SANM-560: Week 3 in Full, Week 4 Begins!

Written by Shane Reuter - 10/01/2025

Week 3:

In the prior weeks I had a strong focus on the story aspect of the project which I had a decent time with for the most part, but as someone with years of writing experience and one singular screenwriting class experience I did feel a bit controlling at times when I would chime in. As such, I ended up backing off a bit as the rest of the team seemed to agree with each other a lot more than I was with them and in my opinion that's one of those completely justified moments to just stop speaking and just listen. However, as we went into week 3 I no longer felt I knew the story. The script had been so fundamentally changed in what felt like

an instant that I needed a moment to wrap my head around the new story and separate it from the one I already knew. While this may seem dramatic, all I'm really saying is I'd keep catching myself subconsciously adding back in prior scenes that no longer happen in the script when thinking or discussing it, and seemed to start throwing people off. Since the script was finalized by this point, I decided the easiest way to adapt to the new script and forget the old would be to shift gears into Unreal Engine and focus on the structure of the story's setting, rather than the structure of the stories plot.

After watching Connor craft the blockout of the station I got inspired to incorporate more of the fantastical elements I enjoyed from the reference images on the Mural board and went ahead and started adding them to it.

The diagonal walkways and tracks leading to an everlasting height and distance does a lot to tell the audience that this world we're in isn't based in reality, even putting aside the apocalypse. I'm personally a huge fan of the cylindrical tungsten lights that mimic the sci-fi neon look while also being realistic for a train tunnel, but I know most people do not want neon lights so I've refrained from testing them out... for now.

I also have been fighting my damn hardest to ensure that the train crashing down from the ceiling remains close within the shot, and those overhead tracks and rails. I have such a suspicion people will say they're too much but I fear anything less would return us to the question of "why use the Volume at all?" though I do have a clear bias.

I have thoroughly enjoyed taking pictures in class, I started moving around and getting genuinely good shots of people and honestly feel more inventive in my listening than ever.

I'm a major multitasker so being in lecture-type classes doesn't help me much, but being able to listen while taking pictures is perfect. Plus, I've never had the opportunity to photograph people in a way that didn't feel extremely creepy so this has helped me come to realize how much I truly do enjoy photography as another little side hobby.

Week 4:

Since we've only had one day so far this week, this entry will be significantly shorter (he says in advance, knowing it's a lie). I opened up the project to find Connor had beautifully extended the rails and trails I added prior along the entire project and it came out exactly as good as I hoped. The way the distance makes them become entangled and cross even when the floors never meet is usually meant as commentary for utopian societies having messy infrastructure in sci-fi movies, however here it's approaching the exact same end goal but without the utopia being intact. I also added the doorway above the stairs, I originally designed it thinking that was where they wanted the door to go, but loved the way it looked after we added the real door so we've kept it as of the most recent version I've seen.

Aside from that, I'm currently preparing to import several asset packs I own to the project and use them as temp-pieces of the blockout and anyone who wants to model them can replace them at their own leisure. I think messing with a "it's technically done, but it could be ours" approach to modeling and set-design would help ease any pressure we may feel about making this look photo-real in time. By having a properly completed, kitbashed, set that we can light and play around with we would allow the modelers and texturers to pick what they want to recreate their own, or even use it as a base mesh and build off little quirks to make it more art deco. I truly believe when working with realism and a time crunch, working with assets first then making things from scratch is always the best approach.

I aimed to go for more singular, close up shots of people for my BTS photography today and I must admit I am very pleased with the results. I didn't capture as many as usual, possibly due to class being a lot more work oriented than previously which was great, but the ones I did I think people will very much enjoy. The ones of Professor Diriwaechter especially, I captured some 10/10 facial expressions I can only assume they had to have used her as reference when she was working on Rio.

Also, as you may have seen Violetta post in the meme channel, I got a phenomenal picture of Connor that he's actually made his profile picture now. A little fun fact people always get mad at me for so I thought it'd be funny to share is that I absolutely hate Photoshop. I edit all of my pictures using the Red Giant Universe and Magic Bullet Suite tools in After Effects on an adjustment layer which I use as basically a LUT. I've been self teaching myself since 2016 so sometimes when I say that I use Cinema 4D or the old version of Substance Painter because I despise the Adobe version, and especially that I use After Effects to edit pictures, people always get confused and I find that amusing.

Aforementioned picture of Connor. J. Roe-sevelt.