cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Sarah Barrick - Launch Pad - Week 2: The Lincoln Experience

SBarrick
Expert Protege

Week 2 Updates (or, OMGHOWAMIGOINGTODOTHISBYAUGUST?!)


Let me start by saying that this is my third time writing this post, as the "Save Draft" feature doesn't appear to actually save a draft anywhere. 😞 I originally outlined in extreme detail the process I developed to determine the amount of actual time I had to work on this project between the day after Bootcamp and the day the application period opens in August (Spoiler Alert: It's only 18!) Essentially, I did a bunch of simple math to figure out the total number of hours for the duration of Phase II and subtracted my average work week (including commute time) and sleep. When it was all said and done it turned out to be ~2.5 weeks.

Yikes! Okay, I can totally do this... right?

After that, I set about creating a schedule to help me track my time and my progress as simply and efficiently as possible. Knowing how little time I'll have, I knew that any time I had to spend on The Lincoln Experience (henceforth referred to as TLE, for brevity) really needed to be productive. (While I wish I could work on this project full-time, I really love having health insurance and enough money to keep the lights on.) Luckily, though...

Organization IS My Bag, Baby!

In my professional life I am a Creative Producer and Project Manager, which means that I am very familiar with scheduling and tracking tasks and their deliverables. For TLE, I setup a bullet journal to keep daily logs of my tasks and productivity (see below.) I added a little icon for me to fill in every day asking "Did You Oculus Today?" - I also fill in the next day's tasks the night before based on what I completed that day. I created a little Pomodoro Calendar as well, to help me identify productive tasks when I have fifteen minutes of "downtime".

1nvv465rv5w2.png8syq9jc8rjzl.png

The trackers still look fairly empty because I just got the first few log pages setup on Monday, so as Phase II progresses you'll see the pages get fuller with every week that passes.

Now that I have the tracking part down, I was ready to take a deeper dive into the pre-viz portion of TLE. I think, like many of you guys, the first steps of our passion projects are always the most intimidating - "where do I start?" is a phrase that would drive any creative mad!

"Start with the things that you know, and the things that are unknown will be revealed to you."

- Rembrandt


Taking some advice from an old master, I decided to start with the one piece of the project that I felt had the least amount of obscurity around it: Lincoln's speech, the Gettysburg Address. This is the only piece of the project that I don't have to define, because it's already been written. And not only that, it's the crux of the experience, and so must be as true to the original as possible. I printed out a copy of the speech I found online, and listened to every audio recording of the speech I could find (not sure if this bears noting, but Lincoln's speech was not recorded - in fact, the Gettysburg addressed happened several years before we had developed the technology to even capture sound!) - I picked a few that I thought had the best speech pattern, and marked up the speech print out to indicate the areas where there are pauses or emphasis (see attached). I then went through and marked down the time stamps when these moments happened so that I could later determine my total frame count and keyframes (more to come on this!)

I have always had an interest in history, and happened to have picked up this lovely,
and extremely well-written book about Abraham Lincoln's life:

                                                                              3jki65ek9zke.png

I read through the section about the Gettysburg Address to cross-check the areas of inflection I had marked up on my print out, based on what the author reasoned were the arguments Lincoln felt most passionate about in his speech. Luckily, when spoken, this speech is only about 2 minutes long - not a lot to read and review, but a lot longer than you think when it comes to....


Animation!

In the spirit of starting with the things that I know, I recalled my experiences in college animating and studying animation. I found a free dope sheet online (a dope sheet, or x-sheet, is a sheet an animator uses to write down the dialogue, action and beats of a scene, along with any other information necessary for shooting.) On it, I wrote down the key scenes (determined by the pauses in the speech), then calculated the total number of frames needed just to animate speech (for just over 2 minutes of speech, animated on 2's at 24 FPS, that totals 3432 frames - enough frames to keep a really talented animator busy for 2-3 months!) Then I went in and marked the frame numbers where these starts and stops would occur. (See both dope sheets attached.)
 
I then made a second pass at the dope sheet where I broke the speech into three major sections based on lengths of breaks in the dialogue to cut it down into easily digestible working chunks for me to focus on. I also included on the dope sheet some camera effects I wanted to include.

Based on the time I spent on the first two passes on the dope sheets, I discovered that I need to make my own modified version of the sheet to compress the number of frames contained on one sheet so that I can see more of the speech on one page.

After the dope sheets, I printed out a few storyboard templates so that I could start nailing down the keyframes needed for the animation. Having finished the speech analysis and the dope sheets, most of the legwork was already done! Based on the areas of pause and inflection I indicated on my script, I was able to easily determine which scenes needed special attention through the use of...

Storyboards and Color Scripts

I identified about 30 key moments in the speech on the storyboard template (see attached.) I have not completed the first pass at the storyboard sketches, but I did indicate the phrases from the speech under each panel, so the drawing portion has a direction before I even begin. Once I have the first pass of storyboards completed, I'll pull a couple out to create color scripts to define the mood, lighting and tone of the scenes.

While working on the storyboards for the speech, I started thinking about how I wanted the player menu to look as well. TLE is ultimately meant to be just one historical event in what will be a "gallery" of options: historical events that a user can experience first-person through VR. A time machine of sorts! I started another storyboard sheet just for some Player Menu ideas I had that I wanted to sketch out and explore a little more. (See attached.) Based on some of the information we learned at the Bootcamp, I knew that I would want to utilize teleportation movement through a 3D menu environment, to help immediately immerse the viewer ahead of whichever experience they choose to have. I am still playing around with immersive player menu options, but will probably not return to it until I've spent some more time developing the storyboards for the main scene. All of this week's work leads me to...

Week 3: Next Steps

Over the next week I plan to further my viz-dev work. I will focus on completing a first pass for the 30 storyboards (keyframes) I identified, as well as taking a deeper dive into the color scripts. I will do some more research on the Gettysburg, VA cemetery and use historical descriptions cross-checked with photo reference to create a recognizable representation of the location and place in time. My stretch goal for the week is to begin building my Abraham Lincoln model in Blender (gonna need some prayers to get this one done!)
5 REPLIES 5

aleemhossain
Expert Protege
I continue to be excited by your project. Finding the right actor to read Lincoln's words will be a fun challenge - kind of a weighty decision. It occurs to me that ss you expand the number of historical experiences, you will eventually be able to include major events where we have the actual audio of a famous speech, etc. (assuming the right are in the public domain or acquirable). At that point, you'll have to consider how/when to inform users about recreations vs actual recordings.

SBarrick
Expert Protege
Smart thought, Aleem! I didn't consider recreations vs. recordings when actual audio is available, depending on the time period. Quality of the recording (and attainability) will be huge factors, no doubt! Wish I had the funds now to get a celebrity voice behind Lincoln! 🙂

SBarrick
Expert Protege
One other challenge I forgot to address was taking into account that, in VR, we no longer get to define the user's frame. In order to focus the user's attention during the experience (though they can freely look around in all 360 degrees if they so chose), I want to "dim" the areas on either side of the user's peripheral vision while turned towards Lincoln to minimize distraction. I also plan to leave some lead up time for the user to look around the environment BEFORE the speech starts so they can check things out ahead time and assuage their curiosity. Inflection and tone during the speech, along with high and low lighting cues, will be my main sources of encouraging the user to create their own "frame", exactly where I want them to be looking. 🙂

Anyone else have thoughts on "framing" areas for the user inside a 3D environment without physically locking the rotation?

Lupac
Protege
You could put together a dream list of actors (famous ones) to do Lincoln's voice and approach their agencies-you can find info about representation on IMDBpro (they have a free trial). It never hurts to ask, and you might just get someone well known.

SBarrick
Expert Protege
Awesome, I didnt know that. Thanks for the tip, Lupac! 🙂