Archive for the “Film Projects” Category

In preparation for the Spinning the Compass music video I’m doing, we’ve put together a quick advert for the goggle props that I made for the video.  Just for fun more than anything really.

Seems to have been quite well received – one chap from New Zealand commented on a forum ‘Hope you don’t mind but I have copied the link to my evil Mates down at Weta. Coolness!’

If I’d been drinking coffee I would’ve spat it over my keyboard.

Some good news.  I’m pleased to say it looks like 0.L.Droid is going to be shown as part of Weekend at the Asylum 2010, the UK steampunk festival in Lincoln, which is fantastic news.

Oldroid from The Dark Power on Vimeo.

So I was up at six this morning and into Crystal Palace Park to shoot the first segment of a new music video.  This is to accompany the title track of my brothers steampunk album Spinning the Compass.

Luckily the weather behaved itself and we spent several hours with Tom wandering around wearing the steampunk goggles I recently made.  Didn’t get too many odd looks, so maybe all the joggers are used to such things.

Crystal Palace Park is great for steampunk as it features a victorian dinosaur theme park (which we took full advantage of) and loads of cool victorian architecture left over where the palace once stood.  The statue pictured above looked very nice partially silhouetted against the morning sky.

It’s kind of par for the course to do this kind of video in a mock sepia effect with a film grain filter with scratches and noise added.    I’m trying to avoid doing that this time, instead I’m going to desaturate the whole thing, not to make it black and white but to give it a slight monotone feel.  I may leave the above shot untouched though as it does look quite nice ;0)

The monotone look will be balanced with a ‘lamp-lit’ orange hued sequence shot inside which will feature shadow puppets. This is kind of narrative driven so I won’t give much more away than that.

We were trying to keep the reveal of Tom in his getup til abit later on, so alot of the initial sequence has been shot focussed on foreground objects and keeping tom out of focus moving about in the background til ‘the reveal’ pictured below.

We’ve got some nice shots so far – I’m just assembling an initial edit.  Seem to have shot tons of footage though – there’s over twenty minutes and it’s only a five minute song!  With a load of additional stuff to shoot think we might have to make some harsh cuts…….!

To My Mother and Father, the horror film I worked on last year is being shown at Fright Fest this august.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/blogs/londoncalling/article_1574379.php/FRIGHTFEST-ANNOUNCES-LINE-UP-FOR-INTERNATIONAL-SHORT-FILM-SHOWCASE

So here’s a quick update on the steampunk project. I’m really getting into the whole steampunk thing, wanna make some more stuff – I’ve been wandering through the shops buyiong various bits of objet d’art!

99p stores are a godsend – I managed to buy a load of belts for a quid each so the powerplant can now be strapped to the arm.

I’ve also been working on the goggles.  I’ve been putting some padding in so they’re more comfortable to wear.  They’re not too bad now and you can balance them on your forehead so you don’t have all the weight pressing on the bridge of your nose.

I’ve recently bought a new camera.    Here’s a test video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd7bc-8nz6s&fmt=22

I went along to a screening of ‘To my Mother and Father’ at the BFI this weekend which is the horror film I worked on last year.  This was the first time I’d seen an edit complete with music and sound effects and with the grading finished.   I think it’s come out well, it’s amazing what a difference good sound can make.  The grading also seems to have added something as I thought the FX shots looked much better than in the rough edit I’d previously seen.  I was impressed at the production values of the piece considering the money that the guys had to play with.  All in all it’s ended up being an evil little eight minute short.

The film’s already been shown in Istanbul and it’s going to be entered into as many film festivals as possible.

In the meantime, here’s a trailer.

The horror film I did some effects for last year, To My Mother and Father,  is finished and is being shown at the BFI this sunday 9th May.  Here’s a link to the Facebook group

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=114443858588944

And here’s the director Can Evrenol’s website

http://www.canevrenol.com/

Slowly getting on with the werewolves.  I’m detailing both sculptures at present so they’re nearing completion.  I’ve bought a load more chavant and will be starting the sculpture of the old man that transforms into the creatures tomorrow.  I want to have all the sculptures on the go at the same time before I start moulding them so I can get a consistent look to them all and also make sure they’re all the correct size.

I’m considering giving them all some kind of distinct facial feature to tie them together, perhaps a scar or something similar so that when you look at the werewolf and them old man you can still see they’re the same character

Cameras

I’m also giving some thought to how I’m going to shoot this. Someone suggested to me shooting on a digital SLR.  These are starting to increasingly include video recording modes.  The benefit is you get to use SLR lenses equivalents of which you don’t find on a camcorder which will allow a very shallow depth of field for a more cinematic look.  This is especiallydesirable for my kind of stuff as I’m usually using miniatures so anything that can make them look bigger than they actually are the better.

A friend shot some footage for me on his Nikon D90 which frankly look amazing.  This does mean I’ll have to buy a new DSLR however (I have the D60 which doesn’t include video).  It’s a toss up between the D90 or the Canon EOS 550D which is about as much as I can afford.  The Nikon is a shade less expensive as I’ll only need to buy the body and can use my existing lens. It only does up to 720p though.  The Canon does 1080p at a variety of frame rates so is slightly better for video, however given that my stuff is only going to go on YouTube, I’m not sure that’s a clincher.

Will cogitate further…….;0)

I’ve finished my Oldroid video.  Came out quite well, abit longer than anticipated, but no bad thing I guess.  Already thinking about the next one, which will feature werewolves ;0)