End of Year: 2018 Edition

Greetings, one and all! Well, the year is finally drawing to a close, and what a year it has been. We shot our biggest project in almost five years, and a short on top of that. Said short was released this last week, and can be found here, for those of you who haven't seen it yet: Light of Hope

Speaking of the series, after the release of our short, we were well into editing episodes 7 and 8, before a pretty nasty bug laid the team out. Hopefully we'll be able to get more of that done after Christmas, when our brains are clearer. (Yes, despite the Wednesday release, this is being written on Monday, due to this little event on the 25th of December...)

All in all, a fairly productive week, despite the sickness and the holiday.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Coming Soon, to a Screen Near You...

Greetings, one and all! This week finds us racing toward the release of our short, which takes place in the Stormborn universe. But first, a recap.
Wednesday night saw our first shoot, in a stand of trees well after dark. For a little over three hours on location, we managed to turn out about four minutes of screen time. The chill wind picking up 2/3 of the way through was an excellent incentive to move quickly...

Friday saw a mad rearrangement of schedules, followed by two shorter shoots, framing the primary narrative. The wind picked up during the first, making sound challenging to capture, and the rain started to fall during the second, leading to a mad juggling of umbrellas, and so no pictures.

Those two hours netted another two plus minutes of screen time. All in all, a very productive shoot session. On Saturday, we dove into a rapid edit session, as well as full sound sync.

Sunday saw the team meeting for the final storming exercise: Medieval style.

By the end, they were getting a good idea of how to go about the process, and then we released them for Christmas break.

Monday came around, and with it the slow process of color correction, and the limited number of effects that are needed to tell the story. As Tuesday is supposed to host a bit of a wind storm, we have no idea if we'll have power, and so this blog is being written early. Thus, the update will end here.

But, before that happens, I will say that this short is being released within the week, before Christmas! So, keep your eyes out for that, and have a great week!

Merry Christmas to all!

On the Cusp of Christmas Cinematography

Greetings, one and all! As I write this, we are fast approaching our first film day of the season. Odds are, by the time you're reading this, we will be setting up for the shoot. It's been one of our shortest production schedules to date, and, as such, we've been doing a wide range of pre-production aspects at once. Everything from costuming and prop construction to casting.

This is also a learning experience for me, a trust exercise, as it were, because I have no time to double check the things that others are doing without me.
Sunday saw the stunt team meeting to refine what they've learned about clearing buildings. This is also the first week where the whole team is back from finals, so it was a packed shop, to be sure.

On top of all that, we've also been keeping apace of our primary duties with Stormborn. Sound sync has been finished on episodes 5 and 6, and the edit tightened yet again. They have also both been color corrected, which has been interesting, as I'm trying to give different planets their own unique feels, despite both being fundamentally forested in nature.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

'Tis the Season

Greetings, one and all! This week has featured a wide spread of events. First off, the focus of production has been sound syncing some more complex scenes, as well as cleaning up the audio. As such, there are no new production pictures, on that end.

Secondly, Sunday saw the team expanding their modern combat skills, in the form of storming lessons.

By the end of the day, things were beginning to move fairly smoothly, barring one hostage scenario...

 

On top of all that, there's the aforementioned "classified writing." While the exact plot will have to wait for full release, let's just say that this particular project would be best if released within the next 20 days... I leave the rest to your imagination. This short project was born out of the realization of how much post work Stormborn has, and the need for simpler projects to be released between now and then. To that end, we are currently revising the short script, while also casting from our closer circle of friends and team members. This production blitz is gonna be a new one for us, so... we're off!

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Fun with Continuity

Greetings, one and all! Despite the holiday weekend, we have actually managed to make a fair amount of progress. For starters, Episodes 5 and 6 have both been edited, and have received their first pacing pass.

It was then that I found a fairly egregious continuity flaw. Circumstances rendered only a single take from a particular angle as viable for an important section of dialog. However, this was also the only take where the hair was in the wrong place, hanging down in front of the actress, (having slipped earlier in the take,) instead of behind her shoulder. Lacking many of the higher end tools to make this right, I had to go old school, copying her torso from another take, and painstakingly adding it to the current one, frame by frame. While not perfect, I'm pleased that the results came out as well as they did.

Also, it's here that I should probably clarify. When I talk about where we are with each episode, that conveniently ignores the fact that there are several shots for each episode that have yet to be created, largely due to needing to build the models, and rigs for filming them. To that end, I will be laying out the designs for our art department to start working on, while I turn my attention to some currently classified writing...

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Another Pass at It

Greetings, one and all! This week has a few very clear highlights. For starters, we finished color correcting episodes 3 and 4. There was a bit in Episode 3 where rapidly changing weather patterns affected the lighting, and thus the color, but several passes finally got that sorted out.

We have also begun editing Episode 5, which is officially where I hit episodic no-man's land. An added scene in Episode 3 changed the pacing of the episodes, and it's finally caught up to me. So, instead of having a plan regarding where this all ends, I'm just gonna edit until the right stopping spot, and see what happens.

Sunday saw a small team meet, which worked out fine, because it made the exercise of the day much more straightforward. After practicing "bounce" for unarmed strikes, we gave the team a very specific scenario to choreograph for. As hoped, they really leaned into their characters...

With Thanksgiving coming up, the early part of this next blog "week" could be a bit quieter, but hopefully next week will bring news of a successful Episode 5 edit.

Happy Thanksgiving! Until next time!

Syncing the Second Batch

Greetings, one and all! This week is a bit more straightforward in description. Several non-filmmaking duties kept me occupied in the evenings, but despite that, Episodes 3 and 4 have been sound synced, and their edits refined, both to make the fight scene punchier, and in preparation for the color correction and effects.

Sunday saw another stunt meet, with a somewhat smaller group. However, that did allow us to expand the unarmed combat development process, through various choreography exercises.

All in all, a low key, yet productive, week.

Well that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Resuming Assembly

Greetings, one and all! This week started with the integration of the prologue footage into the Episode 1 edit. The footage went together well, but I'm not quite satisfied with the audio, so we'll be revisiting that, to see what we can do to make it work. Episode 3 has now been sound synced, and the edit for Episode 4 has received its first pass, though the episode transition has still to be decided upon.

It was during a pass through a quick render of Episode 1 that I discovered a bit of a problem. Long story short, the fix for a persistent tech issue created unfortunate visual glitches that, ironically, now need their own fix. Fortunately, the issue has finally been resolved in those first two episodes. We shall see what the solution will look like in the episodes to come.
In more productive news, we did manage to create a fake window in one shot, and actually make it move with the camera. Given that we're working with older tech, this is quite a bit more impressive than it should be in 2018.

Sunday saw yet another stunt meet, and this time the focus was around taking a hit. After reviewing the finer points of unarmed combat, the team spent the remaining time developing a six person brawl scene.

So, a week which has brought us many puzzles, that are being overcome, one by one.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Prologue Day!

Greetings, one and all! Well, this last week culminated in the long-awaited prologue shoot. Unfortunately, our primary location had been closed down, so we had to resort to  Plan B. Fortunately, Plan B is much closer, which allowed us to wrap both the shoot and the recording session by noon.

All in all, we are quite happy with how that went.
Sunday saw the team meet again, and the return of a first generation stuntie with a martial arts background allowed us to divide up the new members into smaller groups, and cover unarmed combat far more quickly that would've otherwise been possible.

Now we're officially fully into post-production. That begins by washing costumes, packing them, and organizing the office so we have enough room to begin the process of model making...

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Prologue Prep

Greetings, one an all! As production has ramped toward the shoot this Saturday, we've still been able to take some time for working on the episodes. Episode 3 has been edited, and we're most of the way through sound sync. Because I really wanted to see how a particular shot would work out, I threw together a quick test comp in After Effects. I thought you might like to see the results:

We're also deep into costuming, with several options being pulled from the collection for our actors. Final decisions will be made tomorrow. Our art department is also in the middle of creating tassets for our villain's armor.

Sunday, the team met for a quick recap, followed by a series of educational fights.

It's proving interesting, getting three different waves of new stunties up to speed...

By this time next week, we should have pictures from the final location shoot for you to see.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!