top of page
HEART BEATS
All Aspects except Animation
This is our thesis short film, created by a team of three over our last year at sva Computer Arts.
It tells about the story of a boy grows up to become a so called successful adult but left his drummer dream behind. If one day, an accidental sound hits his cooled and numb spirit. Will it reignite the spark and the beats in his heart.
​
I am responsible for : Production magement, Director, Storyboard, Concept Design, Character modeling, Set modeling, Lookdev, Lighting and Compositing in this film.
Though how challenging this project is, as we had lots of hair and cloth simulations throughout this film. And the industrial production pipeline demands a well-organized file structure manage and iterate effectively.
We worked together as a team, taking so many detours we should never have taken, tackling so many issues we have never met before.
Finally bring this come to life. The growth and supports from each other throughout the process makes our story shine through.
With a little working experience I had, I build up our friendly pipeline to ensure a smooth collaberation! We can talk about this later if you are interested. But right now lets jump right in!
BREAKDOWN OF THE SHOT
1.0 INSPIRATIONS
In terms of lighting, we each responsible for a portion of the shots. And I'd love to share my creative process of How I managed to bringing them to life
We tell this story by building contrast!
Color serves as our main visual language, helping to highlight the contrast between two different stages of the boy's life.
For the kid's room, we used a special American retro color scheme that makes the space feel bright, soft, energetic, and vibrant.
As he grows up, the adult's room becomes relatively monotonous and dull, evoking a more conventional and ordinary atmosphere overall.
2.0 LAYOUT
These shots may only last a few seconds, but as the opening, they need to subtly convey and emphasize the character's passion to music. Pave the way for the story to unfold. So his desk is filled with various cassette tapes, musical instruments, and his favorite Walkman.
3.0 SHADING
Then I did all the shading of the props in this scene. Because the props in this shot only appear once, I decided to surface them with careful consideration of the camera angle and lighting.
It's worth mentioning that all our artistic choices should revolve around the story. so based on the color theme, I designed the color palette for all these items.
Pick up your favorite one!
I finally chose to use purple to make our yellow hero prop -- the walkman really pops up. because they are complementary colors
For the paper below, I chose an off-white color because it feels better under the sunshine.
Some of the shading might not look perfect, but I did my best with the very limited time I had.
Desk Shading
Desk Shading
Desk Shading
1/2
Stickers are designed by my dearest friend Xiyin Wang
I am amused by how much attention I paid to those details but we will see nothing in the real shot
4.0 LIGHTING
After this very very long journey, Finally landed on my planet!!!
Every story begins in a hopeful and energitic morning. So does ours.
Everytime I start lighting a shot. I will first immerse myself into the story's scenario. To think about
What kind of environment I wanna build?
What kind of feeling I wanna bring to audiences?
Is there any deeper informantion I wanna reveal?
For this one here, I want to first infuse it with a sense of vitality and energy. While at the mean time feeling kind of romantice and dreamlike. Because what you love and passionate about looks always enchanting and dreamy in your memory right?
And all those stuff on the desk, are all about music, all about this boy's passion and eagerness. They are his beautiful dream.
So it would have a strong directional light, Strong bouncing, warm ish color, have quite obvious glow
I simply found some rough reference to quckily flesh out this feeling in my head
Since it was a morning setup, the sunlight streaming through the window served as the main light source. Key light in this case typically carries most of the information, so as a Lighting Artist, I paid a lot attention to it.
Those gobo I used were from Greyscalegorilla, they have so many interesting gobo images! check it out!
There is a more detailed lighting breakdown of this shot. it's very important note that:
I only have 4 hours to lit up this shot.
While I can still see plenty of room for improvement, I tried my best at the time! :]
Key SunLight
The sunshine coming through the window. Help to establish the visual contrast, build our focus and to devide the composition.
Env RimLight
The overall environment lighting from the left space.Helped to shape the silhouette of hand, intensify the shading behavior.
Floor BounceLight
Warm bouncing light from ground
Key SunLight
The sunshine coming through the window. Help to establish the visual contrast, build our focus and to devide the composition.
1/8
5.0 COMPOSITING
When time is very limited, I will place all the lighting path I want quickly but also thoughtfully.
Rather than focusing on fine-tuning value groups or achieving perfect light balance in the first stages, I prefer to move swiftly into Nuke for final adjustments.
Render output directly from Maya
After down some adjustment in Nuke
Just some pretty basic LPEs and AOVs adjustment!
6.0 END RESULT
After adding some depth and lens effects, and here is the final look!
7.0 IMPLEMENT LIGHTING RIGS TO OTHER SHOT
I am also responsible for another consecutive shot, and they definely can share one lighting rig! So I get rid of the gobo becuase I don't wanna those places to have detailed contrast to draw audiences eyes.
Finally!! With collective effort. We bring it to you!
From this
To This!
Thank you so much for your patience reading here!! I know it's not perfect, I will be so happy to hear any of your feedback on this :]
bottom of page