Ok so just to show I am not slacking (to much), I have compiled some behind the scenes stuff and a little bit of a background to what's going/went into the Lotaluv music video production. First as some might recall from the location scouting, there was a brief explanation into how this video was going to be shot. Basically Roman went ahead and decided we should use what is called a "Scorpio Head" with what I believe was a two control access (pan and tilt). Below is Roman setting up the beast of a rig and getting it work. The thing was set to do two full revoloutions and upon reset, had a nasty recoiling reset action which nearly took me out numerous times. By the end of the day it (I) was a running joke. Yeah well I push buttons Mr Camera Crew man, lets see you do that!

The RED© was mounted and obviously then as it spun, we had to all move with it. The crew walked round and round and round and round. Some people pay good money for that sort of exercise. Ha suck it retards!!! I know you are all jealous.

So as the saying goes, if it ain't hard enough, let's get a giant green 12" x 12" sail and walk around in circles along with everyone else! And so it was.

I was having a play with the green screen, as I am not quite sure how to implement it but that didn't stop me from having a little bit of fun. Below are some "after and before" shots that play a little with the space time continuum. Yeah I know the key is crap, I was just doing a fast key to see what I could get from it.

For the Sake of Art

PICS with CAPS:

BFF

Lucas wants what he can't have

Broke

So now I have to wait. I was hoping to avoid this but I guess for now, I have no choice. Some interesting things with REDrushes, it has the ability to read each RSX file (the file containing all the color settings which has to be adjusted per clip) of each clip and incorporate those settings in the render output for each respective clip. And the much cooler setting that allows you to refer to one individual RSX file which would in theory save you the time of having to open every single clip and creating a color profile for it. I say in theory because until it works, it will remain a theory. The RSX sourcing only one file for all clips unfortunately has a serious bug that results in each clip being rendered out as an all white frame. Or perhaps, I am being a cynic and in fact it's minutes upon minutes of fabulous RED footage of a polar bear in a snow storm. I can only wonder. So as a result I took the long route and made a profile for each shot. In a way this was good because during location 01, the sun was in and out creating havoc with Roman's life (Roman Baska was the Director of Photography on Lotaluv) not to mention the hell he would have given me for showing ppl the shots without a somewhat decent color correction :P. Below are some observations .

Observation 01:

Pretty decent load on the 8 core I am using, 100% across the board, at least I know I can't run it any faster without a render farm.

Observation 02:

REDrushes for some reason does 6 clips simultaneously. It's an odd number (even though it's even) as at first (because I am so good at numbers) I saw six clips and thought, wow how ingenious... they have one clip assigned to an individual processor. Later after counting the processors on my fingers did I realize I am a retard, and that in fact REDrushes does use the multi-core efficiently by spreading the load. Why 6? Because there are 6 days in a week no doubt... oh wait is there 6?

Observation 03:

Maitreya is a shifty looking pirate. Good thing I kept my distance.

17 mins to post this. I have finally pulled myself out of my dream world and am hitting Lotaluv full on. The last 4 months no days off really burned me out. The end of the Maitreya shoots gave me an opportunity to finally take a week or so to myself. Of course I did some planning for the Post on this and had a few meetings, not to mention my addictive personality coupled with my OCD tendencies which found me completely locked into a mortal struggle with CSS and the design of a music site for myself that has all of 1 (thanks patrick!) follower. I have repeatidly managed to kill it only to bring it back from the ashes and as off today, have it working on both safari and firefox (much to my dismay lastnight as right before going to sleep i found it didn't work on firefox).

So here we go, diving into the deep end off the high diving bored straight into this... I will be coming up for air time to time with some cool shit (hopefully) so stay tuned to Adventures in RED© And Beyond.

UPDATE: Ok so things have, as always, completely exploded in my face and I am having to rethink my strategy. First my hope of editing with the 'wrapper proxies' was crushed as this proved unstable with Final Cut Pro (FCP) once I began having to do anything productive with the timelines ie. add 4 or more clips and sync sound. I have played a little more with RED Alert and RED Rushes and have come to the conclusion that this may just be the answer for now. I will still have to find a way to allow all the final selected clips to have a 1 pass color correction done in a fashion that is not overly time consuming, but for now, because of the fiasco with the 'wrapper proxies' I have to bite the bullet and render all the RED raw (R3D) files as a low rez output (provided I can work out the little bugs) so I can begin the offline. Life is GRAND!!

Seems I have plenty of options only non quite fit my workflow to a tee.

My attempted workflow

Red Footage  >>  Low res ProRes422HQ  >>  1 pass color grading with Red Cine with joint Up Res to High Quality ProRes422HQ  >> Online and final color correction.

These third party apps using a mix of xml and exported edl's also add functionality to the whole process.

Crimson Workflow

Rubber Extract

FUN TIMES FOR ALL!!!!

A special thanks goes out to Marco Ponti for these amazing behind the scenes pics. He was the official photographer for the week.

I will be posting more as I get a chance. Right now I am looking at starting the post production on "Lotaluv" by what I hope to be mid next week, I just have to get these other projects out of the way first so I can focus my full concentration on the edit.

Gott'sta pay dem billz.

So I just wanted to get this up as Maitreya just emailed me this and I did kinda ask him to send something I could post for everyone who worked on this. Thanks man!

CHur To Da CHur!!!

Kia Ora everyone, I want to write and say thank you to everyone who was involved in both the both video shoots and the live show at Club Cixi. This last week and half in Hong Kong has been incredibly rewarding, so many wicked people were involved and everyone went way above and beyond, I don't think there is any doubt that Digger and Vix are gonna produce something extremely... DOPE!!! Chur to da Chur! Is that enuf pressure VIx! Haha!

LOTALUV

From the 40 degree heat at Oil Street to the thousands of shocked/smitten Mong Kokers showing a LOTALUV to our flight attendant/beauty queen/kung fu master/village people/mElvis/exotic dancing/pimp cast, it was a looooong, hot, sweaty but hugely fulfilling day! Thank you to Roman and his camera crew, the breakers & boarders, drivers & dancers, make up and of course Dig Deep Entertainment... there was a LOTALUV all day long. The conce pt of the video was one long spinning shot of an array of mad characters that make up this world and give us the diversity that makes life what it is... I can't wait to see it cos "There'a Lotaluv" but "I guess we'll have to wait"!

CHUR TO THE CHUR

Club Cixi was the scene of the crime... even after 15 play backs of the same song the crowd of beautiful, honourary Christchurch-ians were still screaming CHRISTCHURCH and KA MATE like Peter Jackson was calling action! I wanna thank the camera crew and everyone who put this day together... and thank you to air conditioning, it felt like all our xmas's had come at once after Mon Kok. Thank you to Ky, my 7 foot body guard for keeping the boys off the stage during LOTALUV! And a special thank you to my friend Gretchell Yaneza for her dedication and brilliant performance, you brought a really special element to the live show. Thank you to DJ Tee for holding us down on the one's and two's and the primo tunes afterwards... thank you to everyone who came along and partied with us, it was a wicked night and I'm already scheming my way to get back there for another show!

I want to say that the week was saddened by the loss of our friend Sand on Monday night... we will all miss you bro and pray that you smile down on us as we dedicate our work this week to you. Rest In Peace brother, we love you...

Love & Light, maitreya

So we said our goodbyes tonight. Tomorrow Maitreya heads back to New Zealand. Really I am gonna miss him. He is mad talented and really has made me a little nervous as far as these projects go because I want to give him something he can be proud of. I will be heading into post next week on both of the shoots and I want them to be amazing. My boy Josh Evans has my back on this so I am looking good, still I can't help but wonder if I can pull this off. Well here is to hoping. Wishing Maitreya all the luck with whatever lies ahead.

Stay tuned for the never ending saga of Adventures in RED© and Beyond.