Cities and Compositions

Greetings, one and all! This week featured a couple highlights. First off, a review of Episode 4 revealed a pacing issue in an important scene, which required me to piece together about ten seconds of shots by taking parts of six separate handheld shots and stitching them together, to create moments that were never actually filmed. Sadly, because it is a major plot spoiler, we cannot share screenshots of that process.

Secondly, Sunday was our model-making day, and so the team got together to work on turning a pile of junk into a sci-fi city.

We got it roughed in, before our time ran out, so we’ll pick up where we left off next week. Meanwhile, I will be designing and assembling some of the more fiddly bits of the structures.

After that, attention turned back to sound design and timing, as well as more slight adjustments to effects and the edit. Little by little, this series is getting made.

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

The Sound of Violence

Okay, reference and parody aside, that’s really the best way to describe this week. The first period was marked by several days of creating, rendering, integrating, and balancing assorted weapons sound effects.

Sunday, the team met and refined their work from last week, followed by going over plans and materials for the upcoming model-making day. 

 Monday and Tuesday played host to two ADR sessions, and a little Foley work. (Half of Episode 7 and almost all of Episode 8 have horrible sound that will need to be reconstructed from scratch.) 

All in all, a week full of progress, if somewhat shy on the descriptors.

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

Fresh Stripes

Greetings, one and all! After crawling out the other end of our illness, we proceeded to dig into the project, yet again.
First off, one of the things I neglected to mention toward the end of the last blog was that we spent a good amount of time reorganizing the office, so that hopefully more material can remain packed and still accessible.
Secondly, I was hit by a wave of inspiration, and went back through all the episodes, refining the performances further, in particular adjusting cuts to better show reactions during the conversations. After that, we synced up the final bit of dialogue with the last three scenes of Episode 8, which should nicely bookend the concepts of the series.

Thirdly, the Hunter’s ship has received its next paint passes, including a nice bit of detail in the striping on the “wings.” 

Friday saw the return of the class from Roseburg, a new year learning the fine art of inserting pointy object A into belligerent target B.

Sunday, the team met again, and this time we took a bit of a vacation from our more technical training for the lighter fare of a one-off lightsaber choreography session.

It was a lot of fun, especially as we were taking advantage of the first really nice day since the snow cleared.

On top of that, I’ve started working on the designs for various buildings we’ll be making during our forthcoming crafting day. Not bad for a week half-eaten by the bug, eh?

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