You put the Kiss in Masochistic

Dig Dave Campfield's article The Masochistic Existence of a Microbudget Filmmaker.

I know nothing about which he speaks. Nothing. Shh...

Shadow Plane

Oh my. Making a "shadow only" plane so that your 3D object casts a shadow on the ground is a pain in the tuchus with Cycles in Blender.
But. It can be done.
Dig this fellow's tutorial. David Fesliyan explains how to do it. It's a bit, er, convoluted. But it makes a clean shadow pass. (Do yourself a favor and make sure "compositing" is left checked in the render panel or you will be as confused as I was for a substantial amount of time earlier today.)

Ignore the unplugged lens distortion.

You have to put the shadow plane on one layer and then do things with nodes. Subtract, "set alpha" and then "alpha over". Make sure that layer receives shadows. Then move your sun(s) around so the shadows match your original image. And make sure that the outputs are in the correct order in "alpha over".
There seem to be other ways to do shadow planes in Cycles but this method does not involve putting a garbage matte in over the ground plane. And it seems to work.
I say seems. I know not am.
I think at full resolution this render takes about two hours on my fastest machine. But it should make a right pretty composite so I'll let it go for the weekend and see what I've got.

AMAP (Android Masquerade Additional Photography)

Re: additional photography on Carbon Copy (nee' Android Masquerade): honestly our distributor had some excellent ideas for making the movie better. And so we're shooting a scene at the beginning with some soldiers who get killed (which will up the stakes a bit more) and then another scene where some soldiers get killed defending the city against the robot incursion (which will make the stakes of the robot incursion more important) and then some soldiers getting killed during the "false flag" attack in the Philadelphia Desert.
Yes, we kill many soldiers.
Also, we still steal the "Philadelphia Desert" from Montserrat Mendez because stealing from Mozz is what we do.*

Some details from everyone's favorite comic-book movie, the reboot of Fantastic 4. I like these details. Plus, they look totally doable and wearable.

Just a couple pieces of armor and a LOT of straps. Although this is a drawing, this costume notion looks very doable. Plus, I totally dig the shoes.

Another angle on the Fantastic 4 costume.

We, of course, would add a balaclava and an awesome helmet to this costume.

Of course, none of this has been written yet. Well maybe it has but I haven't seen it yet. Steven J. Niles is working on the additions.
We need what will be an abandoned city and the Philadelphia Desert. What would be best is an old factory in a rock quarry. Do you have one of those? Can we shoot in it for a day?
Speaking of helmets, Brian Schiavo is coming up with a helmet design. I have so much faith in how awesome the soldiers' helmets will be I'm not even paying attention to it.

*Just for your own amusement think about where that desert is that Charlton Heston is in at the end of Planet of the Apes.