- Dec 12, 2007 5:54pm
CrowdReel
I have another project that I've been thinking about with my spare cycles for sometime...
The idea is a movie making website and software solution that allows people to produce a fully state of the art 3D movie in days, and maybe eventually, a few hours, one after the other. The solution could be sold, or produced as a service, with various revenue options available to us.
Allow me to elaborate on exactly how such a feat could possible:
We would have a site with plot outlines, followed by voting on them (in a matter of seconds). The plots goes through several iterations, probably by different people, seconds later they are voted on too. after all that they have character profiles and they develop profiles for the environments and social settings, all being rapidly voted on, still in a text stage.
THEN we go to a scene by scene development stage, pictures of the characters made from the character profiles, and pictures of scenes too, voted on, put together from samples of face shapes, eyes, freeform drawing etc. Libraries of objects: man made (cars, computers, food etc) and natural stuff can be used to make them really quickly, but these are just for a quick sketching process for the scenes (Think of it like this: newspapers just have headlines and a photo, but the news story is elaborated on in small print, this is like what we start with at the begging of this stage).
After they are voted on, we're left with a set of scenes for an entire storyboard, a script can be written for a few sample scenes, the
sample scenes can be taken as guides for other writers to fill in the full script for each scene. They get voted on, if they suck, they get rewritten again.
After this process we have a rough idea of scene layout as well as exact scripts for it to be worked to. In a similar way to how Red vs. Blue is animated, we have rough movements for characters fleshed out a little more, using libraries of 3D characters, these can be assigned to many individuals at the same time, for each scene. They can be tested to see if they fit to the character profiles, movement profiles and script.
In this stage voice acting could be tried out by lots of different people, with samples of readings from the script read out by them.
Through this stage, a voice actor for each character is found and as the rest of the movie is being fleshed out, and refined with multiple iterations, they are providing the voice for the characters.
Using the character profiles,plot and scene outlines, 3D artists create 3D models from existing body parts and use them to flesh out exactly how each character looks. The 3D models are not dependent on the library objects, but are based on them. A branch of 3D models can be produced for key plot moments (different clothes, or a character gets cut through the movie etc). 2D software is used for applying textures to these 3D charterers, with incrementally higher detail as time goes on. (Again, shared libraries of these can be built up, greatly speeding up the process).
The characters body language is fleshed out to move detail based upon character profiles and the script in hand. To rapidly move these characters, a puppeteering approach can be used: Joysticks, Weemotes and specialist hardware (think: home made or purchased character skelington puppets from Phidgets), or just keyboard and mouse are used to rapidly flesh out the intricacies of movement.
Sound effects and music are added based on the script, along with the voice acting, in parallel with the rest of the development.
Consistency checkers are used throughout the process, watching random groups of scenes, to monitor the progress and raise issues with consistency throughout the process. If there is a continuity error, we want to know about it faster than George Lucas does at a Star Wars convention.
Flash provides sound input ability, 2D character and scene modeling, Shockwave provides 3D graphics modeling and interaction (as can flash too with a library for 3D rendering), but bridges could be built to open source software such as blender for the final stage of rendering.
Cameramen can navigate through the 3D models being produced throughout the process, working loosely to the direction of the storyboard. These are too, voted on, with character and scene profiles, maintaining the atmosphere of the movie.
This process continues with various iterations until the deadline is met or a majority decision is made that the movie is complete. During this iterative process, participants have the opportunity to watch the entire movie as it is made, with it getting better each time, and with alternate variations.
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