Cubfan135 is one of the grittiest hermits of Hermitcraft. In Season 7, this American YouTuber reincarnated as a Pharaoh and set his mega-base in the... Where else but the desert biome, of course!
This Great Pyramid is his mega-base of the season, stretching almost 250 blocks on each side. The walls were made of sandstone stairs and topped by several layers of gold blocks that allowed a beacon to beam through.
While the exterior facade was relatively simple, its interior was breathtaking. All in all, Cub's grandeur of ancient structure inspired me to develop my first cinematic walkthrough... ever!
This blog post will briefly cover how I created this cinematic walkthrough, from the inspiration to planning and execution:
Creating a cinematic walkthrough using the Minecraft replay mod
This cinematic walkthrough is made possible using Minecraft's replay mod. I highly recommend Pixlriff's tutorial if you're interested.
#1 Prepping, Studying, Researching
Yup, every successful project stems from adequate research. For this case, I downloaded the Season 7 map and explored Cub's pyramid extensively, from room to room. I'm leaving no (sand)stones unturned!
Saw a space? Explore. What to look for? The ceiling, walls, floor, decoration, everything.
This helped me understand this pyramid's architecture, which room takes precedence, what's the focal point of any particular room, etc.
Here's also where I discovered unfamiliar areas and passageways.
Initially, I thought these were merely another room I missed in his videos... Until Cub tweeted his Easter eggs in the world download.
Then it clicked.
What are pyramids known for? Secrets! What secrets? Secret burial chambers, secret treasure rooms, you name it. Cub, you sneaky Pharaoh!
If he's being sneaky, then so can I! Here's me making a cameo in my own video:
#2 Planning the storyline
Enough prepping, now planning!
Coming from an architectural background, I have a strong emphasis on legibility. In simple terms, wayfinding. Can I bring the viewers to tour the pyramid without discombobulating their whereabouts, orientation etc?
With this, I organised the walkthrough using the hierarchy principles: the arrangement of relative importance.
I dissected the walkthrough according to the pyramid's floor level and spaces.
Floor level: in a logical order from the ground floor and then work my way up.
Then the spaces: which room is more significant, which parts of the room can be just as a "filler" or transition scene.
To put it briefly: how the eyes (camera) travel from Point A to Point B, what can be highlighted during the journey, and what should be the focus at Point B.
Let's use the ground floor as an example. I've identified and sorted five spaces by the level of importance: the grand entrance (duh), central atrium, Target, Endermite's Exhibition and relics room.
P/S I don't know if Cub actually assigned names to these spaces, so let me know if I get it wrong!
I find the wall decoration and details of the Endermite Exhibition wing interesting and assigned these as the transition shots.
It's common sense to start the tour from the pyramid's redstone-powered front gate. I then lead the way to the central atrium: the node that traverses to various rooms and between floors. Next, I panned the camera from the atrium to Target's entrance.
The audiences do not have this pyramid's map, and it's crucial for someone to know where they're being directed to. To achieve this, I included the Target sign first before moving to its interior.
Now that the storyline is established, let's start playing with the camera!
#3 Envisioning the Flow
To envision is to foresee possibilities, which is definitely helpful in this stage. The main question I ask myself is: how do I want the viewers to see and understand this room?
In other words:
Cinematography. The art of motion-picture photography, among which involves the composition of a scene and the camera angle and movements.
Don't get frightened by these big words! I'm no expert so I will write it as simple as Grian's Minecraft face!
There are many ways to video capture a space. Do you keep it at eye level, the height one usually sees things? Or a fly-about, viewing everything from the top? These are hugely dependent on the focus of the room.
For the Endermite Exhibition, I happened to catch Scarab, the Endermite moving about. Since it's a small entity, my intention is to observe and experience the enclosure as Scarab itself. With this, I set the camera to follow its path and keep the lens very close to the ground.
Finally, the Relics Room where Cub stored all his riches (and his 6-button abs). I decided it was better to provide an overview of this space, so I had the camera fly up from its entrance to the corner of the room.
Halfway when the camera flew upwards, it accidentally passed through one of the relics. We cannot go through solid entities IRL (duh??) and definitely cannot see anything in the solid form, so it doesn't make sense to keep the camera path.
Here's where a sudden realisation hit me.
There were holes in the relics themselves. Can I purposely have the camera fly through the gaps, rather than avoid the monuments altogether? This brings us to the next step:
#4 Experimenting and Repeating
Yup. Design is a creative process more often born from vigorous trial and error.
After dozens of iterations, I finally found the pathway! Now viewers get to see the Relics Room from the entrance, then fly through a gap and high above to have a comprehensive view of the space.
After this happy accident *ahem* discovery, I'm inspired to be even more daring with my camera work for the rest of the walkthrough!
Let's take the first-floor level as an example, where I panned into the Nether Portal Room:
Is it disorientating? Probably, and purposefully so, since that's my intention.
This shot is inspired by Thor: Ragnarok, the scene where Loki and Valkyrie are summoned by the Grandmaster. At first, we are shown the top of the heads of Loki and Valkyrie... Everything seemed normal until the camera panned backwards. That's when I realised we were actually looking at the reflection on the glass ceiling. How clever!
P/S Unfortunately I cannot find a snippet of the particular scene, sorry!
Here's another example of playing with camera angles, the main atrium:
This trick is made possible because Cub's pyramidical form. Speaking from an architectural point of view, geometric buildings are aesthetically pleasing to photograph due to their classical qualities like symmetry, focal point, hierarchy etc.
And here comes the final part! Drum rolls everyone...
#5 Video Editing
Yup. Video editing... the very existence of hermitcraft.snippets, really. I began by choosing the background music, the most difficult process of video editing. This is because...
As per my editing style, the background audio will dictate the very essence of the final video.
I'll reserve more details of video editing for another blog post. For now, the two primary aspects I look for in choosing background audio are the mood it invokes and its variation.
The genre, the mood: what will the music contribute to this walkthrough? This isn't the usual hermitcraft.snippets video, so comedy music is a big no. And since Cub has dedicated the entire year to raising this grandeur of the ancient structure, I decided epic (or cinematic) music would be most fitting.
Music variation: are there different dynamics and rhythms so that the entire video will not be too monotonous? I find vlog music more often flat, indicating it would be challenging to capture the audience's attention.
I initially researched Egyptian music... for a very obvious reason LOL. Two audio (royalty-free ofc) were shortlisted, however, I cannot really feel their connection with my vision. I later tried a more generic genre and settled on Kevin MacLeod's "The Descent".
Next, I break this audio into several parts. My music background came in handy since I can identify the repertoires and highlights quickly.
The following step is to synchronise the video with the music. This involves tedious editing, more often re-visiting the world download to re-shoot and re-render.
After two days of vigorous experimentation, this architectural cinematic walkthrough is finally complete!
Nice! Where can I watch this walkthrough?
Easy, it's on my YouTube channel, under the same name hermitcraft.snippets! Click on the thumbnail below and you'll be directed to the video:
I hope this blog post is informative enough. Let me know your comments and thoughts. Till then, see you!
Disclaimer:
hermitcraft.snippets is a Hermitcraft fan blog and is not associated with the official Hermitcraft in any way. Kindly contact hermitcraft.snippets should you wish to remove any of the published media.
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