More Clonehunter PR

Here's the Clone Hunter press release.

GH1 Hacked Experience (so far)

So nowadays we're shooting on the Panasonic GH-1. It's a cool little camera, and it's right this minute the only one of the DSLR's which can autofocus effectively while shooting in movie mode.

We set that bad boy to "nostalgic" film mode to cut out all the detail processing the camera will do. And the camera has been hacked to shoot Earthkiller (it was just a straight-up stock GH1 on Day 2 though.)

So we're shooting at... uh... 32Mb/s or some such. Actually, as far as I can tell the bit rate is variable. But we're shooting at the level of what the Internet (and the DVXuser folks) think of as the "safe hack" data rate.

We're using Neoscene to turn the footage from those weird .mts files into ProRes Quicktimes.

Now question number one is: can I tell a difference between the hacked GH1 and the stock GH1?

And the answer is: uh... not really. I see the countdown of remaining minutes and seconds go a lot faster. And... that's about it. I'm sure it's somehow better, and we might find that some composites and such go a lot quicker and smoother. Maybe my blacks are more solid? I don't know. There's certainly little I can say negative about the hack. I mean, except that it sure uses more space on the SD cards.

But the complaining from pro circles about the GH1 has certainly been reduced with the increase of the data rate. The two issues with the camera now are the "jellocam" and the fact the stock lens is an f4.0 at best. Yeah, I'd love that lens to be at least a 2.0 for all focal lengths. But I also want a unicorn with wings and all the ice cream I can eat without making me fat.

But getting back to the "jellocam". I've shot a lot of handheld with the GH1. I'm halfway through my second feature and we're doing well over 90% hand held. I should probably go into how we're doing that on another post. But the jellocam hasn't been a problem with handheld fight scenes, running up and down roads and corridors, whip pans, nowhere.

Yup. I just don't have jellocam problems... except...

Except when shooting outside, hand held, in the wind. Oddly enough, this has been Maduka's experience with the camera too. When you're doing hand-held and you're being buffeted by wind, the top and bottom of the frame smear like crazy, baby.

Now most of those shots where you get blown sideways by the wind are really not good for picture anyway. But the image turning to jelly is not that awesome a thing to look at. It kind of sucks actually. Not only do you lose the level-ness of your horizon, but the whole world smears like you're mixing scotch and lysergic acid.

So if you're outside in the wind, get some sticks.

Script Savvy?

I got an "invitation" to be a "sponsor" for the Script Savvy Contest. I declined. I'm sort of under the impression that Script Savvy is kind of useless. Basically, writers pay $40 to enter their contest and the carrot for them is that production companies are "sponsoring" the contest. So that means that maybe their script will be read by someone who could make the screenplay they send in into a movie.

It can't be.

Well, honestly InkTip.com seems to work. I've gotten a couple things off of there. But the reality out there is that what we (and by "we" I really mean The Asylum and the like) really need are screenwriters who can turn a screenplay around from logline through a finished draft in about 30 days.

So if you want to be a screenwriter, practice writing screenplays really freakin' fast. And read Save the Cat. Use the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet.

Because what we really need is the ability to come up with a screenplay based on our distributor's needs and we need it very quickly. A contest isn't likely to produce the particular script we happen to need right now.

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Katie Hannigan as Mina in Earthkiller.

A Bit More of Clonehunter PR

A little press release from InkTip. I saw the synopsis for Eric's new picture, it's a horror movie and it looks pretty dynamite!

Ooh look!

An interview with Eric Steele, the writer of Clone Hunter.

Here's my favorite quote: "Some of the scenes I'd written would give James Cameron a headache. Pursuits on hoverbikes, floating casinos, talking gorillas - no sane individual would even think of tackling such a project without a studio budget."

Clone Hunter Day

It's Clonehunter day! Today (Tuesday August 10th, 2010) is the day that Clone Hunter is released in North America.

'Tis exciting. Get yourself a copy!

Other news is that I just got the art from the Japanese version of the movie but I can't show it right now until the distributor lifts the embargo.

Earthkiller Day... er... 6?

If we just wrapped the sixth day of Earthkiller, then we must be at the halfway mark.

Robin Kurtz as Helen.

Robin Kurtz and Katie Hannigan.

Robin Kurtz as Helen (with a laser sighting gun.)

Robin Kurtz, touched by Mina (Katie Hannigan).

Oh Yeah, Baby!

Clonehunter is on its way to me!

Day 5 (part... c?) of Earthkiller

I gotta remember that we didn't get to scenes 44, 46, and 60 on the fifth day of shooting Earthkiller. Really, I dramatically over-booked that day of shooting.

And I'm exhausted. Luckily we have a relatively tame half-day of shooting and our set is already up and in place.

Here's Nat Cassidy and Alaina Hammond -- they hear creatures, they're not sure where they're coming from.

Alaina Hammond as Therin.

I suspect that we'll be able to get the scenes we didn't get to yesterday on another day -- I bet they really should have been scheduled on another day but I had a wrong idea (when I scheduled) about what sets would be where/when. I probably thought we were going to mostly use the corridor Mike Kessell built for Alien Uprising.

Tom Rowen as Tennyson.

Welcome to the re-invigoration/rebreathers

You can't get away from this joke.

Brian Schiavo made these cool rebreathers for Earthkiller.

I didn't notice until today that they said "C57D" on them. That's the designation of the ship in Forbidden Planet. It's also the designation of at least two ships in the Joss Whedon Firefly universe.

And now it's the designation of our rebreathers.

I think the only more famous ship designation would be Star Trek's Enterprise, with "NCC-1701". But even non-geeks know that one. The C57D joke is strictly an in-joke for dorks. So, er, I got it right away.

Don't bother reading below!

Everything before this post is archaic. If you want to know what we were doing before August of 2010, go to empiricalpleasures.blogspot.com

Announcing Pre-Production on Day 2

That's pretty well all I have to say about that. We want to shoot in February of 2010. Lots more about this on my personal blog.

September

What I mean is we're going to shoot yet another picture in September, 2008. The project is 0802 The Uprising by Joshua James.

Space marines land on a prison planet to put down a prisoner uprising, only to find trouble which is much much worse. Now the marines have to join forces with the prisoners just to make it off the planet alive.

Start Date

We're going to shoot another picture starting on March 1, 2008.

More information forthcoming.