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

It has been a busy Christmas week here at Freekstorm Entertainment. Rich has spent several days designing CG animation for some friends (alas, we can’t show it here until they are ready to launch their own product) but IMO it looks very cool. However, we can tell you all about what Rich has been up to in Vue 8.

Vue 8 is exceedingly cool software which creates entire worlds. E-on Software (who design it) call it “digital nature” and honestly this stuff is so cool that I’d (almost) sell my soul to buy the xStream version of the licence which integrates Vue into Softimage so that virtual landscapes can be integrated into your film. This software has been used on many, many major films such as Terminator Salvation, Pirates of the Caribbean, Season 5 onwards of Stargate Atlantis...and so on. Vue 8 is the landscape generator for Industrial Light and Magic. It is.... the Holy Grail of VFX landscaping!

You can create complete new backdrops for your movie, fully populated virtual worlds with trees, virtual planets, the list is endless. The only limit is your imagination (and your wallet)! Having seen what this baby can do, all of our ideas for future movie shorts depend on it. Remember that we don’t shoot on location if we can help it. We’d much rather green-screen the entire thing and design the landscape afterwards. Why? Because we wanna do sci-fi shorts, and the locations we need don’t exist on this planet. I know because I’ve looked. We simply can’t boldy go where no sci-fi movie-short has gone before without mega-cool extra-terrestrial landscapes. Got the script, got the camera and sound equipment, got some young and talented actors, got the green-screen studio (sort of – it’s still in pieces.) Alas, no alien planet. Bummer!

Unfortunately the cost for realising our filmmaking runs to over one thousand pounds and there is no way in hell that we can afford our dream-planet any time soon! Still, nothing wrong with a bit of “Iwantitis” is there? After all, it is very important to have goals in one’s business plan. Goals move you forwards, they make you try harder, they give you something to aim for. And let's face it - it is the producer's job to achieve the totally impossible so that her director can make the movie he's always dreamed of!

So my New Year Resolution for 2010 is to earn enough in the day-job to be able to fund this VITAL AND VERY NECESSARY addition to our filmmaking software family.

So get cracking on the day-job, Rich. I wanna make sci-fi!!!



Resources:

e-on Software have a free personal learning edition available for download here. Be careful though - it's a seductive little beastie and you'll quickly want to upgrade to a better version so that you can a) get rid of that pesky watermark, and b) have access too all those mega-cool extra features. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Labels: CG, Software

One of the masterpieces of cinema is Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. The film opens with the famous deathbed scene, which could easily stand alone by itself as a most excellent short film. As he dies, Kane’s final whispered word is “Rosebud.” This single word forms the mystery of the film – “rosebud” is his final and most powerful memory which defines him as a person, the key to unravelling the mystery of his life. “Rosebud is the emblem of security, hope and innocence of childhood, which a man can spend his life seeking to regain.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone could have such an epiphany? A single extraordinary moment which forever changes the direction of their life? A recent interesting article in The Independent addressed this very subject and detailed the Rosebud moments of famous directors which ignited their passion for filmmaking and thus changed the course of their lives forever. After reading this, I figured that most great directors experienced such epiphanies, so I asked my own trusty director to identify his very own “rosebud moment” which made him want to go into filmmaking.

“I don’t believe in epiphanies,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve never had one.”

“What? Never?”

“Nope. I think they’re a bit too melodramatic, to be honest.”

Well, so much for defining moments. It turns out that my dear director believes in evolution not epiphanies. He believes in a more logical (for that read “Vulcan”) approach where a person’s direction in life changes due to cumulated experiences, rather than because a light-bulb goes on somewhere. He is way too sensible for epiphanies – he is far more likely to change the course of his life in response to an intellectual challenge, rather than a sudden revelation.

He told me that when he was a kid, he spent endless hours watching t.v. animation shorts such as Morph in Take Heart. He was inspired enough to want to make animations like these, but in those days the opportunities simply didn’t exist for teenagers to create things like that, no matter how ambitious they were. So he shelved his ambitions whilst growing up and instead became fascinated with computers. He threw himself into programming in a big way, and this formed the cornerstone of his career path. As technology developed, he began to see the possibilities of reviving his interest in animation, not through stop-motion but instead through designing CG characters and animating them on the computer.

“The latest CG animation technology is still in its infancy,” he says. “A few years ago the average six minute animated short film would take around two years to do. I want to develop technology that will reduce the two year period to something manageable, like three months or so. It is only in the last year that the price of the CG software tools has come down enough to make this timescale possible for the serious amateur. Now the sky’s the limit.”

“But why animation?” I asked.

“The real world exists,” he says. “You just have to put a camera in it and record it. You can then put your character into the real world and see how it interacts. I love mixing reality and fantasy. That’s what telling stories is all about.”

So? Less of a single rosebud moment, and more of a slowly growing shrub?

“I’m not trying to open a door to my past,” he says. “There was no epiphany I’m afraid. I know you think there should be, but frankly, I’m just not that deep a person. All I want to do is to tell stories. Now, thanks to modern CG technology, finally I can.”

Labels: director, filmmaking

No doubt some of you may be wondering why we haven’t started on our next little film by now. Well the reasons are threefold. First, we have been promoting the two we’ve made so far, plus my oldest son’s school Media Studies Professor showed Diabolus Domi to his class, and it “kinda went epic” (in the words of my son) from then onwards. I will admit that we were petrified what my son’s school would think of it, and it was a HUGE relief that it was well received. In fact eight out of ten teenagers loved it. Hurrah! It’s good to know our movie appealed to its target audience!

My sons’ classmates have been asking when the next movie is due out. Well, we decided to skip the next fest (due for completion by March) because of the theme, which is Betrayal-Fest. Try as we might, we just couldn’t think of a six minute script involving betrayal which was uplifting, funny and involved visual effects. Yes this is probably because we’re not that good at scriptwriting yet, but the only ideas we came up with involved song and animation, which are great ideas but which we definitely would NOT be able to do by the March deadline because of the time required to do the animation.

Also, we have no green-screen studio! Yes, that’s right, folks. We are decorating! Rich has decided to re-do our old studio and transform it into a green screen Cyc studio, on a miniscule budget, I might add. (In case anyone is wondering, “Cyc” stands for “cyclorama”, so called because when you look at it, the walls appear to be infinite and you cannot see where the edges are.) Building the new studio is not a small task and we will be pretty busy with this for the next few months, and it simply isn’t possible to squeeze in another short film in the meantime, no matter how much we want to!

So I guess it’s “all systems go” for getting the new studio completed ASAP in time for the subsequent DVX fest in the summer. Now....where can I get hold of twenty-five sheets of MDF, a limitless supply of hardboard, new recessed lighting and several gallons of bright green paint? Oh the things we do for our art....

Resources:

If anyone is interested in building a cyc-studio, we recommend the DVD Visual Effects for Directors by Hollywood Camera Work, which explains the “how-to” process in detail.

Labels: green screening, studio

All too often nowadays, if you want to go see a movie it becomes a nightmare trying to find one that doesn’t offer anything more than big explosions, blood, guts or puerile humour. The problem is that in the current ghastly economic climate, most production companies and film distributors can’t and won’t take a chance on smaller independent films that don’t appeal to the masses.

A lot of it is to do with contacts, of course -if you know someone who knows someone in Hollywood, that would be ideal! Unfortunately in the real world, marketing your indie movie is becoming increasingly difficult as time goes on. Way too many distribution companies have closed down due to recessionary forces and it seems as though the whole independent film market is in complete meltdown.

So how do you pimp your movie? Well, I’ve spent many hours researching this very subject, and at the end of the day I think that for small indie filmmakers such as us, trying to get the Big Boys to pick up our films will only result in years of disappointment. Unless we experience a miracle (not that I’m opposed to miracles, mind you, but they are pretty rare) we are almost certainly doomed to failure – wishful thinking won’t change that one iota. Now I'm all for trying to sell your indie film, but I do think that it is also wise to be ever-so-slightly realistic and look for additional ways to market your movie.

Why won’t the conventional film-marketing model work?

Well, even if we had been making films for years (which we haven’t) there is a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting a distributor to pick up any of our films (past present or future.) Most indie filmmakers still try to market their film “the old fashioned way”, trying to follow up contacts in the industry and thus get their film noticed by a distribution company, but after many months or years of trying, they are forced to admit defeat. If you show your indie film to the Big Boys, they might love it, but that won’t make a blind bit of difference if there is no market for it. If your film is “too niche” then frankly you’re going to get precisely nowhere with conventional film distributors. They simply can’t afford to take the chance on you.

Do not despair, indie filmmakers! There is a huge market out there...millions and millions of viewers who really want to watch your film. All you have to do is look for the best way to find your audience. In this respect, the internet is your friend. There are amazing opportunities out there to bypass the middleman and engage with your audience directly. Self-marketing is your key to success.

You could start by showing your indie film on Open Film or U-Tube. Yes you are giving away months (even years) of work away for free, but if you develop a big enough following then there’s a higher chance you will develop a loyal fan club. The more films you make and show for free online, the more fans you get, the more they will learn to love what you do and the more they will want to see. They might even be prepared to pay for it. Remember The Hunt for Gollum which was the blood, sweat and tears of 150 volunteers, and it has a huge following of devoted fans – many of whom would gladly pay a small online fee to see a sequel (I know I would!)

Marketing by word-of-mouth is a way more effective marketing tool than any other. Don’t concentrate on making money for now, instead concentrate on selling yourself. Your passion for your movie, your ideas, both are the ultimate effective marketing tool. Share them with others and concentrate on building your fan base.

You should also submit your movies to online film festivals, and don’t forget the many local festivals around either. Some may charge a small entry fee, but it’s worth it just to get your work out there and seen. Don’t be disheartened if you don’t win the festivals – the point isn’t to win (although it’s nice if you do) – the most important thing is you get your name known. Entering lots of festivals is a good learning experience – fellow directors and filmmakers are a friendly bunch and highly knowledgeable. Not only will you get some detailed reviews of your films, but you will learn a massive amount about filmmaking and your own films will improve as a result.

What about paying for advertising? Well, IMO you don’t have to spend a lot of money on advertising nowadays because an infinite variety of internet marketing tools are at your disposal. Make sure your film has a decent web site, a blog, a twitter account, a Facebook account (we can’t bring ourselves to do the Facebook thingy yet – ugh – but alas that day is coming.) These suggestions are not an exhaustive list by any means. There are many more online resources and cool little marketing tools, as well as many web sites where you can upload your movies where film buffs will watch them. The key is exposure. Talk to your fans via twitter, your blog or forums. Engage with individuals. Be friendly, open and don’t be afraid to let your passion for your work shine through. Passion is infectious, and remember that people always love to watch movies, so pimping your own might be easier than you think.

The more you engage with your potential audience directly through online communities, the more likely they are to want to see what you do. Yes, this method of promoting your film is very time-consuming and extremely hard work, but the potential opportunities are huge. Besides, no-one ever said that building an audience was easy.

Of course the acid question which you’re asking is “Will you ever make money by giving your movies away for free?” Well, many of the top internet marketing gurus believe that you will - if your fan base is big enough. The internet is developing at a furious pace and in a few years time, I believe that many indie movies will be self-distributed this way. It will be common-place for people to pay a few dollars to watch a movie online. Or maybe you can break your movie into episodes – give the first part away for free, and charge for subsequent episodes once your readers are hooked into the story. But you’ll only be able to charge money for your films if your name is out there, if you are well known and loved by your thousands of fans, each of which you have personally engaged with at some stage. Your audience must be familiar with and learn to love your movie style so much that they are clamouring for more, and then and only then will they be prepared to pay hard cash to see it.

The key to the future of filmmaking is to use the growth of the internet as a tool for engaging with your audience directly and building your movie-fan base slowly, step by step.

So prove the big boys wrong. Make them sit up and notice just how darn good you really are.

Pimp your indie movie by using the power of free.

Labels: marketing

One of the more challenging aspects of making Diabolus Domi was mastering the timing. To experienced filmmakers, timing comes naturally. To newbies like us, it’s a whole new art form.

Timing is difficult to explain and even harder to learn. Much of it is to do with instinct. As a writer I have learned that timing in a piece of writing is critical to its success. You can’t get the message of the piece across effectively if your timing is wrong. Writers mutter about cadences and rhythm. Directors talk about beats. In filmmaking, beats are the high and low points of the film – the moment in the story where something significant happens which contributes to the story. Beats are used to pace the film so that the story moves forwards (roughly every five minutes in most popular American films). Beats are not necessarily merely different scenes – you could have more than one beat in a scene, for example, or one spread over several scenes. Between each beat a sequence occurs. The sequence is often a series of scenes that relates to the last beat and leads up to the next beat.

Still awake so far? O.K. the next point to make is that beats aren’t the only form of timing within a film. You also have to figure out the pacing within a scene itself: for example, do the actors move at the right speed? Do pauses occur in the right place? For the most part, this happens naturally with real actors – they physically move and interact according to normal live, human behaviour, so even if the pacing doesn’t fall quite right, the process can be further refined in editing.

However with a CG character, the pacing becomes much more complicated. Because you have to simulate human (or animal) behavior and make it as realistic as possible, then the movement of the CG character has to be worked out from scratch. This is very difficult to do, and is further complicated by the fact that visual effects are not necessarily best displayed in real time or according to the laws of physics. With VFX, hours and hours of careful planning are required and even after you have wired the character to move realistically, you still need to rework, rework, rework until the timing is perfect.

At the point in our film when Mervyn materializes in the bathroom, this took a huge amount of reworking of the CG to get the timing right. If Merv materialized too quickly (real time), the viewer’s eye couldn’t follow the visual effect because it was way too fast, so Rich had to re-render the scene and slow it right down, so that the monster materialized more slowly and the viewer could clearly see what was going on. Visual effects artists often forget to do this – often they simply choose to make their visual effect “real time” which means that the effect whizzes past so fast that the eye can’t figure out what on earth is going on. Think of Transformers – maybe I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but I had huge problems figuring out which character did what to whom because the CG action was in real time. There was special effect after special effect – my poor little brain rapidly became overloaded and I couldn’t figure out what on earth was happening (not helped by the fact that one big stompy robot looks much the same as the next at high speed.) The action was just too fast.

So the conundrum for the VFX artist is that he wants to show off his special effects, but he has to judge the timing incredibly precisely so that it is a) realistic to the viewer b) not too fast so that the viewer can keep up (the human brain finds it easier to absorb human movement at speed, but harder to process how a CG monster moves, so this point is critical) and c) the VFX timing has to be in keeping with the story. In our little example above, Rich had to slow down the monster materialization because smoke couldn’t coagulate and form matter that fast. It’s all about appearing real enough to the viewer so that he can accept it as reality within the confines of the story – even though he knows inside that it’s not. To take another example, for me, Spiderman doesn’t work because his CG character swings from building to building too fast – the character looks unnatural. O.K. so Spiderman may be a superhero but he swings so fast that it really does look too cartoony.

In VFX, the transition between the real world and the CG world has to be relatively seamless (and our viewers very politely told us that we need to work on this!) Everything has to look and feel believable to the viewer’s imagination. This is dependent on rhythm and timing as much as on how good the CG artwork is. Without perfect timing of the character, the whole lot will look unnatural and the film will fail.

So how do you decide the timing of your character? Our recommendation is to rework it until you think it looks real, but then let someone else take a look at your scene and provide feedback. A fresh pair of eyes often helps. When I reviewed the monster materialization scene I could instantly see that the timing was wrong, whereas Rich was too close to the work.

You cannot get the timing completely right by yourself. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and that goes for timing as much as any other element in the film. Your film is a symphony – as a director it is your job to conduct each instrument and time them correctly so that they blend together to create the perfect performance.

Labels: Diabolus Domi, filmmaking