Production - POTENTIAL CRISIS AVERTED

The brief panic caused by yesterday's Blender issues is past. The program on the school machines was no less stubborn, however during an exam revision session Greg (a tech-savy guy) came to media and re-encoded Blender's render process for the Cycles engine. 

In the mean time, screenshot. 

Above: The rendering particle elements for a Blender shot at the start of the second verse.

Production - THAT'S VEXING

In trying to re-render Blender shots to make them more suitable for some of the Greenscreen footage, I'm experiencing some rather vexing technical difficulties.

My short-term solution to this will be to take the project files from my Macbook at home to the Macs at the media department tomorrow - and hopefully Blender won't be feeling so stubborn on the iMacs there.

Production - GREENSCREENED

The screenshots above show my beginnings of greenscreen editing - some problems occurred, such as tight time limits resulting in often rushed shots, meaning that the greenscreen in some shots has proved harder to key out than in others - also some Blender files have to be re-rendered out as multiple files with various elements - for example, background and foreground elements much be rendered separately in order to place Louis in the midst of the waveforms.

Research - AUDIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE DEMOGRAPHICS

Below is a screenshot from the demographic analytics for the BTS video of You Know My Name, which gives limited feedback on my target audience. 

To expand on type of target audience I am aiming at, I compiled a number of pie charts made from key information provided by the questionnaire mentioned in the previous post. Below is a screenshot of the questionnaire itself. 

Research - HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOND, SOUNDCLOUD AND SYNERGY

The video above is from the offical James Bond youtube channel, in which cast and crew from Skyfall discuss the 50th Anniversary of Bond.

The media synergy of the moment creates the perfect time for me to release my music video. With the entire target audience of 007 indulging themselves in the 23rd Bond film, Skyfall, whilst celerating the anniversary of the Franchise which began with Doctor No in 1962, a newly released music video of You Know My Name (which was the theme of Casino Royale, 2006) will be very much welcomed. Below is a sort sound clip, uploaded to SoundCloud and embedded onto this blog post.

To clarify the media synergy theory concerning Skyfall, Casino Royale and my music video, I prepared questionnare for potential viewers of the video. The details of this will be in the following blogpost.

Production - CALL SHEET FOR GREENSCREEN SHOOT

Above: the call sheet

Below: using the 'Reports' section of Celtx to create the call sheet from items in the Master Catalogue

Far Below: The Master Catalogue

Production - PREPARING FOR GREENSCREEN SHOOT

Now that the final CGI renders are complete, I can begin hunting for an afternoon in which to shoot the greenscreen material needed - the objective of which is to put Louis, my actor, into the CG world. Shots in which the audio waveforms overlap the area where Louis would stand are also being re-rendered, landscape and waveforms separately (this allows me to place Louis in the landscape, but behind the waveforms).

Production - PYRO SHOOT CANCELLED

The shoot was on until Saturday morning, when I received a text message from Greg explaining he was too ill to do the shoot. Ultimately it didn't happen, and bearing in mind Greg's busy schedule I may need to find an alternative way to composite in the sparks.

Production - FINAL CUT EXPRESS

Due to previously mentioned technical difficulties, I found attempting to edit on Premier - which was continually loosing render files - impossible. 

The Project after immigration to Final Cut Express

In response to this sticky situation, I brought my own Macbook Pro into school last Tuesday and spent a solid 5 hours moving clips from the Media iMac onto my Macbook, then using time-codes from the Premier file to A) Trim each and every clip as it was  and B) Position it in the exact same location in the timeline. 

Due to a slight change in the location of the soundtrack in the Final Cut project file, each clip was slightly out of time and needed tailored positioning. However this painfully slow process paid off - each and every clip is now in perfect sync, whereas the Premier file had some issues with syncing.

I will now continue to use After Effects for compositing on the Media iMac, however I will use Final Cut Express to edit the music video. In addition to this, I have stopped using Blender to render files for the music video on the iMac and have begun using Blender for this purpose on my Macbook at home - which has almost tripled render speeds, as it is a faster computer. 

Due to all these changes, I think it's almost a happy accident that the Premier file became faulty... the benefits from moving the clips onto the Macbook are near-overwhelming, as my personal preference favours Final Cut anyway.

Production - PARTICLES EXPERIMENTATION

To work on something special for the penultimate CG shot, I have been experimenting with particle simulations in Blender. The Experiments are above.

Production - PYROTECHNIC SHOOT COMING UP

After much scrambling for an afternoon in which to shoot the pyrotechnic assets for the video, Greg and I have agreed to do the shoot this coming Saturday. There are reportedly 11 bought pyrotechnics, and as many DIY pyrotechnics as Greg can make by Saturday night. We will shoot at night in his driveway to achieve the pitch black look needed as the backdrop. The basic plan is to shoot a minimum of three takes for each pyrotechnic. 

Production - TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

Coming back from half term, I am experiencing a few 'minor' technical difficulties.

 All programs had been locked by the administrator, unintentionally, and this somehow meant that when my Premier Pro file was finally unlocked, the render files had vanished. 

Each and every clip needs to be rendered in the timeline; live links to After Effects have been broken. However attempts to render are slow and sometimes cause Premier to crash - on top of this the After Effects files have to be rendered out as self contained files.

This may set me back a week or so in editing, however the shoots can still go ahead.