DCP takes over NZ

I went to an interesting talk the other night about Digital Cinema Package delivery. Basically the upshot is that most of New Zealand cinema's will have gone completely digital within another year. 35mm is dead!

DCP is basically a collection of files stored on a hard drive - which is then passed onto the cinema that will be playing the film. The resolution of these files is fantastic - currently 2 or 4k, but will no doubt soon go up to 6k and 8k (35mm is estimated to have a quality comparable to 1,500k, for what it's worth).

So whatever format you shoot in now will have to be transfered to DCP prior to being shown in cinemas. For a feature film this will cost around $10,000. This is because, though it is a purely digital process, only specific companies have the ability to convert your movie into DCP.

To do this they first convert your film into a digital master "print" that is then used to create the DCP copies. Each time you create one of these copies there is a fee - though this is considerably less that the creation of the first copy. These copies can be modified to add additional features such as subtitles (that are added "live" while the file plays, much as it does on your VLC player).

When cinemas receive their hard drive with the movie on it, they then need to wait for time-coded digital keys to arrive to unlock the content before they can play it (these keys are specified to the cinema and even the projector the movie is to play on). These keys will open the file for only as long as the distributer dictates - from a couple of hours to a few weeks, depending on the run.

All in all it's a HUGE shake-up of the way film is distributed - and soon these files will be transfered over the internet of course, and even the hard drives and usb sticks currently used will become obsolete.

One thing that bothered me was that as well as 35mm, this also means the death of e-cinema. While this in itself isn't a particular tragedy (it's unstandardised and allows all sorts of shoddy low-quality media to play), what does this mean for amateur film makers? Will cinemas still have the ability to play small indy films, and low budget affairs like Last Flight - made by directors like myself? While I certainly couldn't afford the cost of a 35mm print or conversion previously anyway, the emergence of e-cinema at least offered me access to big screens if I wanted them, and the new (much lower) price of approx $10,000 is still a roadblock.

With hindsight I wonder why is the conversion fee so high? If it is a digital process (albeit very processor hungry) what exactly are you paying for? And will it come down over time? I would be interested to know more about this. Essentially, as mentioned at the talk, this means that every film must have a distributor and be marketed. In other words, every film must be commercially viable.

None of this is new of course; it's always been a struggle to make films in New Zealand, and I suppose big business has moved to protect itself here as expected, so in some ways, perhaps it's actually in a bigger sense quite an irrelevant development.

Still, the blinkered, soulless march of big budget Hollywood movies into even more Michael Bay-like  depths - locked in with even tighter controls - doesn't sit entirely easy with me, and seems like a step back from the messy, internet-fueled, but inherently democratic window that e-cinema held up.

Anyway, enough. I'm off to see Planet of the apes.

Trailer on the way!

Richard from Sunset Studios has kindly agreed to put a trailer together for Last Flight! He's going gang-busters so we should have something for you to see very soon...

DONE!

OMG - we're finished! LAST FLIGHT IS COMPLETE!

Wow, that feels good to say. More soon, I'm off for a drink...

Nearly there...

Close to being done! The music is finished and with the sound engineer. She has rough-mixed it and is polishing it up now.

So very, very close...

Next week we plan to submit it to a couple of film festivals! OMG. Then what? My life is going to be so empty.

Good grades!

The grade is done! Check out what Zane, who did the hard yard on it, has to say about the process here...

Last steps...

Getting there! Last few tweaks are being made on the sound mix and the music, and the last few shots are being graded. It's looking and sounding SWEET! Woot!

Good grades

Here's a couple of examples of the grades that Zane is working on.

Likey likey!

New year resolutions

My New year's resolution? Well, duh! - finishing Last Flight of course.

Not that my recent progress has been supersonic; I've been a little unhappy with the shape of the film since seeing it with the first rough sound mix, and have decided to re-edit a few sequences. This has seen me remove the opening narration I introduced a few months ago and replacing it with some titles, which I think works better.

I've also reworked a couple of the seagull shots which were making me cringe every time I saw them - by replacing some of the footage with purchased material from Pond5. Cheating I guess, but it looks much better.

Most dramatically, I've removed a major scene from the film. I kind of already knew that this scene was impeding the flow of the story - but it seemed kind of pivotal - until I took it out. Now it seems like it may have been a good idea - assuming I haven't just rendered the entire movie incomprehensible! ...Which is hard for me to tell, I'm so damn close to it.

An edit has gone to Zane at Sunset Studios now for grading - so am hoping to see some concepts for the colouring of the film shortly, which I'll post up here.

Happy New Year,

DK

Compositing complete!

Woot!

And off to Entirely Sound to hear the first rough sound mix today. Exciting!!!

Prog report for you peeps

We've made leaps and bounds in the last couple of weeks!

The ADR was successfully recorded at Entirely Sound 2 two weeks ago with Kassie and Bevan - and sounded terrific.

Meanwhile the compositing is all but finished - bar a couple of shots that need some polishing up. Then it's off for grading... which the film needs badly - - colours, contrasts and lighting jump around something dreadful, plus the whole thing just needs to be Marsified. It still looks way to "Earthy".

Dylan has been working his magic on the music and come up with some real moody, evocative stuff and will be forwarding it on to Entirely Sound for a first rough mix, which is exciting!

The plan is to have the whole thing ready to go by February... hard to believe, I know, but we'll get there.

I mean, eventually we just have to, right?

Back to it...

Got home from the US at 8am and started working on the film again by the end of the day. That didn't take long! Let's get this puppy wrapped up - before Christmas anyway.

Took a few photos of the Grand Canyon while in the States, among other things(!) and bought a 4.5 billion year old meteorite - as old as the planet.

Lord help, me I'm a geek.

Anyhows, moved all the remaining shots into one folder - and somehow it all looks more manageable... Unfortunately I'm starting my first day at the new Super City today, which I imagine is going to interfere with what I'd rather be doing (the film), so stand by for progress.

(Darn; 2 weeks away and I've forgotten the short cut keys in After Effects!)

All's quiet on the Martian front

I'm in the process of rendering the last two shots that need to be spat outta Vue: a Martian sunrise, and the penultimate shot of the giant canyons. Both are pretty heavy-duty and going to take about a week or two to finish.

Meanwhile, I'm off to the US for a couple of weeks, so will leave the computer to it - there's not much I can do while it's chewing through the renders anyway, so don't be surprised - or concerned -if the site goes quiet for a bit - - Last Flight is still flying! ;-)

Incidentally, I will be taking a helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon while I'm in the States, which I imagine is about as close as I'll ever get to a view like the one that' I'm rendering at the moment... Not that I'm complaining; Mars is only my second favourite planet; Earth is still number one with a bullet!

Oh well....

...So much for getting it done by the end of September... You live and learn I suppose...

Anyway, we've made huge progress, completing the majority of the compositing and recolouring. There's two major renders left to do, each which will take 2 weeks, and then finally we should be ready for sound, and the grade - assuming the rest of the compositing is completed by then.

And this film seriously needs a good grade! Colour jumps all over the place - and the whole thing needs to be reddened up considerably.

Anyway, enough for tonight... bed is calling!

Nuke 'em!

Our friendly CG expert, Oana, has been been using Felicity's artwork to create a 3D projection of the cliffs in Nuke - a tricky proposition, as the shot features quite a high-angle rotate, as you can see in the video below.

Still a few issues to work though apparently, but as you can also see, it's going to be a dynamite shot!

...man, I love this stuff!

The inevitable HUD...

Slightly arty shot of the inevitable HUD...

What, you didn't think we'd have a POV HUD cause we're a "serious" sci fi film?

HA! I'm ALSO a geek, people!

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!

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.

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!