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So what’s next in store?

January 9, 2009 by Jan Hayes

Nothing much actually, the Milton Murder Mystery will probably be out give or take in 2 weeks, I’ll write up a post about the troubled production in the coming week or so. There’s another Cethan Leahy story in the planning stages, whether or not we’re going ahead of this is still unclear since Aidawho and Patchy have been very busy with their college courses of late but as part of their course work they’ll be creating their own videos. There will be another music video from Aidawho and as for Patchy, he’s making a film about light bulbs although I’m not too sure what his role in the production is.

I’ve just ordered some audio recording equipment from ebay so I’ll be doing some foley work in the next few weeks and perhaps put together a little audio story or two and see how it goes. Piratehelm is currently working so she won’t have too much time in her hands. So I predict after Milton Murder Mystery is released there won’t be another Gifted Babies production for at least another 3 or 4 months which may or may not be a detective story …. with a twist.

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Cork Christmas Carol 2nd Edition now online!

January 7, 2009 by Jan Hayes

As stated from the blog post made on the 23rd December, a re-edited version of the Cork Christmas Carol would be released. Here’s the embed link:

Differences:

  • A new narration was recorded. It was an attempt at a Brian Blessed impersonation gone Patrick Stewart.
  • Re-edited title sequence, shortened and doesn’t feature “The Gifted Babies proudly present”, added new credits.
  • Improved audio mixing, music volume is lowered in some parts, new sounds are added and the audio in some parts of the film have been run through a denoise filter.
  • Video now displays at the correct aspect ratio ( 16:9 )
  • Added blur filter, contrast adjustments and a denoise filter ( Mplayer’s hqdn3d ) on some parts of the footage.
  • Added end credits and slapped a Creative Common License at the end.
  • Added a new snow matte ( North Main Street ) as well as made adjustments to enlarge the projected area of the other snow mattes.
  • Fake High Definition video, enlarged to 1280*720 using Lanczos formula.
  • Lengthened ending snowfall animation.
  • The fact that I edited the film is only mentioned once.

Does this greatly improve the experience of the film? Course not, these can be viewed as minor adjustments that I had to overlook prior to releasing the first edition due to timing constraints. After all who would release a Christmas film in early January? Unfortunately in the editing process, there’s no such thing as a quick polish ( the action itself, not people from Poland ).

3rd edition coming out in for the 25th Anniversary in 2033, in this version Wesley Whines will shoot first.

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Cork Christmas Carol is online

December 23, 2008 by Jan Hayes

Still rough around some areas but the Cork Christmas Carol is online. There’s a few things that I intend on fixing when I’m back in Cork but for the most part it will remain mostly the same( Update! You can watch that version from this link ). I’m surprised we managed to get this far in a space of 5 days although I spent the last two days constantly editing but hardly getting any sleep ( 1 hour for the past 48 hours ) so I’m going to keep the post fairly short. Hope you enjoy the film and happy Christmas.

Update: No video! I’ve decided to set the video to private. The 2nd edition is virtually identical except features improved audio and some tighter cuts.

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Cork Christmas Carol – Production Diary 21/12/08

December 21, 2008 by Jan Hayes

And it’s a wrap. We just finished the opening scene now it’s a simple matter of condensing two hours of footage into a 5 minute film for the next two days. Oh the joy.itsawrap1

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Cork Christmas Carol Production Diary – 19 / 12 / 08

December 20, 2008 by Jan Hayes

So slightly later than planned we first started the principle photography with actors on the 18th as opposed to the 17th, as one of our actors was unavailable at the time. So 18th the shoot went fairly well, we’ve decided to start straight into the middle of the film which proved to be an interesting experience because it required us to shoot an eating scene, as film making is a much slower process than cooking unfortunately. So imagine the rigorous torture for the three very hungry actors who weren’t allowed to eat or about an hour just because all that food had to be set up and used as props for film. An important lesson was learnt that day, never ever put the catering into film.

So the shoot started roughly from seven and finished at one in the morning but we still need to get back and add a few more little scenes. I was glad we got to use the cheap clapper board we bought the week before, not becuase it adds to the production value but it’s highly amusing to watch in editing :). Unfortunately we didn’t have the clapper board for the shoot for the following day. Today’s shoot was the final scene of the film, because Cethan’s house isn’t as brightly lit in some parts there’s quite a bit of grain added to the footage as well as flicker, it’s an unfortunate short coming with the Canon GL2. Thankfully the scene was short enough and two of the actors had to leave early enough so we managed to complete the shoot before they had to leave and we were done earlier than usual.

So that leaves the film largely done, we’re aiming to get some of Cethan’s scenes shot in the streets of Cork tomorrow and then wrap up on Sunday ( 21st ) followed by 2 or 3 days of editing though not quite as intense as the other project because I’m pretty sure I don’t have to catch much in editing. We’re well on way to having it done by the 23rd it seems.

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Cork Christmas Carol – Production Diary 15/12/08

December 16, 2008 by Jan Hayes

Bought a neat tripod from the Sony shop in Patrick Street, it’s a Hahnel Triad 50 in case anyone was wondering. I’m no expert with tripods but suggesting from the prices of tripods with similar builds I’ve seen in camera shops, it’s pretty much a steal with a price tag of 60 Euros. It’s a great replacement for the other yoke I used for the past 4 years, which was fine to use with my digital camera but not with a prosumer camcorder which would be the equivalent to horse riding a cat. So expect smooth panning shots in CCC, if there is gonna be any. I have a feeling our shoot will become 17% percent easier with it.

I’ve been running around Cork again taking pictures of the city with Tom’s Finepix camera and some of the photos have turned out really well.

You’ll be seeing the images in the title sequence and used to depict areas in Cork featuring snow. Speaking of which, I’m working on the snow animation at the moment. There is already a useful method of adding snow to a scene but snowfall is a different matter. I’m coming across a few interesting obstacles that I’m working on at the moment such as object occlusion, hopefully I’ll have it figured out shortly before the principle photography is completed. We’re going to cut down on the Special FX due to time constraints, so I’m leaving Camera Mapping out of this, I took a few snaps of Cork City from Shandon tower but it’s far too tedious to map out every object in 3D with these images, though I might look into it again in the not too distant future.

Shooting is starting very soon, we’ve already made some changes to the script and because of time constraints we’ve cut some parts of out of the script yet maintaining the crux of the story. The first thing we’re going to shoot is the 2nd scene which starts off with a story transition from the miser to another person whom we follow for the rest of the story. My next post will be about that shoot so check back in 24 hours.

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Cork Christmas Carol – Production Diary 13/12/08

December 13, 2008 by Jan Hayes

It’s been a little while since we provided an update on the Cork Christmas Carol, lately we’ve been busy with other “things” but rest assured everything is coming along well rather nicely. Today myself and Mr Leahy have spent at least 2 hours wandering around Cork City shooting various bits and bobs for the establishing shots, if Manhattan gets that kind of treatment in hollywood films, why can’t Cork? I suppose this means that principle photography has begun. Anyway here are a few stills from the footage:

As if our reluctance to spend a reasonable amount of cash on film equipment couldn’t stoop to a lower level, we bought a really cheap Clap Board for 6 euros, in a toy shop of all places. For anyone who is interested in getting the clap board featured above, you can get these inside Pinnochios in Paul Street.

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Camera mapping test with Blender

December 1, 2008 by Jan Hayes

Thought I might experiment with Blender’s Camera Mapping technique that I watched from one of the video tutorials made by Peerless Productions. The link to the video tutorial can be found here . The Blender wiki tutorial can be found here. As explained by these lads, Blender doesn’t feature proper Camera Mapping features available on other 3D modelling tools like 3DSMax and Maya, instead you have to use sticky textures to map an image onto 3D objects in a way to match the perspective of the image and the 3D scene or object. Or something like that.

The top image I took from the rooftop of the Car Park in North Main Street. The bottom image is my attempt at re-creating the environment in 3D using the image as a reference in Blender.

Photo of Coal Quay and one of the North Main side streets

blender

With a rough 3D representation of the elements inside the image I then mapped the image onto the 3D scene through the 3D Camera perspective. After animating the camera movement and rendering the output, I got this result.

Aside from the obvious artefacts, the effect looks pretty good. The process itself can take quite a while but I find the results seem to pay off in the end. We’re definitely using it as an FX shot in the upcoming Cork Christmas Carol.

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