Daniel Skubal
Veteran
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.
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.
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.
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.
