How To Break Down Scene VFX: A Complete Guide [With Examples]

Script breakdowns are when a film or television show is broken down into its component parts.

Actors and directors can use these breakdowns to see what their role entails, and the producer can use these breakdowns to ensure that the project is being made for the least amount of money possible.

There are many different tools and techniques used for Scene VFX. Let’s take a look at a few of them below.

Rotoscoping

This technique traces and splits up an existing image into different elements. The rotoscoped elements can then be animated and composited back together over the original image.

A good example of this is how characters are removed from their background, such as when a character flies through the air and needs to be composited over a new background.

Morphing

Morphing is another technique that involves taking two images or elements and blending or morphing them together to create another element.

An example of this might be a character transforming into another character, or into an animal or object.

Matte Painting

This technique combines painting with photography to create an illusion that mimics the real world in order to transform the background of a shot or scene.

An example of this might be adding different textures, colors, and sizes to buildings in a shot, including changing the perspective, adding shadows, etc.,

What Are Script Breakdowns

Script breakdowns usually involve an actor being assigned a number of lines, but not all of them necessarily appearing in the final script. For example, a character who dies in the first act may have only two lines in the script that they actually speak.

The rest of their lines may be written into other characters’ dialogue, or they may be skipped entirely and left out of the final cut. Script breakdowns are also used when there are multiple actors with minor roles who have similar screen time on a show.

A producer will assign each actor different numbers of lines so that they can be paid accordingly for their work. What are script breakdowns? Script breakdowns are a production planning tool that helps keep everything on track.

A breakdown is a list of the scenes in a script and a quick description of what happens in each scene, who’s in it and what props go with it. The breakdown helps everyone on the crew know what they’re responsible for shooting, and before you know it, everyone is ready to go and you’ve had no time wasted.

What does a script breakdown look like? It depends on the script. When I’m doing my breakdowns for short films, I usually do them by character so I can see who has the most screen time. But when I’m working on larger projects, I break them down by set design so I know everybody has their own spaces and we don’t need to worry about stepping into someone else’s scene or set up. Whatever works best for your project is fine.

I like to put the name of the actor next to his or her character name (the actor’s name is actually on their call sheet), but that’s not always possible since many actors are hired after the casting process is done. It’s good to list who plays which character because some people might not want to be out of sight during a long day of shooting.

What are VFX Script Breakdowns?

The other day I was working on a project with a friend and he asked me how to do a script breakdown. I’d never really thought about it before, but when I looked at the time code of the script and broke it down by shot, my jaw dropped.

The number of shots we needed to get from one scene to the next was staggering. It wasn’t an overly complex scene, but on average there were more than 5-6 shots per scene that needed to be done with VFX.

When I was first starting out in post-production, I had no idea what these numbers meant. How many shots does it really take to pull off an entire scene? What are those shots called? What does each shot entail?

So let’s break this down.

What is a VFX Script breakdown?

A VFX breakdown is essentially a task list for visual effects artists or anyone else involved in the creation of visual effects sequences (CGI, compositing, etc). In its most basic form it breaks down a sequence into individual component tasks and provides either estimated times or duration and page references for each task.

A VFX Breakdown sheet is generally characterized by: Tasks – A breakdown sheet will always centralize around tasks. Script breakdowns in VFX are the detailed shot-by-shot planning of a visual effects project. The script breakdown is the first big step in any film that requires visual effects work.

If you are a freelancer, learning how to do a good script breakdown will help you make more money and win more jobs. The script breakdown process begins before the shooting date is set. A producer will get an idea for a visual effect (like a car crash) and confer with the director on how it should look.

The producer will then decide whether or not it is possible to accomplish the effect in camera, or if it requires visual effects work. If they decide that it requires visual effects, they will need to find someone to do the work and estimate how much it will cost.

The estimate will be based on how difficult it is to create the effect. The less complicated the effect, the less expensive it will be. In order for the producer to know how much something will cost, they need to break down each shot into a series of simple steps that can be accomplished by visual effects artists working at their studio.

That’s where you come in!

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What Is A Scene Breakdown?

A scene breakdown is a script-like description of each shot in a film, but it’s not just an outline. It’s essentially a blueprint for the visual elements of a film. It describes the camera angles, lighting, and composition that will be used.

Scene breakdowns are used by filmmakers to plan out their films before they start shooting. They help directors and cinematographers make sure they have enough coverage to tell their stories properly. And they allow other departments to know when they’ll need to get ready for certain shots.

Creating a scene breakdown is an important part of pre-production, even though it might seem like an unnecessary step before actually making the movie. It forces creative teams to consider all of their options before committing to expensive concepts.

While there isn’t a standardized way of creating scene breakdowns, most filmmakers follow the same process:

Determine The Genre Of The Film

Jot Down Shot Ideas

Write A Storyboard

Create A Shot List Based On The Storyboard

Breakdown The Script And Calculate How Many Shots Are Needed For It

Gather Crew And Equipment For Shooting

   

A scene breakdown is one of the first things a director does when she gets her hands on a script. In fact, I’ve heard more than one director say that it’s the most important thing he reads before he starts working with his writer.

(If you’re a screenwriter, you know how scary that is!)

A scene breakdown is a description of what happens in every scene. It usually takes the form of a chart or graph. On the left side you’ll see the page number and on the right side you’ll see the description of what takes place on that page.

And it’s not just for directors. It’s also vital for producers and actors, because it gives them an at-a-glance view of what the script contains and how long each scene is. This helps them to understand better how many days are needed to shoot the film and how much money they need to raise for it.

But for most of us, a breakdown isn’t about money or scheduling; it’s about bringing clarity to your story. Once you have a clear understanding of what’s happening in each scene, you can solve problems before they occur. Is something missing? Does this make sense? Did we lose sight of our hero’s goal?

Shoot Scenes By Location

I was out the other day with a friend doing some landscaping photographs. He was complaining about how he needed more fine art images in his portfolio and I was saying that it would be nice to have some nature shots to go along with all of my architectural work.

So we set off, camera in hand, to see what we could find.

My friend wanted to shoot some scenes by location so we decided to start in the woods. We strolled around for a while, looking for good compositions and soon became lost (oops). After realizing where we were and getting turned around, we set off again and began looking for our next location.

When my friend took this picture he’d been wandering around for about an hour and had just about enough time to take a few shots before it was time to head home. He wasn’t even sure if the shot he captured was anything special, but I liked it.

The lesson here is that you don’t have to be on a special assignment or trip to come back from your photo shoot with something worthwhile. You can have just as much fun finding great pictures by walking around your neighborhood or local park.

And once you’ve found something interesting, you can take several images from different angles and with different lighting conditions just like this one below.When you’re on location shooting, you’ll have a limited time to shoot your scene.

For example, if you’re doing fashion, the model probably has a limited amount of time they can be there. If it’s a commercial shoot, you need to make sure that the crew can get everything done in the time allotted. The more locations you have, the longer it will take to shoot everything.

The best way to plan your day is to look at your call sheet and think about how much time each scene should take. Think about the following: LocationHow hard is it going to be to get this location? Is it something that will take a lot of permits or a lot of time? For example, if you’re shooting in an alley downtown by a restaurant, then you’ll have to wait for them to open up before you can do your shot.

That takes time away from other shots that need to be taken that day. On top of that, if they only give you 30 minutes before they open and it takes 15 minutes just to get there, that’s half your time gone right off the bat.

Make sure you know what’s happening with the location before you book it!Scene Type Will this scene take a long time?

Last Night In Soho VFX Script Breakdown

What we have here is the breakdown of the VFX shot in the movie ‘The Last Night In Soho’ by A52. I’ve worked on this piece as an fx lead at MPC. The original shot was created by a french artist who worked at BUF (thanks man!).

When I received it, it was already quite good, but there were some areas that were problematic and needed a lot of work (I’ll go into detail later). Description: The shot was a simple transition between day and night.

The camera starts on a street, tilts down to show the sky, then moves back to the street which went from bright to dark. In the background there are some neon lights that change color, and then we see them blink out one by one.

Challenges:

One of the major challenges was to recreate the neon lights with CG in all their details. This is why I’m going to focus this post only on this part, since rest of the shot is pretty straightforward.

And now let’s take a look at some pictures… Nowadays, when you watch a movie, it looks like everything is real. But that is actually the achievement of VFX (Visual Effects). Truly exceptional visual effects are often considered the hallmark of modern blockbuster filmmaking.

The VFX team brings movie magic to life both on the big screen and the small screen. Most movies today wouldn’t be possible without their hard work and dedication. In this post, we’re going to take a look at some breakdowns that show us exactly how they did it!

The VFX team’s work doesn’t stop at creating visual effects and animations. They also work together with the director and photographer to create the lighting they need in order to make the best use of their visual effects. Let’s take a look at some of their incredible work!

I’m not going to talk about the making of the shot, but rather I’ll focus on the visual effects in NIS, which are all part of our proprietary software, called KAPOW. It’s a nodal compositor built from the ground up with a specific pipeline in mind: VFX for film.

Tristan spent weeks setting up a complex network of nodes, which allowed him to create a multi-layer simulation that would allow us to animate the particles in the correct way according to the camera movements and lighting. The shot was composed by Thomas Rigotti and myself.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage VFX Script Breakdown

Venom is one of the most popular Spider-Man villains of all time. When he first appeared in the Amazing Spider-Man comic book, he was portrayed as a villain who wanted to make Spider-Man suffer by killing his loved ones.

The movie Venom: Let There Be Carnage is based on the 6th episode of the animated series “Spider-Man TAS”, which was aired in 1995. In this episode, Venom was trying to create a perfect life for himself and Eddie Brock by eliminating all their enemies.

Venom was created by combining Brock’s DNA with an extraterrestrial symbiote that comes from outer space. The symbiote combines with Brock, creating a new character named Venom. Moreover, the symbiote character has its own unique personality and can talk.

According to a comic book store employee, in order to create such an unusual and terrifying visual style, they combined several different techniques including CGI animation, motion capture technology and traditional hand drawn animation.

Motion capture technology is used to provide more dynamic movement for Venom’s character and more natural facial expressions, while CGI is employed for creating his body suit that looks like it consists of separate parts. Traditional animation is used for Venom’s tentacles that can be seen during fight scenes or when he is moving around.

Carnage is almost here and the VFX guys at MPC have released their previs script for the movie. The VFX supervisor was Jean-Philippe Côté and we can see that the previs process was done by The Third Floor.

Description:This is a breakdown of the Previs shotlist for Venom and it covers close to 90% of the final shots in the film. This script has been written by Chris Macdonald and it covers close to 25 pages (A4). We will cover every single page so you can get a good idea of how this previs process works on a major blockbuster movie.

The first page begins with what we call the “script” or “outline”. It’s an overview of how this document works. You can read the entire document in terms of the story, but if you want to know exactly what happens, each page is numbered so you can find them easily in the video.

The next pages are called “Previsualization Sequence ” . They are split into three parts: 1 – Previsualizations (a breakdown of all shots with camera movements, rough animation etc), 2 – Storyboard (what we call a “storyboard” but in comic book style) 3 – Technical requirements.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Jungle Cruise VFX Script Breakdown! This is a breakdown of my personal VFX script for the Disney film The Jungle Cruise. I originally wrote it in June 2018 for a friend of mine who is applying for various visual effects jobs.

He asked me to write a breakdown of my work on The Jungle Cruise, and as an example of my visual effects work. I was more than happy to oblige! This breakdown is meant to be an example of how I approach visual effects from the pre-production phase to the final shot.

It covers my process from pre-viz, shooting live action plates, post-production and compositing with After Effects, Nuke and Fusion. My hope is that by reading this you can get an idea of what goes into making a shot like this as well as some insight into my actual thought process.

I am also trying to use real software and hardware so that people who are interested in visual effects can get an idea of what it’s like to work on set with real world gear rather than relying on fancy plug-ins or simulations.

I am not going to go into extensive detail about every little thing because there are already tutorials available online (like this one) that teach you how to.

Jungle Cruise VFX Script Breakdown

Hey everybody, welcome to the Jungle Cruise VFX Script Breakdown! This is a breakdown of my personal VFX script for the Disney film The Jungle Cruise. I originally wrote it in June 2018 for a friend of mine who is applying for various visual effects jobs.

He asked me to write a breakdown of my work on The Jungle Cruise, and as an example of my visual effects work. I was more than happy to oblige!

This breakdown is meant to be an example of how I approach visual effects from the pre-production phase to the final shot. It covers my process from pre-viz, shooting live action plates, post-production and compositing with After Effects, Nuke and Fusion.

My hope is that by reading this you can get an idea of what goes into making a shot like this as well as some insight into my actual thought process. I am also trying to use real software and hardwar e so that people who are interested in visual effects can get an idea of what it’s like to work on set with real world gear rather than relying on fancy plug ins or simulations.

I am not going to go into extensive detail about every little thing because there are already tutorials available online (like this one) that teach you how to. Rigging an old ride like Jungle Cruise is a big undertaking.

The first step was to tear down the ride to bare bones and rebuild it from scratch. This meant that a lot of VFX work needed to be done to rebuild the attraction. Once things were rebuilt, the team needed to figure out how to make the ride function properly with all those effects working in tandem.

The script breakdown for this attraction is quite extensive! It covers everything from the construction of sets and rigs, to lighting design and animation, plus more. It was great fun sharing some of these details with you over the past year, so I hope you’ve enjoyed them. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on any new updates and changes as we move forward into 2017!

We’d like to thank everyone for their help in bringing this script breakdown to life and hope you’ve enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at Walt Disney Imagineering! Here are some blog sections: Name:Disneyland Resort Update – Fantasy Faire Finale.

InfiniteVFX Script Breakdown

Hi, I’m Katty. I’m a senior 3D artist in the VFX industry. As an indie developer, I wanted to share with you some insights from my side: what are the most common mistakes indie devs make and how to avoid them when you make your own game? Here is a list of the top 10 mistakes:

No market research.

Not setting up a team early on.

Unrealistic deadlines and no time management skills.

Not listening to feedback.

   

Poor planning and underestimating the amount of work to be done.

No focus on details, not knowing how much time it takes to make different types of assets and not being aware of the limitations of your tools or art pipeline in regards to the type of game you are making (for example, if you are making a mobile game don’t try making huge open world levels that take hours to render).

No specific plan or no idea of ​​what you want players to feel or do in your game, so it ends up being boring or unplayable for most people who download it.

Unrealistic expectations regarding sales figures (or lack thereof).

Not doing enough

This client had an awesome idea for a video but they could not get the script right. So they decided to outsource and have me write the script. I wanted to break down all the elements and give you some insight into what it takes to make a great video script.

Description:I’ve seen a lot of video scripts in my time and there is one thing that I learned about writing good ones. You cannot be afraid to ask for what you want in your video. Description:If you are going to ask for something, read it to yourself and if you feel uncomfortable asking for it, get someone else to write the script.

Description:Write down the things that your audience cares about. Then make sure that you spend 80% of your time talking about those things and only 20% of your time on everything else.

In this tutorial, we’ll break down the VFX script for a sci-fi short film called Infinite. The director of the film contacted us early on in the project and asked if we could work with them to create some VFX for their film.

We jumped at the chance to work with such an ambitious project, and were able to produce a number of shot elements that helped enhance the look of the final piece.This project was particularly interesting as it was designed around a modular shooting approach.

Each shot would be split into two halves – one half on green screen, and one half without any green screen elements – and then stitched together in post production. This meant that many of our VFX elements needed to have a very thin black edge so they could be seamlessly composited over their corresponding footage.

We’ll take you through the script step by step, discussing how each VFX element was created in Cinema 4D before being exported out as individual stills or videos and composited back into After Effects.</p>

Togo VFX Script Breakdown

TOGO VFX SCRIPT BREAKDOWN I’ve written a short breakdown of the VFX in my new film Togo, directed by Kevin Smith. I hope it helps people get a better understanding of how visual effects are created.

This is only a partial list, as there were many talented people who worked on the project whose names do not appear here. Special thanks to Craig Scubert for writing the original script, and to Joey Orosco for being such a patient 1st AD.

The final scene of TOGO was shot at an abandoned warehouse in South L.A. (I was told it used to be a military facility). We didn’t have permission to shoot there, so we had to work quickly and quietly so as not to attract any attention from cops or the property owner.

In fact, we shot the finale during two separate nights, as we weren’t sure if someone would call the cops before our second night of shooting. There were many challenges in pulling this scene off.

The actor had never done anything like this before, we only had three days to shoot it all, and we were working inside a decrepit building with no electricity or running water. On top of that, we couldn’t build anything because the set.

Hi, I’m Alan King from Togo VFX and this is my breakdown of our successful project “Treasure Hunt.”

The script was given to us by our client who was an agency representing a large bank. There were two main challenges for this project: firstly, we had to create the whole immersive environment in 3D, which included the city, the characters, a prehistoric forest and a cave scene; secondly and most importantly, we had to tell an engaging story within a short time frame.

Togovfx decided to use its own proprietary software called “Interactive Storytelling Engine” that allows us to set up various triggers in the environment. These triggers send messages and actions to other objects inside the scene.

We could also use multiple layers in order to create some nice depth. Thus, each character had three layers – body, clothes and hair. This allowed us to have more control over lighting as well as creating better shadows and reflections.

The character designs were quite unique for this project because we had an all-female cast of characters. This helped us a lot on creating the right proportions for these characters and also it didn’t really matter what they wore throughout the different scenes because they were going to be naked anyway! All body parts were modeled separately.