Leap: Revelation

The third film in our Leap series

Production Journal

Posted by STARS Pictures on May 16, 2017
Posted in: Leap: Revelation, Uncategorized. 3 Comments

It’s been a while.  I’m honestly not sure if anyone is still reading these, but since I originally started keeping these journals for me, it really doesn’t matter if anyone reads them or not.

I’ll start off by saying that I have not forgotten about Leap 3.  Infact, recently it has started consuming all my free time-again.  It started when I came to some startling revelations about what the saints go through during the time of trouble.  I was so shocked that I decided to go back and rewrite the last half of the script, just to incorporate it.  I also decided to make a drastic change to the ending that I had toyed with using years ago, but after much prayer, I really feel it’s the best way to go.  My number one mission with this series has been to make people think for themselves and question what they’ve been taught and I think this ending will serve that.

Rewriting the last half of the script means I’ve been doing a lot of what I call, “couch time”.  This is where I put in a movie, lay on the couch, and just write.  It’s been a few years since I’ve done this and it’s nice to be at it again.

My effects work has been getting a lot better as of late too.  I’m the VFX supervisor/lead artist at a small company and have been learning so much in order to execute the shots needed on a four part documentary series we’re producing about Bible prophecy.  About two years ago, we ditched After Effects for Nuke after I made the switch myself and it was the best decision we could’ve made.  Now, when I need help with something, I’m able to seek out real industry professionals and not some 10 year old in his bedroom making tutorials with a pirated version of AE.  All kidding aside, the skills I’ve been learning on this job are going to make Leap: Revelation that much better.  I feel a bit like Garreth Edwards who spent a few years doing VFX before finally getting to do his own things.  Maybe this is me paying my dues and learning what I need to make Leap 3 a reality.

Overall, I’m really excited to finish the new script.  I have amazing gear with my Ursa Mini and Glidecam, great tools with Avid, Nuke and Resolve and soon shall have a great script too!

Production Journal

Posted by STARS Pictures on March 3, 2015
Posted in: Leap: Revelation, Leap: Rise of the Beast, Technology. Tagged: . Leave a comment

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

It’s funny how things work out sometimes.  When we finished Leap: Rise of the Beast in spring of 2011, the plan was to spend a year prepping Leap: Revelation and to shoot it the summer of 2012.  Instead, I was whisked away to Montana and then found myself homeless that summer.  I managed to write the first draft of the script, planning to shoot the following summer, but I knew I needed some funding, so I held out.  I didn’t do much with the script the following few years, but about a year ago, I got serious and said that now is the time to do it.

In the past four years, my understanding of God, His character, His plan, and last day events has changed pretty dramatically.  Because of this, the message and focus of the film has shifted a bit too.  I love that God knows what He’s doing.  If we had shot this right away, I don’t think the film would be nearly as powerful as it can be now.

The other great thing about it taking so long is that I’ve been able to slowly accrue gear over the past few years and now have some pretty nice things to play with this time.  When we did Leap 2, I was all about Low Budget Pride.  We did the movie for $2000 and I was proud of it!  We were all about the workarounds, the hacks and trying to avoid spending any money.  While it’s good to be frugal, I’ve since learned that having some toys actually makes life easier on set.  Shooting a movie, while a lot of fun, can also be pretty stressful at times, especially with hacked and DIY toys.  I’ve learned that sometimes, it’s good to have the real things.  Before I had the camera, a multi-function tripod, some work lights, a green sheet and a shower curtain.  Now I have two cameras, plus a GoPro, shoulder rig, nice tripod, slider, real movie lights, Glidecam, reflectors, diffusers, real greenscreens, a few lenses and decent mics. We’ve come a long way.

Speaking of coming a long way, so has my effects abilities.  When I think back to Leap 2, I was just learning After Effects and was so excited about point tracking and corner pinning.  Almost all the effects shots consisted of some form of tracking and corner pinning.  Lots of screen replacements, the gunshot wounds, etc… I had one scene that was all greenscreen, once shot with roto, and one set extension as well.  As I go through the script for Leap 3, the effects we’re looking at are much more ambitious.  3D tracks with CGI security cameras and hailstones, quite a few set extensions, probably a fair amount of roto, rig removals and of course loads of screen replacements.  We’re also bringing makeup effects into the pipeline with the plague of sores and we’re taking parkour out of the city and into the mountains.  What’s funny, is that when I wrote the script for Leap 2, I had no idea how I was going to pull some of that off, and then I discovered After Effects, and it was like I heard the angels sing.  This time around, there’s nothing in the film that I haven’t done before, either on my own or for work, the challenge this time is just the sheer volume of effects we’re dealing with.

We have a big mountain to climb as we prepare to shoot this August, so please continue to keep the film in your prayers.  The breakdowns are done and I’m working on the new schedule now.  Hopefully start casting in about a month or two.  Hang on, it’s gonna be a wild ride.

-El

Production Journal

Posted by STARS Pictures on January 24, 2015
Posted in: Leap: Revelation. Tagged: . Leave a comment

Spent the last two days making and playing with smoke bombs.  The film opens with a huge explosion (which will be CG) and the survivors come running out of the smoke.  Contrary to what people think I do prefer doing things practically when possible.  I got on YouTube and found some great smoke bomb instructions and have been trying them out.  The biggest issues I can see is that this scene takes place in the mountains, and the smoke bombs produce a lot of fire.  I’ll need a way to shield the ground from all the flames.  On the plus side, I spent just under 8 dollars on some supplies from the local hardware and grocery stores and that provides enough stuff to make four smoke bombs.  At that kind of price, I can’t complain.

Preaching (A Spiritual Case Study)

Posted by STARS Pictures on April 7, 2013
Posted in: Leap: Revelation, Random. Leave a comment

Last week was one of the most difficult weeks I’ve experienced in some time.  We’re in the middle of our Kickstarter fundraising campaign for Leap 3 at the moment (and not doing too well either) so Satan has already been coming after me and trying to get me down.  Bringing up issues from my past that I thought had long been burried, telling me that it’s useless to make a movie like this, that I need to make the normal Christian drama if I want success, and hammering on the fact that I really want the companionship of a wife and eventually a family.  Last week, it was all the above, but times ten.

I believe the reason was that I was finally asked to preach at church yesterday, so last week was spent preparing.  So now, I’m not only making a movie the devil hates, but I’m preaching the Great Controversy theme which exposes how he works.  I spent most of the week feeling inadequate and unqualified to be taking the pulpit on Sabbath.  The spiritual battle was intense.  At one point, I even considered stepping down.  I mean, who am I to preach to a congregation?  But, I knew that God had called me and opened the doors for me, so I needed to do it regardless.

Nerves and stage fright had nothing to do with it, I’m quite comfortable speaking in front of people and I rather enjoy it.  It literally wasn’t until five minutes before I walked up front Sabbath morning that I finally felt God’s Spirit and I knew it would all work out.  Not only did it work out, but went better than I imagined it could.

I had a few technical issues with my clicker but the presentation went smooth and afterwards people told me how much they got out of it.  When this started to happen, I remembered something that Christian Berdahl had told me over the summer: When people praise him for his singing or preaching, he always redirects the glory to God.  So I did the same.  I had nothing to do with the preaching, I just asked God to use me.  So when people told me what they thought, I’d say, “Praise God”, or “Praise the Lord”.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge adrenaline junkie, I love getting the juice going.  Let me tell you, I have had some good rushes in my life but few come close to the rush of preaching the Gospel.  It was incredible and I’m hooked.  I pray that God opens up more opportunities for me to preach.  Even if I’m under spiritual attack the whole time, it’s worth it.

I had set up one of my video cameras in the corner and recorded the sermon with the intent of adding the nice audio recording and the exported PowerPoint slides to the final video to upload to my site.  It took just a few hours, rendered last night and uploaded this morning.  Since I had stolen the message from Pastor Ivor, I tagged him in the video on facebook.  He then shared it on his wall and I had two more shares come from there.  On top of that, one guy started messaging me and we got to talking.  Turns out that he has a dropbox account full of presentations he’s collected from speakers or put together himself.  I sent him my version of “The Blueprint”, as well as “The Beast and the Mark”.  I had a few new youtube subscribers come through too.

Overall, this experience was fantastic and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  Here’s the sermon that’s going around on facebook now.

Production Journal

Posted by STARS Pictures on March 26, 2013
Posted in: Leap: Revelation. 1 Comment

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

It’s been a crazy past few days.  After weeks of planning, we officially launched our Kickstarter fundraising campaign yesterday.  We’ve had a few pledges so far and I’m very thankful for them, but I have hunch that if God allows us to make goal, it’ll be a last minute kind of think.  That’s the way God works.  This next month will be a time of faith building for me for sure.  We’re trying to raise $95,000 and Kickstarter is all or nothing.

Kim has really been stepping up as Executive Producer and I’m very thankful for her help.  She may have even found an actor to play Blake.  I auditioned her last week for the role Kati and she did a good job.  Kati is probably the pivotal role in this film and has the most emotional range.  I’m glad that part is cast.

At the begining of the month, Adobe ran a bio about me that I had submitted about my history with After Effects.  They ran it on their blog and now my youtube subscribers has been growing, as has our facebook likes for Leap 3.  Things are starting to move quickly.  The script is done, budget is done, and the even the schedule.  We’ll be shooting for six weeks, five days a week.  Cast and crew will make $100 a day.  And we’ll be shooting both in Spokane, WA and Fortine, MT.

I’ve been struggling lately with trying to figure out how we are going to pull of a sequence in which the Urban Grace crew leap off a rooftop and land on the fire escape on the next building.  As I was reading through The DV Rebel’s Guide (for like the gazillionth time) I came across a paragraph on digital doubles.  Basically you create a 3D model of your actor in the computer and have the model perform the stunt, then composite it into the live action scene.  Hollywood uses this all the time and it seems like something out of the reach of a typical independent filmmaker – But, software has a solution!  Enter Poser.

My version of Poser is a few years old and I’m not good enough at it for closeup work, but for a distance shot, I’m quite capable.  Poser allows you to take a 3D figure (human or animal), dress it up like a paper doll, and animate it easily with keyframes.  Basically, you tell it which poses to hit at what point in time and the computer fills in all the other details.  In the case of a test shot I did for the problem sequence, I had it hit two run poses, a jump, mid air crouch, landing anticipation  and landing, spread out over 75 frames.  Rather than try to move the figure in 3D space, I simply adjusted the virutal camera to somewhat match the real world shot and rendered it out with a green background.  The figure then performed the motions, though in one place.

Inside of After Effects, I scaled down and animated the position of the shot of the figure so that it accomplished the actions where they needed to.  Keyed out the background, added some blur, noise and glow and the shot looks amazing!  I may have to find more instances for this effect now. Image

Production Journal

Posted by STARS Pictures on February 21, 2013
Posted in: Leap: Revelation, Technology. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Given that this is my first real effects film (I only had 120-odd effects shots in Leap 2) I’ve been doing a lot of studying up on effects and shooting them.  When I shot Leap 2, I watched the Bourne films over and over.  Now I’m watching a lot of Transformers 1,2, and 3, The Avengers, Captain America, and Resident Evil: Retribution.  I’ve also been watching a bunch of independent short films that are effects heavy.  Not only am I looking to learn how to shoot for CG, but also what gives these films their epic scale. Most of it comes down to composition and camera movement.

We will be shooting on my T2i, and though it’s an older HDSLR, it’s still running strong.  I was a bit worried about doing effects within the limited colorspace I have, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem.  I’ve been shooting tests with the kids of the family I’m staying with, tests of shots I’m planing on using in the film.  So far, they’re turning out just fine.  In the process, I’m getting practice shooting for effects (the hardest part is visualizing the where exactly the CG is in the frame) and I’m learning more intimately After Effects and especially the rotobrush.  I think the rotobrush gets a bad rap sometimes for being too sharp, but I’m learning how to tweak it and keyframe it’s feather to handle motion blur.

Software-wise, I’m cutting in Premiere and dynamically linking effects shots into AE. Once in AE, I have access to it’s 3D tracker, the aforementioned rotobrush and Element 3D 1.5.  On the last film, After Effects was what made the movie possible.  This time it’s AE and more specifically, it’s Element plugin.  To complement Element, I’m running the latest version of Blender to animate models I get from a Top Secret website (no, it’s not Turbo Squid).  A bunch of the models I’m using have been pulled from videogames, so I’m significantly altering their diffuse texture in Photoshop so they won’t be recognized.  Element’s biggest strength is also it’s biggest drawback: In order for E3D to be realtime, it’s rendering engine is basically the same found in video games.  This can make it difficult to achieve the photo-realism that I’m going for, so I’m planing to save Element for shots with a lot of motion blur or shots that have elements in the distance.

I’m currently in the middle of breaking down the script right now and for the first time on a movie, I’m scheduling a second unit.  But here’s the thing, I AM THE SECOND UNIT.  Let me explain.  In order to keep costs down, I’ll be shooting everything with the actors at one time.  Our schedule is looking to be about a month and a half.  This is the first unit.  Then, when I’m all done with the actors, I become the second unit director and will be shooting all the plates and elements that I’ll need for the effects.  There’s a lot of establishing shots and plates that I won’t have to shoot with actors, so why schedule them then?  If I know a shot will have a digital double, there’s no point in having the actor there.  We’ve got too much other movie to shoot.

When I wrote the script, I had planned to shoot the film in both Montana and in Spokane, WA.  To cover wages, food, props and travel/lodging costs, the budget is sitting at about $18,500 (roughly) right now.  A major chunk of that is bringing the actors out to Montana and putting them up for the duration of the shoot.  I may be better off finding locations an hour from Spokane and then I can either cut that cost or put the money elsewhere.  I haven’t decided on this on yet, still praying about it.

Production Journal

Posted by STARS Pictures on February 16, 2013
Posted in: Leap: Revelation, Technology. Leave a comment

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Happy Sabbath!

The script is now locked!  I’ve printed out draft five, and I’m calling it finished.  Yes, we now have a shooting script 🙂  It’s been sent to the team and the response has been positive.  I dug out my old eighths ruler that I made a few years ago and calculated the eighths the other day.  Although there is software out there that’ll do it for me, I find doing it by hand helps solidify the details of the script in my mind.  Wearing all the hats that I do, I have to know the script frontward and backward.

Well, I gave Gorilla a try, but I wasn’t happy.  It kept locking up on me so I ditched it a few weeks ago.  I’ve spent since then looking for a good replacement for scheduling but nothing was turning up.  I was so desperate that I even tried Celtx again, but I had to use Trelby as a middle man to get the script into Celtx and Celtx kept locking up, being extremely buggy.  I somehow stumbled upon an article that mentioned Sophocles has a scheduler and even budget module.  I managed to acquire the discontinued beta for Sophocles 2007. WAY back when I was in eighth grade, I actually had used Sophocles to write my first attempt at a feature script.  While I don’t think I’d consider switching from Final Draft for the writing of a script, I’ve been nothing but happy with its other features.

First off, when I imported the script for Leap 3, I noticed that it gave me a runtime count, in minutes, along the side of the page.  That’s really cool.  Leap 3, though a 97 page script, should run 93 minutes according to the count.  I discovered the software has an auto-schedule feature, so next I added location details and told the software when certain actors are available.  I then ran the auto-schedule and it it gave me a good start for a shooting schedule.  Pretty smart AI.  I also gave the budget module a once over and I think it’ll do the job nicely.  It’s a shame that the company went bankrupt, but I’m glad I found the beta copy.  You can be sure that I’ll hang on to it incase I ever need to re-install.

In other Leap 3 news, a friend of mine, Kimberly Cruz (she played the reporter in Leap 2) has really stepped up to the plate and shown some real initiative as a producer.  She has a potential source that she is approaching for funding.  She is also very interested in playing the role of Kati.  Welcome to the team, Kim!