Massive Update

Lots of great things happening in the last few weeks; I finished several paying gigs which earned me enough money to buy a Canon EOS T3i, yay!  And this camera will be shooting at the Windie City Shootout starting tonight!  We will also be shooting with a 60D as well.  The 72 Windie City Shootout is a film contest in which groups that enter are given a set of 3 requirements (A prop, a line and a location) that have to be implemented into the film.  Then we have to shoot, edit and finalize a 5-10 minute film for the Monday deadline.

So, this weekend is going to be pretty busy, I don't foresee any special FX shots, but we might have a green screen shot for a short newsreel that might be used in the story.  If that's the case then I might be the Director for "Unit B" while the main "Unit A" shoots the actual film.

We have a tentative script all thought out, with enough vagueness to accommodate the variety of requirements that we get tonight.  Both the Story and the Production team are meeting tonight in Carol Stream to go over the requirements, finalize the script, and set a shooting schedule for tomorrow.

In other news, our recent film "Just Add Water" was screened at the 4th annual Land of Lincoln "21 Project" film contest, and we were nominated for 4 of the 5 categories.  While we didn't win any awards, it was still an impressive set of nominations for a film in which I thought was a very small step backward from last year's entry.  In addition to the other entries being a vast improvement over the previous years, we had a large pool of competitive short films to compete against.  Overall it was a satisfying time in the midst of the Decatur festival, I only wish we could have stayed longer.

Other film updates; "Gorgeous Knight" is still being worked on.  I got an update from the studio that the final "chase" scene came back from their animators wasn't good enough.  So they may be looking to me for either technical advice, or to have some hands in it, not sure yet.  They want me to review the current state of the scene and go from there.  Right now they have me near the top of the Credits list as "Technical Advisor" and as top "Animator" / "Special Effects", so that's fantastic props already.

And more paying gigs coming up as well as non-paying gigs (just because I like to stay busy), so no rest for the weary!