Bumping along…

Happy New Year!

I’m close to finishing the tough shots. But my hard drives are acting suspiciously–including a brand-newish backup drive. After a few weeks, when replacement drives come in, I hope to start the smaller shots and finish the film!

Quickie

Quick update: working on a series of feathers-on-the-wind shots. Feathers that move forward, backwards, towards and away…

After I output the different shots (I need lots of these shots), I’ll composite them. When those are finished, I’ll move to the Beautiful Young Woman effects.

And then things will be very close to the finish line (on my end) before the film is handed off for color grading, sound mix, scoring.

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Another shot

The “Meadow” shot was completed a while back. And now another key VFX composite is about 70% complete. I was worried it would take much longer. But I’m surprised how quickly these shots are being completed these days. Relocating to the chapel has everything to do with it. It’s quiet, cozy and warm–and there’s no internet plugged in there.

Only one or two more big composite shots are left. Then several small shots remain–those should move quickly.

Quickie Update

Finished the roto and almost finished with the Meadow composite shot.

Yay!

Finally got the setup set up, and the main hard drive backed up. It’s taken that long to clean up rooms after the studio was displaced. But now I can resume work.

Update

The last replacement components for my computer and post setup arrived in the mail the other day. This means as soon as I can find a spot in the house (everything is uprooted now because of the flood) to set up temporary shop, I can get going on “Wood” again!

Flood

Just a quick update. Sadly, on August 13, a connector on a toilet water line in a bathroom adjoining my studio flooded busted, and the studio flooded. I lost my sound isolation room, and the studio is completely gutted.

It’s been a very stressful time; the original film footage, computer, external hard drives, film keepsakes and paperwork, monitoring equipment, piano, and hand-written music manuscripts were exposed to 4-5″ of water. Fortunately, my film and music projects seem intact, but until I resume work on the projects, I won’t be completely at ease. I’m in the process of figuring out how to reinstate what I had in the studio before. So there’s been a long period of inactivity on the film and music front since the flood.

The timing of the flood is particularly frustrating, because I’d finally gotten past the biggest challenges and speed bumps of the film, and was on the way to the finish line. Hope things get put together quickly so I can move forward again.

Progress Report

Roughly halfway finished with “Meadow: Miranda Roto.” There may be cleanup involved (painting out foliage). Or I may not need to worry about it. Miranda will need to be blurry in this “Meadow” shot.

Meadow: Miranda Roto

In the Calendar, you’ll see “Meadow: Miranda Roto” for a while (see screenshot). This refers to the phase of a composite I’m working on. I’m extracting (rotoscoping) Miranda from a shot where she runs into a meadow. Then I’ll put her into another live action shot (composite).

“Reveal” Shot Finished!

The huge visual effects shot I started working on on Aug. 14 2011 is finally finished. That was the main one–the climactic reveal of the meaning of the film; and it presented so many challenges. There are close to 100 versions of it that existed. Now, there really isn’t too much left to do on “Wood.”