Late Night Double Feature Picture Show

While no-one was looking, most of the 48 Hour Film Challenge entries have been uploaded to dailymotion.com. This gives me an opportunity to share two more of my favourite humorous entries - one clearly inspired by The Office, the other simply inspired.

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Too Much Too Soon

This was originally an entry in the Sci-Fi London 2009 48 Hour Film Challenge. Nothing can save this film! but this cut includes some additional scenes, my attempt at a soundtrack and credits that didn't quite make the 48 hour deadline. With thanks to all who took part.

Team: Second Foundation
Title: Too Much Too Soon
Compulsory Dialogue: "Choose your spot and mark it with an X - it'll still be there on your return"
Compulsory Props: Three passports from three different countries.
Technical notes: filmed on mini-DV, CGI and titles produced in Cinema 4D, soundtrack mixed in eJay, original cut edited in Final Cut Pro, this cut edited in the Blender VSE.

48 Hour Challenge Shortlisted Films

The ten SFL48 2009 shortlisted films can now be seen on the Sci-Fi Channel website here. Annoyingly you will have to sit through the same 20 second commercial trailer before you can see each one - thanks SyFy. My personal recommendations are the beautiful and stylish "Minute Adjustment" with its' poignant ending, and "Mark Up" which features some simple but well executed special effects and was placed joint second. In different ways I think both these films push the limits of what you can achieve in 48 hours.

Also at this site are the winner "Tracker" and the other second "Glimpse" as well as the entries from the 2008 competition. "Glimpse" features a lot of running - it's exhausting enough just to watch it! - and while the plot is very basic there's some great camerawork and sound and it has plenty of action movie edge.

[update 7.10.09 - link added to Minute Adjustment without SyFy adverts - thanks Rob]

Watson's Universal Robots [Interview: Christopher Watson]

Christopher Watson was the Effects Supervisor for Eyeborgs – he was responsible for the robot concepts and designs and for producing almost all the CGI content of the movie. He kindly agreed to answer some of my questions about the making of Eyeborgs. You can see more examples of Christopher’s work on the Pixellex Studios website.

How did you first get involved in Eyeborgs?

Several years ago, in 2005, I was in my final semester as an undergraduate filmmaking student at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. I had benefitted from putting myself through a veritable VFX boot camp while there, creating occasional effects for my fellow film students' short projects, and Richard, a cinematography faculty member at the time, approached me about the idea of working on a small, low-budget sci-fi film filled with killer robots. I couldn't pass the opportunity up, and I've since been involved in developing the first feasibility tests, creating the look of the cg characters, and ultimately producing the visual effects for the final film.

Which 3D software packages did you use for this project?

Pixellex Studio utilized Autodesk Maya, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, AnderssonTech SynthEyes, Imagineer Systems Mocha and Motor, and Apple Final Cut Pro.

Taking an example effect shot such as the Eyeborg walking along a rooftop, how do you get from storyboard to finished shot?

For most of the larger action sequences, storyboards were used, but in that instance, the shot only warranted a place on the day's shot list. During production, photographs of the lighting scheme (in this case, the direction of the sun), photos of environmental features, and measurements of the live action plate elements are taken. The shot is matchmoved and then laid out in 3d and the robot animation is blocked out and polished. The shot is lit and any texture maps for the plate elements and/or reflection maps are applied. The shot is rendered in several passes for reflections, shadow, occlusion, etc. The shot plate and renders are composited together and any rotoscoping of the robot's interaction with the background plate is executed. The final shot is rendered out and complete.

There's a commonly held belief outside the industry that thanks to CGI there's no longer a limit to what you can show in a film, although I think that underestimates the amount of planning that needs to go into an effect shot. Was there anything you wanted to do in Eyeborgs that proved out of reach?

I can only hope that we did justice to the realism and believability of the more ambitious shots, but for the most part there were very few VFX ideas in Eyeborgs that did not make it to the final film. One shot in particular that we were working on did not make it in. It was a rather intensive shot in Ronni's apartment when the bagged and battered LB lands after being thrown and wriggles inside the cloth, ultimately cutting itself out. We completed the animation and worked with the cloth simulation of the shot for what amounted to two weeks of production time, but ultimately scrapped it for reasons of time. It would have been a great comic addition to the scene and it was an unfortunate cut, but necessary.

There's an example on the Pixellex website of adding a car into the background of a scene from another movie - the kind of subtle effect that most viewers would never identify as CGI. Apart from the Eyeborgs themselves, what else is CGI used for in Eyeborgs?

We had the opportunity to add the window and framing in the alleyway scene when Jarrett is confronted by the SPYder. Another SPYder tosses several CG chairs during the Millennium Center shootout. Additionally, there were a multitude of stunts performed during production and many of them required wire removal. As an example, almost every shot involving Sankur's fall at the DHS headquarters falls into that category. The actor and stuntman, Dale Girard, was on a three cable pulley system suspended from a rather large rig assmbly anchored to the top floor balcony. The cables and rig all had to be painted out to produce the illusion of Sankur thrown from the elevator lobby over the railing and the ultimate fall to the atrium floor.

One theme developed through this movie was the trust people placed in CCTV images that were being manipulated. Given your own knowledge of image manipulation, do you think we should be worrying about this yet?

We're primed to pay attention to manipulated images when watching movies, but I would suggest that it's a consideration when watching anything on television, and today unfortunately that should include reports from reputable news organizations. That should make the conspiracy theorists happy.

Are there any plans to develop Eyeborgs into a game?

I think Eyeborgs would translate into a great videogame and I'd love to be involved if one is eventually produced.

With thanks to Christopher Watson, Pixellex and Crimson Wolf Productions. Related links: Quiet Earth's review of Eyeborgs here, my review here.

48 Hour Challenge news

Congratulations to Lost Souls, producers of Tracker - the 2009 48 Hour Challenge winner. I'll post a link to the film when it's available.

Did I say overlords? I meant protectors...

Our robot overlords had clearly been working behind the scenes at Sci-Fi London before the Eyeborgs premiere on Wednesday night. Firstly they'd set up a cloaking/visual blurring effect of some sort so the Apollo really did look like this:

Secondly we, the Second Foundation, having come all the way from the Other End of the Galaxy, were hoping to see the winning entry in the 48 Hour film challenge - but as too few entries featured robots of any sort our mechanical masters deemed this entertainment unworthy. Perhaps they were also concerned that Eyeborgs, while it features a number of cool robots, has kind of an anti-robot message at its heart.

However, I can't complain - instead, we were treated to stop-motion short, The Day The Robots Woke Up, a sentimental piece of old-school animation with a doggerel narrative and a pro-robot message. Simply beautiful. You can watch it if you're in London this weekend, part of the Blink of an Eye Short Films Programme 2, shown on Saturday 2nd and Monday 4th May (see programme here).

I enjoyed the main feature - more on that coming up. After the screening, Eyeborgs director Richard Clabaugh came down with most of the cast for a very lively Q & A, where we learned that, even though the film includes more effect shots than Transformers, it was produced on what might be the catering budget for a Hollywood blockbuster, and actress Megan Blake described with great enthusiasm how she'd had to learn to fire a gun for her part.

Knot bad for 48 hours?

Here's a link to "This Is..." a humorous entry in the 48 hour competition that I particularly enjoyed.



This original film was made by team Death Star Holiday Chalets, who include writer Molly Brown. On meeting the team after the screening event I was particularly impressed to learn that they held a dummy run the week before - that's dedication to the cause.

Incidentally, Tube travellers over the next few weeks should watch out - Sci-Fi London festival director Louis Savy will be at large with a hi-tech portable projector screening short films and competition entries indiscriminately. You have been warned.

Popcorn!

Too Much Too Soon premiered this morning at the Apollo Piccadilly Circus, along with a selection of other 48 hour competition entries, to muted applause and nervous laughter. I was kind of dreading this but actually it felt OK. It looked slightly better - on a full-size cinema screen - than I'd expected.

We weren't shortlisted, so I'll try and get the film onto YouTube in the near future. We were rushed for time so entered with a fairly minimal soundtrack - I may try and put together a slightly improved version if I get the chance too.

I enjoyed the selection of other entries I saw, including a few of the shortlisted films. General trends this year: lots of teleport effects, use of Canary Wharf or the Jubilee Line as substitutes for the future (we are guilty of these too), plenty of zombies, and everyone seemed to be using the same Now Thats What I Call Discordant Sound Effects CD. Quality varied but several films were extremely well produced, including a few with awesome soundtracks - overall the standard was higher than last year.

I know at least one other team was also ejected from Canary Wharf and there may be more - Wharf security probably fought a weekend-long running battle against amateur filmmakers. Also, we were pretty tired by the end but the two secret agents who spent the entire weekend running up and down the Westminster Station escalators must have been fairly knackered.

Watch out for the shortlist on the Sci-Fi channel, then all the films on the festival website in a month or so. There were some really funny entries - several of my favourites weren't shortlisted either. I'll post links to them when I can, for now I'll just say watch out for string and kettles.

Three favourite books

Looking forward to a screening of the 48 hour competition short films this weekend - our team, Second Foundation, will be there in force. Last year's event produced a high quality winner and plenty of enjoyable entries - my review here, the films can also be seen here. Moving on:

My relationship with Terry Pratchett's novels seems to be different from most other fans I have spoken to. For me the majority of the Discworld series are amusing and readable satire but not that special. There are exceptions - the recent novel Night Watch is excellent and Sam Vimes joins the pantheon of time-travellers sharing the forename Sam (Sam Beckett, Sam Tyler etc...)

The stand-out Pratchett books are the first Discworld novel (The Colour of Magic) and two other novels, Dark Side of the Sun and Strata. The first is well-liked but quite different from the later, much more satirical books - it's a tale of magic with a semi-scientific feel, reminiscent of Ursula K. le Guin in terms of "hard" magical laws including conservation of momentum - and to my mind the humour is more original and works better.

Strata stands out as an attempt to link Discworld, or a discworld, with the real universe in a sci-fi setting. It's a creationist story with ancient races creating younger races and laying down fossil records to disguise their origins, and this is another book with a mind-blowing, emotionally resonant twist in the tale.

The third book, Dark Side of the Sun is pre-Discworld space opera and I don't know anyone else who's read it although there are ideas in Alastair Reynold's fiction that make me wonder.... Read it. Discworld's gain has been space opera's loss. I may write more about this book another day, if I can find my copy.

Post apocalypse

I gather it's traditional for these film competitions to end with a rush for the finish line. I'd like to say it feels a bit like a marathon but then I've never run a full marathon, so unlike this person I may not be in a position to make that comparison.

I think we finished in entirely appropriate style, after two of us spent the last night editing and compositing, we discovered with less than an hour to the deadline that we don't seem to be able to export the film. Cue much angst, and a real, tense dash across London trying to get the film off the computer and get back to the Apollo cinema for the drop-off. Perhaps one of these would have helped...

Thanks to some really helpful people in Pret and KallKwik we dashed across London with a DVD and made the drop-off with minutes to spare! and since then I've got back in touch with all that tiredness I'd been storing up so it's a bit of a blur now. I vaguely remember being given some book and DVD giveaways and spouting gibberish to the festival documentarists. It's a good feeling to have finished and we could easily have been foiled by those last minute tech difficulties.

48 hours to save the world - update 4

OK, it's half past five. Have been across London and back to deliver cgi sequences and help with the editing, although how much "help" I can be at this point may be unclear. Curiously, although there were about 100 teams at the briefing, we didn't run into any others during our location shoots yesterday night or this morning. I'm looking forward to seeing what other teams got up to.

48 hours to save the world - update 3

10.30 on Sunday night and I'm really tired now. We wrapped at about 2 this afternoon but I'm still trying to get the last few cgi sequences done while elsewhere the editing goes on through the night too.

48 Hours to save the world - update 2

Currently living on caffeine and working around technical hitches. We may or may not be half way through shooting at this point. For that matter we may or may not be on course to finish. Anyway, here's a shot from a sequence I'm working on:

48 Hours To Save The World - update 1

So far, so good. We got our title and dialogue at the briefing, and came up with a scenario (suitably post-apocalyptic), meanwhile the team is growing - as ever I'm amazed at people's willingness to give up their time! This time we should have decent sound and probably an original soundtrack. Have checked out the first location and got lots of stock footage, now waiting for the rest of the team to converge so we can shoot the first few scenes. It's going to be a rush, particularly as we're planning to include some CGI. More on that story later...

Sci-Fi London 2009

Sci-Fi London have announced their 2009 programme, including an impressive range of indie films, as well as a chance to see David Bowie in Labyrinth again, and plenty of other events. I'm spoiled for choice, although I am intrigued by the concept of Cryptic which may be the logical extension of time travel as portrayed in Doctor Who or Bill and Ted.

Another part of the festival, the 48 hour film competition, is running this weekend - so watch out for strange activities on the Capital's streets. I'm entering a team so expect a couple of sleepless nights. I'll post some updates as we go along and although I don't think we can release the film before the competition I may sneak in a few pictures...

The Shape of Things To Come?

Sci Fi Gene is looking forward to Sci-Fi London 2009 although there are still no hints as to what will be on the programme. As promised I am getting my act together and rounding up some Usual Suspects for the 48 hour film competition - more on that story later.

I was thinking about TV game shows described in or inspired by science fiction - not just 1984 and Big Brother but also the novel "The Running Man" which curiously was written in 1984. I read this after seeing the 1987 film and was surprised by the differences between the film and book concepts for the gameshow: in the film, Schwarzenegger's character is chased through a deserted and surreal game arena by Gladiator-style killers; in the book he is on the run in the outside world, having to lose his would-be assassins in slightly more subtle ways while any member of the public could collect a reward for leading the killers to him. The only rule of the game is he has to shoot and mail a film reel at regular intervals revealing his whereabouts. Not so many mobile phones with video capacity back in 1984 were there?

The book is one of the four original Richard Bachman books - the other three are Rage, The Long Walk and Roadwork. By using a pseudonym for these novels Stephen King was free to explore a range of very different ideas. The writing style is recognizably King down to the blog-sized chapters and attention to detail but there's a lot to them: all four build up an incredible amount of tension in their plots, and there are some quite deep and allegorical ideas in there too (particularly with the Long Walk).

Apart from the film, the book also inspired a brief real-life Channel 4 game show Wanted. The show followed the plot of the book fairly closely with three contestants on the run from town to town across the UK, with an ex-MI5 officer trying to track them down. There were two minor deviations from the book - firstly, no-one actually got killed, and secondly, in addition to sending in videos the runners had to complete tasks on the run without being photographed. Two series were made but there was a serious design flaw: the game relied on viewers across the country calling in sightings of the runners - I would have expected most viewers to root for the contestants. [corrected]