Signals Of Fury: SRC Stall #14: Total Retribution (2011)

Signals Of Fury: SRC Stall #14: Total Retribution (2011): If you've ever wondered how a group of filmmakers could so completely flush away a $1.5 million budget, wonder no more.

So yeah. There's this. A podcast which makes fun of indy films. Our man Tom Rowen joined in. "Soiled Restroom Cinema" takes apart Earthkiller, er, Total Retribution. Tom Skyped in. He is his natural and charming self.

Estimated $1.5 million budget? Where on earth did that come from? Actually, I don't even know who submitted it to imdb. Tom technically shouldn't have told them the budget but even he estimated it at twice the actual budget. I suspect that in the middle of that exchange he suddenly remember "Oh yeah, the distributors hate talking about the actual budget."
Warning, this podcast is very mean to the actors.
The Pandora Machine logo does not help us.
Laos? Tom, we're not in Laos. You've been reading Dispatches.
Everyone knows that the terminal velocity of androids is 125 miles per hour.
They really don't like our Earthkiller space station CG.
Tom's justification of the way characters go from not-cursing to cursing is pretty much what the idea in the picture is. Which explains why and which characters cursed.
They actually criticize an actor for being too into their role.
The deal with the gun she throws away is very specific. Hmm... they really didn't understand the picture. I thought we spelled everything out pretty explicitly.
I do sort of get the impression that they are extraordinarily jealous of other people making movies. The idea that we made the movie in the first place seems to befuddle them.
Actually, their snotty comment about the "token black guy" who has a British accent "go figure" makes me say they're just assholes.

Kill some Earth for me while you're at it

Earthkiller is now buyable on Amazon.

Alles Gut

Groove to the German version of Earthkiller. Die Entscheidung.

The names means something like "The Verdict" or, as far as I understand it, "The Reckoning" or something like that. It's a pretty badass name for a movie. And no, I have no idea what the "Blade Runner 2" is all about. I love that they use strapping tape to hold the gun together. We're totally going to do that. And not because our guns won't hold together. No. No sir. For aesthetic reasons only.
Note that this is the Blu-ray version of the movie. The DVD uses different art. 

Et More

Here's the whole gang doing a snippet of the dialog in Earthkiller (in German). You want to buy a copy? Look here. You may need to get a used version to convince them to ship it to you.
Here's Katie Hannigan in German:
Here's Sarah-Doe Osborne in German: Here's the whole gang in Android Insurrection in German: Here's a scene with Sarah-Doe Osborne in Android Insurrection in French: And lastly here's the gang in Android Insurrection in French:

Many Languages

We speak many languages here in the Pandora Machine. They are mostly the languages of Love, but in this particular case we have some snippets of a couple movies in German and French.
Joe Beuerlein and Rik Nagel in Earthkiller do it (I mean "do it") in German.

I'm continually blown away by the quality of the performances in the lip-sync versions. The distributors do a really top-notch job. The one thing I don't want to do is irk our distributors, which is part of the reason I deliberately made crappity handheld video of the scenes posted here. Here's the lovely Greg Bodine in German: Here's David Ian Lee being a psychopath, but you know, in German. It's also sort of astonishing how well they match the voices to the characters in these movies. Kari Geddes makes an excellent German. And here's the whole gang in German: I really think the distributors did an excellent job with this.

Earthkiller on Fleshbot!

Our movie Earthkiller was blurbed on Fleshbot.

I think that's just so cool.
And for those of you playing at home, yes, you did wake up naked with amnesia. Take this crowbar, you're going to have to break out of this space station...

North American Deals

The movies Earthkiller by Montserrat Mendez and Android Insurrection by David Ian Lee and Nat Cassidy — even though David and Cassidy used absurd pseudonyms for their screen credits — have North American Distribution.
Yes. They'll be coming out on DVD and VOD in the US and Canada. And relatively soon, too.
I know that for many of our people the most important part of this news is that means these movies will get IMDB credits. ;-)

More Than Once

Here is a conversation I had more than once today. 

We: Hey, don't you want to be on the Board of Theatresource -- and pay $5000 a year to be on it?

They: I'm not going to pay to be on this Board. 

We: Well what if it were a Board of different people?

They: Oh yeah. Then talk to me.

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But that's not what I'm here to talk about.
Today we screened Earthkiller. I had much fun. I drank too much but not sickeningly so. Probably because Joe Chapman ran out and bought pizza (which, again, is probably because he is some sort of angel from heaven).
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The Frogman explains how God created the platypus.

20 Lights

Over at Blood Sweat and Tedium they talk of many things. Specifically they talk of using upwards of 20 lights on a standard 3-wall swing set in TV.
20? Really?
Yeah.
Now, my background as a DP is without any doubt pretty weird. I mean, I started as a sound guy for crying out loud. And although I've done TV with some excellent Lighting Directors, I've never really done TV except as a sound mixer.
But this I know, and know quite well: television engineers are conservative. I don't mean politically. Politically the EIC's I've known have been all-the-freak over the place. But lighting-wise they're mighty conservative.
And either as a consequence of, or resulting from, people who make TV really like some brightly-lit, no shadows anywhere-type lighting.
That's arguably what makes sit-coms look like sit-coms. They're lit up the wazoo. With, like, you know, 20 lights on a 3-wall swing-set.

Robin Kurtz in Earthkiller.

I'm not entirely sure, but I'd be surprised if we ever had as many as a dozen lights on a set. Including practicals and lighting a blue screen. I do enjoy lighting entirely with practical lights -- but doing the kind of sci-fi we do that usually means we have these florescent tubes we've bought at Home Depot and are hanging them at eye level. That kind of lighting is gratuitous and amusing and ultimately vastly easier to do than lighting everything "flat" the way they tend to do in TV.
And you know when they talk about 20 instruments they're talking big, boss instruments. 1K's are considered "small" around those parts.
I forget whether we had a 1K in this shot of Robin Kurtz in Earthkiller. Whatever is whumping her face is an incandescent -- probably Brian's 1K but it could be a 500-watt we borrowed. That rim lighting on her is all practical florescents.
This is the kind of thing that drives many TV people insane. The luminance values on her face go from tippity-top over 100% clipping down to no-detail-blacks (in her hair.) There's a light source in the shot. There's a flare!
But hey, I like the way it looks. You may too.
The point is. Oh heck, I don't know what the point is. The point is I wish I had 20 big lights. ;-)

Delivered Again

Well whew, I delivered Earthkiller again.

I finally saw Predators last night. By far it's the second-best of the Predator movies. I recognize the battle for second place in that series is a pretty low bar.
The only thing I thought strange was that the music seemed to be mixed very low.
I made a new page of the wiki on dialog continuity.

Pulling a Bozo

I royally derped it up today. I sent a small version of Earthkiller up to my distributor today but I hadn't checked the audio for it yet.

That's sexy Maduka in the Quicktime window. See how I've labeled everything? 

Turns out I'd accidentally assigned track 18 (the left side of the commentary track) to the full English stereo mix. Which meant that I made a stereo version of the movie with us yapping all over the picture. And uploaded it to our sales rep's server.
Smoove moove there Drew.
Ugh. I'm cursed by lousy QC.
And I'm working on the page for deliverables on the wiki.

Unsex Me Now

Today I get an emergency email from our rep regarding seeing too much of our android in Earthkiller. So I'm scrambling to do things.

Android walks away.

You can just barely make out see the time code beneath the image. Have I ever mentioned that I really wish Final Cut Pro had an "adjustment" layer? No? Pity.

Android hears a sound. Irony? I like this framing better than the wide. 

The timecode needed to be manually "advanced" to make sure it reads properly through the whole movie.

This was what I in my innocent stupidity thought was a perfectly acceptable wide.  It's now been zoomed in.

This is the furthest that the camera (handheld) "dipped down" in this shot. It only goes this low for a couple frames.

Burning android "zoomed in" and re-framed.

Burning android original. Note that we "Barbie dolled" her in post. Not the first time I've had to do that, but this time 'twas to no avail.

400 Hours

Keri Geddes in Earthkiller

Y'know, the IA is basically encouraging its members to work more dangerous overtime with the 400 hours-till-healthcare rule they're implementing.

Crumple Pop seems to think that magically everything will be OK with Final Cut Pro X.

"It’s tempting to speculate about the heated internet reaction to FCP X and the psychology behind it."

Right. What's not tempting, however, is to actually look at why FCP X isn't in any professional environments right now. Maybe I'm just getting tired of being told I have a psychological problem with FCPX rather than a logistical one.

What am I really doing? I'm avoiding writing a screenplay. I'm on page 42 of the rewrite. If this screenplay doesn't get finished this weekend I'm going to have a conniption.

Out the door!

Robin Kurtz with a laser.

This is the most nerve wracking time. We delivered Earthkiller to the lab. I hope there aren't any errors I haven't seen.
That being said, I'm very happy with the way the picture came out. Every new picture is the best movie we've ever made. And yup, Earthkiller is the best so far.

Slurring Through Quality Control

I gotta batch convert some screen grabs. A lot of screen grabs actually. Our rep wants 300dpi images at "8x5 / 9x6 horizontal or vertical.
A 1920x1080 image is indeed 6.4 inches wide. But graphics designers tend to hate 72dpi images. Apparently this is just a change of metadata but the only way I know of to do it is to change the "image size" in Photoshop.

I'm doing a quality control listen to the M&E tracks of Earthkiller. I'm making sure there is no dialog on the track 'cause that would suck. If there were, we'd have to re-do the movie and that would cost money.
Yesterday Maduka, Robin Kurtz, the Queen of Mars, and I did the commentary track for Earthkiller. I have no idea what happened to me but not having eaten beforehand and then drinking too much alcohol is not good for one's ability to speak clearly. Apparently. So I slur through the whole thing.

Stills

As we're desperately scrambling to finish Earthkiller, our distributor is beating on us to upload still images to him.
I made a wiki page on stills. Note that this makes me no expert on still images. Our distributor so far HATES what we've sent him.
Maybe it's 'cause most of our stills look like this:

That's Maduka slating for us. Why is it a still of Maduka holding the slate in front of his very handsome head? Because I some idiot keeps forgetting to put the camera into "movie" mode after taking some stills, and when I call "roll camera" I that same dork bucket snaps a high resolution still instead. Derp.

Doings and Goings On

I could be working on a script. I could be doing some rotoscoping. I don't like doing either so I'm writing on this blog.
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Via Chance Shirley, Ron Brinkmann on FCP X. Ron points out that Apple trashed Shake, which was a pretty important compositing program 'till they bought it and decided they didn't want it anymore. I bet the makers of Nuke and AfterEffects are pretty happy about that decision.
So Apple may be bringing the "pro" part of Final Cut Pro to an "end of life" in the product development cycle. Which is very good news to Avid and Adobe.
Hey, I actually edited a feature on a... Cube? Sphere? D-Vision? I don't even remember what it was. It was on a PC and it was a real bear to operate, that's for sure.
So, where am I going with this? I have no idea. It's a good thing I didn't get that dual six-core Mac I was talking about.

The Philadelphia Desert in Earthkiller. Matte painting by Joe Chapman.

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Boy, on the movie Earthkiller we're having quite a hard time with our bluescreens. For some reason they're really hard to key. They look like they're correctly exposed. The GH1 is hacked so it's operating at 30Mb/s, so theoretically it should work better. But we're just having a bear of a time with these keys.
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Today I eliminated one or maybe two characters from the screenplay of Earthwar. Just think of the money that will save on lunches.

3 of 9 acts

Oh, here's a good time-waster. 40 ways you can avoid making movies: listening to these podcasts instead of actually making movies.

We're locked on Earthkiller acts 1 through 3. That's out of 9 total acts. I'm hoping to lock 4 and 5 today. Rebecca Kush is on that right now. She's making a punchlist for me. Wish us luck.

Earthkiller animator needed

I put this up on a Blender forum:

We're looking for a Blender animator -- specifically someone whose skill set is animating a bipedal creature. We can handle the lighting, compositing, and rendering (but we don't have to if you want to do it ;-). Our regular animator is way too busy right now.

The android Helen in Earthkiller.

Of course we don't have any money, so this is a non-paid position. But there's IMDB credit and whatever footage you want for your reel. If the movie were to do monster business, you'd get a small piece of the back-end, but it's not likely to make that much cash. Just being realistic here.
My science - fiction production company, Pandora Machine, is in post-production on a couple feature films. One of the features, Earthkiller, has some shots of a dinobot that need animating. The "dinobot" is already rigged and ready to go in Blender.
Here's a brief teaser for the movie: http://vimeo.com/16941145

Android with Digital Anarchy's "Beauty Box" applied.

I'd say that the amount of animation is certainly less than 40 hours of work. The dinobot runs down some hallways, it gets shot at, it bites someone, finally it gets thrown out an airlock. We tried to shoot in order to keep the rotoscoping to a minimum, so the dinobot is typically the thing that's closest to the camera. You can see a closeup of the dinobot briefly in the above teaser.
Pandora Machine's "studio" is in a theater in Manhattan. Typically we don't have an open workstation so in addition to exploiting your labor for free, it would be awesome if you could work at your own computer. This is totally a gig which could be done remotely.
If you want to know more about us you can read my (not safe for work) blog at blog.pandoramachine.com
Our deadline? Boy it would be nice to have this animation finished by the middle of the month. ;-)
Feel free to email me for more information.

While waiting for clothes to dry

I am not being stalked by a Russian stripper.
There are five editors, not including me, working on Earthkiller.
It looks like the movie we're shooting now is going to be called Android Insurrection. Even though if it were up to me we'd call it "Android Insurrection 3020 AD: The Fall of Mankind".