Technique Test - Demon Face

Here, I have taken several video shots of a classmate in which I have asked her to act out in several ways so that I can edit it.

The first one is called the 'Demon Face'. Me and Frouzon have decided to include part of this in our trailer as it is a conventional technique that is relative to our chosen genres. We started off by doing a small amount of research on how different people used this technique in their scenes. We both found out that the most average convention that they use is mostly big eyes, wide mouth and offset colors to the face which is supposed to resemble a demon. After that, I asked my classmate to look into the camera and act out as if she is screaming. I have also done a close up of her face so that I can focus more in the transformation of the face and that the audience can see better. Seeing as this is only a test, I did not think about the mise-en-scene or sounds because I wanted to see how well I can adapt the demon face into my classmate.

I have used Adobe After Effects to create this adaptation on my classmate. Because I did not know how to stabilize and motion track, I used an online tutorial on how I can achieve the demon face to help me learn more about after effects. During the process, I have morphed my classmates face whilst motion tracking so that the morph does not move away from the target area. I have also applied contrasts and coloration so that the demon effect could look more realistic. To test out the color grading  I decreased the brightness, added contrast and added a tint of color on the whole of the scene so that the effect will add verisimilitude towards the way the audience would address to whole scene.

Overall, I think that this has been a successful try, especially since this is my first time working on motion tracking and morphing faces at the same time. What I could improve about it is the timing seeing as my classmate had her mouth open for more than 2 seconds, which gives the audience more time to focus around the face and even if there was a small misplaced detail, they would be able to see it. Also, one way I could distract them from seeing the small mistakes is by adding more props or change the costume or even the background so that the audience would look around the scene and not notice the small details which can change their point of view towards this scene. I think that this technique would be very applicable to include within our actual trailer seeing as it is quite advanced and that we've overlooked through other ways of creating a horror scene. Also, by using After Effects, we can create a variety of demon faces and add many other effects that can help us with creating a conventional horror/thriller trailer.

This is an example of a previous demon face that somebody has created.




Here is the first test of the 'Demon Face' technique that I have created: