FORGE: A Feature Film by 500 Cuts

Today, I dusted off the MIDI keyboard and fired up some Reason (a sampler/sequencer) and tried to bust out some droney/spacey tracks to put in the movie.  I’ve been listening to the scores for Sunshine and Soderberg’s Solaris for reference and I think I have something that’s pretty close.  The problem now is that I only have that one little track.  So I need more.

There are two abilities I have wished for all my life that I have not yet achieved:  Music composition and drawing.  I know it takes practice, but I want these things so badly that I am more quickly discouraged by my inabilities in these arenas.  I am in awe of guys like John Ashlee and Jason Pyke who bust out sketches in seconds with ultimate confidence.  It starts like a scribble, then an instant later, the mess transforms into genius.  Ash draws a single, casual stroke… just a simple curve… then a few more…. then it’s a face!  I can decipher the individual strokes and even replicate them, but when it’s done, it doesn’t remotely resemble his creation.  My copy is just a jumble of lines.   Why, dammit, WHY?

Music is very similar.  I am able to hear the notes and the parts and the measures of the parts.  But when I re-assemble the parts, the essence is lost.  It’s just a soul-less zombie pastiche that drips from the speakers and dies on the floor.

At any rate, I’ll post my test tomorrow and see what people think.

Here’s Mike Gibson’s quick concept render for the octahedron in scene 42.  The idea is that the tech is airborne (from phase 2), and the system no longer needs the helmet to communicate (phase 3), so Paul (Luke Clements) is able to think up a simple shape and the tech forms that shape seemingly out of thin air.  Paul chooses an octahedron because it represents the sodium chloride molecule that he remembers from basic chemistry.  He remembers salt because he’s a chef.  After successfully communicating the image to the system, Paul then thinks of something for which he feels very strongly.  This is a key turning point in the story.

Paul imagines an octahedron

Sorry for the minor hiatus, but as some of you know, I also dabble in web-hosting.  I recently upgraded my situation to take advantage of a major increase in bandwidth.  If anyone needs a site, just say the word.  $20/YEAR!  Can you believe that? Anyway, the domain switch took a couple days so that’s where the blog has been.

Back to the movie now!

The forces of technology continually conspire against me. When my two month old 28″ Hanns-G monitor blinks out… When Premiere crashes every other time after weeks of working perfectly…. When my computer won’t see a hard drive with all my footage on it… ALL IN A THREE DAY PERIOD! With every blow, they seek to return me to pen and paper.

Don’t they know who I am?

Yes, I have battled the Tech Lords for nigh on 30 years. Since my first computer class in the summer of 1980 in which the teacher broke the 1.77 MHz Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I to this morning when my custom 2.5GHz quad core went into an infinite reboot loop… The Tech Lords have done their best to keep me from achieving my goals. But with very few exceptions, I have emerged victorious. 1980? Fixed it. This morning? Fixed it. Hanns-G? bad adapter, monitor fine. Premiere? Corrupt font file, software fine. Hard drive? Bad pin in the cable.

Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that pride and arrogance will be your downfall when dealing with computers and data.  But hear this, Tech Dieties…

When my heart beats its last, I will at last pass into the realm of The Knowing. No technological malfunction will ever stand in my way! I will relentlessly hunt down your gremlin minions and crush them with my bare hands.

Keep coming, you sons-a-bitches. I’ll be waiting.

The End… ?

There’s a company in California called the United Film Organization (UFO, get it?).  They primarily make movies for overseas and the Sci Fi (SyFy?) Channel.  They crank them out fast and cheap.  Last night on Sci Fi, I watched Star Runners aka Termination Shock (SF likes to change the titles).  This movie is a 50-50 blend of David Twohy’s Pitch Black and Joss Whedon’s Serenity, and it stars the guy who played Trip on Voyager (a show I’ve seen  maybe once).

Here’s the thing… Star Runners was well-acted, decently written (serious!), and had all the classic elements of a good horror sci fi.  Two things ruined it.  Poor photography and bad compositing.  I won’t say “bad CG” because most of the CG was really good for an SF Channel movie.  It was the way the elements were combined along with the way the shots were lit, composed, and selected that made it laughable.

Why do I bring this up?  Because I know what I have ahead of me….about 20 vfx shots.  If any one of them doesn’t fit in properly, the whole movie is at risk.  So I have that to look forward to.  Which is nice.

At least our photography is good!

A week ago my good friend Dan Herrera stopped by and we (he) devised a front end for the Amazon cloud computing services some of you have heard me talk about.  When I originally started this project, I knew there would be a lot of rendering.  Not necessarily heavy frames, but a lot of them.  I was ready to build 5 or 6 computers and make a render farm at a cost of about $5000.  Then Dan suggested Amazon’s EC2 service.

It sounded great, but I’m a hardware guy.  I knew I could build 5 computers in a couple hours and was concerned the EC2 would be too hairy to manage easily.  Dan showed up, asked me a few questions, and cranked out some code in Ruby-on-Rails in about 20 mins.  We had a fully functioning setup by the time he left.  Really exciting stuff (for me at least).

In simple terms, this means I can render 24 hours a day for a month on ten computers – 7200 hours of rendering – for under $1000.  That’s way more economical than buying machines and being stuck with them after.  Yeah, I could sell them after, but this is scalable and lower maintenance.  And I don’t have to pay for the electricity!

Stay tuned!

I’m trying to get a few people started on the visual effects since that will take the most trial and error and therefore, the most time.  Here’s a rough I did in photoshop to give Rafael an idea of what I’m thinking for the shot.  This literally took 5 mins, but I think it’ll do a better job describing my concept than a half hour phone call.

Before

After

Let me just say that when you have a lot to do on a project, sometimes the thing you’re currently doing isn’t nearly as interesting as the stuff you still have to do. Not to say that I don’t like editing… I love it… but after editing a few hours, I start thinking about playing around with Realflow or Houdini (software applications for visfx). Then I think I might need a better graphics card so I start shopping. It’s a battle to stay on task and keep the focus going.

So here I am, updating the blog and talking about focus! Back to it! Hunker down!

I’ve reached scene 33 out of 66 scenes.  It’s not technically the halfway point in the what will ultimately be the running time of the movie, but close enough!  Back at it m0re today.  But I may have to take a break to edit some sounds on a couple commercials.  Gotta pay the bills!

One thing I learned very early in my filmmaking experience is that whether people are voluteering or being paid top dollar to work on your project, you gotta feed them right. People rarely seem to complain about working on a movie when the food is good.

I’d like to introduce our readers to Clara Ard (I need a photo!). Walker suggested I contact her for food because she has experience catering. So I did. I knew it would go well when our first meeting lasted a mere 20 minutes. And 18 of that was me explaining the project. Walker isn’t the kind of person who would vouch for a slouch, but Clara killed it! The food was always ready on time, it was always enough for everybody, and it was always exceptional. Ask anyone about their experience on Forge, then ask them about the food. It was truly great.

It’s expensive to find a good food person, but so much more costly when the crew is unhappy.

She caters events of all kinds. Call her!
clara.ard[at]gmail.com