15.02 Virtual Production Final Project Assignment

Assignment Deliverables

1. Your own finished virtual production video, approximately 30–60 seconds, excluding credits, following the scope of your story and shot planning assignment.
   • Export an .mp4 using H.264 at 1920 × 1080 or higher, with a frame rate that matches your editing sequence.
   • Include sound appropriate to the project and readable credits.
   • Label file YYYY-MM-DD Lastname Firstname Virtual Production Final Edit (.mp4).
2. Brief individual production note, submitted with the video in Canvas. Identify your production contributions, explain one or two important editing decisions, and credit collaborators and outside sources.

Present your video at the final critique. Keep your organized editing project and source media so the work can be revised later.

Assignment Overview

Complete a short virtual production that combines physical performance, objects, or space with a virtual environment or digital imagery. Build on your script or action outline, storyboards or animatic, shot planning, and four XR Studio production sessions. Your sequence may tell a story, stage an impossible event, or develop an abstract visual idea. Give it an intentional beginning, development, and ending.

Select techniques that serve the work. These may include scanned or modeled assets, Unreal Engine, disguise, TouchDesigner, MediaPipe, motion capture, practical props, lighting, compositing, or tracked visual effects. You are not required to use every tool introduced in the course.

Collaboration and Individual Editing

Collaboration is encouraged throughout planning and production. You may share scripts, storyboards, props, costumes, 3D environments, performances, camera work, lighting, recordings, and other production assets. Credit the people who contributed.

Each student must create and submit their own final edit. Work in your own editing project or sequence and make your own decisions about shot selection, order, timing, sound, color, and effects. You may use the same footage and story as collaborators and exchange feedback or technical help. Submitting a shared finished sequence with only a different title or credit does not meet the individual editing requirement.

The three individual progress reports and the final individual edit are the basis for assessing your personal contribution, learning, and decisions within the collaborative production.

Finishing Workflow

1. Finish the Sequence

Watch your edit from beginning to end. Check that a viewer can follow the action or visual development. Trim distracting pauses, replace temporary storyboard images or “missing shot” titles, and make the ending intentional. Simple cuts are enough when they communicate the idea.

Use your own sequence and make your own editing decisions. Shared footage and feedback are welcome.

2. Check Sound

• Add the dialogue, effects, ambience, or music the sequence needs. Dialogue is optional.
• Listen with headphones and, if available, speakers. Keep important sounds audible and music low enough that it does not cover them.
• Lower clips that distort or reach the red clipping indicator. Use short audio fades if a cut makes an unwanted click or abrupt jump.

Build on your earlier sound exercises. You do not need a complex mix or a separate audio application.

3. Make Basic Image Adjustments

Compare adjacent shots. If one is much darker, brighter, warmer, or cooler than the others, make a simple adjustment in the editor you already use. Keep the performer and important props visible. A consistent stylized look is also appropriate when it serves the project.

Advanced grading, masks, tracking, and visual effects are optional. If an effect takes time away from a clear finished sequence, simplify it.

4. Add Credits

Include your name, collaborators, and the sources of outside assets, music, and sound. Longer links and source details can go in the brief Canvas production note. Keep screen credits readable. Use material you created or have permission to use.

5. Export and Check

1. Save your editing project.
2. Export an H.264 .mp4 at 1920 × 1080, using the frame rate of your sequence. A 4K export is not required.
3. Name the file YYYY-MM-DD Lastname Firstname Virtual Production Final Edit.mp4.
4. Open the exported file outside the editing application and watch it all the way through with sound. Check for missing images, placeholders, accidental black frames, cut-off titles, and sound problems.
5. Submit the video and your brief production note in Canvas before the December 9 critique begins. Keep your editing project, media, and a backup.

For a refresher, use the export tutorial in the earlier footage editing exercise.

Grading Rubric