Chris Jones Blog

Final DVD – death and resurrection!

I had just about mastered the final DVD’s for Gone Fishing, in both PAL and NTSC, with both Dolby Digital and DTS sound, with perfect picture (even the NTSC thanks to a great system trascoder called Canopus Procoder 3)…

And then I got the dreaded email. We had missed a person off the credits. And it was one of the actors! How could this possibly happen? Well it does on low budget films. The problem is that it’s no-ones particular job to deal with making a credit list. During the shoot, a credit list is very low on the crisis management list. So this happens.

The good news is that as I am writing this, After Effects is rendering a new end roller which I will drop into the various edits later today, and then I will rebuild the DVD’s and BluRay disks. As for the HDCamSR master, I am doing some clones at the weekend and hope that I can drop them onto those tapes then. It should all be fine.

There is a hidden gem here too. After doing all the DVD’s yesterday, I was struck by an obvious idea which would have meant remaking all the DVD’s anyway. I was wrestling with ‘All that work to remake the DVD’s for this damn idea I should have had weeks ago…’ when I got the email about the missing credit and I am now obliged to rebuild the DVD’s. My good friend Johnny Newman made a film a few years ago which I edited for him, called ‘Foster’. It’s a touching tale about fostering young kids, and it won a few festivals. Last week, Johnny got a call from Walden Media (the guys who made among other things, ‘Bridge to Terabithia’) as they had a DVD of ‘Foster’ and liked it. It occurred to me that if this was gong to happen with ‘Gone Fishing’, I ought to have something on the DVD about Rocketboy. I already have a short promo made up of the concept art, so now I am going to include that as a button on the menu saying something like… The Next Project – ROCKETBOY…

So like everything in life, where you lose, you gain! Sure I have to remake all the DVD masters and stuff, but I also get a better crack at getting the message of Rocketboy out there.

You can view the short Rocketboy promo here…  (it's 5mb H264 encoded MOV, so give it a moment to load).

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Grading - The First Day...

I spent today at Midnight Transfer, with senior colourist John Claude, and ‘Gone Fishing’ DP, Vernon Layton, conforming the movie and colour grading it. During the day we had a few visitors, other director and producer friends of mine, and some of the GF contributors - and everyone commented ‘Wow! It looks amazing!’

The first thing that strikes you when you work in an environment like MT’s grading theatre is just that – it’s a theatre. No computer screens or plasmas showing your movie, it’s up there on a cinema screen, with extremely complicated multi layered work playing back in real time. I am still reeling in shock at what we achieved in a single, but very long, day. The images already looked amazing, but now they are simply gob-smacking! What was most impressive was the real time selective grading of small parts of the screen, such as sharpening an actors eyes to give them more presence in a shot.

It’s been a very long day and there’s going to be another long day tomorrow too. I am now not sure that we will complete the grade before Xmas, but we will certainly go for it! Tomorrow, editor Eddie Hamilton will drop in too, as well as Visual Effects guy Russ Wharton so we can drop in his final marvellous work!

One strange aspect today was sitting in this silent, darkened and sedate theatre – and then going outside into the freezing cold circus that it late night Soho only a few days before Christmas! It really was like stepping into a whirl wind.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Bringing it all together...

I have been frantically dashing around, making sure everything is ready for the final picture conform / picture grade tomorrow at Midnight Transfer. Thankfully I have been pretty organised through the whole process, so while it’s a long haul, so far there have been very few unforeseen hitches. Let’s hope it stays that way. (pictured here is our Ace picture grader, John Claude in action at MT).

The final picture conform is like the full stop at the end of a sentence. Once it’s done, the image is creatively completed. This final stage is where all the various elements are brought together and made to feel like a single element, as though the happened ‘in reality’. For instance, all the images will be colour tweaked to make sure they look the same (remember some shots were filmed weeks apart, with different weather and yet they should still look like they happened in the same moment).

In Gone Fishing, we have a number of elements to bring together…

1. The 35mm film negative. This is the actual film from the camera, a negative, that has been scanned on Midnight Transfers Northlight Film Scanner.

2. The special effects. Theses are image sequences that were edited and manipulated on Adobe After Effects by Russ Wharton, and saved as a DPX image stream.

3. Titles. I am hoping to get them all nailed down tonight and created as hi res tiff’s in Photoshop, with one ENORMOUS long tiff for the end roller.

4. HiDef HiSpeed Images – we shot some images on a high speed High Def camera, and those also need importing and lining up.

All of this is really rather simple on paper, but in the real world, it can be a headache as every film is like a prototype. The smallest error can send things cart wheeling in the wrong direction… and let’s not even get into data movement. At this resolution, single image frame sizes are around 12mb! I bought a half terabyte USB2 drive to back up all the data once it’s completed! Blimey.

Right, got to get on with those titles… I have an early start tomorrow…

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Matte Painting Complete!

Blimey! I really mean it. Blimey! How amazing is that!?

Above is the original image, shot by second unit director Simon Cox, and the image below is the final matte painting, Audrius Urbonavicius did for us, and comped into place.

Above the new mountains are some whispy clouds which will be animated to enhance the realism. All the work was done by Audrius in Photoshop, ending up with a multi layered image that was 16bit and over 200mb for the single frame. What is amazing about this is how fast he was able to work. He really is an extremely talented artist. 

The shot only appears briefly in the film, as an establishing shot, and it will be dropped into the final grade, probably on Friday, when we will all see it in its final glory… at full film resolution. I CAN’T WAIT!!!!!

Pictures speak louder than words, so that’s enough for the blog today!

Well done Audrius and thank you Men From Mars!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Worm Shot Completed by Russ Wharton

Russ Wharton, VFX whizz in Wales, has just completed three shots for Gone Fishing.

Two were kind of image fixes, removing small cosmetic problems from the shot, but the third was a full blow VFX shot with a worm enlargement. In the story, Old Bill recounts the tale of how he needed the biggest worms to catch the biggest pike. When we shot it, the scene was fine. But in post, we realised we could increase the worm size and make it a funnier gag. If you have been following the blog, you will know we have been following how this shot has passed through film scanning to DPX, import into After Effects and so on. And I am delighted to now ‘premiere’ a quicktime of the completed shot. You can click on it here…

This is of course a low res version and not in the correct aspect ratio, but blimey Russ, job WELL DONE! So good is Russ’ work, I have now sent him three more shots. I will report on his ongoing progress as we get to each shot.

If you are as impressed with this shot as much as I am, drop Russ an email and say… Well done! His email is russ.wharton@btopenworld.com

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Making A Bigger Worm...

I asked Russ Wharton to detail exactly how he has gone about increasing the size of the worm in one shot from Gone Fishing. Here’s what he has said... Interesting if you are into digital VFX...Anyway, here are his words...

If you know you need a bigger worm before you film, then film the actor without the worm (have him hold a small white headed pin instead) and film the worm full frame against a keyable background (like a greenscreen). Then the worm can just replace the pin. Job Done.

If, however, you decide you need a bigger worm after the fact, then this is one way....

SUPERWORM RECIPE

— Not full details here (to keep it short and sweet) but enough to follow along —

For this tasty meal you will need the following ingredients:

Footage of Young Bill holding a worm
Adobe Photoshop (Any recent version)
Adobe After Effects (Any recent version, but I did use CS3's puppet tool)


The Problem:

We need to scale the worm. Which means we need it separate from its background.

Backgrounds blend into foreground edges, even more so with motion blur. You can pull out this bleeding with keying tools and colour correction but sometimes (as in this case) it doesn't leave much foreground to work with :o(

Also,
Scaling softens the image.
Speed of movement won't be accurate, big things have weight and move slower.

You can get a way with all of these if you're not scaling too big. But we want us a BIG worm, so...

The Solution:

Build a Superworm!

Take some neat (no mo blur) frames into photoshop and use to create just one new superworm image. Scale where poss and clone in some detail so we've got a nice sharp 200% worm to work with. Save out a .psd image with an alpha channel.

Animate the worm - put this image into AE and deform it over time (slightly embarrassed to say I used the new puppet tool - I thought this was a bit pointless when I saw they introduced it in the new version, but for this it was perfect!).

Copy the original worm motion for this. Then slow it down! Our 200% superworm will be weightier than its smaller sibling. I slowed it down by a third.

Tip - If you want an easier animating life, have one of those fancy computer things do the work for you (that's what they're for). Use motion tracking to follow the plate your matching (in this case the hand) and you've already got half the movement done! Very useful on slow moving objects, where hand animated imperfections show up easily.

Clean the background plate: anywhere the old worm shows up behind the new one you'll have to remove it! Its sometimes easiest to use an earlier part of the footage where the plate is clean as source.

Add edge feathering/light wrap — Remember the background bleeding that was such a problem in the first place? Well now we need to put it back! Using a duplicate of the background plate that's been cut out by a feathered edge matte of the worm.

Add a touch of motion blur and season to taste (depends on the shutter speed used when filming).

Put anything back on top of the worm that needs to be there — like fingers and grass. Again, use cut out duplicates of the background plate.

Finally, add a sprinkling of minor colour correction (to the worm, don't touch the plate) and leave to render for about 10 mins (depends on oven speed).

Enjoy!

How big is your worm?

Sometimes, I reflect on what I do, and I really have to pinch myself. Most people have real jobs!

Sure, what I do means I live in a famine and hope for a feast, but every day is different. And today, I was presented with the very serious question of ‘how big should the worm dug up by young Bill in Gone Fishing actually be?’ VFX artist, Russ Wharton spent the weekend rotoscoping the shot, and then expanding the worm at increments of 25%.

So now I have to choose. 125%? 150% or 200% worm increase! Before we did the effect, I thought it would be 150% increase, but now I see it, I am plumbing for 200% enlargement. No digital worm here, the same worm just cut out and blown up to twice its size and then dropped on top of the old 100% sized worm and thus covering it. Cunning.

Well done Russ for this exceptional work. I can’t wait to see the finished version.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

The waiting game…

Now that the picture edit has been locked, we have entered a waiting game for the final picture mastering, sound edit & mix, and the visual effects. We have got top people and companies working on all three aspects, but as they are all at the top of their game, and as we are not paying, we have to slip in between big paying jobs. So we are forced into a waiting game.

VFX company Men From Mars have been choka with two big features, St Trinians and Mutant Chronicles, and they hope to get to us soon… I have broken the VFX into two parts, ‘hard’ and ‘not so hard’. Last week I was contacted by a Gone Fishing contributor who is also an After Effects guru, and he offered to deal with the ‘not so hard’ shots. His name is Russ Wharton and I hope to be able to post an update with some of his ‘before’ and ‘after’ clips soon. Russ lives up in Wales and so I just posted a DVD with data on it. Let’s see what comes back from him.

On the picture conform front, Midnight Transfer are also busy, but I think we will get in there before the end of the month. To speed things up, I am going through making the EDL for them (in CMX3600 format) so that if they get a free afternoon, they can at least scan the neg into the system (the neg is still stored with them). I have a feeling the neg will still be a bit dirty and may need a further ultrasonic clean at The Film Clinic (who have already done some great work for us). We will see.

On the sound front, things are moving very well. Senior sound designer at Videosonics, Bernard O’Reilly, is spending the afternoon in his studio, messing around with the fishing props to see what cool sounds he can create. We are striving to create a film with a truly extraordinary soundtrack, and Bernard is one of the best guys in the country for the job. We are so very lucky to have him! I can’t wait to hear what he cooks up in his accoustic cauldron!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Gone Fishing Locks Picture Edit at 1.45am!

So we locked the picture edit at 1.45am last night. Editor Eddie Hamilton and I made a huge number of tweaks that at first glance, are fairly minimal in impact, but we both know that they made a big difference holistically. At one point Eddie stopped and looked at me grinning and commenting that ‘it’s so good, and so rare, to get the chance to come back to an edit after a short break, to make these small but important changes…’ I knew exactly what he meant.

It’s not that the previous edits were wrong or bad, it’s just that some of them could be better. Editing is often like musical composition, you are looking for rhythm, using timbre of voice, contrast of image and sound, timing of performance, all to its maximum effect within the confines of the story and the style of story telling. Editing begins as a technical construction, moves into the world of craft and ends up in the realm or artists, using feeling and emotion to guide your choices. 

During this final edit, we played with a few new ideas too, some of which worked, some of which didn’t. We also ditched a lot of the shots of Goliath, the killer pike, replacing him with swelling water. This was simply because water is hard to scale in the mind of the viewer (something we discovered and found surprising in test screenings), and Goliath simply looked smaller than he actually was. I learned something there - about water, scaling it, using slow motion and scaled props in shot etc… As Eddie put it though, we had to shoot it to know that it wouldn’t work fully (though there are still shots used). Film makers ‘due diligence’ as it were.

Last night also included making all the deliverables for the sound guys – exporting all the audio, making a QT files with time code, and adding an academy leader. It was when Eddie added the Academy leader (the countdown clock at the start of a film) that I got goose bumps, mainly because I heard the ‘plop on two...’ This is a one frame beep that sound guys use to sync the film up (of course time codes and such usually take care of all of this but it’s nice to have this old school rock solid backup). And it’s the plop that for me is synonymous with sitting in the final mix, in a dubbing theatre, and watching the magic of sound mixing bring your film fully to life. I was giddy as a schoolboy!

There is still a long way to go, completing VFX, track laying sound, mixing the sound, clearing music, grading picture, checking and making titles, making a DVD, making a Blu Ray (that’s a new one for me!). Not to mention, festivals… and the attempt at the Oscars! 

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Compiling Clips for the Gone Fishing Course

I have been working on the one day course for the contributors of Gone Fishing today, and building the DVD with the clips. I have lots of video goodies, including this one here, which illustrates different slow motion frame rates. For some scenes we used an electronic High Speed camera which came in a van and needed super cooled computers and loads of hard disk space. It could shoot up to 2200 frames per second, so you can see why it needed so much kit. Light was also essential, you needed lots of it, so thankfully we were shooting in bright daylight. The camera actually shot a square frame, 1024 x 1024, and these frames were saved as a TIFF stream. I handed the camera guys a half gig drive to copy the media across to after the days shooting and walked away with it at the end of the day. Simple and efficient.

Back to the course… the best part of this course, and I have said it on the blog before, is going to be going through the development of the story, through scripts, shooting, editing, sound, music and mastering. The different edits are fascinating to watch in order, and to see how the film grows and is crafted in each different edit.

I can’t wait to present it to the group!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

VFX starts

We have begun the visual effects stage for Gone Fishing! Hoorah! Yesterday, Midnight Transfer took the 35mm film and scanned selected shots on their Northlight scanner. The shots were outlined in a EDL supplied by Eddie Hamilton (Editor) and are just the shots that need visual effects work.

We shot both 3perf and 4perf 35mm film, and when scanned, the 3perf frames come in at about 9mb each the 4perf coming in at 12mb (per frame that is!!!!). Each frame is saved in a format called DPX, which are RGB encoded with 16 bits per channel. The big thing to note is that the scans are VERY low contrast, as you can see from the picture (left is the raw scan, right I have adjusted the levels in Photoshop to look more like the final image will appear).

The six shots ended up at around 12gb which Midnight Transfer saved to an external USB2 HD that was dropped off last week. The next step is a meeting on Monday with Men From Mars, who are doing the actual effects. I have committed to doing one effect myself, using After Effects - it’s a really simple shot, and MFM have promised to hold my hand through the entire process. I will report on my progress and what I learn on the blog.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

So the plot thickens…

We have been editing, testing, editing, testing… and getting great results and feedback in these screenings. In some ways we are now slipping into analysis paralysis on some points, but on others, we are really having to fine tune the edit. For me, great movies stretch the credible right to the very edge. You take the viewer right to the very limit of plausibility, but never past that point. Hollywood movies tend to do this very well.

We are having such a plausibility debate right now with Gone Fishing, with specific regard to how big viewers thought the enormous killer pike in the story actually was. In previous edits we didn’t have the new footage we shot last week (of Brucey, our big rubber pike), but now we have it in place, we are getting all sorts of sizes quoted. These shots, no matter how impressive, scale the fish. And here is a great one! One test viewer said of our big rubber pike, ‘It was clearly a real fish the you filmed, and so it can’t have been bigger than a couple of feet!’ Blimey. Our effects are so good they are working against us.

The solution is of course to be minimal in what we reveal. So it’s back to the edit to modify once more. This is one of the reasons I love editing so much. We really get the chance to craft the story to perform like a sports car. These tiny tweaks, cummulatively, make such a difference.   

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Test Screening 3 and final roller

Last night, after a small re-edit, we held another test screening. Results were as usual very interesting. No revelations this time, just amplifications on what we already knew, and a few more ideas to integrate into final picture grading.

At some point, screenings like these start slipping into opinion – which isn’t much use. Analysis paralysis! We only need to know what worked and what didn’t in terms of story mechanics. So we are now pretty clear, the story is working as we intended. We are now effectively picture locked, and we can get on with the visual effects, audio track lay, picture grading and final mastering.

I have begun the process of getting the neg scanned for VFX, so let’s see how fast we can get those special effects shots done! The final picture element to lock down is the end roller, and editor Eddie Hamilton is going to be making a temp roller tonight so we can lock down length and timing.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Pickup shoot is 100% success!

Saturday morning, the day after the pickup shoot, and I am looking out of my window in amazement at the weather. According to the BBC it should be bright sun, and it’s grey and miserable. Yesterday on the other hand, the day we shot, WAS AMAZING SUNSHINE! We could not have been luckier with the weather.
So the shoot went very well. We had a very small crew, running without sound, and now ticking over like a well oiled machine. We cranked through loads of simple cutaway shots, like the one here of the gnarled shark hook the killer pike chews up in the story.

By lunch time we had about ten shots in the can, all with amazing backlit sunshine. What was great is I could feel the edit of the film coming together, as I knew just how these new shots would slot in perfectly and plug little problems.

After lunch came the moment of truth with our large, rubber ‘Bruce’ like pike, built by Jenny Cochrane. It was operated by a couple of very nice divers, Steve Reid and Dave O’Dell, who came along for the fun of it. I don’t quite know what they made of Goliath when they finally saw him, but they were game, so they got into the water and we all attempted to make movie magic! Sadly, for most of the time, Goliath performed just like a big rubber pike would. BUT… after lots of takes, we could all see that we got short glimpses of real genius, where Goliath looked terrifying and enormous and completely real. I can’t wait to see the footage. So 100% success!

We also did a few shots of photos that we had to drop during the main shoot as the actual props were not ready (as we had only just filmed the cast in costume – this is always a scheduling nightmare as actors need to be in costume etc., and it’s rarely done before the main shoot). We did these shots in the main building at Bury Hill Fisheries, overlooking the lake, which is a bizarre place to do such shots.

We should get a tape of the rushes from the labs on Tuesday and have it all cut in by Tuesday night. I hope to have a locked picture by Thursday and a final test screening on Friday, making tweaks over the weekend if needed. Then it’s all about the final picture conform at 2k res, getting the digital effects right, and a track lay and Dolby Digital Mix. The very talented guys at Videosonics have already offered their help so I know the movie will sound a million dollars!

FANTASTIC!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com 

Killer Pike Arrives

Today I collected our three and a half foot animatronic – well actually, hand puppet – monster pike. It was made by effects guru Jenny Cochrane and it weighs A TON! This fish is never going to be seen out of water, only in the murky shallows as it battles with Young Bill. We will need two submerged operators, one for the head, one for the tail. Being operated by humans, this will also give it the movement of something alive, and not the movement of a mechanism. The head is effectively a glove puppet, giving the operator full control over head thrashing and jaws snapping. Having worked in effects before, I know how well this will work, and I am delighted I resisted using a real pike.

I love this kind of effect, that will rely on a hint and a glimpse, rather than the current visual barrage of digital effects. The mind is so much more powerful.

During the main shoot, stunt co-ordinator Jude Poyer donned a dry suit from diving company Diving Leisure London who are breaking into film hire and have been fantastic. We hope Jude will be coming back to operate the killer pike. We hope those lovely guys at Diving Leisure London will come back too.

Before the main shoot, Jenny was concerned about the deadline, and so I made the choice to give her the time to get it right rather than hurry it. I am glad we did as we will now get a huge amount of time on Wednesday to get the shots right too. Anything like this always takes a long time to get right, and I am so glad we wont have a crew of 35 and actors all hanging around to watch.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com 

Digital Effects Work Begins

We are now prepping for the Digital Effects that we need in Gone Fishing. This is a bit of a technical process. It starts with a chat with the FX guys, in this case, the amazing wizards from Men From Mars. We isolated the shots we need, in this case a shot of a worm that is going to be increased by 50%. My effects supervisor is Tom Horton, and when I showed him the cut yesterday he looked at me and smiled saying, ‘wow, you really could win the Oscar for best short film!’

FANTASTIC!

Editor, Eddie Hamilton then created a VFX (visual effects) EDL (Edit Decision List or Cutting List) in Avid which lists each shot, plus 10 frame handles on either side (should we want to make it a smidge longer in the final version). Post Production company Midnight Transfer will then scan the 35mm negative and supply those files on a hard drive in DPX format (Wiki Link). These files look like film negative (effectively very low contrast and with an orange colour hue) and so they need a special Look-Up-Table, which effectively changes they way the colours are displayed on a computer so when a VFX artist makes changes, they will look how they would in the final print.

So then Men From Mars will do the effect – in this shot they will rotoscope the worm and increase it by 50% (note the name of this Quicktime file and all the burn in detail in the frame, which all helps the VFX guys). It should just sit ontop of the hole where the old worm was, and look 50% bigger! Crafty! No CGI worms needed. Like so many effects shots, the simplest way is of the best. At that point I guess I will approve the shot and then the files will be saved to disk and taken back to Midnight Transfer to be integrated into the final DI of the movie, and graded to match the other shots.

All sounds so simple. Let’s hope that it is.

What I am looking forward to is going through the whole process so I can speak with experience about the problems and hurdles when working with DPX files, lookup tables etc. This to me seems like that stage most people know very little about.

Once this shot has been done, I will post a clip for us all to see.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com 

Jaws for Kids!

Still working on music for Gone Fishing. We have entered that dreaded stage where we have fallen in love with the temporary music we used, and anything else, just does not do the same job. This is a typical problem and I am trying hard to stay focussed on a solution and not on what I feel I am losing. In fact I am not losing anything as there is no way I could ever use the John Williams tracks we laid into the edit as temp music.

On the upside, we did start track laying with music from Audio Network and that has gone very well, especially for the ethereal parts of the score. The problem scenes we have are the big dramatic battle scenes between Pike and boy. Jaws for kids as it were.

On Sunday we collect the killer Pike from FX guru Jenny Cochrane and get it into the water on Wednesday for the shoot. Interestingly, during test screenings, no-one has commented on the lack of a pike in the edit, in fact, I am now thinking it may be better never to show the pike at all. It seems everyone has their own imaginary fish that will probably be bigger and nastier than whatever we shoot. I am sure we will get some subtle underwater glimpses of our animatronic pike, but I am now wondering if we will use it in the way we initially thought we would. We will see what happens on Wednesday. I hope we get AMAZING footage.

This only serves to highlight the creative journey and how much is lost on that journey. You shoot so much and throw most it away. The same is true with ideas. It’ s just a very lossy process.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com 

Sound Recordist, Killer Pike and Killer Bunnies!

Great news today. Experienced sound recordist Adrian Bell has agreed to record sound on ‘Gone Fishing’. This is particularly good news for me as Adrian recorded sound on my first feature film, ‘The Runner’, the movie that inspired ‘The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook’! So terrific! Adrians website is here. He will be using hard drive recorders which is a firsat for me. I am looking forward to the benefits.

We also enlisted the help of Mike Tucker at the The Model Unit. Mike is a legend, and wandering around his studio was like going down memory lane for me. He even had the original K9 from Dr Who, which he told me he rescued from a skip at the BBC! Blimey.

Mike will be building a scale model set for when the fish is landed – remember, this is supposed to be the biggest pike ever caught. So we are going to build a two foot by two foot section of ‘ground’ that has 50% scale models and grass, so when a real live pike is placed on it, the pike will appear twice as big…. the same way they did for that classic horror movie ‘Night Of The Lepus’ about giant killer bunnies. That movie had the classic line, ‘We need to get out of here, there is a herd of killer rabbits headed our way…!’

And here is another idea for getting a fish to flop around in the water, from Phil Mathews, my effects friend.

‘Use a dead one that you buy. Get a mini bumbleball or such like. Kiddies toys (lots of water proof bathtime stuff is now battery operated and pretty impressive) they operate on giromotor I think, pets toys can do the same. Gut the fish. Pop said kiddies toy inside sealed in a sandwich bag and reseal by sewing up or with superglue and superglue activator. It should work a treat. Good luck with everything’

Crikey Phil!

Onward and upward

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com 

Killer Pike Effects

I have been working out how do some of the visual effects for ‘Gone Fishing’. Of course having no money, it’s a sellotape and string affair. But, I now have recieved tremendous support from a special effects company called Men From Mars. These digital effects guys are real wizards and usually work on $50m movies, but they have agreed to help out on GF! Blimey!

I have been worried about the shots where the giant pike swims away from shore having escaped capture attempt after capture attempt. In an effort to do everything practically and not rely of effects in post, I had been working on underwater rigs that were pulled fast, to create a ripple in the water. But I was having problems and so thought I would ask the Men From Mars guys what there take would be…

‘Why not shoot a radio controlled boat which we then paint out?’

Brilliant! So, what we will do is shoot the boat in the water, creating ripples – which I have now sprayed green (in the pic) – and then shoot a second ‘clean’ plate with no boat. The boat will be digitally removed to reveal the clean plate below, effectively giving the impression of water ripples but nothing on the surface making them. We may need to add a digital fish fin later, but I am hopeful that we will need to do minimal digital work.

Fantastic! We will be doing our first tests in the next few days at the lake location.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com