As you know something went wrong with Whitley’s shoot. The footage had excessive noise we could never explain. But with After Effects and it’s noise remover, placing him in the Unreal Engine cave and a bit of fog and volumetric I managed to get some we can use.
I have yet to place the rocks with the Aboriginal cave paintings this was a quick unfinished test I did last night with amazing results.
Here’s a frame grab. If you zoom far in you can still see some of the noise but I think this will be fine.
Thought I’d share a little of the progress on the film with the public now and then. This is what I sent out the crew today:
This shot was somewhat of a bear to do because Steve was always looking in the wrong direction(my bad in directing him). In addition to that there was some green spill on his neck. That was surprising but there it was. So I spent hours on it. And I suspect this will always be the case. What I did was right click on Steve’s layer and “Flip Horizontal”. Bingo! Now he looks the right way.
In the first film I didn’t always take that extra time with some of the effects, and some scenes it shows. When this film is done I’m going back over the first film to do a director’s cut. All new legal music and better effects and some removed that aren’t needed. This is all Mary’s idea and a wonderful one at that. Steve first walks into the Park world with the stone circle and looks around. We see how POV and his close up. Then our friend in the hat walks in and welcomes him back. We cut to the look on Steve’s face and we cut.
I’m calling it film shooting rather than a movie shoot because to me movies are Hollywood product and what we do is film making. It’s a canvas and you paint on it. There are no rules or standards to follow only one’s artistic vision as with any true art. It’s not made to sell or please anyone but the artists.
We shot last Tuesday on location, Friday at the studio on green screen and the entire weekend, all green screen. The rest of the week was prep when we weren’t shooting. Another words it was a very long 7 day week. Mary and I worked hard and although I’m use to much longer shoots and longer days in my career, at age 69 I definitely felt it a bit more.
The shoot went very well and a it did so because we worked with a group of beautifully talented friends we love dearly. Everyone gave their very best from the actors to the various crew positions.
Mary Cacciapaglia, Emel Durson, Raul Arteaga, Steve Altman, Robb Wolford, David Alan Graf, Tammy Klein, Whitley Strieber, Walter Evans and our producer, Dr. Chris Landon. Not a large crew but one of the very best I have ever had the pleasure or working with. Additionally I want to thank Paul Gentry and Paul butcher for there creative and technical input, you were both with us in spirit.
Now that everything is in the “Can” (as they would say) we move on to post production. On this film I have worn many hats, producer, director, director of photography, writer and makeup artist. Now I become the editor, visual effects artist, and more.
Glen Campbell will be doing a couple of VFX shots for us and Raul who has been the sound man and assistant director will be doing sound effects and sound editing. Raul was invaluable during the shoot with his many outstanding ideas and suggestions that really improved the look of this film.
Mary produced and worked the set from feeding lines to the actors to keeping everyone on top of their game. Between Emel’s and Mary’s producing along with consistent attention to details, script, schedule shots as well as making new ones I overlooked, we had the coverage we needed for a good edit.
Today I take a rest but will be back to the studio tomorrow. I will do a little editing and compositing today because I just can’t wait to see a little less green and a actual composited shot. After two days of green screen it’s hard to wait to see how it will all look with the animated backgrounds. The art is just getting warmed up!
I got an order for our new V-2 Rocket kit that went live yesterday. Then I spent nearly the entire day re-writing our script. Today begins a three day shoot. Big stuff ahead and a long weekend.
Last night I spent sometime editing and compositing effects for the film.
Using Unreal Engine and After Effects I did this sunset scene at what I call, “The Park”. A place where we go when we leave physical death.
As I left the studio yesterday I turned off the lights before I left as always but before I could turn off the power to my models I saw this picture. That Enterprise you see there is nearly 6 ft. long and one of the things I’m most proud I have made. Looking at it and realizing I made it from scratch over a decade ago is sobering and wonderful. Not to mention the Captains chair I built around the same time. Please Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the full sized images.
Today we have our dear long time friend Whitley Strieber coming to the studio to do is intro to our new film.
There’s nothing like film making to keep you busy. These last two weeks have been that. We had a shoot last week and one this week with three still to go. Add post production effects and editing in the evening to all that and you have your hands pretty full. We rap this Sunday.
After that things will somewhat get back to normal, what ever that is. There will be the long haul of post production. This film has to be done in time for the film festivals later this year.
In all that I still have a bit of time to work on studio projects. The studio has been slow, what is called the summer slump. We aren’t selling much and I have time to develop new projects and work on them.
Yesterday I got one of Mark Helmick’s test prints of my Laser Blast gun partially assembled and wow did he ever get it right.
I needed to put it all together and test fit the arm tubing to the arm of the figure before we could go any further. Now Mark can print me a few for production. These can’t be molded and cast because the detailing is too fine and it would be problematic at best.
We had our second shoot day yesterday at our condo. The frame grabs are from the edit I did last night. Yes they are dark. Maybe even darker on your screen if it’s not set right but it is 3 am in the morning and night. It all looks great on the big screen.
If you look close you can see the shadowy figure in the corner of the room our character Mark see’s during mediation and they touch hands.
It was amazing shooting in such low light and getting such great film like results.
We shoot again this weekend two days and that finishes the shoot.
We had a great first shooting day of “The Dreamtime” on Saturday. It’s nice to be film making again. Tammy Klein and Steve Altman in front of camera once more. We are shooting again tomorrow. And this weekend both days. Did one test composite in After Effects yesterday.
Tomorrow all location. No green screen. All live action. Back at the studio for two days of green screen and we will wrap. Lots of after effects, editing, and sound work ahead for me on this 20 minute short film.
The test went well. I have to say this was the creepiest makeup I have ever done. It gave me the creeps for sure. It all took about 3 hours.
The makeup included the nose, eyebags, old age stipple, hairpieces, and a lot of paint work with Ve Neill alcohol palettes. He is supposed to look like a monster, very sick and out of his mind as a ghost spirit in the film.
In fact I called Ve more than once and she helped me get this right. she was right there for me.
Not bad for a test. He is camera ready for next weekends shoot.
Mark Helmick brought by the parts for the gun yesterday. They are just mazing he did such a great job!
I need to order the correct size tubing for the guns but I can tell already the gun is a perfect fit to the sculpture.
Yesterday was spent cleaning up the bay. Over a year of Covid lock down made for piles of stuff we didn’t need. Plus we needed our stage space for this weekends first shoot for our film. A large percentage of the film is green screen with CGI backgrounds made in Unreal Engine 4.
Got my 1985 Z back from my mechanic yesterday. She’s running perfect and has a new clutch slave cylinder and new tires. Can’t wait to take her on Sunday drives.
Today we are doing the makeup test on Robb Wolford as Hitler. We are putting it all on video and taking pictures and will share that all tomorrow.
