Still very new to the design workflow, my second semester at Ravensbourne threw me into a collaborative project with my co-students on the MA Moving Image course. The team comprised of one highly skilled and good friend of mine, Sang Woo Lee, who led the main creative direction, as I took on the role of producer and assisting 3D artist and animator. We furthermore had the help of Louisa P who took charge on motion capture and the initial ideation process. We were also joined by three co-students who did the same course one year before us. Their roles consisted of lending their expertise in areas like lighting (Enrique Muñoz), camera setup (Adam Bloomer) and general production management (Simona Knuchel). Enrique Muñoz even went as far as providing an actor, Karim Jabri, who did a splendid job working with our first-time Director of Photography, Sang Woo Lee.

The project brief set out the task of utilising motion capture for a Moving Image product surrounding the theme of 'Intimacy'. We decided that romance was too obvious and unoriginal for this brief and instead went the "dark" route and started discussing mental illness, nightmares, abstract dark art and the like. We came up with the idea of a man closed off from the surrounding world, alone and isolated. 

To better explain, the final product can be found below:

The final outcome was received with mixed feedback, applauded for the level of visual effects applied with only a 5-week deadline to work with and no resources provided outside of the technical equipment. Negative feedback looked at the title 'Claustrophobia' as a missed opportunity for letting the audience fantasise about what exactly was going on in the film, being abstract and all. The title was a difficult decision in the first place, and we definitely agreed with this critique that the story could just as well have been about something completely different from claustrophobia - it was a lesson in allowing some room for the audience to interpret on their own. 

As for character development, Sang Woo Lee went into great detail drawing storyboards and conferring with Karim Jabri to explore this sense of a person who does not recognise themselves in the mirror, playing on abstract and nightmarish elements and trying to escape that fake reality. Unfortunately for the character, he was not capable of surviving on the other side, having thought hard to escape his condition. Furthermore, we were told that parts of the narrative seemed confusing because it all went very fast - it should be noted, though, that we were constrained to only 1 minute of video, and as such we had to make sacrifices to emphasise the bits of the film that used 3D and heavy post-production, as these seemed more impressive and engaging. This meant that the final video spent much too long showcasing the many forms that the character was transformed into before his death. It is a shame, really, because our previous cut spent much more time developing the character's illness and kept his final battle short but illustrative.

The project was definitely educational in this regard that we developed a challenging project which ended up taking so much time in the post-process that we lost track of our priorities, such as choosing proper background music (I was not happy with the final track) and reviewing the composition in general, spotting things like how the final battle is dragged out too much. I took the feedback with me when I developed my solo project on Bang & Olufsen, which went a lot better because of what I learned.