Rained out!

This Saturday is a no-go for filming, I'm afraid, folks. The forecast is too grim to bother. Even if its not raining, we need DRY sand to keep continuity happy!

Please tentatively put Saturday the 3rd of October in your diaries and we'll send through a confirmation shortly.

Sooner or later, we'll beat nature and get this movie filmed! ;-)

Makeup for animals...

Phoenix Renata, who has served as our back-up makeup artist, and whose partner Chev designed our astronaut's make up and has been helping out on Last Flight's special effects, is in the news. Check it out here.

Backed by a talented group of makeup artists, Phoenix, has created a 2010 calendar of fashion makeup-art to raise money for the SPCA. The calendar will be launched on 20 October at St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland, alongside an exhibition of photographs by Ma'an Adbul-Hafeedh, taken during the calendar's shoots.

I'll put up a link when copies are available... From what I've seen of it, it's a beautiful looking calendar. Yaay, Phoenix!

Filming...

Folks, we've set our first (tentative) date for our last location shoot on Saturday 26.

Our backup day is Saturday Oct 3rd, and if we're really unlucky with the weather, (and we can get everyone!) Saturday 10.

After that we just need a short day at the Studio and we're done! Yay! Let's wrap this puppy up!

The plan, stan...

Spring is here! Yay!

What that means for us is getting our last day at Bethells filmed. To do that we need at least 2 days of sun - one day to dry out the sand, and another to film. It won't be a long day - just 7 hours or so. After that we need to shoot about 6 hours at the studio - and then we're done! So Bethells is the main thing, and after that it's mostly clean up.

So, please stand by and wait for our call. And cross you fingers for some more sun!

NZ Film Month...

Interested in NZ film? Then check out Ant Timpson's proposal at Filmhead.

"Dear Person Interested in NZ Film,

I think the below is a fair and true statement to make.

"Local films are made with lots of love and passion".

A great romance is someone falling in love with a story and wanting to create it for others to embrace. Bitten by this love bug, local casts and crews work in harmony on something they all want to love. The fairytale ending is seeing the story unfold on a big silver screen.

But like all great love affairs it usually ends in...tragedy..." (read on...)

Off for editing...

Last Flight has now gone off to Richie for editing... A real pro! I can't wait to see what he comes up with!

Long time no post...

Here's a couple of composites I've been working on - still rough as - and would benefit from some good colour grading - but I think you can start to see where we're heading...

Mars CG style

Here's an early attempt at creating Martian sunrise in Vue 7, a 3D software package I've been playing with. Not anywhere in the ballpark of Zane's stuff, but fun anyway, and kind of promising. I'd like to use it for creating some of the backgrounds we need for Last Flight. They'd be cleaned up in Photoshop and then imported into Final Cut for the green screen shots. And that's even before they go to Zane for further work! Crikey!

Still working...

In Wellies with LF producer, Sarah B, checking the budget and thrashing out our plan moving forward... What is left to do, how much $$ we have, and how we're going to distribute this puppy!

Dusting off the flightplan...

Zane, Richy and I popped back to the Studio the other night and filmed dust. That is, we set up a black curtain, a red head and a camera and blew dust into the light while we filmed it (when I say “we” I mostly mean Zane – I just stood and watched!).

We got some wild footage and also managed to use up a whole half hour of tape, but the upshot is some cool dust effects that we will be able to blow through the landscapes of the movie – making it look a lot dustier and windswept than it actually was.

Meanwhile, scene 1, 3 and 5 are now mostly edited (in rough form). And parts of the other scenes are also complete.

Now if we could just get some sunny weather we could get out to Bethells and knock the bugger off!