So what happens?

First of all, did I tell you about this? We're a "Staff Pick" on Blendswap -- this is Ian Hubert's model of the Earthkiller.

I think that's very cool.

Also, you may want to know what has happened each time I challenged "Content Lizenz Agentur" on their claims on our videos. This:

Yeah. They're all "Oops, my bad."
I'll tell ya, it's getting very irritating. So far we haven't gotten any of that kind of bull noise on Vimeo so we may just stick with uploading clips to Vimeo and ignore YouTube altogether.

Staff Pick

Ian Hubert's Earthkiller is a Staff Pick over at BlendSwap.

Communications

Continuing my post-mortem on the shoot of The Prometheus Trap:
I'm very happy about having bought some six radios for this movie. Firstly, these kids nowadays with their cheap Family Band Radios have it good. These things are cheap. And they're rechargeable.

And they work. They probably have a practical range of a quarter a mile, which for us is all we need.
One thing I hate is having to yell all day long. And when you're in an echoic environment like a big warehouse it gives you a headache just to try to hear people.
But radios? With headsets?

That's paradise.
You don't have to yell. Everyone (who hasn't accidentally unplugged their headset) can hear. And talk.
Now, of course, this required the characters to be on radio. Which for most movies is absurd. But oh man it was nice.
Now, I'll admit that running multiple lines of audio into my brain is something I'm sort of trained to do.  I used to do audio for broadcast which involves listening to various competing conversations while mixing a show. I was not the best at it, I was at the bottom part of the top rung. Or, as I used to say, "Of the very best, I'm among the worst." Or, more accurately, "Of those who can do it, I'm the most expendable." None of the other (better) engineers ever contradicted me when I said that.
Anyway, where was I? Ah. Yes. Communication. So sweet.  O! That all the director's commands could be delivered like a whispered threat into each person's ear.
Now, we can certainly make it easier for me to hear everyone on set. Just throw a wireless lav on each actor and having someone mix to a Comtek that goes to me. As long as a big ol' limiter is on that feed to me I'd be fine.

CLA FEH

Every few weeks now a company called Content Lizenz Agentur tells Google that they own the rights to one of my movies.

It Looks like they have a pretty good scam running. If I dispute they'll just tell Google they made an innocent little mistake. Clearly they don't bother doing any sort of check to see if they actually own any content they find on YouTube -- they just submit a claim to it and see if nobody will dispute it.

Things We Clearly Need

A crossbow "pistol" for sixteen bucks (including shipping)? Count me in.


 Twenty-sided dice in both red and green? You just know we'll need these.
 
And as you're well aware, the dragon holocaust is quite similar in size and scope to the coming zombie holocaust.
You may need to check the items on this list against your standard household zombie holocaust survival kit: Zombie Survival

Dragon Lass

This blog has 999 comments right now. You know what that means. In two more comments we'll be at 1001.

So, Cannes is over. We won't learn anything about the zeitgeist of Cannes for a couple weeks.

We absolutely must get to shooting on our next picture. It's a dragon picture. The original script was structurally based on The Road Warrior. Now note that when I say "structurally" based it means that nobody but nobody recognized the structure. The internal design was the same even if none of the characters matched and the scenes had dragons instead of cars and motorcycles.

But then Steve Niles did a page-one rewrite on the script. So the original structure went out the window and the lead character got a lot better.

Also good guys became bad guys and some characters just didn't end up going anywhere. So I did a rewrite on Steve's rewrite and... now the picture is short.

We suspect the issue is the beginning of the second act ain't long enough. So we'll fix that. And we'll start shooting... er... next month?

Apples and oranges

Comparing David Frey's Canon T2i to my Panasonic GH1. We didn't even try to color-match the two cameras. Here is an un-color-corrected frame from each camera. We are at the same aperture... I think... f2.0?

Andrew Langton with the GH1 and a 35mm S.S.C. lens (I think).

The picture is clearly bluer in the T2i. That's because we didn't bother to color-match the cameras.

Canon T2i with newer Canon 50(?) mm.

The bigger difference to me is how the two cameras handle flares. That's probably mostly a matter of the newer lenses (like Dave has) not losing contrast as much and not having those distinct "rings" you get off the older lenses.
The Panasonic GH1 also has flare "spikes". I think that is the camera itself and the way it handles highlights.
Overall, to my eye, this footage from each camera is color-correctable into the same world, making the GH1 and the Canon T2i compatible for multi-camera shooting.
And lastly note that the GH1 is a "four-thirds" camera while the T2i is APS-C — which makes the same length lens on the GH1 seem "longer" than what it would be on the T2i.

More Texture

Ben Dansie is finishing the texturing of the Venom model. He's going to move onto the Prometheus.

A wide shot of the Venom.

Closeup.

Closeup with added dirt.

I can't wait to start animating and compositing this.

Promethean Art

Tomorrow is the start of the Cannes Film Market. And our sales rep is there with The Prometheus Trap. And that means the embargo on the key art is lifted.

In the Place

So we made a shot where I was all like "There will be a giant stone head." And the cast said "No, that's a terrible idea."

The first version with a head modeled by BrightonPiers.

And the image, while iconic (and a direct nod, as it were, to Prometheus), doesn't actually pay off. They're just walking through the cargo bay of the ship, we just need to see how vast it is. So then I thought "What about a Borg cube? Nobody will recognize it as a Borg cube and I can get one and..."

The Borg cube didn't work that great. And that square rectangle comes from not switching to "final" from "preview" in the AfterEffects "match grain" effect. The model is by QuantoMan.

So I had to come up with something else. And I think I have. This is the bottom of a spaceship.

Here's a version with the "Star Destroyer" by AnthonyP.

So of course there's a lighting instrument in the frame. And I like it. But we'll see how much people yell about the lighting instrument being in the frame.

Color Balance

So, I have an issue with how to write down the white balance settings on the GH1. Maduka came up with a system.

-1, +8

That is, on the x axis you click once to the left (for -1) and then on the y axis you click up 8 (for +8). And that will give you the color balance we used on The Prometheus Trap.

Photographing the screen on the GH1 with an iPod is not ideal.

Of course, we also used Canon S.S.C. manual lenses -- usually at about an f2.0 -- on the camera. And that's a big difference over the stock lens. And I like the stock lens. It's just that there's something about these old S.S.C. lenses... I don't know what it is. The stills we have use exactly the same color balance and settings as the motion picture we're shooting, so they're an accurate look at what we shot.

Day 7 - We wrap

Today we wrapped on principal photography on The Prometheus Trap.
We ran late. Call at Penn Station was 11am and we got everyone on the 8:37pm train back to New York. We had just missed the 7:37pm train so we kinda hung out for a while. But we did shoot a punchlist of things which Rebecca Kush had asked for. And that was in addition to everything else that had been normally scheduled for the day.

Andrew Langton and Rebecca Kush in the grim cryo-sleep of The Venom.

Andrew Langton in vertical cryo.

Rebecca Kush in our super-creepy cryo chamber. The Queen of Mars built, art-directed, and lit this.

 Do we still have things left to shoot? Probably some inserts but not a whole lot.

This shot was Rebecca's idea. Our haze machine is being repaired so this shot was with a fog machine. 

Michael Shattner getting his Facebook shot on.

Gratuitous silhouette. 

Still Life

 I shot a whole bunch of "textures" around the shop for use in this and other movies.

I'm especially proud of this. We put a spare radio in the camera case along with a Lectro transmitter to record dialog over the radio (mostly when the actors had their helmets on).  

Dramatological

We have an interesting dramatological situation which is playing out very nicely in our prep for the last day of principal photography on The Prometheus Trap.
Basically we have a Groundhog-Day-like movie where time keeps rolling back on itself.
And there's a man and a woman in the story and we've had a number of discussions about whether they were lovers, or they were lovers in some timelines and not others, or what-have-you.

And interestingly, our editor Rebecca Kush, is also one of the leads, and a producer. So she's had a bit of time to go through footage in order to create the edit on the picture and come up with a punchlist of insert shots we need as well as a bit of dialog between the lovers/not-lovers/ex-lovers which informs a lot of the way we've been playing the movie and how it affects different timelines and the whole of the movie.
Funny thing about movies is that you can add a little bit of something to a movie and it changes all the performances. Which is, you know, kinda neat.
I really like it when things play out in an ensemble. Ensembles are fun. This movie certainly has a lead — a point-of-view character (the android played by Michael Shattner who essentially is Prometheus). But, you know, everybody has their own arc. And I'm being especially amused by how it's all working.
This is the fun part of making movies.
Via.