In this week, we finally had our first team meeting to received a detailed brief of the project and to agree which sequence are we going to focus on.
We all met through Teams to start discussing this project.
The project is based in a post global warming VR experience where the user walks through a dystopian London environment.
The viewer starts in a landing craft from where they get out with a protective suit, as the environment is surrounded by a dense mist (it could be due to the increase of CO2 caused by an excess of noxious gases produced by humans over the years). In this part we are thinking to add a projection of what happened reflected in the visor of the viewer’s helmet.
The viewer can interact with objects found in their way that would trigger some flashes of past memories from the same place. It should show vague suggestions of what happened but never give the full information.
It could also be shown the story of a mother that has decided to euthanise her child to then kill herself since they could not get into the spaceship that is taking the most fortunate humans to leave the already destroyed planet Earth. Also, it can be shown a father that is trying to stop the mother to kill the child as he does not agree with this measure. These stories can be triggered when the viewer suddenly finds the ghosts of these persons crossing their way. These flashes of ghostly images should be more like blurry and unfocused images (ghosts from the past) mixed with sounds and effects to add to the experience. The viewer could hear the voice of the ghosts from the moment they get out of the craft until they find their dead bodies inside a building (the voices could guide the viewer through the environment).
The aesthetic of the scenery would be like the Eastern European buildings that are collapsed or unfinished, with some brutalist (naked concrete) look.
The lecturers made a Miro board so we can keep every update there and have a place where we can all share our thoughts and progress.
Some aesthetic materials the professors recommended were Alien, were they have some static interference that can be taken as example for the glitches that happen in between memories.
(add example images)
Also Blade Runner 2049 arid and apocalyptic scenography mixed with Solaris & Stalker decade Soviet Union mood can be a notion of how the environment could look like.
An aesthetic that I also found interesting and inspiring is the one found in Alien Covenant. I found the following video showing the CGI and VFX breakdowns of the different sequences created by MPC.
We also decided to focus only in one section of the story as time wise it is impossible to get the whole experience done. This scene we are going to focus on will be like a beta version of the experience and not a finished piece. After another meeting separately with the MA members only, we decided that the part of the story we want to focus on would be the end scene as it would take place inside a building so it would be easier to model than the whole outside London scenery. Also, we found interesting the interaction of the user with objects found around in the building until they discover the dead bodies in the final room.
References
Framestore (2023). Blade Runner 2049: Art Department (online). Available at: https://www.framestore.com/work/blade-runner-2049-art-department?language=en [Accessed 4 February 2023]
Godwin, K. G. (2017). Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979): Criterion Blu-ray review (online). Available at: https://www.cageyfilms.com/2017/07/andrei-tarkovskys-stalker-1979-criterion-blu-ray-review/ [Accessed 4 February 2023]
TheCGBros (2017). CGI & VFX Breakdowns: “Alien Covenant” – by MPC (Online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv5FyBK_u5Q. [Accessed 4 February 2023]