Party Video

1102 party video small from Andrew Bellware on Vimeo.

Rap Partay

Dragon Girl, which will now be called The Creature: Returns, had our wrap party today.

This was the "everybody close your eyes and we'll tell them that we all blinked simultaneously" actors taking direction test. You can see how well that went.

A vastly more right showing of the Dragon Girl cast.

We had http://www.loumalnatis.com/ air-mailed to us. Oh man. Those pizzas were delicious. We actually ate all the pizza. Chicago pizza for the win.
Queen of Mars made Nutella Rice Crispy treats. And we had Turkish salad. And drunken fruit salad (which makes me drinky e'en now). White wine, honey whisky, and whiskey and Cokes were served. As I recall.
Oh, and the name of the movie now is The Creature: Returns.

A Reputation. Finally.

The brilliant Mac Rogers referred to me on Facebook as an "unbearable, salivating, dead-eyed, hell-portals-for-eye-sockets, sleaze merchant". 
I can now die a happy man.
Today is a good day.

White Spheres

Annalisa and Julia among the spheres.

Nathan Vegdahl made some reference spheres and sent them to amuse me. It worked. I am amused.

Making VFX Cheaper Part II

My dad came through for me here. Here's a fun fact, Leica actually makes one of the laser 3D scanning devices out there.

And it's really close to the magical way I want to just set this device in a room, have it measure the room, and photograph the textures, and spit out a fully-rendered 3D version of the room. It's not quite there yet. Oh but it's so close.

I Wish VFX were cheaper too

If you've been paying any attention to the VFX community lately they've been complaining about how their companies go out of business and how Ang Lee said something to the effect of: "I wish visual effects were cheaper."

Also, why can't science-fiction motorcycles look this cool? And why can't I have one?

I wish they were cheaper too.
So my question is, how do we make VFX cheaper? 3D VFX involves a whole bunch of rather specialized skills: modelling, rigging, animating, texturing, lighting, and compositing. There's also stuff like rotoscoping which is (to me) stupendously boring but is usually best done in the 2D world. In any case, here's a couple things I wish I had in order to make VFX cheaper:

• Make 3D scenes self - light by being able to do the following: set a silver ball (like a Christmas tree ornament) in the middle of the scene. Take a picture of it. Then your favorite open-source 3D animation software automatically lights in order to match the lighting that falls on your silver ball. You can do this in Blender using "environment HDR lighting" but it's not quite as quick and dirty as I'd like.
• Use some sort of cheap 3D-cameras to make autocad references of actual 3D objects and architectural elements (with shading and texturing) in the field.
  The fact we don't have this technology is actually something that's driven me nuts since I was a pre-teen.
  I used to go out into the field with my dad and measure stairs and stuff "as built" so that the handrails that my dad made would actually fit the stairs which had been made. (You couldn't go off the architect's drawings because in the field things would get altered slightly by the ironworkers and carpenters and whomever in order to actually be able to build the darn thing. The drawings one made from measuring in the field were labeled "as built" to distinguish them from the architect's drawings which were, from an engineering prospective, fantasy artwork and not anything you could actually work with.)
  I ever so wanted to just be able to set up some sort of laser-guided multicamera that would automatically measure the size and shape of staircases and walls and ceilings and stuff all that data into a computer. (Actually, one technology change is that they do use lasers now in order to get true level measurements. They're also less troublesome than a plumb-bob.)
  As far as I know this technology does not exist although I'm sure we're somewhat close to having it exist.
  [UPDATE: my father tells me that some sort of device like what I describe does in fact exist and that it costs about $10,000.00. I'm sure it won't also photograph and import the texture of the architectural elements like I want it to. I have no idea what the thingy is. I'll find out.]

Being able to do just these two things automatically would be a huge time-saver in post. One of those things is practical now although no software I know of does it automatically without some fiddling; and the other one will be fantastically expensive if someone made the technology but in 10 years every Radio Shack will have a kit that'll do it for $59.99.
The things that will not get cheaper is the modelling. You want a unique robot? You're gonna need to get a good artist. That artist will have to have put a lot of time into making their robot skills awesome and, you know, you're going to either have to pay for that or use some sort of secret guilt-inducing power in order to get them to work cheaper for you. Making feature films is more glamorous than making, say, television commercials so artists will be willing to do that cheaper than they would for a boring corporate client.
Rotoscoping is becoming automated as we get more powerful computers. With a mirror ball you might solve some lighting and compositing issues.
But still, you're up-in-the-air with modelling, rigging, and animating.
On my particular planet I've been using Blender open-source models on our last couple movies. So that saves money except for animating. I'll tell ya how that goes...

Plan View

I'm gonna grace you with mah skillz as a draughtsman. Here's a plan view. Note that 1" doesn't really mean anything on the web. The side panels are 3 feet (about 1 meter) and that means the wall at the top is about 2 meters. A little less.

Version uno.

The updated super-sexy version.

The walls need to be detailed like crazy. Plus, being me, I want to have all the lights built into it.

You'd Think I'd Know

If it weren't for Joe Chapman, I'd never know anything.
Total Retribution is out on video. You can buy it from Amazon. If Joe didn't inform me of these sorts of things I'd never know them. Earthkiller, which is the same movie, is available on demand on Amazon. I have no idea when Prometheus Trap comes out. Nor do I know about Angry Planet. You'd think I'd know these things. I don't.

Android Masquerade

So we have an amazing script. You ever go to one of those 2-Day film classes with Dov Siemans? He says you don't want a good script, you want a great script. If your script is just "good", go back and make it great.
And this new script (1301) is a Steven J. Niles script. And it's amazing. Actually, I haven't got the contract back from him so maybe I shouldn't tell him how completely off-the-hook this new screenplay is. But it is amazing.
And O! The elegance of the structure of it. Steven is the King, Royalty, I tell you, of making compelling stuff happen in a limited number of locations.

• We need a desert landscape.
• A futuristic apartment
• A command center/operations tent
• An interrogation cell
• An exterior alleyway.

The exterior alleyway is, surprisingly, always one of the hardest locations to find. You'd think that us shooting in NYC we'd have them no problem. They're everywhere, right? Covered in graffiti and trash? Man, it is so not 1979 here anymore.
We really need to do a million-dollar job on the futuristic apartment set. It has to look like we had all the money. I have some ideas. 3-foot wide sections of set which are about 6 or 7 feet high. Must have ceiling. Must have floor.
For CG we're going to steal the open-source models from Ian Hubert's latest Blender Foundation project. Oh, and also get some city walls around New York.
Did I mention that this script is off the lanyard? Because it totally is. I imagine Steve writing it and thinking "Oh, Drew likes dark. I can do dark. Let's see if Drew can handle an ending that's this freakin' dark. We'll make Brazil look like 12th Night. We're gonna go dark." I can't wait.

Son Miserables

Now, I realize that this article was written for a mass audience and not for (say) visual effects professionals. But... something seems a tad absurd here.
Now as a disclaimer, articles about how "they" did something "in Hollywood" are notoriously inaccurate, misleading, or straight-up malarky. So, you know, maybe this ain't how it went down at all.

Anyway, the recording of the voice in the movie version of "Les Miserables". This was the process:

I proposed working closely with the costume department and obtaining swatches of matching fabric that might be used to cover the microphone mount. A small cut in the exterior of the costume would permit mounting the mike on the outside and a camouflaging piece of matching fabric would make it inconspicuous.

I'm down with that. Sounds like a decent idea.

Since the mikes would be attached using DPA’s recommended mount, and since no fabric would touch the grill, the application should be noise- free. 

That's true. And microphone rubbing is one of the biggest pains in the tuchus for the production sound department.

Although the mike would be clearly visible to the human eye, on a wide shot and on a moving costume, it would be very difficult to see, and on a tight shot it would actually be beneath the bottom of the camera’s frame line.

Wide shot: can't see it. Check. Tight: too tight for camera to see it. Check.

For the medium shots we would rely upon advances in VFX technology to paint out the mikes.

Wait. What?
They put lavs on everyone, but expected VFX to paint them out in medium shots? Why not just boom everything and have VFX paint out the booms on the wide shots? I know I'd rather paint out a boompole and a microphone up out of the range of action in a shot than deal with painting out a mic on someone's freaking costume. Painting out the boom — at least that way you're not having to motion-track freakin' cloth.
Well, that decision made a mint for some CG artists at least.

Mad MAXX

I'm somewhat enjoying the war between Sound Devices and Zaxcom right now, because sound mixers are winning.
The new Zaxcom MAXX looks very awesome. For only $2195 it gives you a 4-track recorder (records onto CF or SD with a CF adapter.)

Even with multi-camera shoots there are very, very few scenes which require more than 4 tracks. I guess if you're doing wireless on each character and then a boom you might hit your max (ha) track count more often with only 3 tracks available for wireless iso tracks. But if you're just slapping wireless on each of your characters without a boom it's very rare to run more than 4 channels at a time in a feature.
Sure, about once or twice in a feature you get one of those scenes where 9 people talk at different points. And in TV it probably happens fairly often. But for what we do, 4 tracks could really do a whole lot for us.

Six Easy Days

Have I mentioned that I've written a book?

"Written" is maybe a somewhat loose term here. I re-wrote Mark Owen's "No Easy Day" as Six Easy Days.

The Dragons We Do Have

• Sintel
• Dead
• White
• Callista
• Callista w/o horns

That's really all I have to say about that right now. Aren't you glad you asked?

One Monitor or Two?

I already blogged this post. But... then it ended up in my drafts folder. I... don't understand things.
It may not look terribly big in this picture, but this new monitor is big. And bright (I turned down the brightness actually).

I'm starting to get all non-two-monitors over this thing.

This monitor was only 180 bucks. Back in the day I was getting a good price with Dell on a 24" monitor for $600. Remember those times? Wow. This monitor is bright enough I might even recommend it for my dad.