My screen juggling experiment is finally complete!
This was something I decided to do as a final project for college, and I really underestimated how hard this would be. Took me over two months just to finish the animation part of it because I kept running out of ideas. I used a physics engine called Algodoo, which required so much testing and tweaking to get the marble in time with the music, especially for some of the more ambitious ideas I had. I was listening to a metronome for hours on end sometimes, trying to make progress on this thing.
By the time I got the animation finished, I only had about a week left before the deadline. I then had to separate the animation between the different screens, which was easy at first until I realized that I had done myself no favors in keeping the course so squished together. I had to animate a FAKE marble in Premiere Pro sometimes to make the phones connect well with each other, and sometimes even that wasn't enough to fix those problems.
Combine all that with the insane amount of schoolwork I've been having to do UNRELATED to this, and we make to this past weekend. I finally got the animation split off in a way that I was willing to accept, and with the MUCH needed help of my family (getting access to all needed devices, letting me turn the basement into a low-budget film set), as well as my sister taking over behind the camera, I was able to get this filmed in under 24 hours, somehow. It was real tough, I won't lie.
The camera I wanted to use for this (Blackmagic with gimbal for stability) did not work when I realized that it was impossible for me to get the surface area I felt comfy with within the shot. I ended up pacing around my basement for half an hour, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually I decided to turn the gimbal into a selfie stick and film everything using my iPhone 11. The wide angle lens on it gave me far more room to work with compared to the Blackmagic. I ended up slanting the basement coffee table slightly and using it as the background for the phones to sit on top of. Add in a light to mitigate shadows, and that's the setup I filmed this with. Not ideal, but it worked (somewhat).
It took a lot of practicing to end up with a take that I thought was even OK, much less something I thought made sense and flowed well. I still don't know if the final product here is the best take I am capable of, but I know that even if it isn't, it's not for lack of trying. During the whole shoot I had to keep my motivation going, had to keep my spirits high, no matter how many times I fucked up. At one point early on I had a full-blown mental breakdown, and had to take a minute and clear my head. I feel like that was the toughest part of this for me, but every time I got a decent run, I'd gain more confidence. It got to the point where near the end, despite such little time, I was truly enjoying working on this again.
It's Monday the 15th when I'm typing this, and I have finally finished this project, gotten it in on time to my teacher, and am breathing SUCH a big sigh of relief. I have scheduled this to go online at the same time that I will be screening this film at my college campus. Genuinely interested to hear what people will think of this, I know some people are interested due to some comments on my teaser videos. College is ending for me on the 19th, just in time for me to be getting the PDP guitar (hopefully) so I plan to start uploading Fortnite Festival guitar content the moment I get access to everything.
Thanks for the support, everyone. Wishing you the best.