Freekstorm VFX Blog

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2010-03-16T12:43:00.001Z

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DVXuser betrayalFEST

2010-03-07T08:56:00.010Z

Viewing for the latest DVXuser online film festival is now open.
The theme this time is betrayalFEST.

As you know we didn't enter this time (and yes, with the benefit of hindsight, we wish we had!)

Anyhoo, we're greatly looking forward to seeing what our filmmaking colleagues have been up to in the last few months. The quality of films looks very high and for the first time Joe public get to rate the films too. (See here for the rules.)

The films can be downloaded here.

Congrats to all! See you in DVX-land :-)

How to Make a Big Stompy Robot!

2010-03-01T09:58:00.016Z

About a week ago, Rich discovered a completely awesome short film about Big Stompy Robots and was consequently inspired to practice animating his own. For several days and nights I barely saw him, but today I eventually managed to drag him out for coffee and force him to tell me what exactly he was doing (in words of one syllable that a mere mortal like myself could actually understand):

Step 1: Rich went shopping for a Big Stompy Robot model which would be suitable for animation. He eventually chose a suitable Poser figure, exported it from Poser into Softimage and then broke apart the model into various body parts (poor little thing) that would need animating, eg feet, legs, thighs etc.

Step 2: He then rigged the model. Given that the model has a very unusual joint structure, it took quite a few attempts to make a rig that moved in a realistic motion. The final rig had only three controls: the main centre of gravity for the hips and a control for each foot. This allowed complete animation of movement. (Note for future: Rich intends to later animate the gun barrels and add rocket launchers. Personally I think he’s been playing too much Supreme Commander!)

Step 3: He then added a bump map to the model. This was created by doing a high pass filter in Photoshop on the texture map for the model.

Step4: This involved building a walk cycle animation, which caused lots of fun because Rich didn’t realise that he had put one of the feet on backwards! The result was that the leg moved in all three axis when he tried to animate it, so he had to break the model apart again and re-do the rigging in order to get it right.

Step 5: After animating the walk cycle, Rich loaded the model into the matchmoved footage of our ping pong table (from last time, if you recall) and finished the render. To add a bit of interaction to it, he added a model car (a Mercedes – they really do deserve to be stomped on) and enabled “hard body simulation” in Softimage. This allowed the car to react when the Big Stompy Robot walked into it.

So here’s the result:

Kinda cute, eh? I think it’s kinda dainty-of-foot for something that’s supposed to be so big and scary, so it’s obviously a girl robot. Let’s call her Tippitoes. In fact Tippitoes is so darn cute that I’m thinking of casting her in a future movie. More on that in due course...

The Great Garage Experiment: Part 2

2010-02-18T10:58:00.002Z

Does anyone remember Part 1 of the Great Garage Experiment from a few weeks ago? No we hadn't forgotten about this gripping VFX project, but the day-job work has been hampering our efforts somewhat, so it has taken Rich slightly longer than usual to complete his experiment.

This time the objective was to matchmove the 3D model of the garage (which we prepared last time, if you recall) into the real world - and to do it convincingly. Alas we never did manage to get any decent footage of a real road (weather and moaning kids did not permit) so...erm...we used footage of our very own table tennis table. Yeah, yeah, I know you don't see too many real garages located on ping-pong tables, but the proof of concept is the same - combining real world and CG so that you can't tell the difference.

The process for aligning the garage on the table was to photograph an HDRI globe (big shiny silver ball – purchased from local garden centre - no expense spared) so that we could capture the environmental lighting of the table and then use image-based lighting for the render. This was so that the lighting and colouring of the render matched the table. The next stage was to put some tracking markers (in this case ping-pong balls) and shoot the video that we wanted to use with a camera on a dolly.

Next we loaded the footage from the camera into SynthEyes and we tracked the ping pong balls so that we obtained a virtual camera which matched the real one. The output of Syntheyes was then loaded into Softimage so that we had a virtual camera in Softimage that matched movement of the camera in the real world. We then loaded in the garage model and positioned it appropriately on the virtual table. We created two render passes, one image based lighting (IBL) and one ambient occlusion (AO). This completed the rendering portion of the experiment.

We then moved to Adobe After Effects CS4 for the compositing stage and we loaded the original camera footage and our two render passes. This gave us three layers. At the bottom we had the original camera footage, overlaid on that was the IBL pass which contained the colour and shadows, and finally on top of all of that was the AO which contained the overall brightness and darkness of parts of the model. After adjusting the various levels of each layer and adding a noise overlay, it was ready for final output:

Personally, I think the result is pretty darn realistic, don't you? Now what would be really cool is if the little toy car on the left there (which is real) would drive itself up into the garage and park itself. The resident visual effects artiste tells me that he is working on it. Stay tuned...

On Blogger, Blogging and FTP

2010-02-12T11:23:00.010Z

Cloud City

About a week ago we received a notification from Blogger that they will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26th of this year. They blamed the decision on "too many engineering resources" required to support FTP sites and said "We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users."

Now there's the understatement of the year!

For most folks who use Blogger, this will not affect them at all. Unfortunately for our little Freekstorm blog, we host our blog on our own servers, but we use the freely-available Blogger code for the blog publishing part, which allows anyone with a Blogger account to leave comments if they wish (not that we're exactly snowed under with them, mind you - in fact if we actually do get a rare and precious comment then it's a real "break out the bubbly" moment!) Anyway, the idea is that not only can we remain part of the thriving Blogger community, but by publishing the blog via FTP this means that all our precious artwork, videos and tutorials are kept on our own servers, not Google's. Plus we can design our own groovy blog graphics, instead of Blogger's grotty standard templates.

Basically Google doesn't have any control over what we can publish or how we publish it. We really like it that way. And I quote our resident VFX artiste: "Hell will freeze over before I host our blog on Google servers. No ruddy way! I'd rather close our blog first!"

So we have until 26th March to decide what to do.

Perhaps it's time to put our resident computer geek to work on designing our own blogging code?

(Poor chap! As if he doesn't have enough to do already!)

Rubbish!

2010-02-08T12:04:00.003Z

“If you're going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it.”
Richard Burton

It’s been a long, soggy weekend. Horrible drizzling rain combined with thick damp fog makes February feel interminable at times. The kids had too much homework for us to be able to go out anywhere, so we thought we’d do something productive - like spending some time converting our old photographic studio into the cool groovy new cyc studio that we’ve planned. So first thing yesterday morning we bounded up there, ready to begin.

Oh dear.

“This mess is so big. And so deep and so tall, We can not pick it up. There is no way at all!”

Great Scott! How on earth did we manage to amass so much “stuff”? Clearly we have a long way to go before we have the green-screen studio of our dreams.

Time to hire a really large skip and be utterly ruthless...

It’s all about the lighting

2010-02-05T09:45:00.013Z

It’s been a helluva week. Too many poorly kids at home from school and not enough work and filmmaking being done. The movie highlight of my week was curling up on the sofa and watching Twilight again....yeah, yeah, I know, the special effects were a bit cringe-worthy and the story was entirely predictable. However there is a reason that this, the first movie of the series, was a phenomenon and it had nothing to do with girl-next-door-meets-hunky-vampire and definitely nothing to do with Robert Patterson. (Sorry Robert!) In fact the entire success of this movie hinged on one thing: the cinematography. Oh yes, make no mistake – it was all down to what went on behind the lens, specifically those ultra-cool camera angles and lighting effects.

Elliot Davis, the Director of Photography in the film, is a genius. He really knew how to use the camera to capture the mood and feel of the vampire genre. (Of course, Catherine Hardwicke might have had something to do with it too.) Heck, some of that heavily-desaturated-almost-black-and-white lighting was so darn good that my great old hairy Aunt Hilda would look like sex on a stalk with those effects. It would be difficult for anyone to look bad with that lighting. So cool, so sexy, so atmospheric!

It wasn't just about lighting pretty actors either. Most of the film was visually stunning. The gorgeous mountain landscape helped enormously of course, but there was also very clever use of colour. Remember when a heavily desaturated Edward flipped up a bright red apple with his foot and caught it – how’s that for a snow white/poison apple/forbidden-fruit metaphor? No wonder teenage girls all over the world swooned en-masse. Or remember the scene where Edward and Bella were lying in a sunlit meadow of vibrant green? Such clever use of selective colour and framing techniques! Yep, the framing was very nicely done. Elliot certainly knows his stuff.

But what really made me love the film was the way the camera was used to enhance the characters of Bella and Edward. For example, remember the way the camera shook slightly at the start of the film when Bella first appeared, emphasising Bella’s awkwardness and insecurity at starting at a new school? The lighting at this stage was very middle-of-the-road ordinary, nothing special, just like our heroine. But then when the audience glimpsed Edward....mmm...Edward....now that’s when the really clever stuff began. The camerawork became steadier, the camera angles became more interesting, the shots were more tightly framed and the lighting on Edward’s face became so heavily desaturated that it was almost monochrome in places. Combine this with a great deal of slow-mo, clever make-up and sultry looks and hey presto! Our hero was transformed into every teenage girl’s ultimate fantasy.

Yes indeedy, all ordinary girls like you and I can be seduced by a mysterious and sultry young vampire – all we need is clever lighting and groovy camera angles. So forget Robert Patterson. I mean, I’m sure he’s really nice and terribly sexy and all that, but the guy who really blew my socks off was behind the camera, not in front of it.

Elliot Davis’s attention to detail is the sexiest thing about Twilight. He put a huge amount of time and effort into cinematography and editing - and it shows. He turned a distinctly average teen romance flick into a well choreographed and visually beautiful piece of artwork which was both charming and edgy in equal amounts.

The Unlikely Marriage

2010-02-01T12:30:00.013Z

The British film industry has been in terminal decline for years. This has not been helped by the recession and many of our finest filmmakers decided to desert the U.K. long ago for more favourable climes. But wait! Support has come from an exceedingly unlikely source: the supermarket giant Tesco.

Together with the media firm Amber Productions (which was created in 2009 by New Line Cinema veterans Ileen Maisel, Mark Ordestky and Jane Fleming), Tesco has struck a deal with several of Britain’s favourite authors to turn their books into films. Tesco’s are not interested in showing their movies at the cinema. Instead they want to develop films which will go straight to DVD and be sold exclusively in Tesco stores.

It’s a neat marketing idea and it’s a win-win for the authors too. Tesco will have no say in the films' content or artistic direction but the writers will. Tesco’s have decreed that writers will be equal partners and will have a huge say about how the film is made. In addition they will also receive a comfy income (the Holy Grail for a poor impoverished author nowadays.)

The first DVD film the joint venture will produce will be “Paris Connections” which is a thriller based on a book by Jackie Collins. I for one, won’t be exactly rushing out to buy it, although I’ll certainly be at the head of the queue for the results of the collaboration with Philip Pullman who is one of Britain’s finest writers. I’m a HUGE devotee of His Dark Materials trilogy.

I'm no fan of Tesco's but on the other hand I'm fully supportive of any marriage, however unlikely, which will help poor starving writers. Not that Jackie Collins and Philip Pullman are exactly starving, but this new filmmaking/writing business model gives the rest of us a faint glimmer of hope that there might just - one day maybe - be a remote chance that authors might actually get paid a decent wage for their craft....hey, just call me an optimist!

On the Ancient Art of Fighting Lizards

2010-01-29T11:13:00.024Z

Needs More Ketchup

I am a victim of my lizard brain.

Let me explain. I am a huge fan of Seth Godin, probably the world’s most famous business blogger. If you’ve never read him, then I humbly implore you to check him out ASAP. I guarantee that reading his books will change the way you think about your work. His sound business advice applies equally well regardless of your chosen profession - yep, including and especially your filmmaking career. Anyhoo, enough of the book recommendations and back to my lizard brain and how it relates to filmmaking.

In his new book Linchpin, Seth makes an extremely persuasive argument that our attitude to our work and whether or not we make a go of our project depends on how well we can resist our amygdala.

The amygdala is a lizard shaped piece of your brain, located near the brain stem. It determines your feelings of rage, fear and your sex drive. When you feel threatened or scared of failure, when you hear that nagging voice in the back of your head telling you that you will probably never finish your movie because it’s too damn hard, when you want to write a script but you keep putting it off, when you have writer’s block, that’s your amygdala talking. As Seth says, “the lizard hates change and achievement and risk.....so it rises up in rage and fear and shuts you down.”

And so your amygdala resists, so much so that you find excuses for not pushing forward your filmmaking project. You prevaricate, you doubt that your ideas will ever work and as a result your movie never gets off the ground. But as Seth says, if you want to achieve your goal, if you want to push forward and make your plans reality, then you have to fight and defeat your lizard! How do you do this? By recognising that what is stopping you finishing your film or your script is merely your amydgala at work. You must stop finding excuses, quash your self-doubts, push aside your fears and your dawdling and realise that your film is more important than your insecurities. Willpower is your only solution when faced with the mighty lizard. Push, push, push through your blocks. Ignore the distractions of your mind and just keep on going until your work is finished.

And when you have fought your lizard and won, when you have finally finished your film and you are ready to release it to the unsuspecting public, only then will you have vanquished your demons, only then can you sit back proudly and say, “I did it. I really did it!”

And that’s what makes a truly successful filmmaker rather than a mediocre one.

Right, time to go slay my lizard! See you all next week...

How To Write A Winning Director’s Bio

2010-01-25T21:01:00.002Z

Europa "2010"

On all production and filmmaking company web sites you will usually find not only a description of the aims of the company, but also a section devoted to the bio’s of the company directors.

So when Rich designed the Freekstorm web site, he allocated a section for the bio’s of the cast, crew and most importantly the director (Rich) and the producer (moi.) As I do most of the writing (it is after all my raison d'être) this task has fallen to me. So for the last two weeks I have been wrestling with the herculean task of trying to squash our life accomplishments to four short, dry paragraphs (each.) This has the fairly depressing side effect of making you feel as if you’ve done absolutely nothing of note with your life and you really should get off your ass, head for Hollywood, make a blockbusting movie and thus have a glamorous resume crammed full of festival awards and various gongs, just so you can have a bio as glamorous as all the other (clearly fabulous) directors out there.

Take Rich’s bio, for example. Although his talents outside the movie world are considerable, he is new to filmmaking and so his VFX and filmmaking credentials are somewhat...erm...limited (as are mine.) This does not make for a dazzling filmmaker’s résumé and so a certain amount of embellishment (carefully worded) is required in order to make the proverbial mountain from the molehill. Of course as the number of short films we make increases, then his list of accomplishments gets bigger and his bio will expand accordingly. It wouldn’t hurt to win a few film festivals either.

*sigh*

Oh well. In time...

So how do you write a bio that is suitable not only for your web site, but also suitable for your future press releases and (one day) your IMDb listing? It has to be factual, yet descriptive, inspiring, professional and above all it should make you seem like the real bona fide filmmaker that you are.

This process often terrifies ordinary mortals who are not used to having to make up this sort of thing. But hey, we’re all filmmakers here! Your bio is just a (very) short story of your life’s work, no different from any other movie character’s synopsis, just a bit more formally worded. If you have no idea what to write then the easiest way is to Google the bio's of other directors and producers. You can then get a feel for the type of thing you should be writing as well as a suitable style of wording to use in order to best reflect your magnificent accomplishments in the film world. If you are completely and utterly desperate then you could always crib someone-else’s and re-tailor to your own history as appropriate, although you really should use your own original wording you know. Nice people don’t copy – they reinvent stories and make them their own.

When writing Rich’s bio, I specifically tried not to copy the ideas and wording of other directors’ bio's (largely because they were either too famous or too awful or both) and tried to devise suitable wording of my own. This took many hours of blood, sweat and tears for a few short paragraphs and the result is very far from perfect. It’s rather more formal than I’d like, but it’s the best I can do for the time being. I’ll keep nibbling it over time as our repertoires expand, and with any luck, in a couple of years time it will look positively impressive. Well, that’s the plan anyway.

Unbeknown to me, whilst I was wrestling with words to make his bio sound as professional as possible, Rich effortlessly tossed out a humorous version for his Facebook profile which is SO much better than my herculean effort. Damn! I hate it when he does that! He is such a great writer, although he’s terribly modest and really doesn’t think he is very good at all. But truth be told, if there is one thing he can do well, it’s humour. I really wish I could use his version instead of mine but he thinks my formal, stuck-up, dry version looks more “professional” for our web site.

So without further ado, I give you my version:

Richard has spent over 30 years as a self-confessed computer geek. He has had a life-long passion for visual effects, digital art, photography and filmmaking.

After winning multiple awards for his black and white photography, Richard became fascinated with cinematography. To that end he has written and directed several short films including "Dick Ikon and the Petulant Princess" and "Diabolus Domi," both of which have been featured in the DVX film festivals.

When he is not making films, Richard is a highly successful computer software designer with his own international software company. He has a degree in Physics and Electronics and is married to Lin Bang, a writer and film producer and they have three wonderful kids who are also enthusiastic members of the Freekstorm team.

Richard founded Freekstorm in 2009 with the aim of exploring the worlds of filmmaking and Visual Effects. It is Richard’s creative desire to tell stories which merge fantasy with reality, thereby connecting the real world with the power of our imaginations.

And Rich’s version:

Richard, who does not normally refer to himself in the third person, is a keen film and visual effects director. When not writing cutting-edge software, he spends his time creating visual effects films and blowing zombies to bits in "Left 4 Dead."

His debut starring role in “Dick Ikon and the Petulant Princess” received such praise as ‘the acting was a bit off’ and ‘the acting of the father I found a little bit rigid.’

You can follow the exploits of Richard and his team of filmmakers on the Freekstorm web site.

Now which of the two gives you a better idea of Rich’s character, his wit and the style of films he loves to make? Which tells you what type of director he really is?

Yep, I rest my case. Effortless humour wins over constipated formality - every single time.

The Great Garage Experiment: Part 1

2010-01-22T12:17:00.012Z

Resources: Autodesk ImageModeler, Softimage

The purpose of this exercise was to create a photorealistic 3D model of a real world object. Any object would suffice – in this case a toy garage provided a worthy subject for our modelling experiment.

The first step was to take a series of still photographic reference shots from lots of different angles so as to give full coverage of the object.

These images were then loaded into Autodesk’s ImageModeler and reference points were created in each photograph. Each reference point represented a feature of the object, for example the corner of a window or wall. The more points you put in, the better. If you tell ImageModeler enough of the points in enough of the photographs then the software can determine the shape of the object and how it is aligned in each picture, and consequently it has enough data to build a model of the object. ImageModeler then performs some really clever calculations in order to extract the textures for the objects.

When this process was complete we exported the object and all of the textures into the Softimage modelling software. We then further refined the texture maps and edited the textures in Photoshop. The result was a model that exactly matched the object in the photograph. Finally the image was rendered in Softimage in order to produce the final output.

The second part of the experiment will involve putting the object into the real world, in our case, match-moving the garage onto a real road. Stay tuned for the results in a couple of weeks time....

Acid Pro 7 DOES work on 64 bit !

2010-01-19T11:26:00.006Z

Some of our readers may dimly recall our failure last October to get Acid Pro 7 to work on our 64 bit PC. Well, finally our resident genius figured out how to do it!

For those who are having similar problems, you need to install ASIO4ALL which is the universal ASIO driver for WDM Audio. You can download the driver here.

After installing this you will need to switch Acid Pro 7 from WDM to ASIO (the option can be found in Audio Properties) in order for it to work.

Such a shame we discovered the solution too late for our movie deadline!

Still, now at least we don’t have to buy Adobe Audition 3 instead, and that saves us loadsa money. (I’m a skinflint – I LIKE saving money!)

Face Tracking Test

2010-01-15T10:44:00.005Z

Resources: SynthEyes, Softimage, After Effects, camera, sticky dots + willing victim.

This was an experiment to practice object tracking to see if I could effectively match move Mervyn the Monster’s head onto a real human head (many thanks to Michael, who bravely volunteered for this task.)

First I put tracking markers on Michael’s head. These were simple sticky red paper dots that you can buy from any stationery store. The dots were specifically positioned on his head so that they wouldn’t move relative to each other. Then I filmed him moving his head around.

The next step was to transfer footage to SynthEyes and perform an object-based match move on the markers. This results in all of the markers being treated as part of the solid object and the output from SynthEyes is the movement in that object. I then took the results of the match move and loaded it into Softimage. This gives you a virtual camera that sees the object move in 3D in the same way as it does on film. You then load in the object that you want to composite onto your footage, which in our case was the large chunk of Mervyn’s head. I created a mask that hid the part of Mervyn’s head that I didn’t want to be visible and then rendered out the sequence. Finally I composited it into Adobe After Effects which produced the final output.

Voilà! Boy and Monster are as one!

The total time taken for this was around six hours. Please note that I didn’t make any effort to ensure the cut-out of Mervyn’s head fit cleanly, so the match move isn’t perfect. This was a proof of concept – and it worked! Next time I will do better!

Freekstorm Annual Review

2010-01-10T09:47:00.014Z

This is a new experiment for us. In previous years we have not been interested in new year resolutions at all (because most people break them after the first couple of weeks) but personally I’m fed up with drifting along aimlessly, wondering what the hell we will be doing during the next year. You can’t make movies with vague intentions. Good film-shorts don’t happen by accident; they actually need a huge amount of planning and organising. This is not Rich’s forté – he can do it if he has to, but he’s far happier designing cool special effects and dreaming up stories, whereas it is my job a producer to make sure his dreams are realised by planning and organising the year ahead.

Last year went absolutely splendidly, as far as I am concerned. Considering this time last year we were utterly clueless when we came to filmmaking, we’ve certainly come a very long way on our vertical learning curve. We have studied, studied, studied some more, read tons of books, learned the basics of scriptwriting, producing, directing, acting, the fundamentals of VFX, spent way too much money on getting filmmaking equipment (that bit was not splendid), made loads of mistakes (not splendid either, but necessary I guess), made two six minute film-shorts and entered two online film festivals. Oh and we designed a groovy new Freekstorm web site and started this blog too (which not only charts our progress but also propels us forward into action.) Yep, when you put it like that, crikey, didn’t we do a lot?! One year later, we’re still pretty clueless, but slightly less so than before. If we keep learning at this rate, think where we will be in a year’s time, or in five years time?! The mind boggles.

So what are our goals for next year?

Well, I’m including a few of the highlights here as an exercise in mass accountability.

Rich’s goals:

1. Make a blockbusting action epic in 6 mins!
2. Make a second movie-short that blows something up (I volunteer the barn in the garden – we need a new one.)
3. Finish the cyc-studio, with the possibility of hiring it out.
4. Continue to develop my skill set regarding filmmaking and special effects.

Lin’s goals:

1. Write a decent script for once!
2. Blog at least once a week, preferably twice (this not only helps develop my writing skills, but furthers my interest in film studies in general.)
3. Enter next year’s two films into DVX fests, which acts as a very useful mechanism by which to learn the process of making short films.
4. Learn how to better market our movie-shorts (and boy, do I have a long way to go!)

These goals may change and expand over the next year, of course, but by writing them down here now, it gives us a marker when this time next year we can look back and see how far we have come, and what we did/did not achieve and why.

One year from now, what do we want to have accomplished?

At the end of 2010, we both want to have made two movie shorts which have been entered into DVX festivals, with a view to moving beyond DVX fests in 2011.

So what is the purpose of 2010?

In a nutshell, Freekstorm is our way of learning about the art of making movies. During 2010 we will continue to train ourselves in VFX and filmmaking . We are not expecting Freekstorm to pay for itself during next year because we are still very much in the training phase – VFX and filmmaking are incredibly difficult to learn (especially without formal education) so we are pacing ourselves and trying to have fun along the way.

"Small moves, Ellie, small moves."

Pretty Nordic Scene, designed in Vue

So That Was Christmas

2009-12-27T12:37:00.012Z

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!!!

For Sale: One Alien Planet, Never Used, £1200 + VAT

2009-12-22T13:07:00.026Z

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Our Readers!

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!!!

Sample alien Planet from e-on software

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!

Rose Bushes and Rosebuds

2009-12-18T12:27:00.012Z

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.”

Photo Courtesy of Freebird

When’s the next movie coming out?

2009-12-15T11:46:00.010Z

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.

Needs a bit of a revamp, don't you think?!

Pimping Your Indie Movie - The Alternative Approach

2009-12-10T11:46:00.015Z

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.

Timing Issues in a VFX Film

2009-12-04T12:02:00.009Z

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.

Recording Film Sound for the Clueless: Part 2

2009-11-30T15:45:00.008Z

The Importance of Music in a Horror Film

One of the most important elements in any film is to get the score right! In a horror movie in particular, using extra-diegetic sound is an important tool which can be used to build atmosphere and suspense. When timed correctly, the right music can be used to scare the viewer witless, where dialogue and action alone would not be enough.

I’m afraid our little film would not have worked remotely as well as it did without the suspense music. Whatever other criticisms we received from viewers (and there were many) the sound and the use of music were judged to be very well done (hurrah! We did something right!) The film music starts off quiet and sinister, and gradually grows throughout the film until it gets louder and more dramatic towards the end, thus raising the suspense levels to the optimum level when the demon attacks.

In order to get the score right, Rich listened to various pieces of scary music over and over again. He did this by loading pieces of potential suspense music into a Windows Media player playlist and learning them off by heart. He then visualised each element of the film in his head and tried to put himself in the place of the viewer. He needed to figure out which pieces of music generated the right emotional reaction for each scene, and that meant that he had to build the whole movie in this head i.e. pre-viz both action and music, and then match them together perfectly in order to pace the story properly and build suspense. This sounds easier than it is, incidentally – many filmmakers employ professional sound designers to do this. Alas, we don’t have that option, so Rich had to try it himself. Personally I think he did really well, considering this was only his second attempt!

Dramatic music has the ability to alter our mood, manipulate our emotions and compel us to respond to the film in a different way. A film succeeds only if it generates emotion, which in turn is directly dependent on the sound. Emotion can be attached to any piece of film footage through effective use of the film-score. If used correctly, suspense music can be used to play on our innermost fears and thus create a truly effective horror movie.

Resources:

For our own little film-short, we used stock music, in paricular, Tunes of Terror from Stockmusic.net.

Recording Film Sound for the Clueless: Part 1

2009-11-26T14:08:00.012Z

The Recording Process: General Sound Recording

Despite the hundreds of hours spent on the CG in our little film, as well as many hours endlessly editing, it wasn’t until we finally put the sound into the film that it really started to gel.

I was appointed as the sound technician for the actual recording of the footage. I thought Rich was very brave trusting something as important as the sound to a half-deaf wife, but you gotta love his faith in me. Anyway, we decided that we wanted sound which was a bit more advanced than the camera’s microphone, which always ended up with the dialogue sounding as though it was recorded in the loo. So we took the plunge and allocated some of the film budget to purchasing a microphone and big furry cover (which is rather horrifyingly called “a dead cat”- as a cat lover I must protest – I really do prefer live ones.) We also bought a groovy new Tascam DR-100 Solid State sound recorder, which was so simple to use that in no time at all I was wandering around practising my newbie sound-recording skills by poking my dead cat into the faces of anyone and everyone in the vicinity.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any training in how to use the recorder correctly to obtain the cleanest sound levels, so my learning was strictly a trial and error process. We were also filming the outside scene in the middle of the worst winds for several years, so we had to reshoot the scene many times so that I could learn to record the actress’s speech as clearly as possible whilst minimising the sound of the howling gale. I screwed up frequently at first, mainly setting the recording volume too high, resulting in red-lining the sound levels and generating a godawful hiss. At one point I set the recorder too low and the sound was inaudible on playback, resulting in a lengthy reshoot – the kids were not happy. No, not happy at all. And before you say, “Why didn’t you just over-dub afterwards?” I’m afraid that option wasn’t available to us as our leading actress is five years old and has a pretty bad stammer. With the best will in the world, overdubbing and stuttering do not mix. But it’s all a learning process and we recorded some good sound in the end – crisp and clear, just the way it should be.

The next stage was for Rich to synch the sound and match it to each scene, originally in Acid Pro 7, but when that turned its toes up, with Adobe Audition 3 instead (good software – a piece of cake in the end – shame we can’t afford it though.) He then added foley sounds (feet crunching on gravel, walking up stairs, monster sounds etc) which were mostly recorded separately by me, although we also used a few commonly available foley sounds which were available for free online. Finally he added the creepy music (which will be the subject of the next post.) Then the film really started to come alive!

So to summarise, Rich recommends adding sound to your film is as follows:

1. Master the dialogue
2. Add the major foley components
3. Add the music
4. Add any additional ambience and foley sounds which are needed to fill any spaces
5. Check, check and check again that the timing is perfect

What would we do differently next time round?

Well, for future movies I will definitely avoid recording sound in bad weather conditions - picture if you will your trusty sound-recording-mama bracing herself 45 degrees against the howling wind and driving rain, desperately trying to record crisp clear sound whilst simultaneously shoving her dead cat into face of her young, courageous actress-daughter and frantically worrying that said actress-daughter might be swept away in the gale.

Oh yes, that’s what all great family memories are made of – stress free, jolly, happy filmmaking. Such a shame real life isn’t like it is in the movies...

Resources:

Tascam DR-100 Solid State sound recorder
K6-ME66 Microphone by Sennheiser
Dead Cat: Rycote Softie
Tunes of Terror from Stockmusic.net
Monsters and Creatures Foley Sounds from Sound Ideas

Tips:

Don’t be afraid to spend real-live-money to buy good sound equipment. It will pay for itself many times over. On-camera sound is the sign of a newbie and almost always sounds like it comes out of a toilet, so make sure you invest in a decent microphone and sound recorder instead!

New Freekstorm Web Site

2009-11-20T13:08:00.006Z

Welcome to our new look web site! Rather fabulous isn’t it?

Humungous thanks to Rich who has spent a huge amount of his spare time beavering away to make it look all shiny and sparkly. Not that the old web site wasn’t...erm...groovy, but it wasn’t exactly easy on the eyes. Freekstorm now has a glossier, more professional feel, which is good news as we’re tentatively planning for it to become part of our day-job one day. Yup, it’s a crazy idea (especially in the middle of a recession) but we love making VFX movies that much!

As time goes on we will be adding more to the web site, not only our indie films but also tutorials (visual and written) and we may even...pause for dramatic drum roll...decide to make an actual indie computer game or two (we’re talking far distant future though – dreams are wonderful things!)

As for me, your trusty writer, I’ll be waffling away on the blog and Twitter. I’m intending to chronicle how we actually make our indie films and discuss everything we learn as we go along – yes, including the many mistakes we make along the way. I am also working on a series of articles about indie VFX filmmaking for fellow newbies, including advice, tips and resources for other folks who are crazy enough to want to do this too.

Rich and I are both really excited about our new adventure! There’s a whole new world to explore out there: so much to learn, so much to share. We hope you will join us on our new quest-fest for knowledge and enlightenment in the Fine Art of Filmmaking.

"Quest is at the heart of what I do -
the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it,
seemed a perfect metaphor for life."

(Jeanette Winterson)

Panned!

2009-11-16T15:41:00.015Z

For those folks who haven't yet watched our mini-masterpiece, you can see it here.

When we released our first little movie short, we featured on the blog some incredibly kind and generous comments from fellow directors and movie-festers about how promising our filmmaking efforts were. Wow! The reviews were wonderful! We truly basked in the glow of appreciation!

This time...um...the critics were not quite so kind. Most folks liked the initial (non animated) scene but eight out of ten cats really hated poor little Mervyn, and were pretty scathing about him too:

"I have to give you a lot of credit for giving an attempt at a 3D monster throughout the movie, but ...honestly, it felt like being trapped inside Playstation 1. I don't want to sound mean because I'm sure it was a lot of work, and you get credit for that, but because the monster looked so cheesy, it took away from the experience in a big way.”

“The story itself wasn't at all bad - it was really the monster itself that brought the whole thing down.”

“... for the film as a whole, I think it would have been better served with a real actor in makeup playing the part.”

“When using a CGI monster you film is going to rise or fall on the strength of that monster. Unfortunately, yours was a bit thin”

“Not convincing.”

“kind of smacks of a Dad film - dad and the kids making a film - which is quaint and cute, but often times horrifying to inflict upon a public audience! (This isn’t!!!) But it teeters as a form of self indulgent experimentation not quite ready to be unleashed to the discerning public.”

Blimey. Time to hit the vodka, I guess.

Actually the comments weren’t all bad, and our profound thanks go to those few kind souls (who were mostly professionals and worked in the VFX industry) who generously gave unconditional support and appreciation for Rich’s 200+ hours developing and animating Mervyn (yes, you read that right – it really did take over 200 hours of blood, sweat and tears!) You have no idea how much your suggestions and encouragement meant to Rich, and our extra-special thanks to Bruce Allen who was incredibly helpful.

Well, so much for that fest. Onwards and upwards, as they say.

R.I.P Mervyn. We’ll miss you.

Diabolus Domi viewing is now open.

2009-11-12T13:19:00.001Z

As we didn’t make the second round of Monster Fest we can now open the viewing of our latest creation.

The film is currently hosted on YouTube as we don’t have the bandwidth at present to make it visible to the ~~millions~~ ~~thousands~~ ~~hundreds~~ few fans that want to watch it.

Please feel free to leave a comment either on YouTube or on here as to what you think of the movie. Of course you’ll want to rate it 5 stars as it’s so awesome!

You can watch it here