FEATURE: Leap: Revelation

El Director said:
Shot a promo for the movie today, in character as the cameo that I have this time.
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Don't know if this 'works' unless one is preaching to the choir.

In terms of 'FX'... in the olden days of analog, one could have blips of 'snow' noise screens, color dropping out (if one had a color TV...), and degradation of audio and visuals. In the modern age, the most frequently seen artifact of low or interfered signal is macroblocking, and for some receivers, freeze frames, with audio being cut very choppy.

In your FX, even though the video is doing the macroblocking artifact, the audio is 'clean'.

If this is sort of a 'last survivor' type found footage, I think a view that sort of shows the guy has put a handycamcorder on a table, or propped up in someway... and since there's gunfire in the background, perhaps some explosions and jiggling of the camera would be in order.
 
It may not be recorded during eminent danger, maybe it's recorded before the character is going on the run. (I'm gathering that based on the series' plot).

-Nate
 
Nathyn said:
It may not be recorded during eminent danger, maybe it's recorded before the character is going on the run. (I'm gathering that based on the series' plot).

-Nate
Click to expand...

I guess for me, the 'action' didn't rise much, no ticking clock, no 'if I don't get this message out, it'll never get out', sort of feeling...
 
Thanks for checking it out. In the actual film, we have two scenes like this, both of which occur just before everything gets out of control. The macroblocking will stay, but the recording overlays and static will be gone. Yes, I'll find better sound effects for the macroblocking too.

My lead actor sent me this today and it got me excited. It's a $6000 concept trailer for a $50,000 movie called "Gray State", shot on DSLR by a guy that wears the same number of hats as me. They've nailed the look and feel I'm going for with the city scenes of Leap 3. I've spent the last hour dissecting the video so we can do the same. I'm having to redo the budget a bit to make some accommodations but this is my last outing with the Leap series, I need to do it right. Here's their trailer.
 
El Director said:
Thanks for checking it out. In the actual film, we have two scenes like this, both of which occur just before everything gets out of control. The macroblocking will stay, but the recording overlays and static will be gone. Yes, I'll find better sound effects for the macroblocking too.

My lead actor sent me this today and it got me excited. It's a $6000 concept trailer for a $50,000 movie called "Gray State", shot on DSLR by a guy that wears the same number of hats as me. They've nailed the look and feel I'm going for with the city scenes of Leap 3. I've spent the last hour dissecting the video so we can do the same. I'm having to redo the budget a bit to make some accommodations but this is my last outing with the Leap series, I need to do it right. Here's their trailer.
Click to expand...

I'd like to see the BTS of that 'concept trailer'...
 
Updated Poster

64881_547090231979989_877284318_n.jpg


Spent the day revising the budget and printing the schedule. Hope to film our fundraising pitch by the end of the week if we get a nice a day.
 
Sneak look at my fundraising video
485916_549022955120050_1910767644_n.jpg


Effects in this picture:
1. Denoiser II to get rid of noise in footage
2. Hue/Sat to shift color of shirt from blue to purple for better key.
3. Hue/Sat pumping up the shade of green on greenscreen
4. Keylight for keying
5. Colorista II to shift shirt hue back to blue and grade the footage.
6. Denoiser II (Not Shown) to remove any noise introduced in the above process.

Effects used in actual video:
Change To Color to fix uneven greenscreen lighting
Hue/Sat to pump up the green
Primatte Keyer
An edge cleaner
Curves
Denoiser II
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
I've been meaning to mention... this poster reminds me of the sign on intro for cable TV show "Mad Men"...
Click to expand...
I've never seen it - I don't have cable. Thanks for pointing it out, I'll look into it.

*EDIT*
I just watched the intro, which one were you talking about? None of them reminded me of mine.
 
Gotcha. That's funny. I went with a silhouette as a throwback to the first film. It's the design the main character has on his shirt.
 
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
It’s been a crazy past few days. After weeks of planning, we officially launched our Kickstarter fundraising campaign yesterday. We’ve had a few pledges so far and I’m very thankful for them, but I have hunch that if God allows us to make goal, it’ll be a last minute kind of think. That’s the way God works. This next month will be a time of faith building for me for sure. We’re trying to raise $95,000 and Kickstarter is all or nothing.
Kim has really been stepping up as Executive Producer and I’m very thankful for her help. She may have even found an actor to play Blake. I auditioned her last week for the role Kati and she did a good job. Kati is probably the pivotal role in this film and has the most emotional range. I’m glad that part is cast.
At the begining of the month, Adobe ran a bio about me that I had submitted about my history with After Effects. They ran it on their blog and now my youtube subscribers has been growing, as has our facebook likes for Leap 3. Things are starting to move quickly. The script is done, budget is done, and the even the schedule. We’ll be shooting for six weeks, five days a week. Cast and crew will make $100 a day. And we’ll be shooting both in Spokane, WA and Fortine, MT.
I’ve been struggling lately with trying to figure out how we are going to pull of a sequence in which the Urban Grace crew leap off a rooftop and land on the fire escape on the next building. As I was reading through The DV Rebel’s Guide (for like the gazillionth time) I came across a paragraph on digital doubles. Basically you create a 3D model of your actor in the computer and have the model perform the stunt, then composite it into the live action scene. Hollywood uses this all the time and it seems like something out of the reach of a typical independent filmmaker – But, software has a solution! Enter Poser.
My version of Poser is a few years old and I’m not good enough at it for closeup work, but for a distance shot, I’m quite capable. Poser allows you to take a 3D figure (human or animal), dress it up like a paper doll, and animate it easily with keyframes. Basically, you tell it which poses to hit at what point in time and the computer fills in all the other details. In the case of a test shot I did for the problem sequence, I had it hit two run poses, a jump, mid air crouch, landing anticipation and landing, spread out over 75 frames. Rather than try to move the figure in 3D space, I simply adjusted the virutal camera to somewhat match the real world shot and rendered it out with a green background. The figure then performed the motions, though in one place.
Inside of After Effects, I scaled down and animated the position of the shot of the figure so that it accomplished the actions where they needed to. Keyed out the background, added some blur, noise and glow and the shot looks amazing! I may have to find more instances for this effect now.
 
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