the fxphd deans blog

Zombie Drive through !!!

On the way to the shoot this morning - Richard - or Zombie - wanted breakfast after being in the makeup chair for hours (since 4 am)
We figured … why not try the drive via a local McDonalds !!!

Production is off to a great start.
Today is filming in a residential street which we needed to both lock down and then make look like a bomb zone.

Most of the filming today was from the Viper Camera with the Venom pack, mounted on a steadicam - which in turn was mounted on the back of a 4 wheel motor bike.

The residents were really helpful as we trashed their street, by the end of the day we had an army of kids helping with every shot.

From a production point of view the Venon pack contains about 10 mins of material similar to a normal film camera load. To clear the Venom pack we had a Codex box at Unit - where there was HD monitoring and checking.

Tomorrow is special effect make up and early calls.

Mike

Preproduction continues… but not much to blog as I have been sick as a Dog.

We shoot SAT-SUN-MON-TUES…. and today & tomorrow (thur-fri) are last minute pre-production… wow it sucks being sick… plus I need to get classes out… anyway sorry for the lack of postings but I will start back tomorrow

Mike

I wanted to thank everyone from NAB - but now I am back in Sydney, our attention turns to the Shoot this weekend. We have had a production crew in pre-production while I was in the States and they have done a great job in preparing everything.

For those who have heard about the zombie script, you’ll know that involved a short scene with firearms. In light of the Virginia Tech tragedy, we have removed this scene from the script. While the intent of our script was never to encourage teens with firearms - it was in poor taste and in light of the events of the last week or so, something we should not in anyway ‘glorify’. As such it was a universally easy decision to remove the scene and alter the script.

One can never put the tragic events of Virginia Tech just at the feet of filmmakers, but we do still need to see our role in popular culture and also respect the feeling of those who have been affected by any such tragedy. What can seem cool one day becomes poor taste, or disrepectful the next, especially once the shadow of recent events is cast.

Mike

Jeff found this in Animation Magazine - very cool!

Today was a really tough day for the HD film crew as we were shooting loads of material.
In brief it ran like this

7am Call time

8.30 show floor

9.30 RED Video interview

11.00 Meetings

12.00 Apple Video Interview

1.30 Foundry - Nuke Video Interview

2.00 Shake - Furnace Video Interview

3.30 General filming at the show - quick interviews on everything from 3D tracking to LED blue screens.

5.30 BarCamp at the Recording suite- which was a huge success.

7.00 Day 3 Podcast - recorded before the 30 or so live fxphd audience guests (see fxguide.com)

8.30 - 9 finish the podcast and then start editing

10 Prof drinks to celebrate Mark and my birthdays at Red Square until 1 am - then extra podcast work until 2am.

Still we got a lot done and the BarCamp was a great met up… i think the podcast was one of the best of the show - with a really interesting discussion about the future of compositing packages.

thanks to all for coming - really BRILLIANT to meet you all…
Mike

Monday was a good day.. last night we did the Autodesk user group.

There was a huge reaction from the people there.
We started podcasting around 7.30 and finished around 9.30 - but of course we were setting up from 5 and we did not finish editing until well after 1am. (see Gary and Tahl in the bar at 1.00 am below)

Special thanks to all the guests and especially all the fxphd Post Grads who worked so hard to make the event so successful.

Monday morning we shot down to the convention center and went over to the RED booth.. so see the new Peter Jackson RED short film… within 30 mins of the show opening the queue was over an hour long and it has reamined that way ever since. (see the story on fxguide.com) - we also recorded an entire Background fundamentals on the P2 camera and recordered a lot of podcasts - not finishing until late late on Monday night with Dinner around 11pm and crashing out at around 1am.

One of the things we launched was the ProjectRED.net - which is a collaborative RED film project - something I hope many of you will join us in !

Tomorrow - Tuesday is a day to film down at the NAB all day - so more production issues tomorrow - plus BarCamp !!!

Mike

We will be doing live blogs today from www.fxguide.com

Please got to the site and check up the updates (dont forget the page does not auto-update so you will need to hit refresh)

Mike

Well, we made it to Vegas, good drive across from LA.

We are all set to broadcast each day from NAB for fxguide.com. Tomorrow we will blog here …LIVE from the Apple press conference - 11am-12 midday.

This is a shot of John and some very good friends of ours, all senior compositors and facilities owners.

Mike

Just a quick post - met up with Ron Brinkman this arvo, had a long chat while I shopped for antiques for my wife back home.

Ron is working hard now on his book, and apart from getting all the approvals - the book is progressing really well ! Cross your fingers but Ron may join us for some BKD in a term or two.
No promises, but we’ll try and arrange it.

We certainly want to help him promote the book as it is such an excellent reference book, one of the very best available and the new book is more than just a simple update.

Mike