This blog post is about the progress, development, and results of a Collaboration Project between SCAD students and The Harbor Picture Company's mentors (https://harborpicturecompany.com/). Students were divided up into groups, and given a prompt of any luxury product with the option of doing a full CG project, or a project with CG and live action integration. Our team has decided on Chanel No. 5 Perfume, leaning more on CG with a live plate background. Our roles are as below: FX Crew: Eva Chan (https://evachannc.com/scad-harbor-picture) Wei Lou (https://www.weivfx.com/blog)
Lighting/Look Development Crew: Shannon Taylor - 3D/Lighting (https://shannongtaylor03.wixsite.com/shannon-taylor-tech/blog)
Jenson Dantes - Lighting/Look Dev (https://jdantescol.wixsite.com/dantesportfolio/sanm560harbor)
Alice Yeh - Compositing/Editing (You are currently on my blog!)
Team Members
This blog post will be updated with sections below. It will follow chronologically, with the most recent updates being at the top, and each update being divided by a line with dates.
1/13/25: Pitch (Beginning of Week 2)
After a week of brainstorming and idea development, we have a more constructed pitch. I began with creating a storyboard for the ideas we put together:
Storyboard Sketched By Me Part 1
Storyboard Sketched By Me Part 2
Here is also the scanned pdf of the cleaner version after I redrew it:
Shannon digitized and colored the storyboard, and I typed in our shot notes:
Storyboard by Shannon
Before I go into inspirations and references, I want to show our Previsualization video. I put it together with specific details in each corner:
-Top Left Corner: Shot Number and if it is Full CG or CG on Live
-Top Right Corner: Timecode, and Initials of people who are working on this shot particularly
-Bottom Left Corner: Inset of 3D Previs done by the team
-Bottom Right Corner: Inset of any references that we are following
Previsualization Video
Here are our visual reference boards:
Mood and Lighting Reference by Jenson
Asset and Shader Reference by Shannon
Here are some reference videos we are following for the visual aspect:
Ombre Nomade Fragrance: An Ode to Oud | LOUIS VUITTON
Myriad Perfume: Les Extraits Collection | LOUIS VUITTON
We are paying a lot of attention to color scheme and the materials (shaders) we are choosing to match the essence of the product. While the rest of the team was developing the visual aspect of the project, I narrowed down our purpose and elements for the Pitch.
PURPOSE:
To accentuate the freshness and naturalistic floral notes of the perfume, while emphasizing a luxurious feeling with setting and color.
ELEMENTS:
Sunset: emphasizes calming and relaxation
Flowers/Flower Petals: symbolizes the floral notes of the perfume
Water: represents the naturalistic scent and base ingredient of the perfume
Perfume Mist: Shows how well the scent spreads and produces a luxury feeling.
Visual of Idea Slide
Jenson did also do some background research on the product and brand, and what stuck out to me the most was:
Aimed to develop an elevated, luxurious fragrance revolutionizing existing basic single-flower perfumes– becoming the first of its kind
Uses internationally sourced exotic scents that unite as powerful, rich and feminine
Minimalist design distinguishes No.5 as sleek, elegant, and timeless
I felt that our story aligned with the background of the brand, and that we could continue developing the visuals. That is when I began designing our slide deck to match the essence of our project brand. I think our presentations will now match our product a lot better! The original slides were blank with just the text and images, the slide images I included on this update were designed by me, going for an overall, unified look that matched the brand and product.
Team Pictures and Cover Slide, Design Example
I also created a general pipeline timeline for each week for the team to follow:
Wednesday - Thursday: FX works on first pass, look dev works on shaders
Friday: First passes from FX to Look dev. Look dev passes back file with lighting + shaders onto first pass file, FX makes sure that everything looks correct with look dev
Saturday : FX applies look dev's work to final render file, Render
Saturday evening -> Sunday Morning : Final renders to comp
Besides putting the pitch together, there wasn't much else I could do but prep the team. I went ahead and planned out our shoots and equipment list. We decided that we are going to shoot the sunrise at Tybee Island this weekend (1/17-1/19), and the reshoot is planned for the following weekend (1/24-1/26).
Here is our projected schedule, I began putting our general pipeline deadlines on there, as well as specific time goals we had in mind for specific parts of the project, as well as overall deadlines. Everyone else inputted specific deadlines for their own parts afterwards:
Projected Schedule
I will post an update after we shoot this weekend; I am hoping to get my hands on the HDR images ASAP to be able to start contributing more to the project VFX wise. Very excited for what's to come!
***If you are interested in the FX side of the Pitch and Project, take a look at Eva's and Wei's blogs! They go much more into detail about the FX. Rest of Crew's blog links are at the top of this blog!
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