Freekstorm VFX Blog

Here’s hoping Santa was good to all you indie filmmakers out there! He certainly was to us.



For Christmas I gave Rich Vue 8’s basic Science Fiction Pack and now he can not only get rid of that pesky watermark but he can also create pretty Sci-fi pictures which we can show on the blog and so forth. No he still can’t use this in our film-shorts so it’s pretty useless for anything other than making pretty pictures (like the one above!) but at least he can familiarize himself with the basic software, and although I REALLY wish I could have bought him the xStream version that he wants, anything is better than nothing (I hope.)

And although he has many great filmmaking books already, I also bought him some that he didn’t have (and possibly didn’t know that he wanted):

Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema by David Sonnenschein

Rebel without a Crew: How a 23 Year-old Film-maker with 7,000 Dollars Became a Hollywood Player by Robert Rodriguez (out of print but I managed to get hold of a vintage copy.)

The View from the Bridge by Nicholas Meyer (we both love Star Trek!)

Santa also brought me another rather old book about interviews with some of the best filmmakers:

The Director's Cut: The Best of "Projections" by John Boorman (am greatly looking forward to this one – it’s supposed to be a cracker!)

Oh and Santa gave us lots and lots of DVDs with VERY cool special effects, which will doubtless serve to inspire our trusty VFX artist in his creative endeavours during the coming year: Star Trek XI (for ardent trekkies everywhere, plus I have a massive crush on a certain gorgeous young Vulcan – just so you know). G.I. Joe (yeah, I know, but the kids will love it), Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, X-men Origins: Wolverine, Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian, Terminator Salvation and Monsters vs Aliens.

These are fairly typical for our taste in movies and you will all please note that there is not one single art-house film amongst them. If you want deep, meaningful highbrow movies, then you’ve come to the wrong place I’m afraid.

Let the Christmas Movie-Fest begin!!!

Labels: books