#simtography tips | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

simdreams · 7 months ago

Text

simdreams being metalinguistic about her own story thingy

(OR: me being inspired by @nocturnalazure's not-a-tutorial to ramble about my photoshooting process)

my simblr story photography style has to account for the fact that the world where my characters meet does not exist. most of the internal locations are different iterations of one random empty lot I built on the CAS world, or any SGI lots placed on an empty SGI world (my characters houses are on the basement of public locations), and I build only what I need - in a lot of different saves - because otherwise this thing would need five more years to start and my computer cannot cope with a full world with 50 fully decorated lots. So as a rule I don't have façades and open planes to offer as establishing shots *dies in cinematic*

Establishing shot: my pc rig is weak lol

So what do I do? I offer some detail on the place where the action's happening.

My only off-script written cues on the story are regarding the setting.

Sometimes I insert brief scenes and the only info you need from the setting is that there's a woman in the backseat of a car. and it's raining. Bam.

The only time so far I had an external shot I went full-on Projac and summoned a random lot which was not the same place decorated for the internal shots. Lol. I felt very smart.

Oh, yes, I also had to use this once. Deco buildings and deco sims. It's depressingly bland. My sims will never go back to Brugge.

(there's more under the cut)

Then, the action relies on some tricks too:

My story is not packed with action: it's mostly people exchanging words on the same place, or doing things on a small space. I have issues finding the perfect pose for the context (who doesn't?), so when I do, I take A LOT of shots in all available angles. I abuse the 'look at' feature, and sometimes the same pose makes the cut in different perspectives! (not in a sequence, so it doesn't get so obvious lol)

Eheh. There goes my illusion.

Waist and shoulder shots are good to show emotions and remind my readers of my characters faces, but they are not my favorites because of the ludicrous amount of times that a pose makes my sim face look disturbingly distorted. A smiling pose might end up looking crooked, or most commonly, my sim is looking at the wrong side and the 'look at' feature makes their eyes black.

Give it a zoom out and he'll look 100% possessed.

So, I resort to more tricks.

Headless simtography is my go-to framing - I have to remind myself to include full face shots. It's good to show body language, actions or proximity/distance between characters.

A special type of headless photography is hand photography. Because hands do things, you know.

Also, I shamelessly abuse feet shots. Either as a way to suggest movement, indicate contrast, affinity or character through the choice of footwear, and also suggest distance (or lack thereof) between characters HEH

So, in the end, one pose may give you FOUR shots: face, body, hands and feet. :P

Some takes on dialogue:

Framing your characters without showing their faces is not my favorite angle but useful to hide crooked expressions and/or bring some fresh angles. Especially if they are doing something besides sitting still, it can suggest a conversation being held in the right context.

Zooming out and showing the room where the action's happening (even when the action is just two people facing each other) is a nice breather in between too many closeups (which in my case is usually no bigger than a room, but still helps to set where the characters are)

Cropping a face at the mouth gives (at least for me) more emphasis at the lips and the idea that that person is saying something.

In general, my characters talk (or are engaged in talking) when they are looking at each other's direction. This is why "look at" is essential. See, none of these poses were made to work together, but they did (and this is why it can take SO LONG to shoot something, because you are looking for the perfect body language and then trying to make it match with the scene).

And I suppose the most common solution to this is indeed framing two people and giving the speaker a face shot while the listener is unfocused or with their back turned on the camera. Yes.

#simblr #simtography #simtography tips #sims 3 storytelling tips #sims story #sims 3 #txt

23 notes · View notes