GRACE SHELTON
Church's Story
A virtual production short film created in in Unreal Engine 5
Overview
Church's Story is a virtual production created in 3D using Unreal Engine 5, FaceWare, Xsens, and MetaHuman technology. The story follows Robert "Church" as he recounts his arrest and incarceration and the scenarios leading up to it. The final movie shows Church speaking his truth as a long form monologue as the events play out around him.
I acted as associate producer and project manager on this project. I led weekly round table meetings, set up and managed the project schedule on Redbooth, while working to find the resources and technologies needed to advance each stage of the project.
The project team:
Zeb Wood - Executive Producer
Albert William - Executive Producer
Thomas Lewis - Director
Grace Shelton - Associate Producer/Project Manager
Brianna White - Art Director/3D Artist
Jasmine Martin - Character Designer
Jude Morey - Animator
Shane Sanneman - 3D Artist
Project Breakdown
Pre-Production
To start the project I reviewed all the initial project documents and content to create a framework for the virtual production.
I created time sheets and other production documents so that the team had the structure they needed to begin production.
Production
During the production phase I managed the team to help them hit their goals and targets that were set each week. We used bi-weekly check-ins with me to monitor progress and issues, one virtual and one in person. I created a Redbooth Gantt Chart to outline the project deliverables and schedule.
When one team member was taken off the project and a replacement was not available, I stepped in to take over the workload while still acting as manager to keep the project on track.
Post Production
The 11+ minute movie was completed in the 15 week time frame alotted with a team of only 5 people.
The end product consists of motion capture and hand done animation and has 15 unique sets with a cast of MetaHuman characters.
Church's Story - 15 week progress video:
Reflection
The two greatest issues we ran into during the making of this film were the time constraint of fifteen weeks and a team that was too small for the project. When one member of the team was taken off the project, I was able to step in to do some of the 3D work. However, we were still short by quite a few people with the workload we had. The only way to manage this was to determine the “must haves” and the “nice to haves” and make decisions on what to focus on. There were items that we wanted to get done, but had to sacrifice early on to prioritize having a finished video.
Along with this was the complication of the expectations of two executive producers and a director. As project manager/producer it was my job to take feedback from all three and determine which items were the most pressing for the project. I then needed to direct my team on what to focus on for the next week. Sometimes some of the requests from the executive team were in conflict with each other, so it fell to me to find a way to make everyone content with the final product.