Filming! I think I loooove it!

Well, it's no secret I haven't posted anything in awhile! I sort of took a leave of absence. Probably not the best thing to do on a blog, but I decided to try some new things. Still related to my work, but just sort of a new direction! Most of the jobs we have done, have had NDA's, so that kind of made any posting difficult, and I got side tracked by my other ventures! Jody and I also did some traveling in the States, and she ran the Erie marathon, qualifying her to run the Boston Marathon next year! We also got to re-connect with our friends from Germany, who we have had the misfortune of losing touch with over the many years that have passed!

If you don't follow me on Facebook, I will update you here on the project that has occupied most of my existence outside of work. I have been pouring myself into the film-making world. Not the prop end of things, we do that already, but shooting and directing. Nothing glamorous like being hired by a top notch production company, but just a few of my own personal endeavors. The first attempt was a complete disaster, sort of. It was to be a short film about quad-copter drones, but shot like a documentary, as if they were alive, and thriving in the world. But it quickly became impossible to film. They're far too small to shoot, and when you are  close enough to them to recognize any of the characters, you can't keep them in frame. Add wind, location issues, and all the other headaches........well, it was time to move on.
So I wrote a short movie trailer, for a film that doesn't exist. This way, I get all the fun of shooting, without having to deal with script continuity, as well as wrapping everything up at the end!
I really am happy with the final outcome. It involved learning software, how to edit footage properly, syncing audio, compositing effects (largely to key out a few things that no-one noticed were in the shot at the time :/ ) The list goes on, but wow, what an experience, especially when I get to decide on everything. Which isn't always as awesome as one would think!

We made most of the 'specialty' props, and a big shout out to my buddy Joe, who also had a huge hand in the making of this little film trailer. Both on props, and planning and acting, so thanks again Dude!

For a short little video, it took a ton of work! From writing, production design, lighting, blah, blah, blah. We shot the bulk of it in one night, from sunset to sunrise, and had a small crew of about 8. There were some pick-up shots after the initial filming, which also added more time to the project as well.
So I think for the rest of this post, I will attach some images of the whole process, in no particular order!
Thanks for comin' back again!
8)
JWO

Painting all the way..............

The painting took a long time on this build. Almost everything was hand painted, as masking for different colors would have been a nightmare!

I added a small OPEN sign that we mounted to the ice-cream sculpture out front of the store. This way, ice cream will be available 24 hours a day, forever! Muhahaha!

The roadway pattern we had printed, and the sidewalks were 1/4" MDF painted. The buildings were the worst thing ever to paint. The light acrylic colors have no opacity at all. This meant a minimum of 3 coats on all the trim. This was Jody's cross to bear for a couple of days! If I ever do anything similar to this, I would laser cut craft foam for the trim, and glue it on. Painting the trim was a colossal waste of time. The other thing that we ended up doing differently, was the awnings. And every building had them. Because I squashed the buildings on the z axis, this left very little separation between the awning stripes. This meant that painting 3 coats on every other stripe was quickly turning into a very amateurish looking building.
I decided to cut vinyl for the stripes instead. But this meant figuring out HOW to draw something to cut. After pondering my dilemma at 2 am, I had an idea!

I was able to select the polygon edgeloop of every other awning stripe, extract it, and export it out actual size for vinyl cutting.
This worked almost flawlessly! Just some very minor tweaking of the cut graphic, on one of the buildings! It's amazing what a clean, crisp, opaque stripe can do for the overall look of the whole project!

All in all, this was a great build! The time allotted was about 1 day less than I would have liked, but we got it done! Everyone loved the build, and it was an overall size of 7 feet by 5 feet. Big enough that they won't have to worry about shooting off the base at the edge of frame!

Ahhhhhh...........I looove my job!

Jody and I wish all of you a VERY happy Holiday Season, and we wish that the New Year brings every one of you happiness, health and wealth!
Until 2016 my friends!

8)
Jamie and Jody



 

Back to the Miniatures!

We sort of got caught off guard with 2 builds, and 2 new shoot dates for before Christmas. We shot the second one yesterday, but I can't disclose anything until next summer :(

But, back to the interrupted miniatures build we were working on!

The next little asset I had to make was the picnic table that will sit outside the ice cream store.
I re-modeled the original umbrella model they supplied, just to make the machining a little cleaner.

I brought my model into Aspire, and found a good height for the split. It was a little too thick to double side machine from 2" material, so I cut it in 2 halves.

We also got a request for 4 more additional buildings to populate around the set. They didn't need to be as complicated as the ice cream store, but they needed to still look good. And with the deadline quickly approaching, I decided to try a different approach to them.

I brought the buildings into Hexagon, rotated them to camera a little bit, then squashed them on the z axis. I did have to elongate the depth on all the details, so when I squished it down, there would still be some detail to be able to paint.

Once into Aspire, I set the z height to exactly 2 inches, so as to fit into the material we're working with.

The end result looks really good with some side lighting to make the details really pop.

Meanwhile, Jody was making some pretty decent headway on the painting portion of things!

I finished up on the interior components, and Jody had finished working the little ice cream chairs.
We went with laminated prints for the walls and menu sign. The case-goods were built from .060" styrene, and put together much the same way you would a real cabinet. There was nothing from the cg company for the interior, so we designed it on the fly. This is a 3 walled set, with no ceiling. We just extended the walls up high enough, that no ceiling wouldn't be an issue at all.
8)
JWO