FEATURE: Rise of the Beast-the new feature from STARS Pictures

But you can still do some background extension and stuff. And by your goals, I mean what you plan to do with it. Take a look at the first post in my Bread and Salt thread. (You can click the link in my sig). I list a bunch of goals I have for the film. Listing goals will help keep things on track.

And I'm glad you settled on a camera, definitely glad you hooked up Action Essentials, I have to pick up Action Essentials too. I'm thinking about the 720p version but I don't know. 2k sounds pretty sweet as I am shooting 1080p. Also what about the control center for the bad guys, you got a location for that? You can GS all that stuff and make backgrounds from photos and stuff. And what about costumes. Have you gotten an idea of what the badguys/cops/soldiers will be wearing?

I'm looking forward to Leap 2. It sounds good. I'm glad you got some Krav in there. I'm using "Daqar Krav" which is a form of fighting specifically for combating vampires in hand to hand combat using stake weapons. LOL. And maybe you can use Kickstarter to help finance the camera.

-Nate
 
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Gotcha. Yes, I have goals, and have had them since the beginning of the series. I'll go back and put them in my first or second post.

Action Essentials-I went 720p mostly because it was cheaper and I know that many of the elements would be scaled down anyway. Also, Even some of the large ones like the explosions still look good with 1080 footage, mostly because they're real.
As of right now, the only greenscreen in the movie will be the car chase. The CDF Hub (the bad guys headquarters) will be done by using a conference room I have access to at our library. We'll go with low lighting and have big pieces of colored butcher paper on the wall acting as a stand in for screens. I'll be motion tracking in computer images on the paper as if they're large screens. If actors are crossing the screen, I might use hot pink paper to get a good key in lowlight. The Ops themselves will be wearing street clothes. They're undercover. For the assault team, I have a military flight suit I'll be dying black. I'll have one actor playing the entire team, using Stu's technique from The Guide. I've tried a test and it works well.

Kickstarter is a good idea. I need to put a good video together first. Maybe an intro by me, the entire first couple minutes of the flick(the CGI stuff followed by the opener) and a final plea by me? Three act structure. lol
 
Nice pics man. I see you got a lot of nice stuff happening already. Love the "Chris Tempel wins Oscar" by the way. I'll probably be adding some new pics today too if I can get around to it.

-Nate
 
I textured the satellite and wanted to see what everyone thinks. It passes my squint factor, but I wanted to see if it passes yours. The shot lasts about three seconds and has the camera circle this side of the satellite from left to right. Motion blur will be rendered with it as well.

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Blender 2.49 I'm a longtime Blender user (since jr year of high school and I'm now 25). I don't spend a lot of time with it, so I can't do organic models that well, but non living is pretty easy to do.

Back in 2004, one of my shorts
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CG Art
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Another short, my first all greenscreen movie
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2007-On my first feature, Wulf:
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The final shot from Wulf:
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I had some other examples, but I can't find them. lol
 
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Went back to Best Buy today to play with my future camera. lol! I actually played with some of the shutter settings and ISO this time. The results are currently rendering to toss onto a DVD.
 
Read through this entire thread....glad to see the last few pages are back on track as far as keeping this thread a preproduction like diary instead of a place to fight about religious views.

Wish you the best of luck man!
 
El Director said:
Current Gear:
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To keep your guns from looking so plastic, buy some "Chroma" Opaque Poster Color and paint the guns black, then spray them with some Polyurethane or clear coating. DO NOT use enamel coatings. You want a matte look especially now you're doing HD. Some of the shine may show throw which can work to make the gun look old and beaten. Hey, BTW, is that a Vista tripod? I think I have the exact same one. LOL.

-Nate
 
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Read through this entire thread....glad to see the last few pages are back on track as far as keeping this thread a preproduction like diary instead of a place to fight about religious views.

Wish you the best of luck man!
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Thanks!

To keep your guns from looking so plastic, buy some "Chroma" Opaque Poster Color and paint the guns black, then spray them with some Polyurethane or clear coating. DO NOT use ename coatings. You want a matte look especially now you're doing HD. Some of the shine may show throw which can work to make the gun look old and beaten. Hey, BTW, is that a Vista tripod? I think I have the exact same one. LOL.

-Nate
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Good advice. The handgun is matte black and looks great, but the rifle will def. need a paint job. lol!
Tripod is Platinum Plus by Sunpak. Model 7500 Pro. I bought it at Best Buy a few years back when I worked there. It retailed for about eighty bucks but I got it for thirty. (I miss that discount- cost +5%).
 
I sent my application in to Kickstarter today. Hopefully they'll give me the green light and let me run a campaign. Production will also now begin July 26 and end August 24. I have honestly never been this excited to shoot a movie before. Not even on my first feature! This will be one of the first six or so features to be shot with the Canon T2i. We're all shooting around the same time, so it's pretty exciting!
 
I can't wait to see it. I hope you post some scenes and stills as you go. What sound gear are you planning to get with the T2i. There's XLR mic adapters made for these cameras. I'll probably be on Kickstarter soon as I get my new computer and shoot a few scenes.

-Nate
 
It's ADR again. lol I'll use my cheap shotgun mic as a boom for when the on camera mic isn't good enough for a scratch track.
 
You know my only issue with the ADR, is the actors sound wooden sometimes. Like they fail to match the intensity of the scene. Like when an actor says something in the space of "acting" versus seeing themselves on a screen and reading a script trying to match up. The issue is "are the actors good enough to make it work"?

You should try to get on sight sound as much as possible unless you're out doors and there's a lot of wind and/or traffic. We even got good sound inside on a car a windy day by rigging the mic where it dropped through the sun roof. But there were some scenes I would've preferred to ADR but just a few. There was a lot in the "Fourth Beast" I would've liked to ADR. Just something to think about. Also a good sound mixer could solve a lot of problems.

-Nate
 
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I agree with Nathyn. I'm having to ADR one scene due to bad audio, and it was a PITA. Not because they couldn't do it, but for the very reasons Nathyn mentioned. Its hard to recreate that emotion when your not in the scene doing it..

I would get a Zoom H4N at the very least, and run decent location sound.. but thats just me. I would shoot myself in the head if I had to ADR every single scene in a feature film. But that may work better for you.
 
Thanks guys. I totally agree that if you can get it on set CORRECTLY, it will sound much better. However, many indies think that just by recording on set with a boom they've done the right thing. Yeah, the vocal inflection is better, but if they didn't boom right, the resonance sounds like crap and I find that more distracting than the "wooden" ADR versions. lol. With ADR, I can get a resonance that you usually don't find in no budget films. But yes, if I had the funds to do it right on set, I would. Only issue is that without the original funding sources, I'm self financing again and can't afford to get it on set. Fortunately I've done ADR on EVERY movie I've made for the ENTIRE movie, so I'm not too upset about having to do it again. It's just a part of my workflow now. Yeah, I would love to get a Zoom, it's on my list, I just have some other priorities to take care of first (like a camera and a car).
 
Actually, resonance can be fixed in post, but not bad reading over acting. A good shotgun mic (an Azden cardiod for instance and is cheap) can get good sound if you turn everything around you off. We've only gotten bad sound when we had a bad boom op but most time the sound was good even when we shot the scene outside on Division street. It sounded natural because it was and you could understand the dialogue clearly.

A good sound mixer can fix clean sound (if it's clean) and make it sound pro. (I do know what you mean as far as the difference between indie film sound and pro sound). Plus it will give you less to do in post and free you up for effects and such.

-Nate
 
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