News: October 2005 Archives
The middle of the week is here (already!), and I'm working away inside on this rainy Wednesday. One of my first film shots is up for approval this morning, with another two to be finalled by the end of the week!
The last time I worked on a film project was way back at the beginning of this year, when we were wrapping up Constantine. It's been a slow year (work-wise) for me, but lots of little accomplishments have occurred. I'm hoping that next year will be much busier.
I'm starting to get together all the films I've worked on to so I can start cutting my annual reel. Constantine and Sharkboy will be added, and some old shots will be cut. I might add some commercial work if I can get a copy of them after they air. I'm listening to new music to cut to as well.
A cool clip this morning, from my weekend out on the field. A 76MB, two minute mpeg from my point of view. Check it out!
Movable Type (the blog software I use to run this site) has upgraded their software to version 3.2. I'm unsure as whether I want to upgrade this blog. There are numerous advantages of course, and I've already done an upgrade for another blog that I manage, and it went without a hitch. Upgrades include better entry management, more control over spam and commenting, and a couple of other improvements that I haven't read about in depth yet.
Wow. The week is just flying by. My first week back on Charlotte's, and I've got a bunch of shots to complete. At this time it's mostly rough, temp comps. Basically plate assembly and pretty much getting things cleaned up and prepped for matchmove to take the next step.
So far I've been tasked with completing ten shots (so far this week!). Four are leftovers from a previous comper who has since gone down under to work at WETA to help finish up that project. The other six are new shots, which I have some time to complete. The first of them isn't due until next week. All the work that's been done so far has looked amazing. The TDs are lighting some really sweet shots. I had a chance to take a look at all the sequences we're working on, and they're pretty dope. Most of the voice work is pretty good. R&H are probably doing the animals, since they're experts at it since the Babe days.
This evening we have our wrap party/dinner for the Chevy Impala crew in downtown San Francisco. Should be a fairly small gathering, but it will be fun! The word is that the first of the spots will be shown on Saturday during the World Series, and the second one will be shown early next week.. I'm guessing the Tuesday. Keep an eye out for the two of them! They'll be up on the Tippett website once they've been aired, so keep checking there too. I'm not a huge fan of baseball, so I won't see it when it airs. I'll be too busy geeking out on Civ3 or Quake4. Or maybe for a change, hanging out with my girl.
So while I wait for my last couple Impala shots to get finalled and shipped out the door, I can't help but wonder how it's like at other facilities under a deadline like this, or even other industries.
For a commercial project (of which I've only recently been used to), it seems our shots are seldom finalled by the director. We answer to a higher power, the client and their ad agency. Throughout these three Chevrolet spots, we've always delivered on time, and the agency and GM have always loved our work. There's never a period of time for feedback, at least much less than there is in a film! It's a very weird sensation, to create an awesome shot, approve it inhouse and send it out, only to hear no notes. I have a feeling that the commercials are bullet points somewhere in some meeting or memo, saying that the next Impala commercial has been completed, and will now be on TV. Who knows. Luckily we're not under any stress. There's a short team finishing up the spot this week, just my supervisor, myself, and my producer. We have a TD on call, but he's been on another show this week.
My brother is in town this weekend hanging out with us. He works on the other end of the computer entertainment industry, in games. He's a technical artist (modelling, texturing, animating) over at Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, and has been there for close to five years. He's a talented guy, and it's interesting to note that we as siblings are into this whole CG thing (games/films/digital media) together! It's definitely cool to hear how they're working on a new game for the XBox 360 and the PS3, and how these new console machines are going to be amazing pieces of hardware! It will be a little bit expensive for my taste. My only consoles are the PS2 and the Neo Geo (with the SEGA Genesis and the Atari 2600 now retired from my collection), with the PSP here for some portable gaming.
It's Wednesday, the hump of the week. I'm working away on our last commercial for GM. Two more shots that need to be completed for our Friday delivery. And then I move onto Charlotte's Web next week!
The independent Sundance film that a bunch of us are doing has a deadline of early next month. Our director will be coming at the end of this month to tell us if we're on the right track with our effects. I completed a temp shot over lunch yesterday that's pretty neat. I'm not sure if allowed to talk about this film, so I'll find out from our director when she comes in. The film hasn't been submitted to Sundance for qualification just yet, so our effects won't be in it when it is shown to the committee.
At the moment I'm listening to some ShoutCast radio while I do my work. ShoutCast has been around for a while. I remember listening to it back in Vancouver a mere three years ago, and recall racking up a HUGE amount of gigabytes downloaded (Think 40+ GB a month)! So much so that Shaw.ca called several times to find out why I downloaded so much. At least I wasn't serving it out! Shoutcast is streaming radio. On their website there are a wide range of channels that you can listen to, at various bit depths, of different music. My favorite channels that I've listened to over the years are mostly Digitally Imported and Groove Salad. Right now, it's Euro Trance on Digitally Imported FM. The great part of the channels that I'm listening to is that they have no commercials, and play mostly underground music (well, at least music I've never heard). This allows me to sample new music, and if I like it enough, I just jot the artist down and go web surfing to find the song. It's enabled me to find new tunes that my peers have never heard of; Dadamnphreaknoizfunk, Nautilus, Shpongle, Lemon Jelly, to name a few. Some of the sweetest music is underground.
Which brings up another topic. Just going to toss this out there, so feel free to comment. Would any of you be interested in a podcast of tips, tricks, and how-tos for Shake (or compositing in general)? This would enable you to learn while you listen. It could be beneficial, allowing people to learn about how to composite effectively without reading a book, and just by listening to my wonderful voice, guiding you through the tutorial. I'm going to look into it. I don't portray myself to be the be-all-know-it-all about visual effects, but who else is going to do it?
How do you guys use this software? I can't believe some people composite with this package. What a pain. After being spoiled silly with Flame and Shake, I don't see how AE can keep themselves up to par with the other packages! It's just not intuitive enough to pick and go with the flow.
The reason I'm ranting is because I just got a new G5 for my duties, and I've been playing around with AE 5.5 to do some collaborative work for some of my shots (namely, cheesy lens flares). It's such a pain to do simple things. Maybe Motion might give Shake a run for its money, but Apple owns them all, Motion, Shake, and After Effects. Each one is catered to a specific clientele, which is probably the reason why I never used AE in the past. I would rather comp via pen and paper than enter the mess that is AE. Aargh.
I'm not a regular user of IE, so I don't view this site with that browser. I mostly use Opera at home and Safari, Mozilla, or Firefox at work. So it came as quite a surprise when I viewed digitalGypsy for the first time on Internet Explorer.
Little did I know that it doesn't interpret CSS correctly! Either that or my coding works on every other browser except IE. If you can check to see if the main page displays correctly or incorrectly for you, please let me know (and what your browser is). The main page should display with entries on the left, and a sidebar on the right containing a bio, reel and artist link, and categories and other little bits. The majority of the users that hit this site use Firefox, with IE coming in second, so I'm surprised no one had commented on the messed up layout! The front page and subsequent pages look fine with Firefox.
Ah.. Head clear, smooth pavement, no traffic. I biked to work this morning. It took me all of about 10 minutes. I got up early, showered and got ready for my first commuter ride here in the Bay area.
It's amazing how refreshed you can feel after a quick workout in the morning! Tippett is two miles from my home, and I took two side streets to get to there. I think the only thing that slowed be down were the stop signs! It was a little brisk this morning, but the sun was shining brightly onto my left side, and everything went smooth. I will have to get a commuter bike map to figure out the best streets to go down without hitting a stop sign at every intersection. That would cut off my commute by a minute or two! I'm quite glad to not have to drive to work everyday now. It opens up a whole lot of options, and I will definitely be saving a little on gas! At least a whole gallon a week.
