In this lesson, we shot a range of clips in the green screen/motion capture space and experimented with it in After Effects following a prompt.
In my group, the prompt we received was based on the Netflix Original, Squid Game, which has recently risen in popularity massively and has become well-known on social media.
Congrats – You will composite a Squid Game inspired scenario – Eg. Red Light, Green Light
After we all read the prompt, we launched into a discussion about the series and what we could do. We first outlined who had seen the show and who hadn’t, briefly giving an explanation about the plot and suggesting ideas about the themes and action we would be capturing. Overall, everyone got the general sense that we would be depicting something quite gory and dark and maybe mixing in some comedy in there since we would probably all be slightly awkward on camera and it would make it quite funny. However, in order to get a better sense of the kind of video we would be making, we all decided to do some research on Squid Game, avoiding spoilers if possible.
Squid Game is a South Korean survival drama television series, released by Netflix on September 17, 2021. The series revolves around a contest in which 456 players, all drawn from different walks of life but each deeply in debt, play a series of children’s games with deadly penalties. The high stakes are rewarded massively, with the final prize being 45.6 billion won given to the survivor. The challenges are based on real-life children’s games from South Korea, so will have an additional resonance to the home audience. They are portrayed as simple and easy to understand, allowing the viewers to focus on the characters and their survival, rather than trying to interpret the rules.
We also found a list with all of the games in the series in order, with a brief explanation of the rules. Someone who had watched the series scrolled through and those who knew the games gave their opinions on which would be the best one to do. We decided on the first game (aside from the recruitment one) which is called Red Light, Green Light, and is part of the prompt.
Round 1
In this one, a nominated ‘tagger’ turns his/her back on the group and sings a song that matches the game’s real Korean name, which translates to “the mugunghwa flower has bloomed.” The mugunghwa is the Korean national flower.
Everyone else runs until the singing stops and the person turns around.
We settled on this one because the rules were incredibly simple to understand, and those who hadn’t watched the series yet, such as myself, could easily pick up on what had to be done. In Squid Game, there is one extra rule – if you are caught moving by the machine, you die. We roughly planned out what we would be shooting based on this, each person running in front of the green screen, some stopping, some not. I also suggested that we could have some people running towards the camera, similar to how the game was shot in the actual series.
Whist waiting for the green screen room to free up, we continued prowling the internet for anything that might be of use. I downloaded a clip of the mechanical doll in the red light/green light game speaking, as well as some sounds that were relevant to the first game. I also got an idea to create a poster to put in the opening of our video and saved an image of one of the posters for the series to edit later.
When it was finally our turn to shoot, we headed up to the green screen/motion capture space as a group and got used to the surroundings for a quick minute. This involved adjusting the green screen lighting since it was a bit too bright, looking at any possible props (we discussed the idea of having one of the robot toys we found act as the doll), and setting up the Lumix Camera, which is what we were using to film, on a tripod. At first, as predicted, everyone was a little awkward and shy, despite the fact that we had somewhat planned what we were going to do. I volunteered to go first and run across the screen, and after the rest of the group forgot to say ‘red light’ and I simply kept running, the atmosphere lightened up a bit. Soon after, everyone was running across the green screen, either sideways or towards the camera, and some people dramatically fell, pretending to get shot. We got the hang of it, adding little hacks such as clapping hands to mimic the sound of a gunshot. Here is the link to all of our footage:
Squid Game Prompt Footage
One thing I really regret is not urging the group to experiment more with angles. An engaging scene, no matter the genre, usually has different perspectives and angles, and this is especially true in Squid Game, where we often see one person dying from two or more angles, depending on their importance. A classic technique is showing the person get shot with a mid-shot or wide shot, and then cutting to a close-up of their face, to see their reaction as they realise they are dying and horrify the audience even more. It makes it feel more raw and personal, seeing their face but also more conventional, since the camera isn’t usually still for long periods of time in film & TV unless it is a stylistic choice. This is where our group fell through a little bit since we only filmed a more interesting angle towards the end of our session when I asked one of the people in our group if I could get a close-up over-the-shoulder shot of her hands, which I envisioned to be dripping with her blood. The idea was to have a more in-depth reaction to someone dying, which is what I wish we did throughout.
On to the editing. Back in the classroom, we waited for a couple of minutes for the footage of the SD card to upload onto a shared Drive folder and started watching and downloading certain clips. Something else we had trouble with, which we realised after watching the clips back, was that the camera kept going out of focus. Every time that someone moved and abruptly stopped, the camera would blur. This unfortunately also showed in the edited clips as well, but there was no way to fix it. As other members of my group started compositing the scene together, I got to work on the poster. My initial plan was to finish that up quickly, and then move on to chroma-keying, however, I misjudged how long that would take and ran out of time to start the main editing.
This was the poster that I chose to use. I had to account for how many members there were in our group and what angles their faces were in the available images, so this poster was the best option that I could find.
Using Google Drive and the content that was in each of the folders from our practical/camera sessions, I gathered pictures of screenshots from videos of everyone in the group. My aim was to make this as comedic as possible, so I tried to find funny expressions, but above all else – distinguishable pictures, so that each person could be clearly visible. I imported everything into After Effects, where I used the roto brush to cut out everyone’s heads and paste them onto the heads of the Squid Game characters.
I made sure to rotate and/or flip the pictures depending on which person I would be placing them on and what looked most natural. I didn’t spend too long perfecting this, however, since it was supposed to be a joke to introduce our video. Here is the final result:
I think I achieved my goal of making it parodic since the facial expressions are very unconventional for a survival drama. You can easily compare the two posters and see how different the serious characters look, versus our little rag-tag crew.
I will also be posting Jacob’s work since he is the only want who managed to send me the video that he compiled. It’s entirely his own and I am not taking credit, but I would like to post at least one proper piece of work from our group on my blog and talk about what we were planning to do.
Before going to capture footage, we briefly touched upon what kind of background we’d have, and I mentioned that a desert scene would probably do the trick, since red light, green light appeared to be shot in a field, although it was a barren-looking location and most field pictures don’t the internet are not so bare. I am happy Jacob decided to go for that idea since I think it really conveys the Squid Game aesthetic. He also layered the videos and comped everything brilliantly, and the blood effects also look great. Due to lack of time, he didn’t manage to add in music/sound, and the audio is all messed up because of the layer clips (it is better to watch it on mute). You can also see the shadows we omitted onto the green screen, and the blurs, of course, still remain. For the time we had however, it’s very good, and entertaining to watch. I hope to see what kind of work the others in our group did and if they used the other angle that we shot in.
Our Plan
If we had enough time, these are the ideas that we were talking about and planning to add-in in order to complete the task:
- Put together all of the videos that everyone comped, making sure that we included the different angles in between for variety (would have been done through cross-cutting).
- Add the poster and maybe a title at the start.
- Add clips of the doll turning around at certain intervals throughout the video.
- Included more blood effects, such as the shot of the dying subject looking at their hands, and perhaps blood spilling onto the desert floor.
- Add in the audio – screaming, yelling, panting/heavy breathing, the red light/green light music, blood splatters, gunshots etc.
With all of these things, our video would have been a comedic gory masterpiece, but since there was quite a lot to be done, not enough time, and we were all split apart for a good portion of the editing session, we couldn’t complete everything and add in these ideas. I hope that if we get some time at the end of the year, or perhaps communicate more as a group during our term breaks, we can come back to this project and do everything we intended to!