Picture Locked!

Zap! One minute it’s September, and the next it’s all of a sudden October. It’s certainly been an incredible year and it’s rapidly disappearing. So what’s been happening since my last post – well, like always, lots! This week we successfully locked down the picture edit. It certainly wasn’t easy, and our Final Cut Pro project file has so many different edits and versions within it, it’s ridiculous, but we made it in the end! But, even though this is a big step in the right direction, there is still a very long way to go, and we don’t have much time to do it all. The musical score is under way, as are the many visual effects – but even after we complete these things, we still need to do the final colour grade, the sound design, edit and mastering, plus get the final product onto all the various media and formats for distribution. Although we’re not in a bad position, we’ve basically got three or so weeks to wrap everything up, so the pressure is definitely on! So with that said, I’ve got to get back to work. Eventually (probably next month in all honestly), we will get around to uploading all the things we’ve been promising for months, like some more production stills, video blogs, camera tests, etc. But in the meantime, here are some happy snaps from a recent green screen shoot for the Sakooz trailer. We had to shoot some character pick-ups for some of the visual effects. To save money, we only build one alien character (Pinky), but for the purposes of the trailer, we’re shooting some material of the Pinky character against a green screen, then grading the costume to a different character (i.e. blue) and then digitally inserting the shots into the scenes, so that there’s more than one creature. Because the additional character only appear very small in frame, we can shoot these elements on a HVX202 (as opposed to a RED, which we used for principle photography). We also used a different cast and crew for these pick-ups. A big thank you to Julia for jumping in the costume! Judging by the photos though – it looks like she had at least a little bit of fun…