Awesome tech discovery of the week....

...I can open video in PhotoShop and edit it directly there! OMG!! I Looove technology!

Spot the difference below - I have removed an annoying thread from an LF shot, frame by frame... in PhotoShop!

...and another Mars film.

Again, both these films differ from mine, particularly in that their's are finished.

MARS! from Joe Bichard and Jack Cunningham on Vimeo.

Another Mars film in the works!

Here's a quirkly looking independant film that's just come out in the States... Mars by Geoff Marslet (Perfect name!). More here and an interview here.

MARS - The Movie [HD Trailer] from Geoff Marslett on Vimeo.

...and nearly there!

This is a POV shot, hence the oblique view.

I've layered a reflection of the astronaut onto the display, which is quite effective.

I might need to add a small amount of jitter in there as well, to give it a slightly handheld effect, but otherwise I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Martian computer graphics from Damon Keen on Vimeo.

Future grunge

...now with added static, scratches and scan-lines.

I guess the technology of 2038 is a bit crap...

You know what they say; you can put a woman on Mars, but you can't make an iphone work in space...

Details, details, details....

Here's a couple of examples of the animation that's being built for the computer displays that appear in the film...

We're going with monochromatic displays - on the assumption that power is at a premium within the astronaut's spacesuit.

Also note our usage of IAL - the International Auxiliary Language of 2038. This is a language being used by the European Union in our future, and is an actual working language, created by David Parke.

Canyons test

Here's a quick and dirty (low res that is) look down into the canyons of Mars, with clouds whizzing past, as created in Vue 7.

The clouds are going way too fast, and full blown rendering of the shot is looking like it will take 10 days, so I'm not sold on it yet... But I'm getting there...

Canyons of Mars from Damon Keen on Vimeo.

This shot will ultimately be composited with a cliff-edge and our astronaut's feet, as we see a POV of her peering over the edge... Original storyboard shot below:

The worm has turned...

Mostly moving between sky renders in Vue to PhotoShop and back at the moment...

While some of the work is about creating nice imagery of Mars, a lot of it is actually just fixing consistency problems... For example, adding clouds to the sky in one shot because it's part of sequence that was shot earlier - when it was cloudy.

Mars is actually not particularly cloudy, but I've taken a bit of artistic liberty and decided to stick with cloudy skies. This is partly because it's easier to leave the clouds in the footage already shot (and add clouds to blue-sky shots), than take them out, and also because it looks great.

It's kind of embarrassing in a way, because it's the sort of thing that the geek in me gets irritated about in other people's sci fi movies!

The view inside Shake...

Behind the scenes of a shot Zane is working on inside Shake...

Rendering...

So... 50 hours rendering 40 seconds of Martian sky early this week (for the scene below), followed my 35 hours for 7 seconds of fast moving Martian clouds Weds/Thurs. My poor old computer is crawling.

I'll say one thing though, Vue does a beautiful job of skies; it's clouds are beautiful - it's certainly a godsend for us.

Every shot has now been assigned a job bag and handed over to Sunset for coordination.

Also a big welcome to Harry from Melbourne who is experimenting creating dust for a number of shots. Can't wait to see his results!