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