Delving Days

 Greetings, one and all! With the Block 8 edit mostly in place, we’ve moved into the sound sync. The scene directly before the Spire sequence required extensive clean-up, but was finished relatively quickly. Then, on to the Spire…

Realizing that the dialog bits would be most important, I’m focusing on shoots 3 and 5 first, as anything resembling a linear progression through the scene is out of the question. As of today, Shoot 3 has been synced, and so I have dialog blocks at the beginning and the end of the scene in place, with a smattering throughout the middle.

Sunday was a fun turn. With a smaller group, but pretty nice weather, we decided to let them test their real-world skills with a live action dungeon delve, in the style of the Army’s “glass house” drills.

This incorporated precision athletics, like diving through moving obstacles, problem solving, and a spot of melee combat. It was a fun use of stuntie training, perfectly suited to the group size. (Though, by the end, only one of them was still “alive”…)

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

In the Middle of the Fight

 Greetings, one and all! As expected, this week was comprised of the very slow process of editing the big fight scene. Jumping between three or four out of seven different shoot files at any given time has been its own adventure, but when you only have a certain number of people available at any time, you do what you must. That said, for all the complications the shoot brought, there’s already enough footage that makes me smile…

This scene will likely have more alterations and refining tweaks made to it than any other, but right now we’re just trying to get it all laid out in some coherent order. More updates to follow…

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

The Eve of the Spire Sequence

 Greetings, one and all! Well, this week we’re getting in to it: The Spire Sequence. A meticulously planned and choreographed sequence that quickly turned into the largest exercise in cinematic free form gymnastics to date. I’ve tried to write about this process a couple times, but after two or three paragraphs it begins to feel like vaguely traumatized ranting. Suffice it to say that the Spire sequence started as a well-planned three day shoot that quickly ballooned to seven days as the process got carpet bombed by a series of events well outside of our control. Thus the extra days were made up of us doing shoots to cover for the fact that people were suddenly unavailable, or to hide the fact that the terrain had abruptly changed due to sudden landscaping impulses on the part of the park maintenance crew. (To name but two examples.) So now I must take these intentional shoots and wild jerry-rig measures, and somehow sew them together into a cohesive whole. Let the games begin...

On the more upbeat side, we have finished the fine edit of Block 7, (save an ADR session we will need for a night shoot that had unfortunate combine activity,) and despite the Spire challenges, already have a good bite taken out of Block 8.
On top of all that, the team met again on Sunday, and we walked the younger stunties through footwork and agility exercises.

It’s an important process to work through, though tedious and tiring.

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

First Pass on the Seventh Block

 Greetings, one and all! Alright, so I can sum up pretty much everything we got done this week in one sentence: The sound sync and fine edit have been finished on Block 6, and the rough edit has been finished on Block 7. That said, that’s actually a decent amount accomplished, given the strangeness of the scenes being worked on…

Sadly, a wide assortment of things kept the stunt team from meeting this Sunday, but it also allowed at least one team member to catch up on some much needed sleep. As has been the theme lately, it seems real life has been intruding a mite.

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

A Spot of Everything

 Greetings, one and all! It occurs to me that there’s been no visual update on how the edit is progressing, so I thought I’d add a few screen shots in here. The rough edit has been completed through Block 6, the sound sync and fine edit runs into the early part of that block, as well. I’ve just begun pulling together the materials for Block 7, and was a bit surprised to see that the big fight scene that took us six days to shoot will be coming up in Block 8. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it came up kinda like an ambush. The story doesn’t feel that far along.

Anyway, on top of all that, the team met again, and once more had to work around heavy rain…

We did a mix of choreography and drilling, with the stunties crafting a medieval stakeout on an arms deal…
All in all a good week, but one that felt very short.

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