Concept art from SauceFX

Felicity - working out of Sauce in Parnell has illustrated some beautiful concept art of the cliff shot we're planning on creating. See the large version here.

We now need to find someone with mad 3D skill to help us make this shot a reality! Please get in touch if you'd like to have a go at it - or you know someone who might be capable.

The shot involves a quarter track around the astronaut as she stands up, with the ground plane and cliffs moving in sync with her... the background comped in on cards. It's going to look fabulous.

In the meantime a huge thanks to Sauce and Felicity for the wonderful work!

Details details details...

I guess everyone knows how much work is involved in a film... But man! I've been flat out compositing Last Flight for weeks now, and there's still no shortage of things to do.

Big thanks to Paul, who has taken on a bunch of shots and given me lots of really useful pointers with my own work - which I'm still struggling with at times. Don't let anyone ever tell you that compositing is easy! It's detail-focused and time consuming: I've gone back to shots a number of times just because of some nagging detail that was eating away at me. And tracking... @#!$!*! Try tracking a computer display to some tiny screen that is jerking around like a bastard. The horror.

The screen-grab below is a shot that Paul has been chugging away at. I gotta say, he swears a lot less than me while he's working. Better results too.

Back to work

Another week off work - - to focus on - you guessed it - Last Flight... Sweet!

Plus I have help! As well as Adam, who is coming to work on the computer displays on Thursday, I have Paul working alongside me, who has graciously offered to do some of the compositing. You can see his reel here and his blog here.

Hot damn!

Yeasayer goes to Mars

This is without a doubt the most realistic video of astronauts on Mars I've ever seen. I loved it - and am a bit jealous about how successfully they've recreated the red planet!


YEASAYER - 2080 - MyVideo

Thanks to Dylan of www.dylanstoreymusic.com for the heads up!

One off the wrist

I've noticed quite a few sci-fi films sport the Astronaut wrist display - including the music video in the previous post - and here is ours, courtesy of Mr Sheffield, who spent days last week agonizing over its birth.

Iphone-style touch-screen of course.

White Island in spaaaace!

Had this pointed out to me... We are far from the only peeps using White Island as a interplanetary destination. Our spacesuit is far superior however.

Sound bite

Cool news - we have Entirely Sound working on the mix for Last Flight!

Entirely Sound is a boutique audio studio run by Kahra Scott-James, specialising in custom sound design for animation, film and more.

Kahra actually gave us some training in production sound, prior to filming, to bring us up to speed on various dos-and-don'ts; which was a great help for our rather inexperienced little team.

We'll shortly be recording ADR with Kassie, and then Kahra will start in on the rough mix. I can't wait to hear what she comes up with!

Mars gets ratty(er)

This is a shot I'm working on which is a POV from the Astronaut's transmitter... Using a plug-in for After Effects called Damage... It basically makes your shots look much worse! Very nice.

The final countdown

For all you After Effects geeks out there: If you've ever tried to find the code to make a digital clock count-down in minutes, seconds and milliseconds, here it is.

I only mention this because it took Adam two and a half hours of frustration and swearing to worry this out on the interweb, so I figured the more links to it the better.

In other news, major progress over the last few days with the compositing of around 20 shots, and completion of wrist display computer graphics.

Go team LF!

Knock the bastard off...

It's time to finish Last Flight. I've set a deadline, folks - the end of September. That's right - - the end is in sight!

I've taken this week off to work exclusively on compositing. Adam has joined me on Weds, Thurs Fri to work on the computer displays... And damn if we aren't making progress!

I'll be back at work next week and then I'll take another week off to get the rest done.

Compositing...

Here's some recent examples of shots I'm putting together in After Effects...Steep learning curve, but fun!

Oops and whew!