Michael’s Blog

Ami / Police Re-Touch

After being inspired last night, I decided to touch on that Ami image I shot a few months ago adding detail, color correction, subtle lighting touches, etc. to give it a more illustrated looking look.

 A little fun on a Monday morning…Though I am still trying to wake up…lol

Well Friday night we saw Alice in Wonderland, and it was awesome. Visually stunning and enjoyable story, I thought it was a great take on the classic and tailor made for Tim Burton. The design of the world and characters were amazing.

The weekend was nice. We went over and hung out with Shannie’s Mom Saturday evening. I have some things I needed dig out of storage and we had a nice dinner over there.

Yesterday Tim came over and we went over the edits for Plan B. After some tweaks here and there, we now have our final edit…yyeeayy..so Ill be exporting a working file for Javier tonight and putting it up on my server.

Last night I spent actually working on some new photoshop techniques. I came across this video instruction course by a German artist that does some amazing work and purchased it last night. I pretty much went through the whole 3 hours of instruction and learned some new and cool techniques. Very useful stuff.

So all and all a fun weekend.

Was doing a little Multi-Tasking last night and got all the Plan B pick/up footage trans-coded while finishing up on the Hero storyboards. I’m going to be inserting those pieces into the current edits tonight. I think the extra cut-ins and reactions will add quite a bit to the current edit and with any luck we will have a close to final edit on Sunday. Tim’s going to be over to take a look at the additional footage in place and we’ll make the final editing tweaks.

Once we have that, we’ll hand off the cut to Javier to work his Magic on the Musical Score while I get the rest of the audio together. Then it’s Title sequence, Credits, Color Correction, and assembling the whole thing together.

I had this hilarious idea for the Commentary track I’ll be hitting everyone up for once we have something close to complete, and Tim has a pretty awesome blooper reel for the special features section. I guaranty the commentary is going to be a riot.

In other news, last night was kind of interesting. Shannie comes home from time to time and has some stories about various people she runs into that have an interest in what we’re doing. Most of these are people that express interest in wanting to have something to do with movies, or have some passing comments or questions, or want to see what we’re working on, frequent the blog occasionally, yada yada,…but yesterday an instructor asked Shannie to give this idea to me. I was like “sure…why not”..lol. But then she told it to me I was like..”OMG! That’s actually a pretty funny premise to build a movie around”, and one I haven’t seen really done yet. It has a pretty dark comedy vibe to it, but it was a great idea.

There was no detail or real story, just a two sentence description of the concept, but it was a pretty cool idea. She said if I made a movie with it all she wanted was a credit in there somewhere…lol. But I am sure we could do better than that.

Best part was that it wouldn’t require a lot of exotic locations, is set pretty much anywhere and wouldn’t require a lot of crazy FXs or over the top stunt work. I closed in quick potential bullet point outline this morning covering some basics and I think there is something particularly cool here. A solid feature film potential without spending a ton of production money. I’m going to let it sink in for week or two and see if I still feel the same way about it when its not “new” to me. lol…

Here are the storyboards for “Hero”, which will be a five / seven minute short. These are Storyboards so they are really rough and quick…but get the idea across.

It’s basically quick imagery with a narration over it that spells out what’s going through this guys head as he’s sitting there mortally wounded and bleeding to death. He engages this guy he looks up on the Registered Pedophile registry wanting to be a vigilante for fame and notoriety…but finds out his inexperience ends up causing his own demise.

After the Narration begins, he quickly goes through the event that just unfolded while weighing the outcome which bring him back to the beginning shots. Although he’s there for all the wrong reasons, he does manage to save a little girl and put down a child killer…and contemplates whether it was worth it to him all the way up till his last breath.     

Shannie has been waiting for Alice in Wonderland for a while now…She’s so excited, so I picked up tickets at Fandango for the 10pm IMAX/3D showing Friday evening. Date night Baby…mmmmwwaa!!

Well last night was fun. Tim wanted to get some Pick-Up shots to fill in some of the wide shots on Plan B, so I cruised over there last night to lend a hand. I met the talented and charming Lolly for the first time. I also got to see how Rock’n Roel works with his new 7D rig which was cool. All and all a fun evening.

After I got home last night, I did some work on my next short film. I basically wrote the first draft of the script and got a couple more storyboards finished. I want a stylized “sin city” kind of look to it, so I am keeping this really short…maybe 5 to 7 Minutes tops. Mostly just a test with the new camera, but also to push things visually a little further than ON before moving into BURN. It’s a lot more edgy as well. I think by the end of the weekend I should have a finalized Script and production plan assembled.

I also should have the pick-up shots for Plan B trans-coded and added into the current draft.

***Video Updated***

I added lighting flashes to the shots, and added Joe’s 3rd shot into the footage. I just updated the video file so check out the addition below.

Here’s a quick lo quality render of the gunfire scene. I havent added anything else to it other than masking off Rhoades’ gun for the first shot.

Some Morning fun…

Well it’s back to work on a sunny Monday morning and heading into the next expansion now. BG and SF have shipped and doing very well and now it’s time to move on. I managed to block out an architecture style for the next zones I’m assigned to a couple weeks ago, so now its just expanding it into the rough sketch geo for the entire zone.

Last night I did make some progress on Plan B. I exported out the gun fire section, imported it into After Effects and did most of the muzzle flash / smoke work on it. I have some masking work I need to do for Rhoades’ “first shot” since the flash is in front of the barrel instead of behind but it looks good. Once I get the flash behind the gun it should look pretty tight. I might play around with some faked lighting flash from the discharge and maybe a composite head shot to Lolly but I am not sure how much I want to get into tracking and rotoscoping with this stuff.

What would have been cool would have been to shoot another take of Lolly with bullet holes and blood through her shirt as she fell to the ground. I could have squibbed her in After Effects in a couple places on the clean take, cut over to Joe while he was firing into Rhoades and then came back to Lolly for the fall with the practical blood effects. We could have also had blood on her back so when she slid down the door it left the sliding blood trail. Maybe a little more could have been blood in her mouth, and that would have really punched that shot up….well that and maybe Joe Pesci…lol

I think the gun effects pull it together pretty well though. Maybe some things to think about next time…