Asterism

Full Moon
Dev Blog #18

28 October 2023

Things I've learnt about filming outdoors

This month I've been working on my most music-video-y level of the game, which contains a lot of actual film footage as well as my usual stop-motion. I'm using a lot of outdoor locations for the filming, which has given me lots of challenges to work through! I wanted to share a list of some of these challenges, workarounds and things I found particularly useful. If you, like me, are fairly new to filming but get excited about FMV games and want to make your own, I hope this will be either helpful or interesting, maybe even both!

Some basics

• Assuming you've already got a storyboard/greybox, go through the game/level and make a list of everything you'll need to film. Make a film schedule from this taking into account upcoming weather, what props you'll need, and if you need assistance from anyone, etc.
• Always do a test video for more complicated sections. Make it as close as you can to what you think you want with the least amount of effort. Try it out in the context of your game and work out what needs to be done differently on the next attempt.
• Do multiple takes of the same section, and check them before you leave the filming location to make sure you've got at least one you're happy with.
• Make notes on how long you need each section to be and make sure to film additional footage at the start and end so you have some contingency.
• If you're filming on a phone, make sure the focus is locked while you're filming.
• Think about composition, rule of thirds, if the horizon line is at an angle, etc. Take test photos and examine them before filming.
• Tripods are great, and mean you don't have to balance your phone in awkward places and risk it falling onto a train track (luckily, this did not happen to me in the end).
• Allow more time than you think you need.

The weather

• Check the forecast, the tide times, whatever is appropriate for your film location, in advance and plan around this.
• If you want it to rain when you get there, it won't. If you want it to be dry, it will rain (at least in Scotland).
• Light rain looks more obvious in real life than on film, unless you're filming a puddle in which case all rain looks cool.
• Bring a towel.
• Wind only looks good on film if there's something for it to blow around, so consider this before going outside in a storm to film a largely industrial area.
• Think about lighting, especially if you are relying on natural light alone. Overcast days provide consistent, soft and diffuse light, so can be a good choice for filming, depending on your requirements.

I'm planning to wear a morphsuit

• It's true what they say about morphsuits being very unflattering.
• But, they are really warm so they're good if you're wearing them in colder months.
• BUT, you won't be able to use your phone very well because your fingers are completely inaccessible.
• Think about your silhouette and motion, you may need to move and overact much more than you think.

Post-processing

• You can edit things like colour, exposure, speed, rotation etc., in video editing software.
• EZGif is a very good free online resource that has video editing tools like crop, speed, resize, rotate.
• For custom angle rotation (along with a lot of other features that I've not explored yet), VSDC seems like a really good, mostly free video editor.
• Microsoft ClipChamp can do a lot of basic video editing, and has cool effects and filters.
• Video files can be very large. Consider optimising them before importing them into your game project. I use FreeConvert. Compress it as much as you can before the quality reduction is too noticeable, else you'll end up with enormous game files.

Bonus: behind the scenes photos!

A morph suit (+ dress because it helped a lot with the overall silhouette), pre green(blue)-screening.




Filming in a puddle using a tripod and props.




Checking the back of the costume before filming.





Thanks for reading this moon's blog :)

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