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All posts for the month September, 2012

Moving Forward

Posted by STARS Pictures on September 25, 2012
Posted in: Random. Leave a comment

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

When God moves, He moves fast!  In just over a week, there have been some major changes at STARS Pictures.  Twinkle Adams has officially been brought on as our PR & Marketing Manager.  She has done a terrific job growing the fan base for both our films on Facebook.  Together, we’ve been figuring out what needs to be done to become a true 501c3 non-profit.  I’ve done some budgets and I’m currently working on the business plan.  Things are really moving rapidly.  I would love to have everything up and running by the end of fall.  We’ll have to see what happens.

A new addition to the ministry is a newsletter that we’ll be sending out soon.  I sent the first one out today to all mine and Twinkle’s contacts so they can see what it’s about.  Later I sent out an opt-in form so we’ll see how many decide to do that.

First Project in CS6

Posted by STARS Pictures on September 20, 2012
Posted in: Technology. 7 Comments

As I have mentioned on here before, I started editing video in high school using Adobe Premiere 6.0.  After graduating, I switched to Vegas Pro, which I have used since since version 4.  For nine years, I’ve been a Vegas cutter, but recently, with the amount of effects work my projects have been involving, it made sense to start using Premiere again for editing.  The reason is that getting your cut into After Effects from Premiere is as simple as copy and paste.

Also recently, I’ve taken on the producer role for Twinkle Adams’ first feature, “Run”.  Since she hasn’t directed before, I went back to Spokane this last weekend to shoot a trailer for the film.  Aside from giving her experience and me the fun of filming (I live for this), I thought it would also be a good opportunity to get better acquainted with Premiere CS6.  The goal I have set for myself is to only use Adobe products to complete the trailer (with the exception of ADR, for which I used Vegas Pro 11).  I just finished locking picture, the grade and effects.  So far, the transition to CS6 has been relatively simple.  Editing is editing, you just have to learn the nuances of each software.

Coming from Vegas, the first thing I did was customize my workspace and shortcuts, the most important switching “CRTL K” to “S”.  After nine years of S to split a clip, that’s a habit I won’t break.

Another thing I tried, but probably won’t be doing again, is editing in 2.40, rather than 16:9.  Shooting with Magic Lantern, I had cropmarks that showed me what my final frame would be.  Unfortunately, the way Premiere works, when you stick 1920×1080 footage into a 1920×800 sequence, it wants to render it before it’ll play.  So while I was able to edit in it’s final aspect ratio, the rendering wasn’t worth it.  At first, the shots were playing back just fine without rendering, but once I had over 30 seconds of footage on the timeline, things got slow.  On the plus side, once they were rendered, they played just fine.

At the moment, After Effects is rendering the effects and grade, so I can’t do too much on the laptop right now, but when it’s done I’ll be starting on the audio.  This will probably be the most painful part for me coming from Vegas.  Vegas was created as an audio editor, and it’s tool set and ease of use for audio editing is so far unmatched in my book.  You can bet that I’ll be adding to this post once I finish that phase.

**EDIT**
I finished the final sound mix last night.  What I found is that you really need a dual monitor setup to do any sort of serious mixing in Premiere.  Fortunately I had another monitor to hook up to my laptop so the film was on my large screen and my laptop screen became my mixing console.  I really liked the automation controls where I could move the faders to control levels and they were “recorded”.  I’ve seen videos where if you’re using a physical mixing board with motorized faders, they’ll respond according to the automation.  Pretty cool.  When I initially installed the CS6 suite on this laptop, I didn’t install Audition, thinking I’d never use it.  However, after watching some videos today on what it offers (Spectral Analyzing, for one)   I’ve decided to learn Audition.  To practice, I’m planning on undoing all my mix work from Premiere and redo in Audition and see how that feels.

I never thought I’d say this, but Adobe, you got me.  The ease in which AE, Photoshop and Audition play with Premiere has finally convinced me.  Your tools have reached the point where I’m willing to take them seriously.  I’ve even removed Vegas from my taskbar.  I’m not ready just yet to fly without Vegas on the system, but I have a feeling I’m getting close.  My transition from the Vegas/AE combo to the CS6 suite is a great example of my progressive filmmaking philosophy.  If the tools work for me the way I need to use them, then I don’t care who makes it.  I think to be a good independent today, you need to be progressive, always analyzing your workflow, always asking yourself, “What can I be doing better?”.  For me, making a complete switch to CS6 seems like the right choice.

Production Journal

Posted by STARS Pictures on September 12, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a comment

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

I’m an in an amazingly great mood right.  I bought a brand new laptop yesterday – something I haven’t done for five years or so.  While not top of the line, it’s not bottom either.  More of a mid range.  It’s still better than what I had been using.  I got Vegas installed and now I’m loading the CS6 suite.  I’ll still have to get all my plugins too, so I’ll be at this for a while, but at least I’ll be able to edit and not worry about the computer keeping up with me.  I may still have to do an offline edit for feature work, but for some of the commercials I’m starting to line up, I should be able to do it all in full HD, which will be a HUGE time saver.    This is the first computer I’ll own that won’t be running Celtx, so I’m excited about that too 🙂  I’m really looking forward to being able to do freelance again.  Like, REALLY looking forward to it 🙂

If I treat it right, I should be all set for Leap 3 when the time comes, as well as cutting the trailer for “RUN”, which we’re shooting Sunday and Monday.  

Production Journal

Posted by STARS Pictures on September 5, 2012
Posted in: Leap: Revelation. Leave a comment

Wendsday, September 5, 2012

First off, what an awesome God I serve.  It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had any sort of income, and suddenly it all arrived in my bank account, just when I needed it.

I’ve been pretty busy the past few days doing some effects tests for Leap: Revelation.  The second coming, some hail, and tanks have filled my time.  I’m so thankful that the Lord has given me the skills needed to pull this flick off.  When I wrote the script, I didn’t hold back because I wanted to challenge myself to be free.  Now I’m challenging myself to figure out how to do all the shots, but so far I haven’t had an issue.

Image

Here’s my latest effort.  The image is from Spokane where we’ll be shooting some scenes involving martial law.  The crowd is simply occupy protesters.  I did a crowd replication to fill the scene out more, and set up the shot in Blender, my 3D program that also happens to be free.  Remember when things were free?  My render from Blender was way too sharp, so I ran a fast blur on it, added the mosaic filter, and matched grain, all in After Effects.  After than it was simply a matter of color matching the shots and applying a grade.  While it’s not yet perfect, it is pretty close.  I need to work on my 3D lighting some more, but I think I’m well on my way.

The Bourne Letdown

Posted by STARS Pictures on September 3, 2012
Posted in: Movie Review. Leave a comment

As many know, I am a HUGE Jason Bourne fan.  The original Bourne trilogy was a major influence on Leap: Rise of the Beast, so much so that I watched all three films every day the month leading up to shooting the film, as well as while we were shooting.  Needless to say, when I heard that there was a fourth film coming out that would take the series in a new direction, I was super excited.  I’m a Jeremy Renner fan, so learning that he was to take over as the lead, my expectations rose even higher.

The problem with high expectations is that when the film doesn’t deliver, you’re even more let down.  That’s how I feel about The Bourne Legacy.  With operations Treadstone and Blackbriar now exposed, the CIA decides to eliminate its experimental Outcome program.  Outcome agents are genetically modified to be stronger, faster and smarter than any before them.  This is achieved via green and blue pills called chems.  Our new hero, Aaron Cross, escapes termination and enlists the help of a scientist to make the mental effects of the blue pill permanent.

The whole sci-fi spin with the chems was a major letdown.  Part of what I loved about the original trilogy was the realism.  I believed that a young man could be abused, brainwashed and trained into the agents of the first three movies.  So the filmmakers wanted stronger agents-okay, give them the pills.  But then to make it the driving plot point?  Come on!   It was difficult for me to buy into the story and care about the character.  I didn’t feel like he’d been wronged as Jason Bourne had been.  From the trailers, I was expecting Cross to be a new agent being trained and we would get to witness how that all goes down.  The film even starts off that way, but once you realize he’s just on time out, the excitement went away.  I did like the smaller scale of it though.  It felt more like the first film, and for an offshoot, I felt that was a smart move.

About the action: I’m divided on this one.  I liked the big fight scene on how Cross had to take on five or six people rather than just one.  That was cool.  I was happy to see some parkour with a wall run up onto a roof, however being a traceur myself, I could see that he was assisted by wires.  The motorcycle chase was another story.  While many criticize Paul Greengrass’ shakey cam, at least he had the shots wide enough you could follow the story and see what was going on.  This chase in this film was not so fortunate.  I struggled making heads or tails of what was happening.

I wanted to love this movie, I really did.  However because it let down my expectations, it’ll be a tough film to love.  I’m hoping it’ll be like Fast Five.  In that one, I was expecting street racing and got a heist instead.  On subsequent viewings, knowing what it was supposed to be, I was more able to enjoy it.  Hopefully I’ll feel that way too about The Bourne Legacy.

Production Journal

Posted by STARS Pictures on September 2, 2012
Posted in: Leap: Revelation. Leave a comment

Sunday, September 2, 2012

While I’ve mentioned the influences for Leap: Revelation before, I decided this time to put together an actual Lookbook, comprised of stills from said influences. I’ve got a stack of movies in front of me, and from these I’ll be able to show some of the angles/composition, location ideas, color, and effects references. I’m not sure how many images I’ll end up with, I got six from 2012 and now I’m pulling from The Great Challenge.  I’ll upload the entire Lookbook to our facebook page at facebook.com/leap3movie when I’m done.