Dating jitters

Abstract

Dating Jitters is a short romantic comedy Visual Effects (VFX) film depicting the personification of one’s nervousness during a first date. The premise is that two long-time friends, who like each other, go on their first romantic date, with the added twist that they have “nervous monsters”, a physical representation of their nervousness. The sizes of the monsters are proportional to the level of nervousness in their owners, and will cause more chaos as they get bigger. Throughout the date, our protagonists try to hide their monsters from each other, similarly to how one would try to hide their nervousness on a first date.

In order to facilitate interactions between the actors and the computer generated (CG) monsters, we used tracking puppets to be object tracked in post-production, and this also helped the actors to get a better idea of the scenario to improve their performance. To simulate other movements of objects, we used other props such as PVC pipes and strings. A various number of 3D, tracking and compositing software were used, such as The Foundry Nuke, Autodesk Maya, Pixologic Z-brush, Andersson Technologies LLC Syntheyes, Imagineer Systems Mocha Pro and SideFX Houdini to complete our project. The film was shot on an ALEXA camera. This report will focus on my experiences and contributions to the completion of the film, as well as the insights I have gained.