Been meaning to get a post up in the past few days but I have been completely drained. I am currently working with Digger T Mesch on a new short film. The name of the film is "A Little Less Conversation". I don't have all the details but in short, it was written by DIgger and is directed by Digger and Paul Mogg. It is for the most part being shot on 2 Canon 5D Mark II's. Yours truly is Director of Post Production and is featuring a cast of many, some interesting punch lines, guns and kung fu. What you would come to expect from Mr. Mesch. The story takes place in a Chinese Mexican restaraunt in L.A. called East of the Border.

Will be back with more details but I have to finish setting up for tonights shoot. Tonight is the action scene and I am bit worried cuz there is quite a few kicks, punches and bodies flying. Here are some pictures from the past two nights, there is a lot going on so I wasn't able to get to much coverage.

Trying really hard to work here but this view is killing me!  This is why they don't put windows in edit suites, editors wouldnt get any work done. I can't stop staring out this damn window!

The end shot of this piece has requires that our main character stops walking and at that moment, he see's himself walk into frame. The main character faces himself and then an action ensues. This would be a very easy thing to accomplish if the final shot was locked off on a tripod but because this piece is shot on a steadicam, the final shot actually is a slow drifting shot, that being because it is virtually impossible for the steadicam to stay completely motionless. so what this means is I have to do several things in order to compile this last shot. The first being that i would have to do an initial stabilization of the final approach. I then have to go in a rotoscope the second main character. Once that is done, I have to go back to the final shot and track a portion of the frame to get the spatial data. Once I have done this, I have to pin the rotoscoped figure to that data to give the illusion of both characters being shot at the same time. This in effect will match the camera moves with the second character thus creating the effect that both where shot simultaneously.

Tracking video can be touch and go especially depending on which software I use. For the initial track, I used the built in affter effects tracker to do a two point track tracking the position and the rotation. This would stabalize it enough to allow me to do a rotoscoping. Then I used mocha to go back and motion track a portion of the scene so that i could pin the second character to match the slight drifting of the camera. But below is some shots of roto heaven.

 

Below is a little timelapse of a portion of the roto. I don't know why I bother to document this process, I guess I do it just to remind myself what a pain in the ass it is and just how I can actually do something really difficult if I just put my mind to it.

 

 

FYI the project is done but I am going to wait a bit before I put it up for viewing, the project has to screen first and a few feathers have to be unruffled. Plus I have yet to post on the motion tracking of the background for inserting the morphing trippy graphic smorgasbord... or not. FUN STUFF!

I know it has been quite some time since my last post. To be honest things have been very very VERY slow this past year. At times I found myself wondering if I would have to demote myself back to "starving artist" status and I have so been there and done that and to be honest..... IT SUCKS!!!!

But then as if someone flipped a switch, this past month and a half has turned out to be quite interesting. The work started trickling in, first with this projecta and then in the past few days, my phone has rung more than it has over the entire past 9 months combined and I am not exagerating. I am thanking my post production gods that is has as to be honest, I was starting to loose it. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU !!!!

The job I am currently working had an interesting set of guidlines and end goals. It is called called "Archrival" and is directed by Dan Pak and produced by Whitespace Studios. To start with, this particular piece involved 1 minute constant take incorporating 15 + characters to happen in procession over a space of 150 meters. The director wanted the playback to appear in slowmotion in regards to the Main character but for the background characters to appear in real time. This presented numerous challenges.

First off the theory behind accomplishing something like this we mean we would have to shoot at a high frame rate. By doing this, you capture more information, then when it is played back at normal speed you will be able to see a nice and smooth slow motion play back. For ppl have difficulty imagining this, think about recording your voice on a tape recorder while the tape recorder is is moving at a fast speed. Then play back the tape at normally speed, the result is a voice that is being played real l y sss looooooow.

The second request was that the content shot was shot smooth. Using tracks and a dolley was not an option as we could no close down the street at our location to lay down a track, which meant steady cam.

Third, we had set budget to operate in which pretty much dictated what equipment we would have to use.

Fourth, the one minute take using steady cam and being shot at a high framerate would have to occur while cueing 15+ actors who all had to perform in sync (the sync issues will be explained later) and we had 4 hours to do it.

To use quote from scotty in the new star trek movie, "it would be like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet wearing a blindfold while riding a horse", that is in terms doing everything right and getting the take. The odds wear not in our favor but with enough planning and rehearsal combined with best equipment we could find in our given budget (which turned out to be a nightmare in itself) and using the most experienced ppl I could find to work that equipment.

Because of the fact we where using a steadicam, we had to find a large format camera that could provide enough weight to counterbalance the steadicam rig. Although there are smaller rigs designed for lighter cameras, it decided on to go with the full sized steadicam rig because it offers the smoothest shot when operated properly. The smaller rigs like movecam and glidecam tend to put out more drifting when being used which in this case would mean the shot would not wor k. Because we had to go with a larger camera, plus the lack of availability of cameras (with in the budget) that shoot at a variable frame rate, in the end we had to go with the Panasonic AJ-HDC27F, which is a rather old camera which only shoots to tape. It uses those big monster DV format tapes.

There were a few comprimises we had to make in order to shoot variable frame rate, this camera doesn't shoot high speed in the traditional sense, not like a film camera or a RED camera, instead of shooting at a higher speed, it actually doubles up on frames or something fancy like that, but in fact plays back in realtime so it is impossible to see what the final footage will look like. Plus as a result of this format, it requires a specialized deck which, at least out here, was very hard to find a facility that provided the transfer service. Perhaps in a later post, I will touch on the difficulties I have faced as a result of using this camera's variable frame rate.

Here are some shots of Grant Douglas, the DP for the shoot setting up the steadicam rig. It really is a monster, and after all the necessary attachments, the rig weighed in excess of 70 pounds / 30 kilos . Now imagine carrying that and trying to do a 1 minute take while walking and operating the camera. Not so easy! Then in order to make sure everyone was moving at an appropriate speed during the recording we constructed a click track that we were comfortable with at both its record speed of 96bpms and its play back speed of 48 bpms. The trickiest thing about it was to make sure that at record speed, it wasn't too fast so that the DP could not keep up walking along side, but still keeping it fast enough so when played back in slow motion, things were not too slow. Not as easy as it sounds I tell you. This was played live during the takes to make sure everyone nailed their speeds.

The Post Production is currently in process, I actually do not have so much time to post blogs and make my deadline :P , so I am probably just going to do one wrap up blog at the end of this. I have a deadline for the 17th of Oct. so I really have to hit this hard. basically what I have on my plate is rotoscoping ( my personal favorite), motion stabalizing and color grading. I would have liked to document the shoot a lot more but I took on the role of impromptu Assistant Director for the shoot so I wasn't able to take too many pics (above), I did take some video and that's below. Stay tuned...

btw It's great to be back !!!! :)

Here it is! The trailer is done and director Elissa Rosati is shopping it in Cannes. MAKE ME RICH! Below is the poster designed by Ben Robinson and of course the trailer. ENJOY :)

Trailer Title: Y4 The Death Loop
Director: Elissa Rosati
Producer/Sound Designer: Ben Robinson
Assistant Director: Billy Lau
Director of Post Production: mrvix
Director of Photography: Ross Clarkson

Starring:
Man: Darren E. Scott
Harpy/Wife: Emilie Guillot
Doctor: Peter Jordan
Burly Man: Simon Yin
Burly Man: Eric Ng
Burly Man: Samuel Yau
Butoh: Tommy Tse
Butoh: Andrew Ng
Butoh: Jean Luc Bonefacino

Y4 is also being done in conjunction with Focus On Film which was assisting production with it's Apprentice Program, a program which allows the kids enrolled to assist and learn the ropes on a real film set. A special thanks to all of them for their excellent work and tireless efforts :)

The Y4 Post tattoo Production is almost at an end (thank god)! There are a few minor graphic titles to be created and inserted and Mr Ben Robinson is still working hard on the music score and audio. I just wanted to get in a quick semi-Y4 post production wrap up up on dah blog.

As far as a tech summary, the Y4 trailer was shot on the Panasonic HVX-200 using a MOVIEtube mount. The mount is in fact a angle shaped piece of circular metal housing a prism. This mount allows the use of 35mm lenses which results in a more filmic look. We shot recording onto the P2 card which is a solid state flash card. This allowed us to shoot at 720 25PN. That means at a screen resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels and at 25 frames a second. The "N" in "PN" stands for native which means that it's true progressive and not a in camera interlace to progressive conversion which happens in some cameras (most notably the pro-sumer models that claim to shot 1080 25P). So you might wonder why am I boring you with all these specs? Well, cuz I have issues with the equipment used. First, I just want to make it known that I am very impressed with what was done with the very very small budget for this production, and in no way am I criticizing any of the amazing and talented people that worked so hard on everything :) What I am doing is what us post production people do best, and that is to lay it out with our acute 20/20 hindsight ;)

So here is the breakdown:

Regarding the MOVIEtube, I caution people who are considering using it to understand it's limits and possible pitfalls. I say possible because I am not 100 percent sure the problem we faced is the same across all the models, but... the one we used had a serious serious issue regarding the exposure and color accuracy. Below are two frames that were shot, one with the MOVIEtube and one without. As most of the environments we were shooting were meant to look dark, with our limited lighting kits, we found that we were most always stopped all the way up (lens open all the way to allow the most amount of light). Having your lens open all the way is a sure way to increase the amount of noise that registers in the blacks and mid tones of your picture. The HVX-200 is not known for it's low light capabilities and with the MOVIEtube attached, it was adding insult to injury in the way that the noise in some of the darker shots was almost a show stopper. Also the MOVIEtube tended to mute out the colors as well as is very apparent in the example below. The before and after shots are have pretty much identical lighting, the only difference is that we threw some blue gels on the screen lights to bring out the blue as the bluescreen we were using was actually kinda purple.

My second bit of beef is with the whole HDV and DVCPRO HD codecs. They both use rectangular pixels instead of the square pixels that we see in all true HD spec cameras and also with the RED cameras. What that means is the actual picture size being shot is 960 x 720 at true square pixels and then the video gets stretched so that the square pixels get elongated across the horizontal plane thus stretching the width of the screen size from 960 to 1280 making it 1280 x 720 (which is the smaller of the two standard HD specs). This little bit of rectangular pixel magic is one of the reasons they are able to get their files sizes so small. Yay for them! But what this also does is take the noise that is already in the shot and amplify it. See the example below. Basically noise is a bitch. Film has grain, but video has noise. Noise can look like grain at times but it is extremely annoying in dark shots because when you go to adjust the grade and do color correction, it in fact becomes more enhanced. The noise can span multiple color channels (rgb and beyond) so when you start messing with the color balance, you might be effecting individual channels of noise which could have an end result of a rainbow extravaganza of noise dancing all over the screen. Truly annoying and very upsetting for me.

So recap, MOVIEtube causing exposure to be close to two stops lower then what the light meter reads (BAD) and then HDV/DVCPRO HD codecs not being square pixels (BAD ON BAD) and then color grading to correct exposures and color problems from the already mentioned faulty gear really does equal BAD ON BAD WITH A SIDE ORDER OF MAJOR SUCK. Kay bitching done. On to the post end :)

I hit this project with the usual line up of software, Final Cut Pro, Color and After Effects. But this time around I was able to try out some new software called Monet and Mocha (thanks to Andy Stokes for putting me onto them). These are both made by Imagineer Systems and utilize something called planar tracking. I used these two apps to do motion tracking and to map textures to the motion tracks. The advantage (and what makes these apps so powerful) of Monet and Mocha is that by being planar trackers, they track planes instead of points. Point trackers, like what comes native with After Effects, really can spoil the show when there is lots of noise (BAD!) because the noise and/or grain can cause the tracker to jump all over the place destroying any attempt and having an accurate track.
 
Now for the show and tell! Here are some before and after color graded shots.

And finally I leave you with a quick little timelapse movie involving some of the post effects I was working on. Coming Soon... Y4 The Trailer!!!

More on the FOB cast and talent involved. Firstly we have a lead actress. We have casted up and coming talent Jenna Lomazzo as the lead role of Blondie.

Below are some recent illustrations depicting the character design of some of the main characters in FOB. First illustrations where done by David Millgate and the last black and white illustration was done by Gustavo Vazquez.

 

Just want to mention (as the emails of amazing work come in from artists all over the world), Digger T. has begun asking his multiplexitude of musicalistic artists all over this spherical planet to contribute their amazing amounts of talent in some sort of compilation of tracks all inspired from the title "Fistful Of Blood". I imagine these will be used in a soundtrack of sorts for the FOB trailer as well as for the site launch happening in July and perhaps greeting cards with those little musical chips inside (i kid). But seriously... I don't know where he finds these people but they all have mad talent (both musical and otherwise) and are all contributing their abilities to make this movie/trailer something amazing.

First out of the gate is Gregory Moore of "Blind Generation" fame.

Here are stills of what I am dubbing "The Son Of Burly Man" . I am imagining this is what it would look like if our two Burly Men Simon Yin and Eric Ng had a son. However I was not setting out to create one for the Yin-Ng family album, this is in fact relevant! Stay tuned for more Y4 goodness.

Fistful Of Blood is in the pre productions stages now and I wanted to post some recent artwork. First of the logo has finally been created (by yours truly). Special thanks to the person who pointed out "Fistful" has only one "L". I owe you one!

 

Also, a serious amount of design has gone into the design of Blondie's (the main character)gun. Digger came up with his concept and design's based and a few criteria which in turn was based on Blondie's character and what she had to actually accomplish with her weapon of choice. I am not sure if Digger has given his creation a name yet but I am sure it's gonna be something super bad ass. Illustrations were then knocked out by illustrator/designer David Millgate, who resides in London.

 

After the illustrations where finalized, it was translated by Rob Arcidiacono (hope I got his name right) into 3D software called Rhino which is used by product designers and architects and animators to create 3D objects that are going to enter production. Below are some simple 3D renders and there is also a quicktime 3D version that you can interact with. It's pretty amazing what kids are into these days :P

More pre production news and artwork to come!