Cleanup Complete!

 After wrestling with the connection point between episodes 12 and 13 for the better part of a week, the slightly unusual use of a deleted scene turned out to provide the best blend. With that, the cleanup and revision was officially completed.  Next up, constructing the credits sequence.

 

Now, for your viewing pleasure, we will give you a teaser of one of the deleted scenes:

 

Well, that about sums it up for a rather quiet, yet productive week. Until next time!

Seen A Scene?

 Greetings one and all! This week, the audio revision has been locked down on two more episodes, and we're currently working on integrating the final new scene into the revised episode structure. The new scene was originally intended for Season 3, and should give a better picture of why Kate is making the choices she is.

The stunt team met again this Sunday and drilled some more. Afterwards we discussed costuming options.

 

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

Quarry Clash

 So... it's been a full week. Saturday I met with a group of filmmakers in Salem. It was interesting and somewhat educational, though I'm not sure what, if anything will come of it.

 

 Sunday the stunt team met, and we choreographed the first phase of the LCC fight. It's often quite challenging to choreograph an all on one fight scene and make it look good, and not like someone is waiting their turn, but I think we've developed a good system. 

 

 

Tuesday we returned to an old location to scout for our competition entry. It was with great joy that we realized the location would help the fight considerably, as well as adding an epic backdrop.

I am also finally into the last giant step of the audio cleanup/ re-edit. Episodes 11 through 13 of Gatewalkers are all together in one giant and somewhat unstable file, and it will be interesting to see if it can handle the weight of a couple more scenes.

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

Och... It Never Rains...

 Well, this has been an interesting week. Good progress on the sound clean-up has been made, including diving into a near total rework of Episode 8. Experience has apparently granted me the ability to realize how horrible the first attempt was. Alas, that was interrupted by a long power outage... and a few sheep giving birth in the middle of a storm. Y'know, normal film troubles.

Once again, a few members of the stunt team were occupied, so we ran through some choreography drills. This time not even the rain could stop us. Then the sun peeked through to backlight the whole affair...

For just throwing two random stunties together, the results were quite good. I guess the "teach a man to fight" method of stunt training is starting to pay off.

That's about all for this week, until next time!

All the Buzz

So maybe that's a really bad pun, but I'm happy to announce that we've finally finished the first shot of the swarm sequence in Othersight.

One down, one to go.

The other primary achievement of this week has been the extensive cleanup of the Gatewalkers Season 1 audio and the addition of a deleted scene.

You may remember this screenshot from an earlier blog. Pacing didn't allow us to include it in the series, (which was a pity, as I really loved a couple shots from it,) but thanks to the feature edit, you too will be able to enjoy it with us.

Sunday the crew was a little short for finishing up the historical montage, so we took a brief detour into discussing and developing the basics for the Lightsaber Choreography Competition.

 

 Nathan arrived later and proved to be a wealth of resources for this particular project. If all goes well next week, we'll try for the montage again. If the weather refuses to cooperate, well... I guess we'll wing it. It's not like we have a shortage of things to work on.

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

Refinement

Hello all! This week has been very productive, though not necessarily in the context of new material as much as the improvement of the old. Since I learned a lot over the course of turning out Gatewalkers, especially in regards to audio cleanup, I'm going back and refining what I can to make the feature edit a better experience overall. As mentioned before, we're choreographing a fight to place over part of the historical monologue: We are most of the way through the mass combat, and will be developing the duel between elven lords this coming week. Work on the Chaos backgrounds continues to be slow, as multiple HD 3D layers has led to some buffering and fragmentation issues, but here's a quick sample of the work in progress. Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

On the Need for Random Title Generators

(Seriously, a guy can run out of original titles after doing this kind of thing for years.)

This week was a dense melange of assorted tasks, but alas, very few of them were movie related. In order to reduce the number of backgrounds we'll have to render, I've been on the hunt for textures that would make respectable walls with only a few details added. That has gone moderately well, but laws can be somewhat sticky if an otherwise free to use texture gets used in the wrong medium, so regular research is required.

 

The stunt team met for a choreography drill, which then devolved (or evolved, take your pick,) into a free-form sparring match, which yielded some interesting results regarding the balance of power between weapons and their wielders.

 

 

 

For instance, strength and skill only matter so much if the unit is not cohesive. As a result, better individual combatants can be steamrollered by less experienced ones if the latter work well in tandem. Perhaps the thing that makes someone a good duelist actually harms him in massed combat, but the jury's still out on that.

 

We also discussed ways to expand the audience for our channel. One thing we're looking at is entering a certain well established choreography competition. The LCC (Lightsaber Choreography Competition) is going into its 13th year, and has been a great boon to the YouTube endeavors of its winners. If all goes well, that may soon be us as well.

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