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Ensuring Video Production Success
Creating quality FMV. Far too often, I’ll see video that looks almost professional. For example, Dune 2000 (along with just about every other Westwood title using live action), had crystal-clear interlacing artifacts caused by not removing one of the two fields that makes up a video frame. Just about any digital video professional could have corrected this problem with a mouse click. These artifacts are distracting, and make digital video compression much more difficult. Problems such as this can crop up in every stage of in the production of video, from lighting to direction to compositing to editing. The video in Black Dahlia, a game completely dependent on the success of its cinematic elements is, quite simply, professional. The lighting on actors matches backgrounds. They are well placed within their environment. 3D animation is married sensibly and elegantly to stock footage, as well as to newly shot elements. The bottom line is make sure that you have video professionals working on your FMV segments, otherwise your quality could suffer. Actors need good direction. Game developers have often shown the ability to pull wooden performances from very talented actors. Many a time, I’ve seen some of my favorite character actors deliver lines with all the conviction of a Creationist giving the keynote address at a Darwinists’ convention. These problems often stem from a fairly simple issue: the talent has been inadequately prepared for the task at hand. If the developer is in charge of the production of the video assets, then the fault lies there. When making the transition from the stage to film or television, actors often complain about the lack of linearity. Movies are rarely shot in sequence, and an actor used to being able to carry their character from scene to scene can get lost in the technical considerations of production. What’s worse is that the nonlinearity of game plots can make an actor’s role even more difficult when filming game video. In the game developers’ world, video sequences often exist around game sequences, and each segment might come from and go to many branches. Actors can find it difficult to maintain a strong grasp on what their character is doing or, for that matter, who they are. This fact can result in flat, unappealing performances. Therefore, if you’re going to be working with actors, empower them with an understanding of the process they’re involved in. Some developers have taken to bringing large flowcharts to the set, so that the actors can see where they are in a given scene, and understand how it relates to the rest of the game. Developers have also learned the value of rehearsals and read-throughs of the script. Many problems with a scene can be caught during this process. Keep your animation animated. Almost all titles today use 3D animation in their cutscenes, either as background elements for actors (see the sidebar "The Black Art of Chroma Key Compositing") or as the sole element in the video. Most modern game development teams have top notch 3D artists on their teams. They are brilliant at taking complicated objects and characters and building low–polygon-count 3D models with depth and life. However, these skills don’t necessarily translate into the ability to produce an animated segment for a videogame. For example, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 opens with a long, drawn out flythrough over Nar-Shaddaa. Although this is a wonderful example of whatever modeling program the animator used, it’s long and uninvolving. There is nothing wrong with using animation to introduce new settings and hardware. Blizzard has done a very good job of that with Starcraft. You just can’t assume that a camera spinning around a 3D object is inherently dramatic. Without any sort of context, it’s boring. Post-production preparedness. Digital video post production is often thought of as simply the stage where things that went wrong are corrected — as in, "We’ll fix it in post." However, as mentioned earlier, it’s a lot cheaper do to something correctly the first time. Keep that in mind. Post production should be thought of as fine tuning what you’ve already done right, not correcting earlier flaws. This is the stage where a scene’s structure and rhythm are honed via video editing, animation and live action are merged, and graphics and subtitles are added. Never underestimate the critical importance of good editing. It can be tempting for some computer animators to create an entire scene purely with camera motion instead of using cuts — almost always a terrible idea. Cutting from different camera angles and subjects is core to our video experience. A great way to understand how this works is to watch TV with the volume off. Notice how often the cuts happen during a scene. Note how they set up the scene, emphasize facial expressions, and set up a rhythmic pace. Interstate ’76, with its primitive graphics, was able to really capture the feel of a 1970s action film by mimicking their editing style. Some big differences exist between traditional video post and post for game delivery. First, traditional video is made up of tall, rectangular pixels. Computers use square ones. Second, each traditional video frame is made of two unique picture fields interlaced into one frame, with all the even lines capturing a moment in time a fraction of a second different from the odd lines. Video in games is always progressive scan, with only one image in the frame (see "Ten Digital Video Disasters"). Because RGB computer monitors are much better than analog televisions, games can use film-like color saturation and contrast. The drawback to the high-quality images produced by computer monitors is that a lot of subtle noise that would go unnoticed on a television is often readily apparent on the monitor. This can be especially obvious in shadow tones, and it requires processing by a tool such as Media Cleaner or After Effects to reduce the noise. Digital video codecs also have limitations that should be addressed in post production. For example, Smacker and other codecs that use a limited palette of on-screen colors benefit from video processing that limits the color palette used in any given frame. Other codecs have trouble with certain types of content, such as rapidly moving complex textures. Perform some sample tests of your post and edits well before final compression, so you can alleviate trouble spots in the video.
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