FEATURE: Leap: Revelation

Thanks for the tip, I'll have to look into that to see how theirs looked :) I was having a hard time getting a deeper red, but I think I just realized how I can do it :)
 
Spent the past few days immersing myself in disaster films to get ideas and reference for Leap 3. Deep Impact, Day After Tomorrow, Dante's Peak, Twister, 2012 and Poseidon. Quite a fun genre. I'm still working on some tsunami shots where New York get's wiped out. Perhaps after today I can use real footage from the news networks? Sorry, bad joke. The trouble I'm having in Blender is creating foam. I can set up a simulation and it looks pretty darn good now, but because there's no foam, it looks like a miniature.
I have a new music DAW for scoring, I abandoned Mixcraft for Reaper. I like their business model and it's PC/Mac, so my partner can keep working on a Mac, I can stay PC and everything transfers over. I'm currently looking for some new VSTi collections, preferably orchestral. Anyone know of any good ones?

If you haven't seen it yet, I released the last film, "Leap: Rise of the Beast" online a week ago. Check it out here:
[video=youtube;jZd-J7Ucn-c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jZd-J7Ucn-c[/video]
 
New vlog update looking at the progress of some of the effects. Some are more final than others. Also, if you haven't seen the last film yet, it's just a few posts above, check it out. I have a torrent available too if you'd prefer it in HD.
 
From the Production Journal at starspictures.org
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Lots of cool stuff going on! Movie-wise, things are still progressing, just slower than I’d like. I’m still doing some effects testing and I think I’m almost done solving all the issues. I used the Element 3D plugin to do some fighter jets that turned out nice and for the past month I’ve been trying to nail the tidal wave that will destroy a city. Most of that time was spent playing with the fluid sim, but I was unable to get the scale right since Blender maxes out at 10 meters. I made a list of other options like trying multiple fluid objects, smoke instead of water, deforming a mesh with a lattice. None of those worked. I finally decided to try a Photoshop/After Effects combo. Found an image of a wave I liked that didn’t have much spray or foam, Photoshopped out what I didn’t want and threw it into AE. I animated it in 3D space, added a Turbulent Displace effect and then comp’d in some quickie buildings I had made in Blender. Since this shot will be at night, I graded it to look right. While the shot isn’t perfect, this method worked far better than I expected, so I’ll keep heading in this direction for now.

It seems like this movie has got me jumping ship from all my old software to new stuff. First Celtx to Trelby/Final Draft, then Vegas to Premiere, and now I’ve left Mixcraft for Reaper. Yep. I’ll now be using Reaper for any music scoring that I do personally. Since I’m wanting to use only Hymns this time around, I figure I can download some midi’s learn how they’re played, then “orchestrate” them. Should work well.

Also on the software front, I’ve started using Microsoft Office 2013 instead of LibreOffice. With starting the ministry, a major part of my job is to give lectures/sermons about the subject matter of our movies. I’ve recorded six or so messages and uploaded them online, but recently I’ve been able to start doing some speaking at church, which is ultimately where I want to go with the lectures. Unfortunately the presenting program of the LibreOffice suite wasn’t up to my standards, so I went Office 2013 mostly for PowerPoint. I think that the last version of Office I used was 2003. It’s come far in ten years and I really like it now.

One last note, “Leap: Rise of the Beast” is still going fairly strong. It’s been online for a month and a half and we’re almost at 700 views, which isn’t bad when you consider I’ve hardly promoted the thing. God is moving and causing those that need to see it to find it, so I really can’t complain. I’ve made quite a few new friends lately that have seeing either the film, or the messages I have.
 
The script is now in the hands of a very well known young actor. If you've been following entertainment news, you can probably guess who. Given the views the film expresses, I'd say the odds are good. We'll see.
 
OMG! I would be awesome if he were in it. You would have to train him if he has no prior training and it would have to be top notch stuff with a name like that attached. Plus you'd definitely open the distribution doors. Or even if you place it on Youtube it would surely draw a crowd. Leap 2 has over 1,000 views now and hopefully it will keep climbing.

-Nate
 
Man, Leap 2 is online?!! Great! I think that's a great idea. I'm at work, but I'm going to watch some of it right freakin' now.
 
@ Nate - Yes, he'll need training if he decides to do it. My hope is that with him involved I can get more people interested in the project.
@ Marlon - Enjoy!
 
Came up with a new grading technique today more akin to "how the pros" do things. Rather than pushing shadows to teal and highlights to orange, I used two instances of Colorista II and using the keyers, adjust skin tones first, then everything but skin on the second. Here's the results. I feel it provides a much cleaner and more cinematic look. I'll do some more tests before I commit, but I like where this is heading. Please excuse the lousy jpeg compression.
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Nathyn said:
OMG! I would be awesome if he were in it. You would have to train him if he has no prior training and it would have to be top notch stuff with a name like that attached. Plus you'd definitely open the distribution doors. Or even if you place it on Youtube it would surely draw a crowd. Leap 2 has over 1,000 views now and hopefully it will keep climbing.

-Nate
Click to expand...

Nat!!! I migrated from HV20, glad to see a familiar face. :)
 
Location Scouting
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More Pre-Pro
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PRODUCTION JOURNAL

Saturday, February 16, 2013
Happy Sabbath!
The script is now locked! I’ve printed out draft five, and I’m calling it finished. Yes, we now have a shooting script
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It’s been sent to the team and the response has been positive. I dug out my old eighths ruler that I made a few years ago and calculated the eighths the other day. Although there is software out there that’ll do it for me, I find doing it by hand helps solidify the details of the script in my mind. Wearing all the hats that I do, I have to know the script frontward and backward.
Well, I gave Gorilla a try, but I wasn’t happy. It kept locking up on me so I ditched it a few weeks ago. I’ve spent since then looking for a good replacement for scheduling but nothing was turning up. I was so desperate that I even tried Celtx again, but I had to use Trelby as a middle man to get the script into Celtx and Celtx kept locking up, being extremely buggy. I somehow stumbled upon an article that mentioned Sophocles has a scheduler and even budget module. I managed to acquire the discontinued beta for Sophocles 2007. WAY back when I was in eighth grade, I actually had used Sophocles to write my first attempt at a feature script. While I don’t think I’d consider switching from Final Draft for the writing of a script, I’ve been nothing but happy with its other features.
First off, when I imported the script for Leap 3, I noticed that it gave me a runtime count, in minutes, along the side of the page. That’s really cool. Leap 3, though a 97 page script, should run 93 minutes according to the count. I discovered the software has an auto-schedule feature, so next I added location details and told the software when certain actors are available. I then ran the auto-schedule and it it gave me a good start for a shooting schedule. Pretty smart AI. I also gave the budget module a once over and I think it’ll do the job nicely. It’s a shame that the company went bankrupt, but I’m glad I found the beta copy. You can be sure that I’ll hang on to it incase I ever need to re-install.
In other Leap 3 news, a friend of mine, Kimberly Cruz (she played the reporter in Leap 2) has really stepped up to the plate and shown some real initiative as a producer. She has a potential source that she is approaching for funding. She is also very interested in playing the role of Kati. Welcome to the team, Kim!
 
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FROM THE PRODUCTION JOURNAL AT STARSPICTURES.ORG

Thursday, February 21, 2013
Given that this is my first real effects film (I only had 120-odd effects shots in Leap 2) I've been doing a lot of studying up on effects and shooting them. When I shot Leap 2, I watched the Bourne films over and over. Now I'm watching a lot of Transformers 1,2, and 3, The Avengers, Captain America, and Resident Evil: Retribution. I've also been watching a bunch of independent short films that are effects heavy. Not only am I looking to learn how to shoot for CG, but also what gives these films their epic scale. Most of it comes down to composition and camera movement.

We will be shooting on my T2i, and though it's an older HDSLR, it's still running strong. I was a bit worried about doing effects within the limited colorspace I have, but I don't think it'll be a problem. I've been shooting tests with the kids of the family I'm staying with, tests of shots I'm planing on using in the film. So far, they're turning out just fine. In the process, I'm getting practice shooting for effects (the hardest part is visualizing the where exactly the CG is in the frame) and I'm learning more intimately After Effects and especially the rotobrush. I think the rotobrush gets a bad rap sometimes for being too sharp, but I'm learning how to tweak it and keyframe it's feather to handle motion blur.

Software-wise, I'm cutting in Premiere and dynamically linking effects shots into AE. Once in AE, I have access to it's 3D tracker, the aforementioned rotobrush and Element 3D 1.5. On the last film, After Effects was what made the movie possible. This time it's AE and more specifically, it's Element plugin. To complement Element, I'm running the latest version of Blender to animate models I get from a Top Secret website (no, it's not Turbo Squid). A bunch of the models I'm using have been pulled from videogames, so I'm significantly altering their diffuse texture in Photoshop so they won't be recognized. Element's biggest strength is also it's biggest drawback: In order for E3D to be realtime, it's rendering engine is basically the same found in video games. This can make it difficult to achieve the photo-realism that I'm going for, so I'm planing to save Element for shots with a lot of motion blur or shots that have elements in the distance.

I'm currently in the middle of breaking down the script right now and for the first time on a movie, I'm scheduling a second unit. But here's the thing, I AM THE SECOND UNIT. Let me explain. In order to keep costs down, I'll be shooting everything with the actors at one time. Our schedule is looking to be about a month and a half. This is the first unit. Then, when I'm all done with the actors, I become the second unit director and will be shooting all the plates and elements that I'll need for the effects. There's a lot of establishing shots and plates that I won't have to shoot with actors, so why schedule them then? If I know a shot will have a digital double, there's no point in having the actor there. We've got too much other movie to shoot.

When I wrote the script, I had planned to shoot the film in both Montana and in Spokane, WA. To cover wages, food, props and travel/lodging costs, the budget is sitting at about $18,500 (roughly) right now. A major chunk of that is bringing the actors out to Montana and putting them up for the duration of the shoot. I may be better off finding locations an hour from Spokane and then I can either cut that cost or put the money elsewhere. I haven't decided on this on yet, still praying about it.
 
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