On this Spark page I got a challenge assignment

On this page you'll see my progress on the challenge 'Terminator: Dark Fate'. This project goes as followed; Research, W.i.ps/progress, starting to finish, end result.

I first had to listen to what the assignment included. This had of course a few requirements.

The assignment was as followed; Make from the trailer Terminator: Dark fate, a whole new genre trailer. This has to be in 60 seconds. You got from Adobe the original source of the trailer, motion graphic templates, stock audio and video files.

Original trailer:

Requirements:

• In the remake you put a clear, different, genre.
• The trailer has a length of 60 seconds.
• You'll animate the fonts yourself in Adobe After Effects.
• Fileformat: MP4 (H.264 1080p)
• Deadline: November 8th 2019, 17:15 (4 weeks, each week 4 hours.)

If you don't want to see my entire research, w.i.ps/proces etc. On this spark page I have all the end results from assignments from school and outside. With a quick explanation on the how, when, etc.

This spark page will go to another page with only my own projects and creations. With also a quick explanation on the how, when, etc.

Research

After we got our assignment, it was time to go behind the computer and look for research on the movie. My research included:

• Films
• Trailers
• Genre
• Music

For genre I got a top 3;

1. Mystery
2. Horror (Robot = monster)
3. Drama, war drama

Translation;

• Mystery - searching for the evil robot (you'll see him after the credits. Or not at all)
• Horror; monster / robot -- Robots kill the humans (mostly will need the skull clips of the trailer).
• Drama; Militairy / war drama -- There's war between human and robot (mostly need fighting scenes).

After the genre ideas, I started looking for different trailers with those three genres.

Drama

I started with the war drama. I liked this trailer (plus for how long it was). Unfortunately the 'old fashioned' was in the 1900s. and this is more set in 2020s.

After that, I found this trailer. I thought this one was pretty long and to my opinion rather boring. And once again, set in the 1900s.

Mystery

After those two trailers I got to the mystery genre. I thought this one was rather funny for mystery. You could see they didn't know who was the killer.

This one is also about mystery, his child and wife are in the hospital but they never get out / found. I also thought this was a pretty good Netflix trailer that I really thought; I'm going to watch this tonight! Here was everything very clearly unknown; the crash, mystery, questions/search. Who's responsible? The end is of course not revealed.

Horror

I'm sorry but I'm such a pussy that I would never in a billion years watch horror. So I also don't have any trailers to show.

Original footage

After the Youtube saga, I went back to the original footage. I made for each genre a small storyboard with what I definitely wanted in that trailer.

I did this on paper and it's basically an 'I would like this shot more in the middle, this voice when this shot plays'.

Below is a picture of the results.

The shots, better viewed above here.

The audio I'll definitely use for each genre.

What did I choose

I eventually choose mystery. This is because drama didn't have anything for the now time, only in the 1900s. I also would never watch horror so I couldn't really make an opinion out of that. So mystery was my only option.

w.i.ps / process

While walking to school I came across this one song called; Game of Survival from Ruelle. I was thinking, this could really fit in my mystery genre.

Here's the song if you want to listen to it.

I also had a good reference for my video. It helps me to understand where I can put an effect like an explosion and where not.

Here's the video;

So, on school I putted the storyboard together. And then the song. Cropped it in until I thought it'd fit perfectly.

... It didn't match or give any feelings or what so ever. So I wouldn't be using it in my final trailer.

Then I started looking on Youtube for another song. I quickly found this one:

Did once again put it on my video and it just fitted, perfectly.

But when I got to school, I found out they had a new trailer. I asked the teacher if we can use those too and he said sure, as long as the resolution is the same. This is the trailer I used too:

Something changed 🤔

I only had the feeling my mystery turned into an action genre. I hope that'd be fine too.

Storyboard

Now that I got my video, music and dialogue I made a small storyboard.

Typography

I still got an idea how I want my 'story' to be shown. However, I still need to make my own typography and animate that. For this I first went back to other peoples trailers with the same genre, to see how they made them.

For inspiration I went on Youtube and found this video;

In this video I mostly thought the trailer Bright was something I could use. In the beginning there's some explosions and bad guys etc, but then Will Smiths character wakes up. I can use the same technique in my montage.

While I got the idea, I still needed my fonts. On Dafont I found a nice font called BTX-EXCELCIUS. This will be mostly be for Titles and important texts. For in-between texts I found this font; USPF Liberty. And for the tiny texts I got the font Droid.

In my final montage the fonts I've used in the 'raw' storyboard will be replaced by the fonts I just downloaded.

In the photo above are my three fonts visible. They do fit with one another.

• Terminator = BTX-EXCELCIUS
• Dark Fate = USPF Liberty
• By = Droid

Now I got my fonts, all I need to do is transfer the scenes I want to animate into After Effects.

For my first text I didn't want to do the basic text on screen and POP done. I started looking through YouTube for inspiration and I found the next video / tutorial;

This tutorial told me, in a good phase, how to create motion trackers and how to put that into a null object. Now the only thing I missed was the mask. He said that's for another video (this was made last year, 2018, and I still haven't seen a video about it). Fortunately for me he's not the only one out there with tutorials. I found, to mask my text, this tutorial.

With this tutorial I got my text how I wanted, behind the bones and then gone. For the mask, as he explained it, I had to use the Pen tool. The pen tool was a great mask, down here is a small w.i.p on me using the mask on the word "Producer"

The video below is my final proces I did on this text. I think it looks great! It has all the elements, fits together like wine and cheese! This isn't rendered, it's simply a screen video.

Now that I have my very first text animated and already in Premiere, 'cuz it'll go directly back to my Premiere file. I got to make the other texts.

I'll try to make each text individually different. The next text I'll animate is the "From Tim Miller. Director of DEADPOOL".

The Deadpool part didn't work the way I wanted so I simply made it's opacity from 0% too 100%. The "from Tim Miller" I used another mask to create it, no motion tracker this time.

Here's how far I got with the video:

I showed the video above to a few fellow students and they all agreed on the same genre, it's Action / Sci - fi. I also asked them which trailer they'd like to watch the movie from more, mine or the original. They all said mine.

Also one of my fellow students said that because of this trailer, I might get a job in making trailers, because it looked so professional. And pretty cool to make him that excited to watch a movie, in 1 minute. I'd think that's a bit extreem that he'd think that after seeing one trailer. But hey, I can't see the future.

I only got 4 more hours left, and I'm not falling behind. That's really good, the only stuff that has to be included before my trailer comes to an end is I HAVE to add a few more scenes for the gaps where the texts used to be. I also have to make a few more animated texts through After Effects, I need to put the music a bit softer (with my headphones it sounds how it should but without them it doesn't) and I have to render it. In 4 hours sounds like a piece of cake!

Starting to finish

For the first text, Terminator Dark Fate, i wanted something with lights to show. For that I found this tutorial.

• It's basically a
• Solid
• The text
• Effects: Fast Blur, Radical Fast Blur and Color balance

The picture below is my own text, Dark Fate, almost ready with the effect. In After Effects.

I also got a picture from Premiere were the same composition is rendering, so it can work smoothly.

This is unfortunately the only thing I did as animation for today, because we had a shortened schedule for that day. Instead of 2 hours I had 1.30 hours. However I did manage to get a few more clips into the trailer since some will be replaced with my own animated titles.

Before the last and final day of working on the trailer was near. Adobe released its 2020 software.

We got 2 last hours to work on the project, and my video looks amazing and finished. All that's missing are the last two texts with my own animation.

But when I looked back at the assignment spark page I found this video,

The video used an effect called Gradient Ramp. This was exactly the same used in the official trailer. This made me a bit sad because I always thought big movie trailers used an almost unknown effect and now I know exactly which one it is. But anyway, I wanted to use the same effect on my texts. Which I did.

I don't have photo's or w.i.ps on me using those effects onto my texts, I only have my finished product.

However, on our last day of working on the assignment the teacher wanted to look at my trailer, which I happily showed him, since I'm very proud of the end results. He told me that two of the texts were too short, so he helped me with the "In theatre’s now etc". With that my video FINALLY turned into 00:01:00:00 exact! That was a win-win situation. But now, the moment we've all been waiting and I've worked on for 4 weeks, my final trailer!

Other stuff that can be important:

• I had 4 weeks for this project.
• The remake must have a clear genre.
• You make the remake 60 seconds long.
• Typography in the trailer is animated with Adobe After Effects CC (Dynamic Link) (you'll do it from your own).
• Format: MP4 (H.264 1080p)
• You can use the original files, but there'll also be a lot of other material that you can use in the trailer to put in a different sphere.

The assignment spark page (in Dutch):

https://spark.adobe.com/page/MKSPJp3scFJuu/

This spark page will be closed in the months September till the middle of October. This is because the students aren't allowed to see the next assignment. Around the third week of October it'll be opened. And it will stay open for the rest of the year.