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

Thanks!

Spent the day today shooting some establishing shots and such of the Crew's apartment and Luke's apartment. Also dropped in some shots I got of Riverfront Park on July 4th with all the crowds. Those shots were inserted before the outreach scenes.
 
Computer animation/3D animation (or CGI animation) is the art of creating moving images with the use of computers. It is a subfield of computer graphics and animation. Increasingly it is created by means of 3D computer graphics, though 2D computer graphics are still widely used for stylistic, low bandwidth, and faster real-time rendering needs. Sometimes the target of the animation is the computer itself, but sometimes the target is another medium, such as film. It is also referred to as CGI (computer-generated imagery or computer-generated imaging), especially when used in films such as spiderman,batman,toy story,any action scenes and more.so more info google out renderrocket.
 
Computer animation/3D animation (or CGI animation) is the art of creating moving images with the use of computers. It is a subfield of computer graphics and animation. Increasingly it is created by means of 3D computer graphics, though 2D computer graphics are still widely used for stylistic, low bandwidth, and faster real-time rendering needs. Sometimes the target of the animation is the computer itself, but sometimes the target is another medium, such as film. It is also referred to as CGI (computer-generated imagery or computer-generated imaging), especially when used in films such as spiderman,batman,toy story,any action scenes and more.so more info google out renderrocket.
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We're down to a weekend schedule now. Only seven days of liming left! Didn't get anything done with the actors this last weekend, but this weekend we'll be shooting the mountains stuff at the end of the flick. Then I just need to shoot the market stuff and the bad guys scenes and we're done =D

I'm in the middle of doing an online render of what I have done so far. I want to see how it looks on my TV =D
 
how the heck did you get finished so fast? I've been working on EXIT 101 for almost a year now. We have 2 days of shooting left.
 
What do you mean? lol We've had 14 shoot days so far. By the time we're done we'll be at 21. That's way longer than my previous two movies! lol
 
21 days is about average for a low-budget shoot. Both of my films took about 21 days or so over the course of weekends and a few evenings. We were shooting eight hour days and a few weeknights.

-Nate
 
I've never shot longer than six hours before on any movie. Our average is 4 or 5, which showed on the last two, but I don't think shows on this one ;)
 
we shoot anywhere between 8-12 hrs every shoot. We don't always get to shoot every day of the weekend though, and weather can play a part in delaying us.

we are on day 21, with 3 more to go. The only shoots that didn't take that long were broll.
 
Another journal update finally!
http://starspictures.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/production-journal-16/

Wednsday, September 1, 2010
It’s been a pretty crazy last week. We didn’t do any filming, so I’ve started working on some more post stuff. I had one of the composers, Mark Richardson, come over and expand a simple six note melody that I had created. When he left, we had a final track for the film! The really cool part was that it sounded AMAZING! So not only will the movie look great, but sound great too!

Then I got a call from the other composer, Russ Seaton, and he was interested in seeing what we’ve done so far. Initially I was just going to send him an offline render, but then I decided to go through the steps and render out an online for him. Plus, I want to see what my movie looks like in HD too! The past few nights have been a blur as I’ve started to go through the process. I first needed to create my online clips, as I hadn’t done that yet. Converting 14 days of footage to the Avid DNxHD codec took almost 20 hours. Next I bumped all the scenes on the timeline against each other and saved an EDL. Keep in mind that at this point, it was only a 40 minute timeline. When I tried to import the timeline into AE to master, AE crashed. I tried a few times with different settings, but nothing. Great. This means I’ll have to do it one scene at a time.

I’ve made it through two scenes so far. I copy all the clips for a scene from my master Vegas timeline and paste it into another project. Then I can save an EDL for just that scene. That is then opened in AE and I replace all the offlines with the onlines. I then take that scene’s comp and place it in a master comp. Hopefully this will work. The one thing I’m not looking forward to is having to do this all again, but double the amount when I’m ready to do the final master for the picture.

So yeah, it’s going to be a lot of work, but at least it’ll make the movie look the best it possibly can. The other day I went ahead and shot a 30 minute video that showcases the workflow I’ve developed since I’m kind of pioneering my own thing here. Almost no one seems to know what offline editing is anymore. I see and hear about people all the time complaining that their computers aren’t fast enough to edit HD. As I’ve said before, mine is seven years old, a single celeron processor, with only 2 gigs of RAM. I do have a video card, but Vegas doesn’t use it, except to output the signal to my TV. And I’m editing HD footage from the Rebel T2i. Hopefully the video will be able to help someone like me who has a dated system, but wants to shoot HD without spending the farm. The only problem with the video is that it’s 1.8 gigs and 30 minutes long. I can’t find any hosting sites for it, so people might have to wait until it goes to DVD as an extra for the movie.

Besides trying to “preach” about offline editing and what it allows you, I’ve also been busy trying to correct common misconceptions about the limitations of DSLR cameras, namely rolling shutter. You read on the net how you can’t do this, and you can’t do that. Excuse me- I’m doing this. I’m doing that. And it looks amazing! There are two big secrets I found that allow you to get almost any shot you want. First, pivot the pan behind the sensor. We’ve shot the entire movie with my steadypod and shoulderpod. Both rigs place the sensor between 1 and 2 feet from my body, which is the pivot. Second is to treat the camera like a motion picture camera. Hollywood doesn’t use cameras that fit in your hand, so use rigs to make your camera bigger. Then you’re having to move a larger camera, and that alone will eliminate 90% of rolling shutter issues. Our movie has some pretty shakey shots, but very little jello. Sure if you pause frame by frame you might see a tiny bit, but when you watch it as intended, you won’t see thing.

So that’s what’s been going on here at STARS Pictures. I haven’t done too much work yet on the next script, but I hope to get started soon.
 
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Wow! It's good to see you're on the ball. We're just starting. I'm still looking for various actors but have most of the ones I need. Can't wait to see more footage from the film. The last stuff looked real nice. Very professional. I mean it's a big LEAP from the first one. (Sorry, I had to). But I'm glad to see you're still at it. I hope this is the one that blows up for you. The potential is there. I saw someone on here do a special showing. You may want to consider an online test showing if possible, just for DVXUsers and offer a questionnaire or something. Or maybe put a few minutes of it up like Brandon.

-Nate
 
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The best part about our short days is that the actors don't expect meals. We keep snacks and such on set, but when we're only filming five hours, we take one fifteen minute break and that's it. That really helped keep costs down. Usually the actors jet right after filming, but sometimes we'll hang out after, in which case, yes, we do have a meal and I cover the tab.

I spent about four hours yesterday prepping my online of the forty minute test. I found a script on AEscripts.com that really helped, but I'm just using the trial for now. When the time comes to do the entire movie, I will be purchasing it. It's called Immigration and costs just $20. The render for the test is looking to be around 40 hours for a full 1080p/23.976 file. Roughly an hour per minute. Meaning the entire movie will take 90 hours minimum, however there'll also be the grading effects on it, which might add to it :-\ I really need a new computer.
 
I bought it brand new from Best Buy in 2003 after I graduated from high school. Intel Celeron 2.6ghz, 2 gigs of RAM, and an ATI Radeon 9200 card.
 
Wow, your computer is about as old as my G4. I bought it in 2003. It wasn't top of the line though. Is you're a dual or single processor. Mine was a dual 1 gig processor. Got me through two films and I still do my Photoshop work on it. I would've used it for this one, but the processing power simply wasn't there. In fact FCS2 wouldn't even work on it. I was a .25 or .50 away from being able to use it. LOL.

-Nate
 
lol
It's a single core. When I bough it, it had no graphics card, and only 512MB of RAM. The card was my first upgrade to it. Both Wulf and Leap were cut with just the 512 RAM. I got a free upgrade to 2gigs right before coloring Leap. I've made other upgrades and replacements too, like addind firewire for my old DV camera, replacing the power supply, and adding more thermal paste to the heatsink once a year. I also vacuum it out once a month. I've babied it and it's served me well, but I think it's time to upgrade. Ideally, I'd like to get two computers. One for editing and one for effects. That way I can be rendering effects, but still edit other stuff, or vice versa. Hopefully I can make enough money off ROTB to get the new computers and a few accessories for the Rebel.
 
It kind of sucks when you have to upgrade because you've put so much into the current machine. Mine had four harddrive, 1.8 gigs of ram and upgraded my Firewire ports (I had five or six when it was all said and done). The machine was a work horse and never really gave me any problem I couldn't fix, most of the time the PMU reset was the answer. I still have to get those harddrives though. Just finished my final disintergration test. You'll see it when Vimeo finishes making me "Wait in Line" for no reason. LOL. I remember AE CS3 used to chug along on my G4, but it wasn't as slow as I thought it would be, but then again I wasn't doing anything as big as the stuff I'm doing now.

-Nate
 
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