Response curves in Blender

This isn't exactly new, but it's something I don't think that many people realize, and I may want to reference it again, so I'll put it here.

In the scene properties side panel, (this section is between render and world) under 'color management' there's a set of render buttons labelled

Default     RRT     Film     Raw     Log

Try the film option. It really does a pretty good job, and the other options can be good for quick and easy color response adjustment.

Scene one test, now with sound!

I've been playing around with some ideas for the first scene soundtrack and the first set of credits. Here's what I've got right now. Let me know what you think!

Minor details

It's kind of interesting to think about the little details, and get some specific ideas about the final product. 

(I know, I should be working on the script, but I've been making progress on that too)

Here are a number of random thoughts;

We should make a total of 12 scenes. I was originally thinking we would have 16 scenes, but I can't think of that many things to fill those spaces, so 12 would probably be better. The reason for 12 or 16 is that in the disk menus you can only fit so much, and I think you can fit 3 or 4 video tiles / icons across, and not more than 2 high. That means that you could fit 6 or 8 scenes on one menu screen, and I think 6 would work better anyway.

Color grading: We need to do this right. Once we decide what clips we are going to use, we need to take them, and exactly match all of the footage. (Except possibly the night scenes) No mood setting yet, we just make all the clips match (white balance, basic contrast, etc.) (probably rendering them each individually before putting them back into the video sequence editor) Next, we do more advanced color grading, day to night, and color mood setting. On the final output we need to do a final grade. The purpose of this is to make sure it only contain legal colors. It may slightly detract from the desired look of the film, but I want this to only contain legal colors. It probably won't matter so much since this will mostly be played on computers or DVD players, but it's good practice.

You might want to check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG_k2wz9mcU&hd=1

We are shooting for a general or PG audience. The only thing we need to worry about is violence. Here are the violent scenes I can think of: 1. The first gunfight. This will be set at night, only one shot will hit, and it will be dark, so not a lot of detail will be shown. 2. The car chase. the following car gets hit, swerves, and gets hit again, blowing up. Again, not a lot of detail will be shown. The first shot will hit a tire, the second shot will hit a gas tank. 3. The car stop. This is when we think that the car has a tracking device on it and one of us gets out to look for it and gets shot at. (They miss) 4. At the CIA when they are surrounded by CIA guards. We could put some action here, but there shouldn't be much.

Check out scene 7 in the script! I've worked a little on it, and I like the way it's going.

Cycles Satellite

Here's a quick test video render of the Cycles satellite:



Drastic overuse of the glare node. I need to fix that, but it's still a work in progress.

2.5K camera

The market for high resolution digital cinema cameras is really expanding. It's really interesting watching right now, when there's so much competition. Prices are also falling, which I like! Right now, I know of two different 2K RAW cameras for about $3000. That's still pretty expensive, and they don't include lenses either, but that's still less than something like Canon's 5D MK III.

Below: A photo of Black Magic Design's 2.5K camera from their website.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/blackmagiccinemacamera/

It's really neat seeing what's happening right now. Another big plus of this camera is that it records to 2.5" SSDs, so recording media will be easily available, not proprietary, and it will also be easy and quick to transfer data.
Anyway, this isn't exactly related to the project, but it is of general interest. At the rate things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if we shot our next film in 2K! Maybe wishful thinking, but you never know...

Bigger Better Camera Crane

The camera crane is now 20 feet long, (15 effective) 60lbs counterweight, and still working nicely. If I can figure out how to mount this thing it will be great. Here's another video, and this time it's longer too (still no HD, sorry)

It's looking good, but finding a good mount for it is going to be tough, not to mention trying to transport it! (If we decide to use it for the movie that is) Here are some photos to show the size of this thing.

Above: It's not small!

The counterbalance system above.

Above: The temporary camera mount (This is part of why I'm not putting a 5D up there!)

My impromptu method of joining. (It's actually much better than it looks)

And along the side.

Try not to cringe too much, watch the video first, it really works very well so far.

Camera Crane Test

I've wanted to make / use a camera crane for a while, but they're expensive, and I would also need a pan/tilt head. A pan/tilt head shouldn't be too hard to build, now that I've figured out how to get my Arduino to read a potentiometer and control a stepper motor. I was thinking about using a servo motor for a while, and then I discovered stepper motors :) Anyway, I may or may not go that direction yet, but I was testing out a section of antenna tower I have as a camera crane with the camera mounted directly on it. Here's the test video below:

Start at 0:15. The jerk at 30 seconds in is from the counterweight (30lbs) on the back sliding around.

Yes, I know, it's not HD, and I find that annoying too, but I'm not putting one of our HD cameras up there until I have some sort of fail-safe. Below are photos of it:

And close up of the ends:

All for now! Please comment, and next up, production workstation photos!

Muzzle Flash Test

Like I said earlier, I'll post tests here, so people can get an idea of how things are happening. Here's a short muzzle flash test I did a while back. I plan on doing a (much) better version soon.

Script overview

The general script overview is finished! This is a big step forward. I still have to work in one more actor, but it doesn't affect the plot very much, so it shouldn't take too long. It should add some humor too, which is always good. I'm unsure how much of the plot we want to reveal before the movie is released, so for now I'm keeping it to a minimum, but keep watching, we may release some of the script later! (Not to mention test scenes, trailers and such ;) I've started some test videos, so I'll post some periodically, so people can see what some of the issues we might run into would be. Here's one below:


Some of the problems you can see if you watch closely. The main one is rolling shutter. We can't do a whole lot about that. It's going to be tricky to minimize it, and it becomes more pronounced at higher shutter speeds. Since we will be filming at 60fps, the shutter speed can't be below 1/60 of a second. That's not too bad, but the other problem is blurring. This clip looks pretty blurred, and is somewhat painful to watch. That being said, the white balance looks pretty nice, not perfect though, and the rolling shutter isn't very pronounced here. In the car chase scenes (oops, I gave another scene away ;) we're going to try to film from around 45 degrees, not 90 to minimize rolling shutter. We might have some shots that are straight on, but that probably wouldn't be as interesting, so probably not too many.