Blocking: trails part 1

This “trails” series of studies will go over extra measures taken to ensure the audience has a clear read of the blocking.

The first example shows perhaps the most common use of trails: clarity in complexity. The trails of the ship after it flies into space allows the audience to track it through high frequency details:

What’s helpful with the trails in the example below is that, even the overhead-wideshot of the ground is short, there’s a trail history of movement happening over a longer period of time. So there is more blocking information given with the trails than if the speeders didn’t create trails.

The idea of a trail “history” is also helpful when the object leaving the trail has left screen space. It’s a cheat of motion blur and leaves a trail for the viewer for the movement to register. Like in this Heroes of the Storm trailer below. Without the long green streak, it would be unclear what affected the other bug bots.

Another example of trail history is when the ball goes out of frame is from the NBA’s tip off promo below. This manages to always keep the idea of the ball in frame.

Keeping the idea of the object with a trail is a similar concept to an earlier study I did on lighting:
Lighting: Shadow and Visibility