWREEL
THE SHOWREEL / INFORMATION
The Show Reel is nearly 10 minutes long because of all of the done work that I wanted to show. I have explained each part behind the film, what was the technique, introduction and introduction to the whole film production. What I did with the Show Reel was that I put all of the information and video material from the actual film, concept design, story and storyboard, project plan, main character 3D visualisation, Environmental 3D Visualisation, Renders, Pre-Production Video Material and recorded my voice.
DOCUMENTATION
Regarding the document, I created a Script Document from which I supported my voice-over.
The document:
RENDERING SHOTS
As I wanted the shots to be different, I worked with Unreal Engine 5 and rendered a couple of shots and placed them in the project.
VIDEO EDITING
The video editing was, as usual, I worked with the timing, video and text transitions, video cut and colour edit, image scale and visual media such as text and transitions. It took me 7 hours to edit the whole Video Show-Reel.
SOUND AND MUSIC
I recorded my voice and put on royalty-free music.
The music tracks:
The process of creating
FINAL SHOWREEL VIDEO
the void
OFFICIAL POSTERS
THE VOID
SHORT ANIMATION FILM
RELEASE
THE FILM
REFERENCE LIST
CREATED BY
NIKOL MANOLOVA
SPECIAL THANKS
BY
NIKOL MANOLOVA
ALL I WANT TO SAY IS 'THANK YOU!
It has been 3 months and in these 3 months I showed myself that I can be who I want to be, that I can be organised, I can be creative under high pressure, and I can collaborate with the right people and pursue what is meant for me.
The Void is a film that is very personal to me, it is a piece for each human being that ever felt trapped inside themselves, each person that is struggling with themselves, and each person that ever felt that their freedom has been taken away. I wanted to share a very personal message with everyone who watched the film it can be interpreted in a lot of ways but there is only one thing, I hope you WAKE UP after you watch it.
I would like to thank my previous and present course leaders - Jay Shin and Lee Montgomery.
Special thanks to all my teachers - Andrew Crystall / Nathan Fowles / Angus Luscombe / Syed Assad Bokhari / Ryan Callard / Ben Dunning.
Special thanks to the Sound Designer - Christopher Bailey - Innawaves.
Special Thanks to the voice actress - Renee Boissier.
I hope you enjoyed my journey, my research, my emotions, my mind and my level of creativity!
With Kind Regards,
Nikol Manolova
THE VOID
ARTBOOK
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