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Posts Tagged ‘Cork Christmas Carol’

Cork Christmas Carol 2nd Edition now online!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 7, 2009| 2 Comments »

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 – Production Diary 21/12/08

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 21, 2008| Leave a Comment »

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

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 20, 2008| Leave a Comment »

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

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 16, 2008| Leave a Comment »

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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Camera mapping test with Blender

Posted in Cork Christmas Carol, tests, tagged , , on December 1, 2008| 1 Comment »

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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Cork Christmas Carol: Introduction to Production Blog

Posted in Cork Christmas Carol, tagged , , , on November 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »

As previously stated by Patchy, we are going to keep a production diary of the first Gifted Babies Christmas Special, tentatively called Cork Christmas Carol. Patchy will post concept art, storyboads and production photos. I’ll be covering FX stuff, specifically how I give Cork a white Christmas using open source software such as GIMP and Blender, as well as cover other post-production aspects such as audio mixing and video editing. I also intend on writing tutorials so at least if anyone is interested, they’ll be able to reproduce some of the same effects, in fact my first production blog will be a tutorial based on creating simple snow fall animation.

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Cork Christmas Carol: A New Era in Xmas Films That Rip Off Dickens

Posted in Cork Christmas Carol, tagged , , , , on November 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »

It was the 6 O’Clock in the morning, suffering from a touch of insomnia. To occupiy my mind, I tried thinking of movie ideas. I was currently struggling with two concepts. One was a Christmas sequel of Trippers Through Time (Trippers 2ugh Time) and the other about a couple that solve crimes.  The former was too complex and confusing (there is a graph somewhere explaining various timelines, that proves this) and the latter was little more than a Thin Man rehash.  I looked to the side of my room and saw my €3 copy of Charles Dickens’ “Christmas Stories” I attempt to read each Christmas, rarely get past the first story. I thought about reading it again (Is November too early to read Christmas Stories? Discuss…) However A special kind of alchemy soon occurred. I remember that first story, an unknown tale known as The Christmas Carol. An Idea was born and I rushed to the computer downstairs, thankfully not waking the dogs. Two hours later, I had a first draft.

Now, I’m not going to tell you what the plot is yet. However I can reveal the following, It is a very loose retelling of A Christmas Carol, featuring many Gifted Babies Trademarks, including food, Beehive hair, cat puppets and lame jokes. In case you are thinking “this will be a pointless rehash”, (why would you think that? that’s pretty cold.) It will have some exciting elements, such as SFX and singing. It will also be the first Gifted Babies film to be blogged. Various Gifted Babies and I will document the various production challenges of Cork Christmas Carol. So check back regularly!

+ In case you are wondering what happened to the other two ideas. T2T will be shelved till the world is ready and the detective story was gutted of its best feature. A character named Beverly Honeycomb.

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