Maps and journeys - Making of the shaddows

One of the hardest things i found when making the shadows was finding a location to film them in, i tried in several different places,

• A long white corridor, all though this seemed like a good idea finding just a plain white corridor that was long enough was near enough imposible so when it came to editing the footage i had to roterscope around the person which looked untidy and wasn't useful in my project 
• a green screen room, this was better as it ment i didnt have to cut around the person how ever i couldn't get a room long enough to make the walking look realistic so the shadows ended up walking to fast off the screen 
• a black room, this was my final option and the best one as i was able to find a room long enough that was full black and when i inverted and change the colour in after effects it gave the desired effect i was looking for 

I couldnt decided on a style i liked for the shadows either so i tested several different versions

To pick one that would work the best i show all of the videos to several different people and got their oppinions, here is some of the response i got

• The overly blured one is creapy and i cant tell it is ment to be a person 
• The darker coloured figurs seem too intrusive and agressive 
• the solid grey one looks like a cyber man 
• the back ground reminds me of clouds which is relaxing , fuigre made oout of the same texture but lighter would look trippy 
• i like the one that you can tell is a person but it very faint 

in the end i went for 

as  they found him the lest intrusive and didnt question his presence


I then tested several, several different walking styles , how many i should put in at a time and wither to fade them in and out.

In the end i decided to go with one figure slowly walking from the back light and out past the camera whcih took up 2 miniutes of video, but then behind him and occisally fuigure would started walking in from the back ground but fizzle out into the light.

see video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWz1e1INKu4&feature=youtu.be

To get this effect on the shadow i had to use made effects in after effects which hevily impacted on the rendering time at one point it was saying it would take 3 hours to render. To cut this down slightly i split all the layers up into separte compositions then pre rendered them and assembled them back into one composition cutting the time down to about 20 miniutes.

here is a screen shot of the different effects i used  and the key framing process i took to make the figures fade in and out