THE GLITCH

Light Operator/Secondary Camera Operator/Scene 1 Compositor: Edwin Nguyen
Main Camera Operator/Scene 2 Compositor: Faiz Zahirul
Actor/Scene 3 Compositor: Hao Pan

Our conceptualisation for “The Plot Thickens” revolves around the narrative of a subject playing a game, unknowingly being reality itself. When this game crashes, reality begins to collapse and glitch, leaving the subject to panic as they’re stuck in a game.

We took into finding inspiration from different types of media for the shots, themes associated with a “matrix” setting, and colour scheme. Notable inspirations included “The Matrix (1999)”, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)”, “Duck Season (2017)”, “Portal” Game Series, and “The Amazing Digital Circus (2023)”.

Compositing Process

My Overall Node Tree

For my part of the project, it starts from 00:18 to 00:25. It is quite a short one, but it is also a tedious one as the camera movement is drastic in such a small space. This is my overall look on the node graph tree. I will break it down by part by part accordingly.

First, I put the Life Remaining counter in 3D space on the wall using card as I need to do some layering with roto. It is layered behind a glitch effects we found on Footage Crate. It is followed by some effects like blur and glow

Then, it is followed by the Choose Your Character also in 3D space using card behind the same glitch effects. Behind it is the grid world created by Hao. Merge is used to combine with the previous node

In the next node, I put the pot plant and character in the scene. As scene also on the previous slide, I used IDistort to create a glitchy distortion on the objects which I shared with both of my teammates

Finally, on the front layer, I put the 3D Coin created by Edwin to create a perspective of it floating in front of the camera. It is followed with some effects such as glow, blur and etc. Ending the node graph, I used grade, colour correct and denoise to finalize everything which is followed by write node to render