At some point in my life, this quote happened from my lips:
“I’m glad to see that Austin’s got these studios and that they’re helping broaden the film landscape in town,” said filmmaker Rolin Moe. “However, this city shouldn’t be too quick to get into bed with Hollywood and forget the pioneer-style films that brought exposure to this town in the first place.”
No clue when or where, or why I’m quoted as a filmmaker. Does that make me a filmmaker?
http://journalism.utexas.edu/onlinejournalism/mmj/lightscameraaustin.swf
Sorry about the delays. Been busy ’round here.
I got all of the images gathered together and converted to JPEG. They’ll all fit on a single CD with room to spare (they’re about 1/20th the size as JPEGs instead of TIFFs), so I’m going to dump the video clips on there as well. I didn’t have time last night to pull the video, but will do so this evening. I’ll try to get the CDs in the mail tomorrow (though I’m travelling for work until Friday, so I may not get to a FedEx place until then).
Thanks for everyone’s patience.
Work is slowing down as construction season is winding to a close and the off-season is fast approaching - which means I am going to have gobs of time on my hands. It’s been almost a month now and the Labor Day project hasn’t moved an inch. What can I do to help get this thing rolling again? I know a couple fo guys up here who have a sound studio and I asked them about doing some foley there - they said they could do it. I know that is probably a ways down the road but hey, it doens’t hurt to put the info out. My post office box is getting lonely, Troy…
Sorry, guys, but there’ll be one more week of delay before I can get everyone discs. I was out all last weekend (back in NWA) and then had a last-minute business trip this week. This weekend in the ACL music festival, so I won’t get much of a chance over the weekend. Next week, though, I should be in town all week and should have the opportunity to put together the discs (I’ll try to do them Monday evening).
BTW, I pulled up a few of the photographic plates in Photoshop and played with them a bit. It may be necessary to reshoot a few shots, as well as a few additional shots. For example, the shot looking up the stairwell is just too bright so I’ll need to return at night and shoot it. Shouldn’t be a problem though, our target resolution is right at what my Elph does.
I hope to have some time next week to sit down with Elizabeth and beginning working through the rotoscoping process. We may end up not doing it in Photoshop as it will likely be just too cumbersome to work effectively. Instead, I think we may end up using Mirage. It’s $350, so it ain’t cheap, but it’s pretty freak’n cool software that I’m sure we’d get a lot of use out of (particularly if Elizabeth and I continue doing animation work). If you want to play with it yourself, there’s a demo available from their site (haven’t checked it out yet, but will in the near future).
Principal photography is finished after a flurry of activity, most of it on 5th street in downtown Austin. We got everything we needed almost in a 1 block radius of Troy’s office. Its nice when you can concentrate all of your locations in one general area. I am posting an image of Page 1 of my copy of the
Script.jpg.
Troy, I am looking in my PO Box for a cd so that everyone can start messing around with ideas for what to do in post (as far as the visuals for the rotoscoping). I know that you have that game conference this week and I am moving so I guess I shouldn’t expect it too soon. It was fun fellas - hopefully we can get this thing out the door by November 1. My copy of Photoshop is ready to go if need be…
The equipment is all packed and padded. I’m not bringing the studio lights as they require too much power and we won’t have access to power everywhere we go. However, I’ve got a huge assortment of lenses and combinations as well as a powerful fill flash. With
f-stops as low as 1.4, I don’t think light should be too much an issue. Any fill lighting we can’t get into the original exposure, we can put in with Photoshop.
Folks, for your viewing pleasure–
Draft One
A few things to consider:
- This is not a shooting script. It’s better practice for me to write as if it were a traditional script, and it’s good for those of you who want to get into development or production to look at a regular script and see how you would want to shoot it. There are giveaways in there, but they aren’t written as CAMERA PANS or EXTREME CLOSE UP. That’s the art =)
- I didn’t know if the second world was lush and rampant, so I wrote it as a babe’s playfield rather than the ultimate urban experience. There are areas in Austin to shoot that.
- Three lines of dialogue that are not necessary for the script; the sentiment can be shown rather than said, and probably would be better that way. It reads well on the page as dialogue though.I’m having trouble with my webserver and am about to see a movie, so if this doesn’t work, I’ll fix it by 8pm tonight.
Bubbling one of Rolin’s comments up to the blog’s frontpage:
“Fogetting my idea that we have people in World One, he is happy in World Two. He sits down to paint, and people pass by, paying him no attention. This doesn’t bother him at first, but then he gets agitated. Tries to confront people. They say nothing; completely ignore him. Then, a dissolve back to the first world, where he still is, and where there are people now. Illusory.”
I like this. In fact, when I read Rolin’s first comment regarding having people in World One I was a bit disappointed because I am very much drawn to the imagery of the empty world (and I think it’s an interesting visual we can pull off due to our production style). The above is a good twist on things.
I would expect that we would want a specific color palette for World One, and a specific color palette for World Two. This would help accentuate the transition at the end from one world to the other.
One thing regarding practical production issues: having people ignoring him, etc. How does everyone think we should organize something like this? I can probably get together 3 or 4 extras (plus us), maybe as many as 6 or 7. Don’t know if Rolin could round up more. Another option would be to add the characters digitally (they’re all digital/rotoscoped anyway) and simply record the people we have present walking past camera several, several times then layering them. This could be emphasized in a particular way to embue the crowds with a certain anonymity (i.e., all of the crowd are basically cookie-cutter versions of each other, same color scheme, same shape and motion).
Rolin, how quickly would you be able to produce a first draft? It’s Tuesday night, which gives us Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to finalize this thing for shooting. We’re close, very close…
