"TRANSCEND" Sci-fi/drama in the works.

[Moonlight Pictures]

Hello, I'm D.L. Watson, indy filmmaker in Eugene, OR and Nick Blacketer and I have shot our new visualfx heavy live-action short film called “Transcend”, starring local Theater actress Erika Antonsen.

The film takes place in present day, where a young woman unlocks the secret to time-traveling and to test her new found “power”, she decides to travel to a point in which she can see her father before his inevitable death. But when she mis-calculates, she ends up not only being chased by Dinosaurs of our past, but witnesses the death of our very existence. Its a dramatic tale of love, survival, and the very essence of time.

We have shot our desert scenes at the Oregon Dunes and our Jurassic era at Delta Sand and Gravel Pit.

This film will have plenty of VisualFX in it and will be our first film to be shot with a High-Definition Sony Camera (which Nick Blacketer has recently purchased).

We had a “Behind the Scenes” camera-man as well so we can have fun little making of videos.

Thanks and I'll keep you all updated!

 

[Moonlight Pictures]

Wrap Shooting

Wrap Shooting

“TRANSCEND” WRAPS SHOOTING!
​

Well, after 27 hours of shooting over a period of 2 days, we have finally finished shooting our newest short film “Transcend”. It was a long, hectic and fun process that took us to the beautiful Oregon Coast, some abandoned buildings, and to the surreal and alien looking terrain at the Delta Sand and Gravel Pit.

This will be our most ambitious project we have ever attempted to accomplish. I give big thanks to Nick Blacketer, who went forth and fronted the money toward a new camera, an nearly equally expensive underwater case, and paying our actress to perform not only the acting lines, but the stunts as well.

Day 1 was a 10 hour day of filming. We started off by taking off to the Oregon Coast and shooting our “Wasteland Scene” in a rugged dune near the coast. It seemed we were there only for seconds before we were back in the car to drive the 40 minutes back to the studio where we filmed a partial opening to the film. At 5pm, we were done to allow our actress to prep for her other performance downtown.

In the meantime, Nick and I went over to Don's house to take a look at some remote controlled World War II tanks. Completely impressed, we decided to use them and had Don charge their batteries. Nick and I stopped by the office, took a look at the dailies and called it a night.

Day 2 was the most hectic. Because we had to cut the day short, we had to cram a lot of scenes to shoot. We started off by going to Alten Baker Park to shoot the ending of the film. But when we got there, we realized we forgot a small flower prop so Nick took the Explorer back to get it while Don and Erika practiced their lines. Then I suddenly remembered that we needed our Chair prop and so I went back to get it and to my surprise, my expensive Tripod mysteriously busted in the middle of the night.

I returned where we finished up the scene. We took a trip to the two abandoned buildings for our “End of the World” sequence. We took a lunch break and prepped for the Delta Sand and Gravel Pit. We filmed there from 3pm to 6pm where we headed back to the studio and took a 2 hour break.

We prepped our Hospital Scene (which is ironically the most difficult set to create), shot and moved onto the greenscreen visualfx scenes. By this time all of us are so tired that things can go either two ways, we could have gotten really grumpy, or find everything we do or see hilarious. Luckily, we choose the laughter, and boy...my facial sunburn hurt even more because we were all laughing so hard at the most ridiculous things...even Erika, our actress, was laughing so hard she was crying.

Monday morning crept up and we finished, ending by recording Erika's voice-overs and shooting one last scene we had forgot about (because we were all so damn tired). She left, we said our goodbyes and I crawled into bed...

So now the post-production begins. We are not stressed to finish this film within any time period as the visualfx will take a while to incorporate into the footage. Below, I have included some images from the shoot and some behind the scenes stuff. Coming soon will be a Behind the Scenes video which will showcase some fun at the beach, at the lake, and an exclusive into the “Prop” Shop!

Stay Tuned!

 

[Moonlight Pictures]

More Screenshots!

More Screenshots!

Here are some more exclusive shots from the shoot! Some have HD links. Enjoy!

 

[Moonlight Pictures]

First Visualfx Screenshot!

First Visualfx Screenshot!

Hey everyone! I decided to spend the first half of the day trying to see what the process would be chroma-keying and compositing our greenscreen scenes into the CG or plated backgrounds.

And a couple hours later, this is a test clip I ended up with. I'm very satisfied with the results. Some work on motion-blur and etc will be applied.

The shot before any keying...

The shot after keying, digital import into 3Ds Max for CG environment, and applied color correction.

Click on the image to see in high-res.

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

Very cool. Nice banner as well.
I love time travel flicks.

Good luck!

MAH

 

[pixelated]

Glad to see you were able to enjoy our spell of warm weather - but the water is still d*#n COLD! Congrats on finding talent willing to play (Dp's don't count, but you can kind of tell he's experiencing the moment in that one shot . . .)

Looking forward to more!:beer::beer:

 

[Moonlight Pictures]

Very cool. Nice banner as well.
I love time travel flicks.

Good luck!

MAH

Hey thanks for taking the time to check out this production thread! Thanks for the kudos!

Glad to see you were able to enjoy our spell of warm weather - but the water is still d*#n COLD! Congrats on finding talent willing to play (Dp's don't count, but you can kind of tell he's experiencing the moment in that one shot . . .)

Looking forward to more!:beer::beer:

Always nice to meet a fellow Oregonian! Yeah, it was perfect timing for the warm weather, but I actually hate shooting in it! Too many freakin shadows. lol And yes, the water was certainly cold, or so I was told.

But after reviewing some more of the footage, we will need to go back to Florence and re-shoot the entire sequence as the footprints are WAY too noticeable when its supposed to take place during the Jurassic era. lol

Now, time to do some research and find some places easy to get too without alot of foot-traffic...or maybe my crew or I could remember to bring the broom.

 

[Sid Barnhoorn]

Looks and sounds cool, man!

 

[Moonlight Pictures]

T-Rex!!!

T-Rex!!!

Well, today, I decided to see how my T-REX would fit into the scene we shot.

In my opinion, it looks quite great. There is alot of layers here, but I wont go into the boring details.

Just feast your eyes upon it below!

Now, we may change some things as things go along, but it certainly is coming along.

The visualfx in the film are very time consuming.

Anyways, thought I'd give some people an update!

 

[Brandon Rice]

Cool VFX! Wow

 

[Moonlight Pictures]

Transcend Re-Shoots

Transcend Re-Shoots

TRANSCEND RE-SHOOTS!​

At 6:30am on Wednesday morning, my day started. I woke up, took a shower and printed off some paperwork needed to keep the shoot productive. Around 7:15am, Nick called me and said he was on his way down to the studio to drop some things off. He arrived and we kind of went over how the day would go and I cooked myself up an egg sandwich as we waited for Don Moore and for Erika Antonsen to arrive. Soon afterwards, we all greeted each other, stepped inside the small green screen room we had prepared. Today was all about re-shooting scenes that just didn’t turn out as well as they should have, particularly the green screen shots and the Jurassic scenes.

Erika waving at her fans!

Now, I didn’t anticipate that the green screen shots would take as long as they did, but it showed we were really taking our time trying to get the correct scenes and angles unlike before. However, we did have to stop because we had reserved an Audio suite to do some ADR from 12:00pm to 3:00pm. So we headed on over to Lane Community College where we had reserved the audio suite and when we got there, we suddenly realized that the Mac computer didn’t have a DVD-Rom drive and when Nick took the DVD which had our scenes needing ADR down to a computer that had a DVD-Rom drive, it said there wasn’t anything on the disk (which I knew it did). So we cut our losses and headed back to the studio to finish up the green screen shoot.

Don Moore and Nick Blacketer positioning the Time-Chair

Around 3:45pm, we finished the green screen scenes and we all piled into the car and drove down to an old gas station that Mother Nature had taken over. We scouted the area and re-shot a part of our “End of World” sequence. Then I got a phone call from Brian Wardell, otherwise known as “Emerald Edge” from The Movies Underground Community, telling me he was at Delta Sand & Gravel waiting for us. We realized that it was really close to 5:00pm and we packed up and headed over there.

Associate Producer Brian Wardell (AKA Emerald Edge from TMU community)

Brian contributed some funds to help us make our T-Rex scene a reality for this film and so in return, we invited him to come down and see the 90 foot deep rock quarry. You see, a lot of Eugene residents have a fascination with the big whole next the freeway, and that’s because in reality you actually can’t see it. They have big bushy trees surrounding the entire facility, so you’re always peeking over trying to get a glimpse. And according to George Staples, we are the first film crew to shoot down in it, and one of the few to be down there. So in way, this was a first time experience for Brian and continuing pleasure for us.

Location Manager George Staples from Delta Sand & Rock

So we all climbed in my Ford Explorer, and two others climbed into George’s truck, and we headed on down to the pit. And to my surprise, the landscape had changed quite a bit since we were last down there. They had deepened it probably about three feet, so there was A LOT of mud and standing water, and when they is standing water, there is mosquito larvae and when there is that, there is a ‘sewage’ like smell which curls your nose hairs.
But we all managed even if that meant our shoes were covered in gunk and our tires were plastered. Nick and I shot the scenes we needed and we called it a wrap! We said our goodbyes but not for good as we knew we would all get together again to do the ADR and to shoot one key scene in the “End of the World”.

The Delta Sand & Rock Pit; 90 feet below ground level.

We headed back to the studio/home, and parted ways. It was a great day of film-making and I thank the crew for that and of course the cast for bringing forth a great performance. This film is panning out to be one of the best projects that we have worked on.


CHECK OUT THE OFFICIAL NEW MOONLIGHT PICTURES BLOG AT blog.moonlightpictures.org!

 

[Moonlight Pictures]

Hey everyone, Transcend is coming along very well. I thought I'd finally share some screenshot's from the production. Some of these scenes are not finished, but its certainly looking good.

So check it out below!

Annabelle (Erika Antonsen) looks out at the destruction of a city.

Annabelle lands into the distant future.

Annabelle tries to turn the Time Chair on while being pursued by a T-Rex.

Annabelle checks out the underbelly of a futuristic tank.

Annabelle walks beside an abandoned future tank.

An abandoned old gas station.

Remnants of the American symbol...

Annabelle in the Jurassic Era...

Annabelle looking for her Time Chair...

Annabelle hears some distant sounds...

Something big is chasing her...

And as promised, there will be some Behind the Scenes videos coming soon! Hope you enjoy!

 

[Moonlight Pictures]

We just got word from "i2TV.tv" that our promotional teaser trailer of our upcoming science-fiction film "Transcend" has been selected to be aired on broadcast television in three states.

It will be available in the state of PA in the cities of VENANGO, WATERFORD, TOWNVILLE, CAMBRIDGE SPRINGS, EDINBORO, SAEGERTOWN, MC KEAN, CRANESVILLE at the times of 2009-06-26 05:07:27, 2009-06-26 20:07:27, 2009-06-25 14:07:27, 2009-06-26 10:07:27, 2009-06-26 15:07:27, 2009-06-25 09:07:27, 2009-06-25 04:07:27, 2009-06-25 19:07:27 Tune in to the TV provider Coaxial Cable TV under the TV Channel of i2TV.

It will also aired in the state of MO in the city of SAINT JOSEPH at the times of 2009-06-26 05:07:27, 2009-06-26 20:07:27, 2009-06-25 14:07:27, 2009-06-26 10:07:27, 2009-06-26 15:07:27, 2009-06-25 09:07:27, 2009-06-25 04:07:27, 2009-06-25 19:07:27 Tune in to the TV provided NPG Cable under the TV Channel i2TV.

And finally, it will be broadcast in the state of CA, in the cities of LOOMIS, CARMICHAEL, CITRUS HEIGHTS, ANTELOPE, GRANITE BAY, SACRAMENTO, ROSEVILLE, MCCLELLAN, LINCOLN, ELK GROVE, ROCKLIN at the times of 2009-06-26 05:07:27, 2009-06-25 14:07:27, 2009-06-26 10:07:27, 2009-06-25 09:07:27, 2009-06-25 04:07:27, 2009-06-25 19:07:27. Tune into TV provider SureWest under the TV Channel i2TV.

This is fantastic news. It only shows us that all of our hard work and sacrifices are paying off. We thank i2TV for this incredible opportunity hope that some of our fans that are in those states and cities will have the opprotunity to check out our work! If you can't check it out on live television, check it out online by clicking the film title above or by visiting these alternate video networks below:

Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Revver, Break, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Veoh, eBaums World and Viddler


Thanks!