FEATURE: Leap: Revelation

j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Do you have an alternative actor who believes more along your lines in this matter? In mainstream films, the "Harry Potter" series for example, the character "Dumbledore" played by Richard Harris transitioned from Harris playing the role to Michael Gambon, when Harris died. The series went on for 7 more installments with the substitution...

There is a philosophical point here which involves the question of 'acting'... does an actor have to absolutely 'believe' what the character believes... if this were true, then anyone playing the role of an 'evil' person... well is doomed... I don't think your actors or actresses who are playing against the protagonist(s) 'believe' what they are portraying, well 'believe that is the correct way to behave'... (And that is the same for any mainstream actor/actress who plays say a 'mass/serial' killer...).
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I thought about replacing the actor, but he was in the last two. I also already did a switch in part 2 and it screwed with a lot of people, so I'd rather just loose the character if we can't agree. And no, the actor doesn't have to believe, in fact he didn't share the believes of the last one either, but he still did it and did a convincing job. For whatever reason though, this one hit closer to home for him.
 
So when you say "he's uncomfortable" wit the direction the film is heading, does that mean he's unwilling to even be in it? As in he wouldn't even be willing to have a cameo?
 
jghenderson said:
So when you say "he's uncomfortable" wit the direction the film is heading, does that mean he's unwilling to even be in it? As in he wouldn't even be willing to have a cameo?
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We're negotiating that part right now. It'd be great if he will do a cameo, it'd help keep the films tied together, but if not, my new story will function just fine. Started writing the new script last night. Got seven pages. It's kinda weird to get into the mindset of starting a sequel in the middle of the previous story. I'm telling part of Rise of the Beast from a different point of view to introduce the new characters in what's basically the first act. The call to adventure at the end of the first act is when the story will change to the new events I wrote in my first draft for this film.
 
El Director said:
We're negotiating that part right now. It'd be great if he will do a cameo, it'd help keep the films tied together, but if not, my new story will function just fine. Started writing the new script last night. Got seven pages. It's kinda weird to get into the mindset of starting a sequel in the middle of the previous story. I'm telling part of Rise of the Beast from a different point of view to introduce the new characters in what's basically the first act. The call to adventure at the end of the first act is when the story will change to the new events I wrote in my first draft for this film.
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Since the Wife was gone from the house last night to take the opportunity to watch first 3 "Resident Evil" series. While Milla Jovovich is in all of them, they 'cover' for characters who 'drop out', or 'don't continue' with the series. In the first film there are two survivors, the Alice and Matt characters... in the second installment Matt has morphed into a monster, and so no need for the original to play that role... and in the third installment Alice returns as does the Carlos character who was seen in the second installment, but a second woman character 'disappeared'...
 
This idea is possibly stupid (I have not seen the first two Leap films) but thought I would throw it out there just so you know you have options.

What if the character turns against everyone else? If the actor is not comfortable playing a character that believes certain things, then you can make his character provide a counter argument. Perhaps this would eschew the actors worries? This of course would rely on his character making a legitimate argument that is not simply thrown aside. In the end this probably would create way more problems than it would solve, but who knows.

You are dealing with a very difficult situation, and I feel for you. Just make sure you give thought to the full range of options before you. As artists, we ALWAYS have choices.
 
I appreciate the ideas! :)

The four Resident Evil films are a pretty big influence on Leap 3. What's funny is that the original screenplay for Resident Evil 3 actually had that woman instead of Claire Redfield. But for whatever reason, they changed the character, so I guess I'm in good company ;) All my missing characters are accounted for by an explosion that opens the film. If an actor couldn't/wouldn't come back, I just stuck them in the explosion. Cheap, but effective.

I've also considered having the character of Shane turn on his friends, but due to the nature of this film, the character would then suffer the literal wrath of God, so the film's agenda is still being pushed, and that's part of this actor's issue.

I'm starting to make some headway with the new script. This first act is quite a bit different than I wanted, but it's growing on me. At least I know the rest of the film will be the same.

Synopsis for this draft:

Blake Owens and his parkour team have been following the Leap Crew's videos about the Vatican being the first beast of Revelation 13. When Sunday laws become enacted globally, Blake and his team realize that this is the mark of the beast. They try to contact the Leap Crew only to discover that they're nowhere to be found. Blake and co. put on the mantle of the Leap Crew and take up their mission of sharing what they've discovered on the internet. The new Leap Crew must hurry to spread the Truth before probation for this planet closes and God's wrath is poured out upon the wicked.
 
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In Epitaph I've had two girl play the Siren character and neither worked out, so I ditched the character. Not completely, but made it where she wasn't such a big part of the film and expanded Damious, the mage character. The problem is, she was our main Estrie and now I have to figure out a way to explain the "bread and salt" reference. This is a bit different because this is a first film. I'd hate to see the lead guy replaced because I liked him and he was turning out to be a pretty good action guy. But pray about it and you'll see the answer come to you. But switching up the teams could be the thing to do. It's simple and makes sense, but you'll have to rewrite it as a whole new story. Then again I did that with Divinity. No one from "The 4th Beast" is in "Divinity". In fact I decided to make it a stand alone thing. You can't really do that with Leap, but you can pass the touch.

-Nate
 
I just finished the new draft with the new pk crew. I wrote a cameo for "Shane" (and myself) where leaders of the various crews hold a meeting about what to do. I really only had to come up from scratch with seventeen pages. For the rest of the script, I used Draft 01 and just replaced the names with my new characters. I had to rework a few things, but overall, I like how this one is. In the event my actor and I work things out for him to star in this flick, I've got an easy plan for that too. Unfortunately my other two returning leads may not be able to do the film afterall, so I'll have to stick with the new crew story regardless. On the plus side, the actor who played Gabriel in Leap 2 has committed :)
 
Alex and I are working things out, so he may still star in it. I'm waiting to hear back from him about what he thought of the second draft with the new crew. If he says yes, we'll write Shane back in as the sole survivor of the Leap Crew and have him take over the new team. Some new ideas that we're working into the story is martial law in the cities, as well as adding another parkour chase to get out of the city. We'll also be taking parkour to the rooftops finally, so that's exciting :)
 
On a more technical note... I tried to use the new CS6 After Effects Camera Tracking 'feature'... and the clip I was working with is not a good candidate in the least...

A 'good' candiidate is not 'handheld', 'handrackedfocus'... a 'good' canddate is smooth motion, and pretty 'sharp/deep' focus for the elements that you want to track. I was tracking a wall mounted TV monitor, to drop in a fake TV broadcast. The camera 'work' was such that the TV monitor was in motion (relatively speaking...), blurry, and the motion unsteady due to the handheld work.

Smooth steadycam may work, but definitely the 'track object' has to be relatively sharp.

Oh, yeah... and CS5 AE 'rotobrush' requires an almost 'ready to cut out' image as well. I tried to use that on a roto project (my CS6 eval expired...), and ended up doing mask shape keyframing... I didn't get a chance to evaluate CS6 rotobrush...

I do have a linux box that is almost exclusively mine to fiddle with, load in the camera tracking software I found a while back for use with Blender, and see what kind of images work best with it... well... if the software still exists out there...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
I do have a linux box that is almost exclusively mine to fiddle with, load in the camera tracking software I found a while back for use with Blender, and see what kind of images work best with it... well... if the software still exists out there...
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Voodoo? I used it in the past and had good results.

Did a lot of customizing to Trelby today. I have it using the Final Draft fonts, tried to match the color scheme, and I made the cursor look normal. The result:
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If you look at the page count you'll see I've added quite a bit to the story. The first draft was 73 pages and now we're over 90. Still have more story to add tonight :)
 
After not hearing from my actor for a month, he finally read the third draft and, in his words, "I went from severely apprehensive to pretty excited". So now that I have him on board, we can proceed. At this point, we're planning to shoot in the spring. That gives me the fall and winter to cast and train the new actors, as well as figure out just how we're going to pull this one off. Moving forward!
 
El Director said:
Bad news. The graphics unit in my Macbook Pro went bad. I can’t even hook up an external monitor
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This means two things for me. First: I won’t be using the Mac to cut the film (Leap: Revelation). Second: I was about fifty pages into the script when it happened. Stupid me, the last time I backed the script up to the Celtx cloud was at the start of the month. I’d written 20 pages since then! Fortunately I discovered that I may be able to recover the data by turning the macbook into one big firewire drive. I ordered a six pin to six pin cable and should have it next week sometime.
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Do you have an Apple Store near. I bought a MPB with a bad graphics card for $250 off Craigslist, took it to the Apple Store and they fixed it for $329 including tax. They also replaced the optical drive and randomly maxed out the memory. To fix it in store would've cost $550 just for the repair, but when they sent it in I got the repair, plus extras and it came back exactly when they said it would (five days). I'm using it now and I'm loving it.

-Nate
 
From the Production Journal at starspictures.org

Friday, August 31, 2012
I went hiking today and shot some test plates. One for the Second Coming, and one where 150 lbs hailstones will fall from the sky. While I’ve shot greenscreen before, and am pretty good at visualizing what will be in the scene, I found it more difficult to visualize and frame for objects that don’t exist yet. I will be practicing this more in the near future. Once my dog and I got back home, I threw the Second Coming shot into AE. Since my laptop had crashed, this is on my 9 year old desktop, the one with a Celeron chip and 2 gigs of RAM. I would love to get CS6 on here, but I don’t think it’ll run well, so I’m stuck with CS4. In any case, the image below took 4 seconds to render on this machine. The process is as follows:
First, I blew out the sky and created a luma matte from the original shot. Next, I graded the original shot to be night using Colorista II. Then I added the starfield (used Particular for the stars), ripped the starfield in the center, added a shot of some nebula thing, then added a cloud, the rainbow, and a VC Optical Flare.
Before

After

While it’s not perfect yet, I think I have the mechanics down on what needs to be done. I’ll do a few more before we shoot it, just to be sure. Next up is the shot of the hailstones
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From the Production Journal at starspictures.org

Sunday, September 2, 2012
While I’ve mentioned the influences for Leap: Revelation before, I decided this time to put together an actual Lookbook, comprised of stills from said influences. I’ve got a stack of movies in front of me, and from these I’ll be able to show some of the angles/composition, location ideas, color, and effects references. I’m not sure how many images I’ll end up with, I got six from 2012 and now I’m pulling from The Great Challenge. I’ll upload the entire Lookbook to our facebook page atfacebook.com/leap3movie when I’m done.
 
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