Hypercinema - Week 5 & 6 (24-10-08)

Surviving After Effects via A Speculative Future

Do you want to live in a 5th floor walk up?
No? I thought so.
​What if your building provided an entertainment simulation so that you could experience more exciting environments other than the gloomy hallways and stair landings in NYC apartment buildings?
Welcome to your WALK UP JOURNEY ™

In this speculative future, you are provided the option to be transported to different worlds as you made your journey up to your apartment. This subscription services is paid for by building management companies to make their less desirable rental units more marketable. But of course, no technology is perfect, and often when not properly executed can be a little frustrating, borderline scary if you are not prepared.

This project was such a rollercoaster! So many error messages, so many hours spent tracking and 3D mapping. The images below are not from this particular project, because I did not think to document these nightmare-ish moments, but a quick google image search, and I can easily be reminded of the memories of camping out in the HyperLab.

I will say though, these error messages were the inspiration for us to fill in some blank spaces in our footage as a nod to our fellow After Effects survivors, and then we extended that sentiment to other error messages we've encountered throughout our ITP foundation courses. Can you spot those Easter eggs?  

Unfortunately, the fish eye (wide view) footage from the GoPro made it impossible to 3D track the environment, and rotobrushing every stair landing just simply did not make any sense. Solution? Using Runway for some of the simulation scenes. I found that the first pass was often the best one, and they get more and more obscure as you continue prompting for variations. 

Editing transitions and keyframing effects was probably my favorite aspect of this project. Watching the visual effects line up with the footage and sound effects synchronize with the action truly helps immerse the viewer into the story.