Here’s a cool and powerful little app I found online recently that’s going to prove indispensable whilst working on the film.

It’s called ‘DJV’ and it is quite simply an image sequence player. Now, you can play .tif and .png image sequences etc.. from within Quicktime Player 7, but it doesn’t support many HDR image sequence types, such as the OpenEXR format…. DJV does.

This is great because it’ll enable me to check renders from within a stand alone player without having to directly bring them in to a compositing application’s project file or rendering an additional .mov for preview purposes.

Get it now, it’s free!

Check it out: http://kmog.tumblr.com

We currently have two actors attached to the film:

• Steve Speirs as ‘Ryan’

• and Laura Bridgwater as ‘Jean’.

I’ve already recorded Steve’s dialogue which went great. My current plans for the casting/recording of the remaining parts: to be focused on later in the year.

The past few months my main focus has been on learning as much as I can to do with the technical side of the film: the 3D software. I’ve in particular spent most time my learning through books, tutorials and tests how to model and rig characters ready for animation.

This is really the crux of it all in my mind as once the characters are digitally created and set up ready to go, I feel, in a way, the hardest job will be done and although the animation and modelling of other assets will be a much longer task, it will also be a much easier and more enjoyable task.

With modelling, I now have the first set created. Today I’ve been playing around with the look and feel for the film (or that set at least) I’ve lately been leaning towards a black and white look but that could change in time. I’ve also tested and defined what render settings and workflow I’m using with the film and finding out alternative routes for time-intensive render options like DOF and Motion Blur which I need, but don’t want to waste time doing natively if I can get them as-good in post in a tenth of the time.

Anyway time for me to return to isolation. No resolutions for me, I just want to keep on the same track going forward.

Happy New Year!

The original Intro.

I’ve been in an unusual good mood lately, one that has so far sustained itself for the longest period that I can remember. I’ve been introspecting and recollecting the past few years from 2008 to present and it’s been a nice an uplifting task in recalling the different eras (as they felt) and what kind of mind set I was in at those times, both good and bad. It really has been a experience where I can look at it from both a personal and objective standpoint and close a book on a few things and be comfortable in moving forward. Of all things this journey was set in motion through my emails, Importing them from one account to another and seeing slowly the conversations pop-up from 2008 to present and given many little bursts of memory, being transported back in time to a time when those emails were of the upmost concern in my life, seeing moments in time that were high points and also seeing times when I was at my most stressed out and having to ground myself through hard emails to read and write. It was nice to see that the majority were on the good side of the fence. A lot of things that temporarily got filed at the back of my mind and forgotten brought forward before my eyes and bringing a cheery reminiscence of, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that, that was really a great moment’. It put into perspective all the crazy stuff that has happened since 2008 and how it’s great to be able to keep improving day to day and trucking on forward hoping to be running on the good side of the fence more often than the bad.

I wrote 6011 words in a single stretch about it all, putting it to rest, that felt good too, both cathartic and motivating.

I have the combined feelings of upmost fear and upmost excitement about what is going on around today: 24th July 2011 and the remainder of this year. There’s a lot of things in the unknown but the potential of it all is hard not to pontificate with a wide-eyed fascination.

I wrote about getting one of these before. I went for a better mic and a lesser reflection studio (booth) and am really happy with the ease of use and results I’ve gotten from recent tests. All dialogue will be recorded through this mic, a sound-card and a laptop enabling me to record where I’m based or also take it with me to record elsewhere. I also plan on tracking much of the soundtrack using it and my acoustic. The sound of the guitar (raw) sounds exact to how it sounds in the room which I was really impressed with.

Regarding the film, it’s more a-go than ever. Things are developing faster than ever. I’m currently in talks with a few people regarding parts and have booked two weeks at the end of August/start of September to fully complete the animatic animation with demo voices.

Music not by me.

This will be the last but one short intro movie that I’m gonna publish for a while. After the next video it’s going to be back to the weird, crazy and nonsensical shorts that I want to make. Expect possible even some live action short narritives in the future which will be produced alongside creating my animated feature. To keep my video sharp.

I wish I came across this little tool earlier.

If you’re having trouble or have commonly found yourself having trouble thinking of names for your characters in new writing projects, Scrivener has an awesome tool to help you out.

Simply go to EDIT – WRITING TOOLS and select NAME GENERATOR.

This will pop up a simple window below which will populate with names that you can use or mix and match with each other once you hit the ‘Generate Names’ button.

If you click on the little cog icon on the bottom right of the pop-up a few more options will appear for you to fine tune your results. Here you can select whether you need male only, female only or a mixture of both and also an obscurity level of the actual names produced. These are the two I’ve been playing with most lately.

In a recent project I’ve attempted to write a little differently than the script for Porbeagle. I’ve decided to go more situation based and without an outline to see how I like it. I find myself constantly hitting a little wall where I need to introduce a character which has not been all planned out before so this little tool is really indispensable to quickly give a realistic name to that character and move forward with the story.

If you haven’t tried Scrivener, check my other post which goes over some of my favourite writing features and why I use it: Using Scrivener to Write Screenplays.

Or check out the Scrivener home page to get a trial.

I had spent a lot of this following week down my caravan in the Gower, my dog had been unwell so it was a bit back and forth more than I would have liked but it was out of concern for the little guy. My birthday was on the fourth and after seeing the vet I went back down the van to finally get some work done on this fourth draft of the script. It had been a while since I’d last worked on it through other commitments that have been taking up my time, but on that notion, I’m all freed up now on the time front to work on the film (after my full-time job’s hours of course).

Anyway I managed to print off the current state of the third draft, as I much prefer to read on paper when I can and I re-read the whole thing making notes and little storyboards on the pages when inspiration struck to do so. I had this nagging feeling that a lot of the middle-story was somewhat superfluous – which is something that I didn’t want (both having filler and/or taking it out). So I reworked a lot of that stuff making it more key to the plot, driving it forward and making each scene important to the overall story. I also added some more tension throughout and ambiguity too. I like ambiguity in stories as it allows multiple interpretations, even if I as the writer know the hard facts about the reality of what happened or what is. I think because with ambiguity you have to

think

, it makes a story last, as it stays with you after watching/reading. But it can be a balancing act as too many questions and who cares?

Right now as it stands, I’m so much more happy with the script as a whole, it feels more of a whole piece too, not just sections as I felt it once did.

In between writing I bought a book on storyboarding after giving it an amazon quick look. Originally I was quite close-minded about the subject of needing a book about storyboarding as I’ve focused on composition for years now and feel like my grasp of it is pretty strong. But this book: ‘The Art of the Storyboard‘ even through the quick look gave me some great ideas, and I even storyboarded certain shots which have gotten me really excited about actually creating them. I think this book which has a lot of theory (which I love more than practical, which it does have too) will really take the film’s visual style forward. I’ve already through reading through the script again been watching it in my mind differently, the shots, the edits are much better this time around – I just need to get them into the boards and into the animatic to solidify that. Which is what I’ll be working on next.