WORLD ROBOT BOXING CHAMPIONSHIP 2097!
Its done!
Yes! Another film finished. Damn it feels good and also I can finally put my green screen set up away. The Robots are lightly customized Lego Robot Factory toys bought for less than $10 each. To be honest they aren't well articulated and this made animating them a challenge, but my budget didn't run to professional quality armatures which would be about $200 per robot.
The inspiration for this movie, came from 2 films, Death Race and Real Steel. In the process of making this film I became very interested in sci fi films from the nineteen fifties, especially the works of Ray Harryhausen.
The inspiration for this movie, came from 2 films, Death Race and Real Steel. In the process of making this film I became very interested in sci fi films from the nineteen fifties, especially the works of Ray Harryhausen.
What went right?
It looks how I thought it would
On some of my previous projects, my ambition has massively outstripped my abilities. I'm specifically thinking about my attempt to make an apocalyptic car chase movie using RC cars. With this project, I picked something where I could basically control the scope. The project looks very much how I expected it to.
Also, everything I built was used in the film. I didn't spend a lot of time making stuff that didn't get used for once.
Green screen worked flawlessly
My green screen is a sheet of green cloth purchased from tubetape.com pinned to a large sheet of foam core. Its fairly flat, but that isn't the key (no pun intended) to green screening. The key is to have softboxes lighting the set up from each side at 45 degrees. These provide a uniform soft light an eliminate any shadows caused by wrinkles in the cloth. The puppets were lit by another 2 lights. I was able to key very easily in Vegas with this set up.
Vegas isn't Crashing all the time!
I use Sony Vegas Pro 9.0 as my editing and effects package. With some of my other projects, by the time the project is complete the final master Vegas file so so complex and scary, my PC struggles to play it back at the correct speed, which makes syncing audio and the like very hard. In the past Vegas became unstable with my big messy projects, in this instance however it behaved flawlessly because I thought ahead and broke the project down into more manageable sub projects.
Great background shots!
A trip to China and India Basins in SF netted me with some fantastic background plates. Its amazing down there, I can't believe it doesn't get used to real filming more often. Ideal for both historical and Zombie movies.
Great Music!
Once again Micah came up trumps with an awesome sound track. Can't thank him enough for his work here! Want great music? Ask him!
On some of my previous projects, my ambition has massively outstripped my abilities. I'm specifically thinking about my attempt to make an apocalyptic car chase movie using RC cars. With this project, I picked something where I could basically control the scope. The project looks very much how I expected it to.
Also, everything I built was used in the film. I didn't spend a lot of time making stuff that didn't get used for once.
Green screen worked flawlessly
My green screen is a sheet of green cloth purchased from tubetape.com pinned to a large sheet of foam core. Its fairly flat, but that isn't the key (no pun intended) to green screening. The key is to have softboxes lighting the set up from each side at 45 degrees. These provide a uniform soft light an eliminate any shadows caused by wrinkles in the cloth. The puppets were lit by another 2 lights. I was able to key very easily in Vegas with this set up.
Vegas isn't Crashing all the time!
I use Sony Vegas Pro 9.0 as my editing and effects package. With some of my other projects, by the time the project is complete the final master Vegas file so so complex and scary, my PC struggles to play it back at the correct speed, which makes syncing audio and the like very hard. In the past Vegas became unstable with my big messy projects, in this instance however it behaved flawlessly because I thought ahead and broke the project down into more manageable sub projects.
Great background shots!
A trip to China and India Basins in SF netted me with some fantastic background plates. Its amazing down there, I can't believe it doesn't get used to real filming more often. Ideal for both historical and Zombie movies.
Great Music!
Once again Micah came up trumps with an awesome sound track. Can't thank him enough for his work here! Want great music? Ask him!
What went wrong?
Live action shooting
It took me ages to get around to doing the live action shooting, This project should have been done in 3 weeks, but it wound up taking 3 months because of this. I had scheduling conflicts and when we actually did it, we were in a rush because a lady was watching us and making a cell call. I was half expecting the cops to show up and arrest us for being terrorists. Also my little sony handycam doesn't give the best results. I'd really like a camera with similar ease of use but better image quality. The 5DII is just too freaking slow and hard to use when you are shooting guerilla style.
I'd really like to be able to take my time in a cool location with good actors on my next project. Hopefully I can find a way to make that happen.
Animation Quality
The animation quality isn't where I would have liked it to be. Some of this is because of limitations with the puppets I used, but also I think an animation table so I could work with less bending over would have helped a bit.
It took me ages to get around to doing the live action shooting, This project should have been done in 3 weeks, but it wound up taking 3 months because of this. I had scheduling conflicts and when we actually did it, we were in a rush because a lady was watching us and making a cell call. I was half expecting the cops to show up and arrest us for being terrorists. Also my little sony handycam doesn't give the best results. I'd really like a camera with similar ease of use but better image quality. The 5DII is just too freaking slow and hard to use when you are shooting guerilla style.
I'd really like to be able to take my time in a cool location with good actors on my next project. Hopefully I can find a way to make that happen.
Animation Quality
The animation quality isn't where I would have liked it to be. Some of this is because of limitations with the puppets I used, but also I think an animation table so I could work with less bending over would have helped a bit.