Falling Cities and Chattering Crowds

Greetings, one and all! So this week saw us finally getting around to doing the audio for the destruction of a city, which was certainly its own challenge, as there are so few samples of ancient cities falling into the sea… Next up, we continued the edit review, made a few adjustments, and then spent a few hours making dice disappear from a shot. Sounds strange, but basically we needed to repurpose a shot to preserve continuity.

Lastly, the team met again, and on top of practicing their death and injury reactions, we also ran a street chatter recording session, where the stunties improvised in-universe scenes and conversations.

Then we promptly integrated them into the edit. Multiple layers of conversations hidden behind the main dialog, most that tell a hilarious story of their own.

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

Whip Cracks, Power Axes, and Breaking the Edit

Greetings, one and all! Wow, where did the week go…? It feels like just yesterday that I was writing the blog for last week. In retrospect I can see everything we did, it’s just that initially it’s all a blur.

The week started off with finding sound for the big chain lightning effect, then manipulating it to match the timing. On top of things like actual electrical arcs, you can also hear things like whip cracks in the final edit if you really listen.
Next up we went through a series of renders as we tried to finesse the edit in a few places to make things work a little better. Ah, the joys of breaking with your time-tested production pipeline because of a deadline… you end up with four times more work.

Lastly, the team was back again after the holiday, and choreographed a fight scene that fuses a bit of the past and future…

Everyone seemed to be having fun, and at least two of the stunties declared their bit to be “the best,” so I think that’s a win.

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

Sound of Stone

Greetings, one and all! Despite the holiday weekend and a few other unfortunate speed bumps, we did still manage to get a few things done this week. The biggest challenge was animating stone shards that would then stick to where they hit. Making the velocity feel realistic was the real trick. After that we did a lot of stone sounds, be it movement, impact, or the sound of a vault door being hammered in…

This in turn led us to places where the edit needed to be tightened up even more, and in the end we had a lot of work finished that wasn’t on the schedule when we started. But it all needed to be done, so in the end it’s all good. Just doesn’t look as encouraging when you really wanted to check something off the list.

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

Blocks and Bolts

Greetings, one and all! Well… turns out it can take a week to animate a lightning bolt. Okay, so it was chain lightning, and multiple shots, but still… But yes, the biggest feature of this week was the trial and error process of animating a lightning bolt as it streaks through various targets. As the shots are different distances from the subjects, it was largely a process of getting the bolt to look like it was moving the same speed between shots. Of course, in reality the bolt would only be a frame or two per shot, but that’s not cinematic enough, or really even particularly clear to the viewer. So it was a week of art direction on a lightning bolt to make it look good to the audience, if not realistic. Next up will come the sound design…

Anyway, next up was the stunt team, where we taught the newbies the art of basic choreography, followed by a classic exercise…

So, despite the new parent exhaustion, we’re still making progress. A surprising amount, to be frank. Though this last weekend certainly took it out of us.

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