Immersive Theater Short Films
Refreshed films showcasing the people and projects of NCMNS
Role
Sr. Motion Designer
TOOLS
After Effects, Premiere Pro, Audition, Blender, Substance Painter, Mocha Pro
SKILLS
2D Animation, Concept Development, Creative Direction, 3D Modeling & Texturing, Compositing, Editing, Archival Media Integration
Relative Scale worked with a team of employees from NCMNS from concept discovery to final production to develop 4 narrative short films to run in the Daily Planet Theater, a three-story concave immersive theater open to the public. These short films would be centered around the idea of “Research Happens Here,” highlighting the variety of work facilitated by the museum and the people behind the work. These films would interspersed in a cycle of preexisting ambient films that play during the museum’s open hours.
Focus Areas
Through brainstorming sessions with the NCMNS team, the four themes were identified as Collections, Community, Animal Care, and Field Work, with each film featuring audio interviews and original footage with two NCMNS subject matter experts. Once the concept was solidified, I worked with Relative Scale’s Executive Producer on creative production until final installation, including script development, conducting interviews, visual development, original production, post-production, and video and audio mastering for 5.1 surround.
Pictured below are (Left) 3D animation and compositing scenes for the films (Center) Intro animation for the films (Right) NCMNS Staff original production video portraits.
Animation Challenges
Production techniques included designing systems for data presentation, AE’s GLB import feature to track 2D animated location pins to a rotating Earth model, particle simulations, expressions linking high volumes of shape layer properties to slider controls, and multiple instances of 2.5D animation for rotation and parallax effects.
This project required considerations for viewing from three floors, accessible type sizes, a concave trapezoidal projection area, and speed of visuals to reduce motion sickness. Pre-production test videos for scale, position, speed, distortion, and text size were viewed on-site.
Advanced 3D Tracking
A pre-rendered 3D scan of NCMNS’ Prairie Ridge campus was provided to the Relative Scale team to implement in the Community film. Since we did not have the base project file, I used the Mocha Pro plugin to track the 3D camera. Then, I had enough data to composite the location pin and surrounding cubes which represent developing land surrounding the nature preserve.
To streamline my workflow and allow me to animate the cubes in 3D space, I built an editable cube rig with expressions which gave me control over height, width, depth, and later, color. I was then able to duplicate the cubes and animate them individually while they were tracked to the original layer’s 3D camera data generated with Mocha Pro.
Moodboard & Storyboards
Behind the Scenes
MEDIA DEVELOPER
Relative Scale