11/05/04

Just a handfull of items on the list for me to finish up. If my daily train ride were longer (and I am glad it's not) I'd probably be done. If I were working on the film on weekends the visuals would probably be done as well. But things are very very close, and will be done soon. I might make a push this weekend and finish the visuals, we'll see.

Other than the handful of visual items, I just need to assemble the final cut and have the sound finished. I've been working with my composer and sound designer and we're off to a good start. While I have only heard little samples so far, I will be meeting with both of them soon, and we'll hopefully be able to get the sound completed within the month. I don't know for sure how long they need, so maybe the film will be in the can in December, but I'd like to think that it wont take until January for them to finish the sound.

I'm very happy to have it so close to completion. I can't wait to see it in it's final form, and finally just start to send it out to festivals. I also have two other shorts I want to start working on, both stop motion and hopefully not utilizing a lot of mixed media. While mixing is fun, it's a lot of work to do by one's self as anyone can see by reading my production log. Stop motion takes a long enough time to do as it is, I don't feel like taking so long to finish the next piece. One short might very well take me just as long, because I don't have a lot of time any more and I don't have a studio space, so I'm not really sure how I'll actually get either of them done. One has a puppet already, I just need props, a set, a place to shoot it, and possibly another character. We'll see how it goes, but I don't want to get too involved in a new project until Illume is finished.

These new shorts are going to be short, simple, and funny. More along the lines of my older work and not anywhere near as experimental as Illume. I needed to do it with Illume, and I'm glad I did, but it's time for me to go back to simple funny shorts for the time being. I don't like to get political, but I think that with the current state of world affairs (and this does not depend on ones political views) everyone could use a good chuckle right now. I feel that as an animator, a filmmaker, and most importantly an entertainer it's my duty to make work for an audience, to let them forget everything that's going on and just laugh, if only for 30 seconds.

I never understood why drama always was seen as the top dog and comedy as a cheap #2. Schindler's List is a great film and very powerful, but how many times do you want to WATCH it? I can safely say I've never had a long day where I came home and thought "Gee, I could sure go for some Schindler's List right now!" But I often want to sit back and watch a comedy. Besides, creating comedy is actually much harder than drama.

10/24/04

It's been almost a month since I last wrote an update on my progress. There is one shot where I need to fix a matte, and two or three shots where the cat is off model and needs to be fixed. That's about it as far as the visuals go. I've been working on doing the color correction as well and am almost done with that as well.

I started a new job last week as a production assistant at J.J. Sedelmaier Productions. It's a bit of a commute to the studio from my apt, but thats ok because it gives me time (about 2 hours) every day on the train to work on my film. I'm so glad I have a powerbook. I never thought I'd still be working on the film in October 2004, but hey, a lot of things have happened since I started this film. At least it is almost complete and I'll be able to start sending it out to festivals soon.

I'm hoping to meet up with both my sound designer and my composer sometime in the next week to see what they have so far. Very soon the only part of my film that will still need work is the sound. I can't even put words to how good that feels. I really want to practice my CGI animation more and get it up to par with my stop motion, however, I cannot let myself do this until I'm done with Illume. Hopefully I'll be done with the few tweeks that I need by next week and then I can spend my time on the train animating in Maya. That's about all I have to say for now, it may be another couple of weeks before I update this log again now that I'm busy again (thankfully).

09/28/04 "Picture Lock" - Illume is 05:27;11

The big news on the film is that I have picture lock! What that means, is that the edit is complete, and most likely will stay AS IS and require no more editing. There is still the option of a little bit of tweeking the edit, but I'm pretty happy with it as is, and if I were to change anything it'll likely only be a few frames less here, a few more frames there, etc. The cut without credits is now 5 minutes 27 seconds and 11 frames long. The effects are in all the shots, some need a little bit of attention to help get them finalized, but overall most of the visual work is done! I've been working on my sculpting and drawing lately in addition to getting this film finished, but if I just sat down for a few days non-stop (for 8-12 hours/day) I could probably have all the visual effects polished within a week.

I want to get the edit to my composer and sound designer soon and have them start to work on the other half of my film. Other HALF? But I thought you said it was basically done, how are you only 50% complete? That is what you might be thinking right now. Well, the visuals is only half of the film. Seeing is believing, but hearing sells the product. Sure, you could watch a film for almost 6 minutes without sound, but wouldn't that be boring? The sound design and music is especially important for my film since there is no dialogue. I need the sound to sell my film. In order to BELIEVE that what is being seen is 'real' and that this world I created EXISTS it must have a convincing soundtrack. Just as I had to create EVERYTHING that is seen, I need to have EVERYTHING you hear created from scratch.

This part of the process is new to me. I have never 'really' worked with a sound designer. I had a friend do some sound design for Love Hurts, but I just needed some very basic sound. It didn't matter if the effects were originally created for my film or not. But for Illume the sound is VERY important. I'm giving my sound designer a lot of freedom and control over the sounds. The little sound production experience I've had was a lot of fun, but I really don't know much about it. It's hard to give up control like this, but exciting at the same time. Where I knew in my mind what I wanted to see, I'm excited to HEAR what someone else creates based on my loose audio ideas. I'm more excited to hear Illume than I am to see it.

While the sound is being worked on I will finish up any visual polishing that is needed. This includes all the color correction, and maybe motion blur. I have always intended on putting motion blur into my film. Yesterday I decided that I don't know that I should. Why do I need motion blur? The stop motion does not take place in the real world, so there is no need for blurring to match live action. The piece is not trying to pretend to be real, it is animation and knows it is animation. If I were not doing everything on the computer, and was purely shooting on film I would NOT be concerned about blur. Why then do I intend on adding it in? Because I can, and I don't know that that's a good reason. Sure, it'll make the animation look a little smoother and realistic, but does it ADD anything constructive to the film? I'm not so sure.

09/20/04

Illume is now 5 minutes 24 seconds long (or short). I knew a lot would be cut out, I was guessing about a minute to a minute and a half would be gone, and so far a little bit more than a minute and a half of footage has been cut. The result is a MUCH tighter film. I still have more editing to do, though I doubt too much more screen time will be lost. At this point the editing is more about pacing, building tension, and just refining the timing of the cuts. A few frames here, a few frames there, thats all that is left to cut out. A few shots have been cut in their entirety, but they are NOT missed. They added nothing productive to the film except for screen time.

As for the effects. At this point most just need some fine tuning to make them "complete". Some still need to be done, but those are minimal. A few new effects are going to be added now that I met with my advisor to show him my new cut. In addition a few more ideas to make the film "work better" came up, which only add a little bit more work. A little bit at this point is relative.

The Cat, who WAS done, is going to get some more attention. The way I'm animating the cat when it is still is by making two images of the cat in the same pose and cross fading between them. While this keeps it moving, it is not as powerful as when the cat is in movement. The suggestion was made that I add a third drawing to all the still poses. This is going to be done, but requires all the keyframing I have on the opacity of the drawings be redone to allow for drawing number three. This is a bit a of work, but I want the film to have a proper finishing polish, and who am I to take the easy way out? Why even bother making a film if it's easy and poses no challenge?

On the other hand, I can't help thinking that if I had made a pure stop motion film instead of a crazy mixed-media piece I would be finished by now and able to start sending it out and hopefully getting into festivals. The real deadline for this film being complete is the end of January 2005. In early February I need to turn the film in for New York University's First Run Student Film Festival. So I do have a little bit of time left. I wish I had something more entertaining to post along with this such as an image or movie, but I really want to wait for the film to be finished before showing anything else. There are some finsihed shots (missing motion blur though) in my reel for those interested. The reel can be found with my resume.

09/02/04

Here's an interesting tidbit to ponder. It seems as if something happens after I update this log. In March I updated the site and got a gig making stop motion models for a commercial, which started 3 days after the update. The last update was uploaded and then 2 days later I got a gig doing CGI animation for a short film. Perhaps another gig will come my way after I upload this page? Only time will tell.

This other short is a pretty interesting idea, the animation is all rendered by the Unreal game engine in real time. I can't wait to see the final film which should be ready in a matter of days, so I am told. Anyway, if you want to check out the details about this project you can view the Game On Webpage. I don't think that site has been updated for a few months but I think there will be an update very soon, once the film is complete and uploaded.

No more about that. This is an area to talk about MY FILM, Illume. Well, things were going great and then I go and get some work. I have been working on my own project while working on Game On, but most of my time was spent animating, not working on Illume. But I'm still getting close. Most of the effects are finished. It is finished enough that I have rendered out every shot with effects in it and am going to start editing today. I'm planning on splitting my time between looking for more work, editing the film, and finishing/polishing up the effects. Once edited I'll give a copy to my sound designer and composer and have them get to work. While the sound is being produced I'll clean up the effects and give them any final "polishing" that they may need. There are also some shots where I want to redo certain elements. For instance, the cat is off model in 2 or 3 shots and I'll re-draw them.

At the beginning of the summer I wanted to have the film finished by the end of September. While possible, it's not likely. October is another story. If Halloween rolls around and I don't have a GOOD REASON, for instance working on something else for pay, I'd better be finished with Illume, I don't see why I can't be as long as my sound production team can be finished by then. Picture should be done.

I'm afraid post-production doesn't really allow for very many images or video clips to be uploaded. I could post a picture of me sitting at the computer painting mattes but I doubt anyone would find that interesting (except maybe my mom).