When I lent my services to a collegue who was working on a film about 12 years ago, I was introduced to the world of cnc. I remember watching this huge machining centre milling out a slab of mdf and turning it into a fantastic set of gears. I knew that it would have taken me hours to achieve the same thing with traditional power tools. I decided then that I would invest in a cnc router for my own business Oxenham Design. At that time I could turn on a computer, but even to check email seemed like a crazy set of operations. I persevered and learned every piece of relevant software I could get my hands on. I am now fortunate enough to be using Vectric's ASPIRE software, and Techno cnc routers, which has helped us to create some amazing projects, both in part, or in full. I thought that this blog would be a great place to share "behind the scenes" adventures with the software, materials and equipment we use, as well as the projects we build.

Monday 13 January 2014

Returning to Earth!

Due to technical difficulties, I was unable to get a time lapse of the pre-light. It's too bad, but that's how it rolls sometimes!

With the set pieces all located in they're final spot, the lighting crew set to work, running miles of cable and lights.
 The art director gave a hand at carving up some additional rocks that could be placed around the set where needed. In the end, it was only 3 extra rocks that we needed. If you can't tell, the studio was freezing first thing in the morning. And with the giant loading door open for bringing in the gear, the -40c air made things very uncomfortable! Even though the studio lighting eventually warmed up the studio, I wore my snowmobile suit until around 2 pm!

We painted up the 3 rocks in the wardrobe room just outside the studio. This was quite a bit warmer for paint drying than the studio was.
The first thing lit was the stars on the backdrop. For the first part of the morning, the art dept. rode around on the lift, punching holes through the canvas, to let the light blast through.


It wasn't long before things really started to come together!
Jody went around and filled any remaining seems with the sand ground cover. This was a mix of crushed brick and orange and red sand. However, once the moisture in the crushed brick dried off, it was far to light in color. It looked way better wet. Instead of wetting the set down every 2 minutes, to keep the color great, I sprayed it down with Pledge acrylic floor polish. This kept the brick wet looking. In order to remove the gloss from the floor polish treatment, the large rocks got dusted with spray glue to mat everything down.


 The lighting was quite dramatic in the end. Perfect! I couldn't shoot any more pictures after this, as the toy was on set, and I don't know if I can show pictures of it or not.
Another fun miniature base, these are my favourite by far!
8)
JWO








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