APOLLO: The Legacy of Hayden- OFFICIAL THREAD

[Daniel Skubal]

Hey guys. With a little encouragement from Brandon Rice, I thought I'd get a thread going for my newest short film, Apollo: The Legacy of Hayden. You guys may remember a little contest DVXuser had a couple months back... what was it called? Oh yeah, HEROFEST. The film was meant to be our entry but we came to the decision that rather than rushing out the final product, we were going to take our time with it and make it as best as we could.

I've failed to mention this project due to the pacing of our progress, but I feel as though we're far enough along that we can at least shed a little light on Apollo. For those who have been keeping up with our website, there's been quite a bit of material released on there, but that was the extent of it.
To get a bit more insight on some of the stuff we've recently been working on, check out http://www.mooseheadfilms.com.

The film is of course, a superhero film but we took a different route with this one. Rather than having a non-stop redundant crimefighting movie, we focused more on the characters. The style of the film is very dark and comic-bookish. A professor of mine said it reminded him of a cross between Sin City and Batman, which were the two films we based our city and characters on. Going off that Sin City vibe, we shot about 40% of the film on the green screen with the DVX. We're currently starting on the 3rd month of Post-Production of this 10-minute film, and we're approaching the half-way point on the composite shots. Although it's taking more time than we had hoped for, we're very proud of the shots we've completed.

We're shooting for late November for the DVD release and as we get closer to completion, we'll keep this thread up to date with our progress. This is the website for the film, it was just launched today.
http://www.mooseheadfilms.com/apollo/
As we get our footage rendered out, we'll be able to put up more content both on the thread and on both of the sites.

So on to some content: These three images are the teaser posters I developed for the film. The first two were created while we were still in Pre-prod, and the last one was created today as the third and final teaser poster.

If you click on the images, you can see larger versions of each. We'll most likely be posting these on our cafepress site. If not, they'll end up as mini posters at our premier.

So as I said earlier, a big chunk of the film is shot on green screen. That's been quite a difficult task, not only to shoot cleanly, but also to create believable backgrounds. This image below is a screenie from a shot we've been working on all weekend. The shot is a dolly and pan shot, so while the camera is dollying left, it is also panning to keep the character centered in frame. The background matte consists of the cityscape, a rain element with lightning, and then the wall. Click on the thumbnail to see the large sized version of the wall.

In AE, I separated these layers in a 3D environment.

I then keyed in Devin (Who plays Jason Kane, an investigative journalist), I then applied a 3-pass motion tracker on the green screen footage (if you look at the image below, you'll see a few spots of duct tape on the green screen, that was our tracking source.)

After the motion tracking was applied, I cleaned up the matte a bit and did color grading (which is temporary until we finish all of the shots), then we'll grade them together.

There's three shots in this film that require a lot of effects work, this is the first of the three. The remaining two have yet to be touched, but we're confident in our methods.

Our green screen consisted of two big pieces of green felt, sewn together in the middle. It cost about 60$ but worked out very well.

Our lights consisted of two big fluoro ballasts that I stuck on a wheeled-clothes rack, 2 small fluoro light sticks which we used as the rim lights for a lot of the close ups, a set of home depot lights with tinfoil for reflectors and three tungsten lightbulb bowl lights. Despite the shoddy set up, it worked quite well. And yes, we shot it in my garage. haha

We shot EVERYTHING very flat with the DVX to give us the highest detail and widest range for color processing. The method worked well, especially for the green screen work. For sound, we used the mk012 Oktava and the Sennheiser me66. There's quite a long opening monologue and the Oktava worked great for that. It was my first time using the Oktava on any project, and despite its cheap cost, it provided a very rich quality in vocal ranges. We shot in approximately a dozen locations, and were able to score all of our locs for free.
We had the film logged and all of the live stuff edited by the 2nd week of post, but because there was so much green screen material, editing was put on hold until the completion of the composites and fx. So once we complete the shots, we'll be able to have a rough edit. Then we'll start mixing the vocal/foley tracks together and then lastly scoring the film. While the film is being scored, we'll release the trailer and get the pre-order stuff set up.

We plan to pack the DVD with a bunch of tutorials and behind the scenes stuff to get some real insight into the project and how much time we actually spent on it.


Anyway, thanks for checking this out guys. I know there was a lot to read, but there was a lot to cover. This was just the tip of the iceberg, there's WAY more coming. If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear from you. We're really trying to make a high quality product here, and we'd love feedback.

Thanks again for looking at this stuff. I'll update it as more stuff comes along.

[macintosh]

I don't think I was around during hero-fest so this is the first of your project I'm hearing about. It sounds like a fun project, that should be really entertaining to watch, and I'm sure the quality of it will be amazing.

I really like the 2nd and 3rd posters, my favorite would probably be the 3rd though.

The final composited shot of the guy at the desk looks real good. I'd love to see a bigger version of it.

I'm looking forward to seeing your progress, and hope all goes well for you on the project.

[Daniel Skubal]

Hey Mac! Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree that the third one is my favorite too. Apollo was a very fun project to work on. Ask and ye shall receive. Here's the full size version of that desk shot. We're still working on it, the sillhouette around his mouth has proven to be a bit of a task, so I'm going to have to get in there frame-by-frame and clean it up.



Thanks again for checking the thread out!

[Brandon Rice]

Hey Daniel! I am super stoked about Apollo! Thanks for opening a thread for updates and stuff. Can't wait to see this finished film!

[macintosh]

Like I said before, it looks really smooth, I don't really notice anything around the mouth even. But I wanna add in that you did a great job matching the key and the background. That can often be pretty tricky, but its so crucial to selling the shot, and you did it very well.

[Brandon Rice]

Dude, that layer stuff and compositing is fascinating! I love it!

[Daniel Skubal]

Thanks again mac and brandon! If I can get some free time tomorrow, I'll finish up that shot and get it posted along with a bit more of a detailed explanation of how it was made. I'll also toss up some more screen shots from the film. I didn't even get to discuss the non-greenscreen stuff. But I'll get into that tomorrow. A mountain of homework and reading awaits me right now.

[Brandon Rice]

Awesome Daniel! I can't wait to see some more stuff! It's looking real good so far!

[Kirk Gillock]

Very impressive stuff, Daniel. The posters look great (although, not to sure why the title isn't centered on the first one). But the information and example you gave is incredible. Very cool. Can't wait to see actual scenes from this project.

Good luck!

[Matt Sconce]

WOW! I am lookin forward to it!