The Imitation Game

Well, it's been almost two years since I updated this blog - which is crazy, but time flies when you aren't looking. Anyway, last night we went with some friends to the Ambler Theater to see the movie 'The Imitation Game', starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightly. I thought it was a great film about an amazing man, as well as the amazing ability of the human race to be really terrible to the people that it should celebrate the most.

 The Imitation Game is about Alan Turing, a British mathematician who, with the aid of several others, successfully cracked the codes being used by the German Enigma machines in World War II, effectively helping to turn the tide and win the war for the Allies. Turing's genius wasn't just that he was a great mathematician, (many of the other codebreakers on the team were as well) but that he thought about problems and situations differently than everyone else did. Turing realized that to beat a machine, one must create a machine. His papers on math and the ability to create machines that would compute complex problems, as well as his work on concepts such as artificial intelligence, allow us to live in the technological age that we currently enjoy.

I'm not going to write a detailed synopsis of the film itself. I don't want to give too much away - besides, you could pretty much just Google Alan Turing, and get a pretty good idea of what you are in for. I will say however, that I enjoyed everything about this movie. Benedict Cumberbatch does an amazing job of bringing Turing's struggles and triumphs to life - the performance is reminiscent of his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the way that Sherlock has no sense of how to interact with other humans, yet I didn't find myself thinking about that show or character at all while watching the film. Keira Knightly was great as well, portraying Joan Clarke, a female codebreaker (making her also somewhat of an outsider) that Turing discovered, and one of the few people to accept him for who he was - idiosyncrasies and all. Alex Lawther, played the young Alan Turing and I was amazed by his performance. He not only handled some pretty heavy scenes very well, but he really seemed to have the same mannerisms and physicality of Cumberbatch's older Turing.

The story was completely engaging, and I was surprised to find out that this was the first feature film for screenwriter Graham Moore. The film juggled drama and humor and history superbly and had a moral that developed quietly throughout without ever feeling preachy. I left the theater wanting to write and make movies like this one.

 I had wanted to see this film for a number of reasons - I enjoy Benedict Cumberbatch, I love WW2 movies, and I love movies that are based on true stories. I didn't really know what to expect other than those three things, and I didn't know much about the real Alan Turing either. I walked away from the theater with my brain buzzing away, thinking about everything I do on a daily basis from a different perspective. Thinking about the impact that this man had on my life, and the lives of everyone else in the world. Thinking about how he was treated for being gay in a time where being a homosexual in England was a crime. Thinking about what kinds of things we could achieve in this world if we just accepted people for who they are, instead of trying to make them into who we think they should be.

The Imitation Game is definitely worth checking out if you can!

"Sometimes it’s the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine."


ALSO - After seeing this movie, Robin and I wanted to find out more about the real Alan Turing, and we found a pretty good documentary about him that is on Netflix.  It's called 'Codebreaker'.  Also worth a look!


          

Resurrect Dead

So, this afternoon I was feeling a little down and Robin suggested that we go to the movies tonight. We decided that we'd go see something at the Ambler Theater since I have some gift cards there that Robin's parents got me for Christmas. Anyway, we looked up what was playing and were toying with going to see either The Artist, or The Iron Lady. Then I looked a little further down the list and realized that there was a documentary playing there - today only - that I'd really wanted to see since I came across the trailer a few months back. The film is called "Resurrect Dead" and it was in Sundance where it did pretty well. The bonus of this trip was that the director of the film, Jon Foy, was going to be there and was going to do a Q&A after the screening. So we decided to go.

The film was interesting - in short, it's about the appearance of these mysterious tiles in the streets of cities all over the U.S. and South America. They've been showing up for over two decades, and nobody knew who put them there. The tiles refer to a man named Toynbee and the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the notion of resurrecting the dead on Jupiter. In any case, the film follows a group of guys who are somewhat obsessed with solving the mystery of these tiles and who made them. I liked the film overall. I felt that in a few places there were some pacing problems and some choices that I might not have made, but overall I was sucked into the story and found it really engaging.

Afterwards there was a Q&A, and it was pretty standard stuff, except for the one guy who raised his hand and told the director that he actually knew one of the guys considered by the film to be a main suspect. He also said that he had originally planned to see a different movie, but saw this was playing when he got to the theater and changed his mind. So that was pretty crazy. Afterwards, Robin made me swear that I would introduce myself to Mr. Foy, and tell him that I, too, am a local filmmaker and give him a card. She's good at pushing me to do that kind of stuff. I'm terrible at networking. In any case, we hung around and I did just that. We talked for a few minutes about filmmaking and his film, and he was a very pleasant guy. He took my card and put it in his wallet, so mission accomplished. Whether I will ever hear from him again I have no idea, but I did something that was difficult for me to do, and I'm proud of that.

Then we stopped at McDonald's on the way home (bleh - but it was cheap and fast) and now here I am writing this up. All in all it was a very enjoyable evening. If you get the chance go see "Resurrect Dead", or get it on dvd. It's worth a look.

Later!

Check out the trailer for "Resurrect Dead":

Resurrect Dead Trailer from Resurrect Dead on Vimeo.

Sound Effects, etc.

Now that the dialogue has been edited together, I need to move on to sound effects and foley work. Basically all the sounds other than dialogue and music that need to be in the film. Yesterday I went through the film scene by scene and mapped out what sounds I need and where they are supposed to go. The total list is somewhere around 322 sounds or so.

Anyway, before I can cut the sounds into the film, I actually have to go and record them (obviously). Now, a couple of years ago (2008, I think) Rufus, Nick and I actually did do some recording of sounds for the movie. I think we got about 60, but having just listened to them again I realize that a few need to be re-recorded. And I think there are more sounds on my new list than were on the original list from 2008 but the edit has changed here and there so I'm not really surprised.

So, the task at the moment is to go through the list of sounds and see which ones I can get from sound effects/foley libraries, which ones I may already have from another past production or two, and which ones I will have to record myself. Once I have done that I will collect all the sounds together on my computer and begin the process of cutting them into the film.

Then, onward to sound mixing!

Later!

One Step Closer...

Just a quick update -

Finally finished the 1st sound pass on Preservation! It was tedious and took a while, but all the dialogue is edited in, and the bumps have been smoothed out.

I'm really happy that's finished. Of course, now I have to basically go do the same thing again - but this time edit all the sound effects and stuff in. It will also be tedious and take forever, but it'll get done. And then we'll be closer than ever.....

....closer to what, I don't really know....stay tuned!

Later!

Another Update

Just trying to remember to update this thing with my progress - easier said than done, but here I am.

Not much to write about other than sound editing on 'Preservation' still. Slowly coming along. I am by no means a sound person, so this part of the film is the hardest for me to work on. Also the most tedious. But it has to get done, so here I sit. As I mentioned before, I'm working in passes. The first pass (editing in all the ADR and making sure that all the dialogue is clean) is getting close to being finished. The total running time of the film at the moment is 1 hour and 35 minutes. I am 1 hour and 10 minutes into my first sound pass! Just finished a pretty long, intricate scene today with lots of screaming and crying. I was about to call it a day after that, but I decided to push myself to do one more scene. I really didn't want to, but it's done now and I feel pretty good about that.

That's about it for now. I'll be plugging away at this again tomorrow....and the day after....and the day after....and the day af--- well, you get it.

The funny part is - after all this work - who the hell is even going to care? I'm pretty sure everyone who worked on it has written it off as one of those projects that they'll never see, and even after I'm finished, they'll probably look at it and say "we waited five years for THAT?"

Oh well. At least the monkey will be off my back and I can move forward.

Later!

Quick Update

Just a quick update. Still cutting dialogue for 'Preservation'. Finally over halfway through the film with that. Still a lot of ADR to cut in, but I'm plugging away at it.

That's about it for now. Had some good meetings lately regarding a couple of other projects that could hopefully be on the horizon - but more on that at another time.

Later!

Preservation - WTF?

Quick update on Preservation for anyone who 1) may still care, and 2) stumbles upon this blog...

The visuals are all done and locked. Been done for a few months, but I'm terrible at progress updates. Anyway, the VFX are finished and I've moved on to sound editing - which I hate....but it needs to get done, so I'm plugging away at it.

So far I've been working on it for about two days. The first pass is editing the dialogue - making sure that everything flows correctly - no clicks, pops, etc....adding in all the re-recorded dialogue, yadda yadda. I'm 30 minutes into the movie.

After that I'll go back and start cutting in all the sound effects and foley sound. Then the music (some of which still needs to be written) will get cut in, and then I go back and do one final sound pass to mix all the levels. After that, I just need to go through and color correct everything and slap some credits on the end.

Well, better get back to it. If the Mayans are correct I only have until December to wrap this up. Work has been pretty slow the last two months which has proved to be conducive to the process, but a pain in the ass to my bank account.

More as I finish.

Some new stuff

Okay, obviously it's been a while since I've posted anything - but, in my defense, there's been a lot going on since then. Got married - that was big! :)

Anyway, a couple of updates -

Preservation is completely picture-locked! Took forever, but there ya go. All the visual effects shots are done and cut into the movie and now I just need to finish sound editing and color correction. It's time consuming, and (as with everything else with the movie) I have to work it in between jobs that I'm getting paid for. But I'm pushing forward on that as hard as I can because I just want it finished and off my computer!

In other recent news, we just finished another 5 day film. This year we made a film called 'The Sidewinder' about a confrontation between a super-villain named Sidewinder and her arch nemesis, Northstar. It was a crazy shoot (especially since it was snowing and it was only October!), but we got through it. I think it came out alright for the amount of time we had to work on it. I'm still jones-ing to do a superhero flick that I have more time to plan and execute. I would have like the visual effects in the film to not suck, but they are what they are. Hopefully as I learn more, they will get better in the future.

Anyway, I've linked the film below, as well as some stills.

I hope to try to blog a little more regularly - we'll see if I can make that happen or not.

Until then....





The Sidewinder - Trailer:


The Sidewinder - Final Cut:

16 Pages

Today is a gray, bleak, rainy, demotivating sort of day. Not that I will let that stop me from getting things done but, as a way of procrastinating just a little bit, I thought I'd type out a quick update of yesterday.

Yesterday was a pretty productive day for me, which I am rather pleased about. On one hand, no money in the door, but on the other hand lots of creative stuff got done.

I sat down and managed to write 16 pages of script for 'The Chrononauts' yesterday. That felt pretty good considering I have to take a crowbar to my brain and pry out every last word that I put on paper (or, uh, the computer screen). Sometimes, however, it's not the words that you type out but the mere act of writing something. I know that I can't shape this story into something that I think will be really cool until I have a crap draft to guide me. Revision is always easier than the initial creation.
Anyway, with those 16 pages from yesterday I'm up to a total of 81 pages. I have four more chapters of the story to write, and then I will have a completed first draft! Then begins the process of throwing most of that draft out and shaping the script into something that can be shot. But, one step at a time!

Also, yesterday I managed to work on (and mostly finish) another VFX shot for 'Preservation'. That made me happy because any completed work that gets me closer to that finish line is a good thing.

Now I'm off to eat some lunch and try to push myself again today. More writing, more compositing, etc. Just gotta keep pushing forward.

Oh, and Happy Birthday to my friend Markus Harris!

Later!

Rob

Another Shot in the Bag

Real quick 'Preservation' update. Finished another VFX shot today. This one is from one of the action sequences near the end of the film. It took a couple of days to complete.

Seemed like a pretty straightforward greenscreen composite, but it's also a wirework shot....so that added some complexity. Removing a wire from in front of the greenscreen isn't terribly difficult, but when the wire crosses in front of the face of your killer in the background, it all gets more interesting.

And by interesting, I'm SUCKtacular. Lots of extra work. But all done now. I've added some stills below.

On to the next shot!

Rob

Checking In

Hey there!

Checking in briefly to give some updates. It's been some time, but I've been busy trying to keep "real work" coming in the door so that I can pay rent, and working on a pretty time consuming shot for 'Preservation'. It's finally finished, but there was a lot of work involved in getting it there - specifically a lot of rotoscoping and compositing.

I don't have any images of it to post yet for a couple of reasons....one being that it's a pretty cool shot and I'm not sure I want to give it away yet, and the other reason is that my editing system is currently in the shop having its (probably) faulty graphics card replaced. I hope to have it back in a few days.

In the mean time, I will keep plugging away on the script for 'The Chrononauts' and trying to get that into shape, as well as working on a redesign of the DRF website.

That's about it for now. I did work on an animated promo piece for Robin's new place of employment, Reconstructing History. It was fun. They're a bunch of good eggs over there. Check out the promo below, and then head over to their site at www.reconstructinghistory.com and check them out as well!

Later!

Haven't updated in about a month.....big surprise.....anyway....

In my last post, I put some stills up from our Five Day Film entry, 'Rendezvous'. Now (almost a month later) I'm finally getting around to posting the film itself, as well as the poster created for the film.

More updates on 'Preservation' and 'The Chrononauts' to come, as well as a feature length version of 'Rendezvous'.

Catch ya later!

The Poster

Prints of the poster are available for sale at:
Cafe Press

5 Day Film 2010 part 2

I thought I would take a minute to upload a couple of stills from the film 'Rendezvous'. There were a lot of behind the scenes pics taken while we were shooting, but I haven't received any of them yet. When I do, I'll probably post a few of those as well.

Enjoy!

Opening Title Screen



The Journey


Jensen Bucher as Margeaux


Amanda Kay Schill as Emilie


Nick Martorelli as The Stranger


Die like Willem Dafoe

5 Day Film 2010

Hey there.

There have been a number of things going on in the last month. Still banging away at Preservation, and writing the Chrononauts. I've also been trying to finish up the last few shots in the extended edit of last year's 5 Day Film, Rebel. Soon it should be finished and ready to be put on dvd. Stay tuned for that.

That brings me to this year's 5 Day Film which was produced this past weekend. If you don't know what the 5 Day Film fest is - here is a brief explanation: It's a competition to make a 5 minute film in 5 days. Pretty simple. Well, the concept - not necessarily the execution. That's usually a little tougher. Basically there are certain elements that are required to be in every team's film (theme, prop, line of dialogue), and then each team picks a genre at random. Last year ours was Romance.

This year we got "Road Movie".

So, armed with that we set out to make this year's film entitled, "Rendezvous". The story takes place in Nazi-occupied France in 1940 and centers around a woman (Jensen Bucher) and her sister (Amanda Kay Schill) who are traveling across the country trying to fulfill the last mission of her late husband who was killed while trying to get a message through to a contact in Dunkirk. A daunting task itself, things get trickier when they meet a mysterious stranger (Nick Martorelli) along the way who seems to be hiding several details of his past.

We shot the film in one day - on Sunday - in Bucks County, PA, and it went very well. The next two days were spent editing the film and doing all of the post work that comes along with that. The film came out very well (despite some sound issues), and I'm proud to say that this is the first one of these that I've done where I finished everything I wanted to finish before I had to call it quits to get the film in on time. So, that's a victory in and of itself.

The film will be screening on Nov. 3 at 7pm at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, PA. Should be a good time. I've added the trailer for the film below. I will try to put up some screen stills at some point in the future.

Enjoy!

Rob

After a month...

Okay, so it's been a month since last I posted. Not great but far from my longest gap. :)

Lots of things have been going on. I've been shooting for a new crew (well, new to me)...did a mixed martial arts (MMA) event in Lancaster which was pretty cool, and a two day music festival in the woods in NJ this past weekend. That was also pretty cool. Tomorrow and Tuesday it's out to Philly to shoot a Def Comedy Jam showcase, or so I'm told. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, back to the current (non "real job" related) projects. Chrononauts is still being written. What's the hold up? Lots of things I guess, but I've been trying to push forward a lot on Preservation so that's taken up a lot of my free time. I'm still plugging away on it though. More updates on that when there is something interesting to write about.

Preservation rolls onward. Or, maybe the word is wobbles.....I don't know. In any event I've been knocking VFX shots off here and there since my last post. But they take time...case in point:

Sometimes when you do night shoots and it rolls around to, oh, say 4am and you're still shooting the big fight scene of the film - lack of sleep can lead to a lack of attention to certain details. Like, clearly visible light reflections on windows in scenes that are supposed to have no lights on at all for story reasons. You generally pick those little details up once you are comfortably back in your edit suite with a few hours of sleep under your belt.

What do you do? Well, you could leave it alone, reshoot.....or, you just paint out the reflections:

It's a time consuming process - especially for a project that is low budget to begin with, and who knows if anyone will ever see it. So, yeah, I guess I didn't HAVE to do it. But it's one of those things that would bother the heck out of me forever, so there.

More in a bit.

Catch ya later!

Rob

Compositing....

Just a quick update. Pretty much finished the post work on another scene of Preservation. A scene that shouldn't have taken any time to do (because it's just a dialogue scene) but because we ran out of time the day we were shooting in Jim Thorpe, I had to shoot this scene against greenscreen. Gah!

Good lesson to be learned here though. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, try to get the shot on the day whenever possible. Doing extensive post work on scenes that shouldn't really require it SUCKS!

Anyway, finally got all the compositing on this scene finished. Again, maybe it could be better if I spent two more weeks on it, but I think it looks good, and I am in the process of trying to get shots completed.....so, there ya go. The ADR hasn't been cut in yet, but the visuals are done.



Check that off the list. Moving on.

In Chrononauts news, I finished the rough draft of Chapter Four today - and started Chapter Five. Again, slow, but moving. Meeting with Nick tomorrow.

That's it for now.

Catch ya later!

Rob

Pushing forward

Still working on multiple things. Still moving slowly, but getting done bit by bit. A lot of the writing stopped this past week while my parents were in town, as I spent most of my free time with them. But now that they're back home, work on the script will pick back up. Meeting with Nick on Saturday to go over some more stuff for TC.

Preservation is three FX shots closer to being finished. I finished the final comps for one of the 'kill' scenes in the movie. The one I was writing about in an earlier entry. It's not perfect - I think I could get it to look better, but I also want the movie to get finished, so at some point I have to call a shot 'done'. I think I reached that point with these particular shots tonight.

Now just have to go down the FX list, find the next one, and start getting that one finished. Hopefully at some point soon there will be no more shots on the list. That will be a happy day.

Oh. Also set a date for the wedding today. August 6, 2011. Should be fun. Stay tuned.

Catch ya later!

Rob

One page at a time...

Over the last week I've been attempting to write the rough draft of 'The Chrononauts'. It has proved to be challenging - not because I don't know where the story goes - but more because of other things going on in life. Trying to get the apartment organized for my parents' visit, running around to different wedding type places.....lots of stuff. So, it's going a little slower than I'd hoped, BUT, I did manage to complete a rough draft of the first three chapters so far.

Today Nick came over for about an hour and we read through them, and I was surprised that they sounded better than I'd thought they were going to. I hadn't gone back to read any of what I'd written before this because I didn't want to get stuck doing revisions on a rough draft without just pushing through and finishing said draft. So, getting to read it today and hear it was pretty helpful. I'm still not going to go back and re-write anything yet (even though there are definitely some changes I'd make) I'm going to keep pushing forward toward finishing the whole draft. Nick, on the other hand has what I've written already, and can sort of "follow behind me" working a next draft out of what has already been written. Then, when I get to the end, I'll go back to Chapter One (of his revisions), and work on revising that - "following behind him". And we'll keep dancing that dance until we have a shootable script.

Other than that, I've been hanging out with my parents the last few days, and Robin's mom as well. We did tourist-y things yesterday in Philly and that was fun. Saw the Liberty Bell, Betsy Ross's house, and inside Independence Hall (which I'd never seen the inside of before even though I was born and raised here). Also saw a kick-ass possible location for some Chrononauts stuff near the Betsy Ross house.

That's about it. More work to do. More fun to have.

Catch ya later!

Rob

Animating Fluid Simulations

Yeah, sounds weird right?

Actually, it's kind of interesting what 3D animation programs can do these days. Of course, it's also maddening as there is no end to what you need to learn to operate them. I'm sure for some people it's super easy - but I'm not a computer programmer, so some of these things take me a little longer to do.

Well, that and I find that a lot of amateur CGI artists figure out how to do something, but then don't go all the way with it. So, instead of a really great final shot you get something that looks like really bad CGI. Now, I'm not saying that I do really good CGI, but sometimes it takes me a little longer to get stuff done because I keep trying to see if I can make it look just a little more realistic. I don't think I'll ever really be happy with a finished shot - I just try to refine it as much as I can before I feel like I have to call it done.

With 'Preservation' that time is fast approaching. I have a number of FX shots still to do, and I want them to look great. So, I'm working toward that end. But I am keeping conscious of the fact that I also NEED to get this film done SOON. It's already been 3 years.

So anyway - back to the title of this post - I've been working on a specific shot for 'Preservation' over the last two days. It's a shot where the killer rams his machete through the abdomen of one of the characters. Weee! Horror movies! Anyway, I've managed to model the torso and machete in the computer, and animate the blade moving through the abdomen. I've been able to use the animation program's physics simulations to make the abdomen model "deform" as the machete pushes through it. Like I said before - it's not 100% where I would take it if I had all the time in the world, but I think I can probably live with it.

I've rendered out that animation (rendering is the process of having the computer draw each frame and save them to be able to play back in a movie file) and I've composited the animation into the live action background plate that we shot on location. That was completed yesterday.

Today I spent some time work on fluid simulation. Pretty cool, but very complex. The computer is able (based on settings and other things that you tell it) to simulate various fluids and how they flow, etc. So using that I've created a "blast" of blood to shoot out of the wound with the machete blade. It's a separate animation that I rendered today, and composited into the shot from yesterday. I think it looks pretty cool. You can judge for yourself.


Now, it's not quite finished yet. It still needs color correcting, and I'm going to add some more blood to the blade itself, as well as adjust some of the texturing/shading on it. And this frame may look a little blurry, but that's because the actual moving shot has a zoom in here, and there's motion blur on it. It's a little dark, but it's supposed to be to match the lighting of the live action shot.

So, that's what I've been up to lately. Still writing on 'The Chrononauts'. Getting closer to a draft of that. Have a meeting on Wednesday with Nick to go over whatever I get written up to that point.

In the meantime, I have a couple more shots to do for the machete scene and then I can put that to bed.

Feels pretty good.

Catch ya later!

Rob

Script Writing and Rendering

What do script writing and rendering computer generated images have in common you might ask?

They take FOREVER to complete.

And they both need to happen in order to have yourself a finished movie. (Unless you have no CGI in your film, but whatever)

So, as I write this I am taking a short break from some writing work on the rough (or crap, as some might say) draft of the first season of 'The Chrononauts', and my computer is also rendering part of an FX shot for Preservation. Two movies at once!!

The writing is coming along well enough, I guess. I finished Episode 1, and I'm a little over halfway through Episode 2. I'm kinda hoping to finish Episodes 2 and 3 before bed. We'll see. It definitely helps to have the story outlined beat for beat. Keeps me more focused as to what to write. Still takes time though. So I just plug away one page at a time, and eventually it will be finished.

Then we'll revise it like fifteen times, and maybe then we can shoot it!

There's really less to tell about the CGI rendering for 'Preservation'. The computer takes care of most of the work there. I just go do other stuff, cause it's like watching paint dry. In any case, it needs to be done. So there ya have it. A few more hours, and a TON of compositing and color correcting later, and I'll have another completed shot for the movie. One step closer there!

All in all, it's nice to keep productive - especially when I don't have much (any) work coming in and I'm trying to avoid thinking about being broke.

I guess that's it for now. Off to get a frozen fruit bar!! Mmm....cherry.

Later!

Rob