In Progres...

I was reminiscing today, looking over old projects, finished and unfinished. Our most ambitious film, PEARL, still lies unfinished waiting to be revived. A year ago, we tried to finish it in time for a film contest, but ended up not happy with the results and decided to push it aside for the time being. The problem with PEARL is that it features several minutes of total CGI rendered sequences in space. The opening 2 minutes features an attack on a space vessel from a dozen or so fighters and a couple larger attack vessels.



A sequence like that is generally done in a studio with a couple dozen animators, modelers, particle simulators, and compositors all working on separate scenes. At the time, I had only 6 months experience with 3DS Max and was just getting into learning the Afterburn plugin. I had created some test animations and explosions, and they were good, but the modeling needed some serious work.



After 9 revisions of the visual style of the ships and atmosphere between December of 2007 and August of 2008, we finally got something what we thought at the time was good enough to start filming. During filming, I started previsual work on the opening sequence which was 1:45 long. After about 16 revisions, the animation sequence was approved and then I started the final renders. In the end though, after it was completed, I decided that I hated it, and wasn't proud of it, and after a final cut was produced, we all decided that it was not good enough to finalize, so we put the project on the back-burner.

After a much needed hiatus after that, and now, two more projects finished, I feel like trying to conquer this once and for all. During the last year, I redesigned all the ships and the sequence entirely from the ground up and I feel that now something is possible which wasn't before. While the motivation hasn't creeped in yet, I'm still excited about the possibilities.

The Missing Bank Card 2: The Revenge of Stephen Douglas (Video)

As you could probably tell from the film, we had a tremendous amount of fun making it. It was our first film in which we didn't feel too constricted by our lack of experience. In the past, we felt too limited by our lack of knowledge in filmmaking and special effects to really get the look and feel that we wanted.

One thing that was considerably different with this film, was the amount of time we had to work on it. I had about a month before shooting to research and prepare effects, and 3 weeks after filming to put the effects together. We collaborated primary through rendered outputs of videos through email, and the last week we gathered up all our computers and hardware and made Paul's "game" room home for several days while we ironed it out.

My most time-consuming scene, was the car-portal explosion with Douglas. I was lucky enough to acquire Video Copilot's Action Movie Essentials 2 stock footage library for the explosion video, and I created a disintegration mask over a painstakingly hand-rotoscoped, slowmotion video of Douglas (Jeff Benson) in front of the car waving his arms.

99% of the time, I can always count on Paul to change something in an effect shot, whether it's changing the colors, the order of the shots, or just plain changing it entirely. This is most certainly not a bad thing, it helps prepare me for the real world of motion graphics. There's a saying in the industry "Pimp yourself, not your work", never fall in love with your work, and it ALWAYS changes before it reaches the final product, and ALWAYS be willing to change it for whomever wants it changed, because someone else always sees something that you don't.

It was funny, the only scene that Paul didn't ask me to redo, was the M.T. fight scene. Which I was surprised, because to me that scene is the only scene that I am not too happy about, it just wasn't perfect. But since he loved it on the first take, I decided not to mess with it unless I had time (which of course I didn't).

This is (so far) my proudest film and I am very glad to have worked with everyone on it. And I hope to top this.... very soon...

Matte Painting (Video)

We've always had the idea of doing a Fantasy film. Up until now, we didn't have the knowledge on exactly how to do that. This video shows a simple track matte, which is simply motion tracking the whole scene and keying in objects that don't belong. This is the basis of films that don't have the ability of shooting on location. I mean, where else are you going to find a firey mountain side with an exploding volcano for the land of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings? Or showing people walking through an old 1800's town that doesn't have city skyscrapers or cars running in the background?

That's the magic of matte painting, and is extremely common in many movies. Sometimes they may just be replacing a small object in the scene, like a window ad in a store, or grafiti on a brick wall. Other times its more advanced like removing roads from a scene so that it looks more isolated, or adding thousands of warriors fighting on a battlefield when you only have a dozen or so actual actors.

In need of a hiatus...

The past month has been extremely busy. On top of two short-film deadlines, we have all been juggling work, school, vacations, and other family time, and somehow inserting two of our most technically challenging films to date.

We entered the 2nd annual Land of Lincoln Credit Union film contest again this year. Last year we won an award for "Best Direction" for "The Missing Bank Card", and this year was more of the same. We won for "Best use of the logo" for the sequel "The Missing Bank Card 2" but we failed to get the coveted "Best Film" award, again. Even though it was a major letdown for me, I don't feel so bad now that I look back on it; we lost to the same guy who also won last year (Steve Heinzel), and his film was very good (again), and I felt as though our film generated the biggest and best audience reaction throughout the whole film.

So, it wasn't bad. Even a few of the event directors felt very strongly that our film should of won, and that we are "required" to make a sequel again next year to finish the trilogy. Even this year's winner, Steve Heinzel, thought that we were going to take the trophy this year. If there was anyone whom I wouldn't mind losing to, it is Steve Heinzel, while his films aren't technically amazing, he has a cinematic eye that is just awe inspiring.

After that, we all had a series of vacations and work-related business that kept us from focusing on the next project which was submitting an entry for the "Protect Your Butterfinger Bar" commercial film contest. We were able to get it done in time for the deadline, and while I am very proud of it, even though I re-used effects that I had done in my previous films, it is a very funny piece of work. There is another film which I think will beat it, and I feel as though we are missing the mark on the commercial tie-in for the Butterfinger, but it is still a solid entry.

If you want to check it out, head to http://protectyourbutterfingerbar.com and go to the "Best use of a Gadget" section and look for a film titled "Igor's Lament". That's our film, and yes, I played Igor... I just kept repeating "25,000$" in my head, that's how I was willing to do the dress... scene...

Well, I know that this is a very long first post, I have a lot rattling around up there. I don't know if this blog will get any attention, but that's alright, I just need a place to write.

Dave