Saturday 27 March 2010
Filmmaking In Three Acts: Act III [Review: In The Blink Of An Eye]
Wednesday 24 March 2010
The Purrfect Storm
The Eyecat Training Collar has some serious competition - well, it made me laugh. Thanks bro.
In other news, Sci-Fi London is coming in April. I'm getting a team together again for the 48 Hour Film Challenge, but right now I'm still working on post-production for Bast in every minute I can squeeze in.
Demo of post-production work on Bast. I'm working in Blender 2.49. The steps:
Artefact reduction: Quad blurring the Cr and Cb channels in the compositor leaving the Y channel unblurred. You can't see this step at all if you're watching at 360p as YouTube tends to add in some lovely artefacts of its own. If you're watching at 480p look at the candle during this step.
Colour consistency: lift gamma gain balancing in the VSE so all the shots in a scene look similar. Blender 2.5 will include colour balancing nodes in the compositor as well, seriously speeding up the process.
Lighting: adding or reducing highlights - meshes with gradient textures in the 3D scene, multiplied in the compositor.
Gradients and overall colour look: adding local colour uses same approach as lighting step. Overall colour look is a colour curves node that is applied equally to all the shots in the same scene. Here I've just bowed the red and green channels slightly to add warmth.
Tuesday 23 March 2010
Reducing DV Artefacts in Blender
Monday 22 March 2010
Filmmaking In Three Acts: Act II [Review: DV Rebel's Guide]
Stu directed The Last Birthday Card which is used as an example throughout the book. It's a fun & occasionally brilliant short that demonstrates the strengths, and to be fair some of the weaknesses, of the DV Rebel approach. You can watch it here (via bifsniff who also reviewed this book).
The Last Birthday Card
Saturday 20 March 2010
Filmmaking In Three Acts: Act I [Review: Guerilla Filmmaker's Movie Blueprint]
Author Chris Jones worked on the feature Urban Ghost Story with director Genevieve Jolliffe. I'm waiting to receive my copy of this film which was generally well received.
Thursday 18 March 2010
The Loneliness Of The Science Fiction Writer [Review: Martian Child]
Two thoughts, though: firstly, science fiction writers are always portrayed as loners in fiction, with Tony Leung in 2046 playing perhaps the loneliest of all. Here John Cusack’s character is doubly alone, having spent his own childhood inventing fantasies, and more recently become a widower. I don’t think this reflects real life, the few sci-fi authors I know or have met seem to be pretty gregarious types.
Secondly, where did all that Polaroid film come from? If I’ve read one blog about the artistic merits of this obsolete photographic format I’ve read about a billion, and every single one bemoans the difficulty in obtaining film stock. There’s even an open-source style project by Polaroiders to invent an alternative. Yet a child in a care home is apparently able to score an unlimited supply: someone should check out that child’s eBay account.
Saturday 13 March 2010
Mega Novella vs Giant Novel part 2: Now Weight For Last Year
Wednesday 10 March 2010
Aspire Two
Marauder's Mistake from Christina Beard on Vimeo.
While Christina's MMO-like fantasy setting allows for some magical touches, Alex Blawion's Blender-produced film is a fantastic voyage that maxes out the senses: a glowing, hooded figure propels itself through crackling ice cubes, swarms of jellyfish umbrellas and a lonely, alien world. The setting reminded me a little of Stephen Baxter's Flux, in which altered humans live and swim in a magnetic plasma.In-Between Ends from Alex Glawion on Vimeo.
Monday 8 March 2010
Pandora's (Slightly Smaller) Box Of Oscars
I have yet to see The Hurt Locker, this year's success story. I missed it the first time around as I'm not all that keen on straight war movies (I prefer films like Lord Of War or Wag The Dog) but I'm now extremely keen to see it. The Academy can be a little proud this year but should still be ashamed of it's failure to recognize female directors: no previous wins in this category and only three previous nominations (Lina Wertmuller - Seven Beauties 1976, Jane Campion - The Piano 1993, Sofia Coppola - Lost in Translation 2003) plus two female director winners of the Best Foreign Language Film award. Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola did win Best Screenplay Oscars. [source: wikianswers.com]