Fractal Gallery 2: Degeneration Series

After my first set of fractals went up, working full time at a local retailer was pretty much my only livelihood at the time so I spent a lot of time away from my computer, which allowed me lots of rendering hours to complete some more interesting ones I'd come home and fiddle with.  Degeneration series was born out of some rather unusual concepts just playing around with the fractal designs that I would "degenerate" from basic fractal patterns.

I'll forgo my commentary and just state up here that only a select few have any slight adjustments in photoshop, everything else is straight out of Apophysis 2.02. through 2.06.  For wallpaper sizes, please see the entire collection in full view at my deviantart. 

Motion Purge

Apeface

Escape

Escape 2

Helix

Butterfly

Dreamcatcher

Pulsar 2.0

Quantum Fold

Spiral Addiction 1.0

Spiral Addiction 2.0

Fractal Gallery 1: Argive Series

About 2 years ago, I was introduced to Apophysis and other fractal programs, and what was initially a small personal side project turned into an addiction of sorts that comes and goes.  Several of these are featured on a couple of patron's sites, as well as being used for album artwork in a couple upcoming releases.  For wallpaper sizes, please see the entire collection in full view at my deviantart. 

A Solar System Called Baroque

My very first forray into Fractals.  Apophysis 2.02, no post.  I'm horrible at math but getting to play with the traingles for the coordinate system was definitely interesting.

Autumn

I started with a random generated fractal in Apophysis 2.02 and started playing with the mutations, getting to check out all the different types of algorithms available.  Ended up with something COMPLETELY different from the original fractal, and then edited the coordinates and weighting to end up with this final image.  No post.

Collapse

Went through several iterations, played a lot with the rotation and crop/zoomo to get this piece to look good.  Apophysis 2.02.  No post.

Dances With Colors

I can't even remember how much time I spent getting a color gradient I really liked on this one.  I just loved the way the whole thing looks and feels with these two colors.  Apophysis 2.02.  No post.

Ghost of an Angel

Still one of my favorites.  I don't know how I was able to come up with something so resembling of a human form sitting indian-style, with wings.  It took a lot of playing with the coordinate system and it just came out at random, so I kept it.  I used a random pattern generator to come up with the weighting and color gradient, and I just kept it that way, it came out really well.  Apophysis 2.02, no post.

Gravity Well

I imagine if one could ever actually see what a gravity well, it might look something like this.  Pretty simple fractal, spent more time on weighting and color gradients to get something I liked.  Apophysis 2.02, slight contrast adjustment in Photoshop CS.

Liquid Superstructure

Did a few variations on this one, I just loved the color scheme and the rhythm in this one,  and yes... used a lot of negative space, for effect.  Apophysis 2.02, Photoshop CS.

Nullified transmissions

An alternate version to Liquid Superstructure shown above.  I thought both looked interesting.  This one definitely feels more like a "transmission", and the use of negative space and rhythm differ enough to make it a whole separate piece.  Apophysis 2.02, no post.

Shards of Reality

Never thought this piece would make it but the more i looked back at it, the more interesting it got.  I decided on the title last minute as I really didn't know what to do with this piece until the name came to mind.  Apophysis 2.02, no post.

Solar Eclipse

Somewhat interesting variation of the Nullified transmissions.  A lot of whisps here and there and a rough circular center made me think of an eclipse.  Apophysis 2.02, no post.

Solar Flare

I absolutely love how the cloud-look came out in the flare.  This can be so many different things.  Apophysis 2.02, no post.

Spiral Thoughts

Exactly as it is titled, and often my state of mind!  Just kidding...  At least, not entirely.  Apophysis 2.02, no post.

Stay tuned for more series as I will be posting up all of them on here this week!

The boredome festive...

It's the holiday season.  Turkey day, the epicenter of family time and relations, good (if not enormous) meals, and lots and lots of alcohol (for everyone else).  We've all officially entered the hibernating mode where everyone gladly sits back and relaxes: watching movies, talking, sharing stories, jokes, or whatever competitive oral phenomena one can drum up.

In fact, I myself have been in story-mode.  This last week or so, while waiting to see where my finances stand as we enter the holiday rush for present purchasing and putting our bank accounts through the financial binge that inevitably comes, I've re-purposed one of my story concepts, and begun to write anew.

Today, actually - began with some creative re-arrangement of the storyline.  What was once the first chapter is now the prologue and the first chapter has pretty much written itself.  I must admit after recently seeing Harry Potter 7, and watching movies like How to Train Your Dragon, and various other fantasy movies coming out as of late; I've had ideas churning in my head for this story that have only cultivated in some great (in my opinion) characterizations and really allowed me to explore a more human element I know I've been lacking in my writing skills. 

The story as it unfolds in my head plays out like a movie I would be seeing on screen and just keeps driving me to want to create it however I can!  So, very soon (perhaps just after the holiday season is over) I will be doing some sketching, concept design, and the like for this story, which I will more than gladly post my progress of on here :).

I'ts been too long...  Until then, however - enjoy a happy thanksgiving, and may everyone enjoy their holidays!

A Dashboard Confession

It's been a long October moving swiftly and not so diligently through a TV series concept and getting it off the ground.  Let's start at the beginning shall we?

A couple months ago my friend who happens to own a nice Sony Z1u approached me about a possible job opportunity he had been brought into the fold on.  This job consisted of developing and operating a production company around a tv series concept.  Lots of promises and lots of changes and rescinding on said promises later, and one bunk storyline and proof of concept after another we arrive at Friday October 15th.

The producer has me cabbing him around first to pick him up and we go to meet our private investor company whom, after an hour and a half or so of bantering and not even talking business really - decided to hand our producer a final check for the "production".  I can't go into detail on how much exactly but it's a generous amount to actually do something business-like with.

The plans change about 3 times in the span of an hour after getting said funding and our producer decides on a whim and without anything packed, that he wants me to drive him out even further to oakland with a stop in pleasanton so that he can fly out to vegas that same day.  God knows what for...

I advised that we get a business license set up, start planning out a rough schedule, and book hotel(s) and come up with a budget, as well as a contract that weekend so that we could have everything on solid ground before we depart for Vegas on Sunday by car.  Now,

• Lesson #1: never do anything without at least 10% pay up front.

• Lesson #2: Have binding documentation as to what the nature of everything is and how everyone is to be compensated (a contract, basically).  

I've known these for a while and our producer rushing out to Vegas despite my advising not to go made me very uneasy about the project.  However, he did pay for the travel (somewhat) around that day; he also paid 10% up front for both me and my partner to "get us out there".
So, Sunday October 17th, we depart late afternoon after a brief conference with our producer over the phone.  We have no idea what he's been doing out there the whole weekend.  I asked him to book us the hotel in the morning so we can have everything arranged for us to just come in and unpack when we get there at night.  The producer didn't book the room until we got into Vegas...  To make things worse, the next morning we were up early and on time to get prepped and ready to leave so we could make it to the shooting location we needed to be at by 9.  Our producer - being completely unprepared and came out with nothing but the clothes on his back, demanded I cab him to a bank and then to a Wal Mart to buy clothing and some miscellaneous items.  We also needed to purchase some groceries to minimize food expenses but we didn't have time.  Our producer bought himself new clothes just for the day (not the week), and we picked up some missing items we simply forgot to pack like shampoo and conditioner.

• Lesson # 3: make sure everyone is clear on expenses.

That being said, our first major shady act of the day, our producer says "so how should we split this? you guys pay for your stuff, I'll pay for my share of what we're all using?"  Now because he's carrying a minimal amount of cash I decide to go ahead and just pay for what we needed to get.  Except, in-case of any legal affairs later on that might happen down the road; i opted not to pay in cash, and instead use a credit card that hadn't been used in a while - no balance to pay.  For legal purposes I can show I was the one paying these expenses and track exactly how much I should be getting reimbursed for.

So just what is our jobs on this project, you might be asking...  Well, since I am in all ways not bound to any NDA agreement, and I myself actually wrote the contract (notice this is not notarized nor am I any type of legal representative, this is just purely for clear and concise documentation as to what the project is and who is responsible for what).

Crush The Record Production Contract

On behalf of Crush The Record Production, I ___________________________(Executive Producer)  hereby appoint ___________________________(Production manager, Production Sound Mixer) and ___________________________(Director of Photography, Digital Imaging technician) as project employees, and enter into the following terms of agreement:

1.       Terms:    ----- ----- on behalf of Crush The Record Production shall be known as Executive Producer.  Cameron Bashaw for the duration of the project shall be known as Production Manager, and Production Sound Mixer.  ------- ---, for the duration of the project shall be known as Director of Photography, and Digital Imaging Technician.  The three negotiating entities shall collectively be called the “parties”.  The pilot episode production for Crush The Record Production shall be called “the project.”

2.       Definition:     The parties wish to enter into the project on behalf of Crush The Record Production for the purpose of creating the pilot episode of a TV Series concept which technical descriptions shall be entered into agreement orally. The agreement discussed in this contract on behalf of all parties is for mutual assurance of satisfaction with exchange of services for compensation.

3.       Crush The Record Production Contract:  

a.       The Executive producer shall be responsible for handling the financing of the project which includes

                                                               i.      Handling of all fund(s) generated by project from initial private 3^rd parties and/or commercial entities entering into business with Crush The Record Production, and accept ON BEHALF OF Crush The Record.

                                                             ii.      Payment of employees and those associated directly with project.  Anyone involved in project doing work for hire directly for Crush The Record Production (i) only as considered part of video production (ii) involved in front of, or behind camera as a “personality” for Crush The Record Production (iii) not as a third party already being compensated by alternate source whether in front of, or behind camera.

                                                            iii.      Proper compensation shall be provided by the end of the project duration, and paid in full.

b.      Production Manager shall be responsible for organizing documents, and schedules, and coordinating the project once on-location and operating

                                                               i.      Handling of any task relating to disclosure of documents within project team and to third parties if necessary with approval of executive producer.

                                                             ii.      Coordinate with Executive producer on organizational tasks and oversee the project operation

                                                            iii.      Manage progress of day to day shooting and scheduling according to viable content that can be obtained throughout.

                                                           iv.      Create and organize documents and any bookkeeping throughout duration of project.

c.       Director of Photography shall be responsible for delivery of video content and production value throughout the duration of the project

                                                               i.      Creative control and consistency of videography throughout production

                                                             ii.      Communicate effectively with Production manager and Producer to obtain the shots needed for project, and stay on task.

                                                            iii.      Directs Digital Imaging Technician on all creative aspects of videography

d.      Production Sound Mixer shall be responsible for delivery of audio content and production value throughout the duration of the project

                                                              i.      Handling of audio equipment and content quality, including jobs of boom operator and Utility Sound Technician

                                                            ii.      Maintain audio equipment

                                                          iii.      Deliver audio content to executive producer for review and editing

e.      Digital Imaging Technician shall be responsible for

                                                               i.      Handling of video equipment and content quality

                                                             ii.      Operate and maintain video equipment

                                                            iii.      Deliver video content to executive producer for review and editing

4.       Mutual Agreement of the following terms outlining the proper compensation of the following parties by the Executive Producer: Production Manager and Production Sound Mixer, Director of Photography.

a.       Prerequisites:  The employed parties agree to (i) arrive at Las Vegas no later than Sunday, October 17^th for check-in, unpacked and prepared for production. (ii) Begin production schedule on Monday, October 18^th, conclude no later than Friday, October 24^th. (iii) Production team is allowed short-leave, but must return no later than Sunday, October 24^th, checked-in, unpacked and prepared for production.  (iv) Begin production schedule on Monday, October 25^th, and conclude no later than Saturday, October 30^th.  (v) Production team will leave Las Vegas on Sunday, October 31^st, ending production duration. (vi) Work per-Diem: set compensation for day, hours can be more or less than state labor laws as long as lunch break and breaks are provided.

b.      Per-Diem  compensation:    The employed parties shall be paid for the duration of the project per day for services rendered and equipment operated and maintained.  Each party member shall receive the value of $------- per day.  The duration of the production shall be no less and not to exceed 11 days.  The total compensation to employed parties across the duration of the project will reach $----- to be paid to ------- --- for the jobs of Director of Photography and digital imaging technician, and $----- to be paid to Cameron Bashaw for the jobs of Production Manager and Production Sound Mixer.

c.       Coverage of expenses:    The employed parties shall have reimbursement for travel expenses incurred throughout the duration of the project as stipulated during development.  Executive Producer holds the option to either:

                                                               i.      Pay directly for any expenses incurred throughout the duration of production (i) based on its relevance to project, (ii) necessity to travel for project including but not limited to gas, lodging, food, and utilities for production.

                                                             ii.      To reimburse expenses incurred throughout the duration of production (i) based on its relevance to project, (ii) necessity to travel for project including but not limited to gas, lodging, food, and utilities for production.

d.      Exclusions to coverage of expenses include items that are purchased for personal use or have no necessity to travel or stay throughout the duration of the project.

                                                               i.      Miscellaneous items and personal habit materials purchased are considered personal purchases and not to be covered by fund(s) generated by and for Crush The Record Production.

                                                             ii.      Excessive purchases of any items that cannot be properly documented for production or have no receipt with which to claim.

e.      Proper documentation and clear and concise reporting by Production Manager to accurately document all expenses incurred; Production manager is not responsible for acquisition of receipts from all parties.

5.       Disclosure  of this agreement herein provided solely for the purpose of identifying parties, services, and compensation shall be considered for good and valuable measure sufficient to all parties for the purpose of conducting the project.

a.       All parties arrive to mutual agreement and act according to common code of conduct including but not limited to: professional behavior, representation of the company values, adhere to any dress code, and punctual attendance according to any derived schedule.

b.      Any and all compensation is considered final and non-refundable.

c.       Any exemption from transactions must be weighed with good and valuable measure within reason upon breach of any of the terms stated in this agreement.

Upon reading and agreeing to the terms stated in the agreement, Each party hereby validates and enters into business of the project.  Proof of this shall be supplied by signing below.  Each party must sign each copy of this document as required for authenticity.

Now, without going into a detailed day-by-day description, I'd like to describe more of the useful experiences that were derived from this whole project.  From someone who's come from a studio background and this being the first travel / on-location production, there was a lot of learning going on for me.

First off, business to business side of things were developing relations with the raceway association, the company building the car for their client to compete in the upcoming race event, and then getting a hold of the parts companies being used on the car that is being captured for the tv episode to see if they want any involvement.   The producer is actually decent at pulling in interest from companies but that's fairly easy considering they have a budget to spend on things like advertising and marketing.

Working with what's really only a 2-man crew: 1 camera operator, and 1 production sound mixer tripling as Boom Operator, and utility sound technician; was not actually that bad, but limited the scope of what we could achieve as far as capturing "cinematic shots" for the TV series' look and feel the producer wants. 
Working with only mono for external mic to capture sound and our location primarily being a large machine shop for fabrication, everything was extremely hard to capture.  To add to that, while our producer wants the end result to feel very "weekly movie" the true aspect of production is fully reality / documentary as we spent most of our time in the "hurry up and wait" mode.  We captured 90% of the footage as we were able to shoot them, if things happened (and often they did) we just got rolling and shot what we could without interfering too much in the business. Aside from a few key dialogue moments, a lot of the footage would probably end up on B-roll or secondary footage used without any real audio or character focus.

The entire first week was primarily spent at the shop with the fabrication company building the car for their client to race.  the Second week we started getting other footage needed while still basing our operations at the shop.  By Tuesday, October 26th, we had private access to the Bull Ring track at the Vegas Speedway to shoot some B-Roll footage of the track itself, as well as from the stands, some trucking / dolly shots, and transition shots. Thursday we started shooting interviews and prepping for Friday's practice, and Saturday's event.

Friday was perhaps one of the longest days we spent out there as we tried to get there as early as possible to get footage of the last bits being worked on the car, while our producer spent time with his dad who came through for the day, as well as at the track setting up onboard camera shots with a very lucky turnout.

Our producer was lucky enough to have a couple reps from Go Pro buy into the concept of the show and loan us 6 Go Pro Hero HD cameras with mounting kits and memory cards.  Our producer set them up on the cars, while we stayed at the shop to wait around to capture the last moments of the car being built and hopefully catch them doing the first engine firing and tuning.

Friday's schedule for the Bull Ring consisted of practices for all the different leagues and classes of cars on teh track that day.  The first SMRA practice session was at 4:15 pm, then again at 6:15 pm, 8:15 pm, and finally at 10 pm.  the two of us stayed at the shop the entire day waiting around for our shots which didn't actually happen until 10 pm finally when they got the top wing fully assembled and on the car.  By now, 3 practice sessions had already happened and 2 competitor cars were at the garage already being worked on by their teams due to complications on the track.  After a good 20 minutes of clearing out the cars and getting our car prepped for it's first run, we set up and were ready to shoot the first firing.

Because of the type of design and the way the cars work, they have to be push-started, and our location made it feasible for the company to do this with their own trucks get the car in place, we were able to get static shots of the whole process, which at first, consisted of us running around the whole block keeping up with the push-truck and the car as they did laps around the building to make several passes at starting the car.  The whole firing attempt was successful but with some tuning needed on the engine which they promptly just pulled into the garage and started working on.  We rushed inside and stayed handheld through the rest of the shot and captured some amazing dialogue (compared to the rest of the production we'd done thus far).

Saturday we were up bright and early even though we had ended late the night before.  With some typical delays from our producer we still made it to the track early enough to beat traffic of the race event.  After checking in and getting our pit passes we started rolling out immediately and prepping gear for initial shots in the pits with the vaious racers.  The first practice session started at 1:15 pm, the 2nd at 3:15 pm, qualifying at 5:15 pm, and the main feature at 8:30 pm.

3:15 pm rolls around and we made it up to the track to start filming the practice session and plan out camera angles and get b-footage of the practice.  We weren't expecting to be involved in a crash on the track at 150+ mph!  The #85 car had a problem during his deceleration at the end of the straightaway on the track coming into the 1st turn and barreled toward us with a broken front axle.  The car slammed into the barrier at more than 150 mph and got airborne, slamming up against the upper fence where we were  filming a good 4-7 feet to our left.  Luckily no one other than the race driver was injured.

However the impact was extremely severe and he is hospitalized.  While we waited and watched what we could before the racing association cleared out the track area of all bystanders, we reviewed our tape and realized we had caught footage of the accident as it happened.  We showed the racing team that wanted to know what happened, and representatives of the track and racing association that asked to see what happened.  They also asked for a copy of the footage of just that portion for insurance purposes.  We cooperated with and respected their wishes and destroyed the footage after.

I just found out today however, that he is still alive, had just come out of surgery but is in stable condition though critical. Our prayers go out to the race team and family.  It was quite an unforgettable experience...

The show, however, rolled on.  Even with a 2 hour delay on the track from the crash, the qualifying round still happened about about 7:15 pm, and the main feature at 9 pm.  For the main feature we were able to get clearance to get down on the inner ring of the track behind the barriers.  After the race we finished up with some interviews of the various people racing, as well as final interviews of the builders and car owner we followed throughout the production.

Now, production may have ended Saturday, but we have still been very busy.  Sunday was an all-day drive back home, a very long and not very pleasant drive.  What was originally just me and the camera guy turned into his gf, and our producer riding home with us.  Everyone got home and unpacked pretty much killed the entire day, so on Monday we were supposed to capture footage.  Monday was pretty much everyone's rest day so I took it upon myself to work on some of the various other projects that need managing.

So, here we are at late last night.  My camera guy brings over the equipment and tapes so we can start capturing.  today we just brought the producer the footage we captured so far, as well as getting my primary payment.  Up next is discussing reimbursement of all the travel expenses.

All in all, I highly disliked the experience working with a shady producer, who's completely unprofessional.  That being said, the experience has allowed me to prove to myself I am capable of operating such a project at a professional capacity, whether or not I can put put this experience on a resume.

On-track, which track?

As I write this I'm on-location at Belfab fabrication shop at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Las Vegas, shooting for a Pilot episode for this startup production company.  With 9 days into the production, lots of money invested that I should be getting reimbursed, we are nearing the final push to wrap up the project.  It's been a rough couple weeks and I only imagine it's going to get worse as our hours extend to stay up with the final touches and work being done on-location here. 

While I've been here I've written contracts, invoices, schedules, outlines, itineraries, scripting treatments, and various other miscellaneous research items for the producer.  I could share the horror story this whole thing has turned into, but I'll save that for after we're concluded!  I can promise some great insider learning experiences gained from this project when I have time to write. 

I also just got finished reviewing a treatment for a friend's documentary project as a consultation.  Things certainly have a way of clustering together to happen all at once.  I've also managed to start outlining the floorplans to the warehouse studio I help run back home, as well as some nice additions to my studio!  Finally on the ball.  When I return home I will get back to the various other projects like the indie film concept Redhawk Rising, and my involvement with Troy's indie film project.

I'd also like to mention BR and I have started refining a script and plot design for a tv series concept that shall for now remain confidential.  BR, if you're reading this, we should continue developing that ASAP!

The big Push

As I write this I'm knee deep in organizational tasking for 3 major projects.  I just had a busy day traveling around doing a few meetings for the various projects at hand.  In the morning Troy and I had a 2nd meeting with a contractor to go over the renovations proposal for an expansion to the studio.

After a nice workout, I met with Mok and first headed out to Stockton to pick up a camera with footage and then we headed out to Copperopolis to meet with Tommy for the production company working on the reality series project I cannot yet name.  I've been in charge of production management tasks and even consulting on marketing. 

On our way back we discussed the project scope and scheduling.  Met up with a friend for a late dinner and chat, and then headed back to my place to discuss plans for tomorrow's meetings which will entail the next scene for the indie film that needs to be scripted choreographed and shot before renovations begin at the studio warehouse.  Right now I'm writing up the refined treatment for the scene and roughing in dialog and story progression into and out of the fight sequence. 

Tomorrow I meet with Mok to start choreograph ideas and talk about the concept build to the scene, and then schedule a meeting with the cast to start practicing and working on the choreography, schedule rehearsal(s) and the shoot.

Later tomorrow night I rough out a floor-plan to present to the contractor for a 3rd meeting to discuss plans and options before we say yay or nay..  Then it's off to Oakdale to meet with sponsors for the reality series and get production schedules refined...

Starting Monday next week, I'm Las Vegas bound for a solid 2 weeks of shooting for the pilot episode, and then 3 weeks of solid editing and post production putting together the pilot and any commercials and webisode content for sponsors.

It's going to be very hectic, I just ordered speakers that will probably arrive while i'm out of town.  I need to get mixing going and this post unit up here at my place, and still continue to manage these 3 projects; but i can promise there will be lots of updates going on here as I start to roll through more production concepts and share ideas with how things roll out.  Stay tuned!

What's the Story - Continued

Just last night, me and another editor started and finished reviewing our footage from this next scene.  We took notes and built a time log of cut ins and outs for each take in the footage, which camera angle, etc...  for the editing process later on.

Our first shoot consisted of two scenes shot in the same day.  We had a lot of source material to work with and conditions for shooting weren't ideal.  Again, with little to no rehearsal time, it took us the longest time to get through this scene.  So here are the storyboards from Scene 8 of "Red Hawk Rising".

The first thing we wanted to establish in shooting was finding all our camera angles for the scene.  From here we continued with the wide shots to transition from the scene before it into this.  Now, before you say "Hey, I found a flaw!" We already realized this and yes, we didn't catch it during the shoot.  Our main actor had switched shirts after all of our wide shots and going forward in all of our close-ups he's wearing just a black tank-top.  This is one of the easiest mistakes to overlook and the easiest to catch if you're paying attention.  So right away, all of our wide shots are useless if we wanted to actually build the film.  However, we only need small segments from the scene to build the trailer with so I believe we're okay still!

Being a dialog-heavy scene, it was critical to find the right timings and when to switch to what camera.  However, we only had one camera and with little to no rehearsal, each take was very rough and completely different,  so during our review we spent more time pinpointing audio and video segments from each character's standpoint and the overall performance to hone in on what worked and what didn't.  During editing this will make it a lot easier to rely on notes with specific time-code markers to build continuity in the scene.

With story-boarding on this scene, conveying the scene of serious dialog has to do with the characters and positions so i looked through the footage roughly for certain frames that I feel best conveyed the bulk of that camera angle's take.  These were also my reference point for building the action I discussed in the previous blog entry.

Because of the colors from the stills I extracted it made it very easy to do some basic adjustment layers after running the action script and creating a separate action for that,  then combining the two once I was satisfied with the results for multiple stills.

We were actually doing dress rehearsal as part of our shooting so we had a lot of redundant footage with terrible audio just as practice.  Once we got the mic and boom in place, the first issue was our location.  We were facing the direction the wind was blowing, and we were right next to the shoreline on the pier we were at.  That's the Golden Gate in the background you can see in several shots.  So, wind and shoreline noise made it rough to get good audio. 

 

Typically productions will hold the mic above and out of frame to get the audio, but it was to our advantage based on our posture and the elements in the environment that using a cardioid pencil condenser mic, covered with a couple socks (regular socks!) on a boom just on the outside of the railing below the frame aiming up at us in the frame worked out perfectly!

 

The sequence I've posted in is still only in a rough order.  The actual storyboard will take place during our next meeting with the crew as we head into editing.

With the story-boarding for this scene, with so many camera angles to work from, I want to try and establish a good perspective for cutting around dialog.  So having as many angles as possible to cut through and displaying them in storyboard will allow us during editing to fine tune the story, and how many or few cuts to do.  Or, at the very least, give us a good guide to work from and improve on in the future if we re-shoot.

Let me take a moment to describe our work-flow.  It's a bit backwards compared to how a professional indie project might go (or any professional production for that matter), but for what we're doing it's a start.

When we started out, we: small group of friends wanting to do some type of project - started out doing little skits and filming them, which quickly turned into "lets do something bigger".  I started developing a quick story outline, which then turned into a complete rough treatment.  With some minor tweaks to the treatment which conveys the ENTIRE story for the short film's plot, we decided to move onto to shooting basic scenes to build a trailer with. 

Our first scheduled day to shoot was pushed back as no one was available to go, so I took some time to manage the project and pushed out another month, which then allowed me to refine the treatment a bit more, while still keeping it loose enough to leave room for any major changes that might arise from production problems.  Come the last week before the shoot, I roughed out the dialog for scenes 5 and 8 to be shot that Saturday.  I proceeded to send and make copies of script and treatment outlines for everyone to take and practice with during the trip out to San Francisco.

The idea to shoot for the trailer quickly became shooting the entire scenes as if we were building the short film.  The reasoning behind this is that we get the time and experience to play and experiment with the story directionality, visual styles, and establish source material to build storyboards and refine the treatment further so that if the trailer picks up enough attention for potential investors to do the actual indie film justice, we'll be well prepared and documented!

I'm already scouting locations for the next major scene elements we plan on shooting, out of 9 scenes, 2 have been shot, the other 7 are in development for staging and location scouting; 2 of which are completely ready for production (no dialog in sequences).  Once we have staging diagrams and locations I'll be scheduling the next shoot :)

What's the story?

As I write this I've been hard at work on two different video projects.  One is getting a production company off the ground for a potential TV Series aiming for the national networks, and the other is an indie film project I started with some friends.  See? I've been busy.

I normally wouldn't put this stuff up here, but I felt it had much to do with my creative process as  I wrote the story, and shot, and attempted to act in the project.  So, here are storyboard shots from scene 5 to "Red Hawk Rising".

All these stills are somewhat in the right order.  I started with our source footage for the trailer which is also PreViz.  I then extracted the stills I felt conveyed the scene or cut best, and created a custom Action in photoshop for several different styles.

Every so often, the action would result in the posterization looking too washed out or too burned in, so I tweaked the action by deleting some steps and redoing them towards the end of the action list.

This allowed me to quickly just hit undo after I had applied the action to a new frame and quickly change some values and re-create the effect to fit the shot.

This hugging shot above I just loved.  However my source material was very dark and the initial action list had high-key threshold values that caused them to come out in complete silhouette.  Thanks to the custom action and proper order of actions in the list, I just hit the undo button once and was able to tweak the values to get this look you see above.  Much, much better!

I'm sure by now you're starting to see the picture for the sequence of events happening here, but just in case you haven't noticed;  He's about to propose to her.  Storyboarding is as much an art as any other field.  Trying to find a limited number of pictures to tell a story is much like a comic book or graphic novel.  How clearly can you convey action and how many frames do you need to do to make it clear what's happening?

Some of these storyboards you will notice convey the same shot from maybe a slightly different angle, as you can see below.  The main mugger with the 504 beanie for example we got several angles of footage for the same walking sequence when they confront the couple.

Multiple camera angles achieved with just one camera and little to no rehearsal led to getting A LOT of footage for source material.  However in the end we were satisfied with most of our shots.

When we shot our Trailer shots, we only had one camera for which to do multiple takes.  Now, we are not working with a budget.  This is a project that my friends and I are doing.  The end result isn't as big of a worry for us as going out and having fun with the experience.  However, we're serious about what we want to do, so the end result will depend on how much planning we put into our production.

I also tweaked the action to purposely leave out the posterization effect on certain sequences.  You'll see more that look different below.  I felt these needed to convey more of the details than you could see with the posterization effect on.  So instead, I left the effect off, and played with exposure levels on the water-coloring effects to get the detail to pop out.

I'm sure by now you can tell these feel templated and the whited out center of the image is getting old.  I noticed this too very quickly but there is a decision of quality vs time spent in play that I felt it didn't need that much attention.  Overall, the storyboard shots do well to convey the action while at the same time removing all of the fine detail that could distract from receiving the story.  The balance needs to be in conveying what matters most in the shot while hinting at other things like camera angles, locations, action, and color theory. 

Just above - as I mentioned earlier, certain shots needed to convey more detail, and in this hand shot you can see the posterization effect and washed out center-image needed to be removed to convey the emotion of the sequence.

Depending on how important during previz is to the production, Color theory may play an important role in conveying things like who's good and who's evil, or the particular visual style of a film.  When these things aren't as important to convey in the storyboarding (like these here) You don't have to worry so much about what colors people are wearing or clothing or what background information is in your scene.

Again, these are in a rough order.  The next step is to arrange them in the chronological order based on the treatment I had written.  The treatment is also going to be roughed out before previz is finished following critical discussion about the shots we obtain.