The End of the Embargo

How Big is Your Drone?

A drone scale test by Ian Hubert with Sarah Schoofs and Tony Travostino.

Oblivion Status Update

Bob Teague asked me for a status update on Oblivion.
This is where we're at. We have a cut. We have a lot of visual effects. But Ian Hubert is em-bettering the effects and adding our giant robot Henry.
This actually means there's a lot of paperwork for me. I am labeling all the effects and making sure the background plates are properly labeled and rendering out files which have "context" so Ian can see what happens before and after the effect. The effects numbering is like "1401 02.100 downed drone series" and the like.
Huh. I just now realized I'd made an error in my numbering. The "1401" is correct because that's the number code of the movie. But the "02" should be for a visual effect in act 2, not act 1 as shown here. Oops. As long as no visual effect is given the same number though, that's the key.

There's going to be some ADR. The stuff outside was never properly recorded, but that was by design because the park rangers would have busted us on day 1 if we'd showed up with recording gear as well as a camera.

Now, I'm also in post on two other pictures. And I have to build sets for the reshoots on the movie which was once called Android Masquerade but is now called Carbon Copy. And then there are about a million things I have to do. I'm sure.

EDIT: my above mistake has been fixed. We're back to project number/act/shot number. Whew.

Sketches for Henry

Edge of Oblivion needs a giant robot.
And Mars needs women.
It's just the way things go.

I was talking about how I thought Henry was essentially a 40-foot tall oil platform surrounding a huge rocket engine with a platform overhanging the side with a T-34 turret on top. So Ian Hubert was like "Send me a sketch of what you want for Henry."

My skillz as an artist are unparalleled. This is what I sent.

He was not impressed. I tried again.

But of course it needs to be less dog-like and the tower has to go higher than the turret and there has to be a rocket engine, etc.

End of July

Felicia Hudson, Chester Poon, Sarah Schoofs. Everyone has at least one "o" in their last name. Most have "oo". Which sounds like they're really excited about something. Ooh! Or in Sarah's case, "Oof!"

Would you believe I never got around to syncing these scenes?
Lesee. I'm waiting on a robot and a spaceship from Ian. I've been mixing Carbon Copy but there are still three (new) scenes we need to shoot. Which means we need a rock quarry and an abandoned city.

Last day

Chester Poon, Sarah Schoofs, Felicia Hudson. (Chester isn't in full costume during this rehearsal.) We're green because Laura, the True Queen of the Marsians felt it should be green (remember when we thought that back on Millennium Crisis while shooting against a greenscreen? Yeah, live and learn. No screen (looking in this direction) on this picture.

Travis Pilar let me take a picture of his groovy shirt. I told him my sister was making a deck of cards based around house cats.

Felicia Hudson, Chester Poon, Sarah Schoofs, inside Varl's ship watching the sun rise.

Felicia Hudson, Chester Poon, Sarah Schoofs.

 We shot over an hour. The slate was up for a bit over 8 hours. We used a LOT of lights on this small set. Laura insisted on hitting us with a 650 Fresnel, two chiclets, and a pair of LED lights. There was a lot of whumpus on set at 400ISO.

Sarah Schoofs new dating profile pic.

Felicia and Sarah looking out on the desert plain.

Laura did this very pretty vertical line of whumpus on Chester. Jason Birdsall's set really held up.

Felicia gets shot twice in this movie.

Dark Side of the Moon

Making a Gas Giant is 57 steps. 57.
It's actually a very good tutorial.

I didn't follow all the steps exactly though. Firstwise, Adobe changed its scripting language somewhat since that tutorial. You need to put in a semicolon between all kinds of expression stuff and the time variables. ;*-1 and suchlike.
The other thing is that it's actually our moon -- just that in the intervening time it's managed to turn all the way around. So that's the far side of the moon. And now it has rings. And two satellite moons of its own.
In the future, the world is rough.

Motors on Boys Day

Camera-less rig -- motorized dolly and motorized pan and tilt head. Tony Travostino in the background.

My buddy Brian Dalthorp of PopStudios lent me his Revolve slider system (vastly more advanced than mine). The advanced e'en more portion is a used Bescor 101 remote pan/tilt head. Also, we can use a nice Manfrotto fluid head instead. Sometimes you want a motorized dolly and a manual head. Sometimes a motorized head and a motorized dolly, sometimes a motorized head and a manual dolly.
Could not get the slider system to work at all, we just got slipping on some of the gears, so we went back to skateboard wheels on a flat board.
Libby ran this system mostly. On a couple shots it took two operators. Man I wish we had like Bluetooth focus pulling as an option.
What else, what else? So many things. I write these blog posts as I'm practically passed out from a day of shooting so I have no idea what I'm saying 'till I read them (and don't edit them) in the morning.

Day 8

Amanda Sayle as Delta and Sarah Schoofs as Sagan

 Today's innovation was to have a real tripod head atop the skateboard dolly. It tood a bit of practice to work dolly and pan&tilt at the same time. Once you added pulling focus there was too much for Libby to do and someone had to pitch in. But it totally looks like a Fisher dolly, just not with a Worral head.We did two scenes in single shots which moved around very nicely.

Joe Chapman looking sexy with the slate.

It's all about having lights in the deep distance.

The set painter made some beautiful "rusty" walls.

Sarah Schoofs in a pensive moment.

The robot rests.

Just some notes for myself

Tomorrow we have the biggest gang on-set that we get on this movie. I think it's the biggest gang. Steve Niles, who wrote this picture, did a brilliant turn yet again where he keeps the ensemble down low, to a real small number of cast. In this case there are only six speaking roles. Many days only have two characters on set. But tomorrow is the big action scene at the end.
So I gotta pick up a minivan. Somebody remind me to make sure I bring my EZPass.

One shot. Two Ian Hubert models. 

You know what's really been working for me? Having a Kindle with the script and the call sheet(s) on it. I never make any notes in the actual set script so just having easy access to everything all at once in a compact form is really the way to go. Plus, you know, page turns are quiet and don't wreck sound takes.
I have in mind two reshoots. Three. Three reshoots. And one additional scene. Two. Two additional scenes.

1. There's a closeup of Warfield where we missed the focus.
2. An insert of the control panel which wasn't long or steady enough.
3. The part where Cameron and Sagan walk in needs another take for focus. 

• I want a pretty pan showing Sagan sitting in her place in the other hallway.
• I want to try go get a show of Sagan and Cameron coming in the actual front door. We may use the "elephant set" at Joe Chapman's. We'll see how that works for us. I'm worried about getting enough light on the green screen. 

Also, I'm going to spend a couple minutes actually setting up the Tascam 680 sound recorder. Because I really haven't done that on this movie and I feel kinda stupid about it. 

Oh, and we need mug shots and 3D readiment shots of the android just... to have.

What else? Lithium AA batteries are doing a bang-up job on both transmitters and receivers. The Lectrosonics transmitter has a reputation for eating batteries but it's been working pretty well. I do wish we had a Sanken COS 11 for that transmitter though. I'm getting a bit tired of the boxy sound of the PSC Millimics -- even if the PSC's are relatively immune to clothing rustle. 

Oh look, we're 5 days away from the Cannes Film Market.

Robot Messiah

Next up on the hit parade is 3rd Degree Silicone. This is to be a burned android look. Wish us luck.

Sarah Shoofs is the new prophet of the Robot Messiah. 

§§§

I did two dumb sound things. Three. Three dumb sound things this weekend. But I don't think we're going to be punished for them.
The first thing is that I recorded the first two of three days at 44.1kHz. Well lucky for us it's the FUTURE and we have machines and software which can handle 44.1 and 48kHz on the same timeline. It doesn't seem to be bothering us.
Dumb thing number two is that I was recording three sets of stereo tracks for each take. Derp. Then I went and started recording mono tracks. Believe me, by next weekend I'll be down to one interleaved 6-channel broadcast wave file just like I'm supposed to. For now I'm just syncing the audio, then going and syncing more audio to the same take.
Lastwise we did exactly the thing you'd expect to do when you think to yourself "I'll shut off the transmitter and the record channel on the character we don't need to record." Then, of course, we got to the next scene and never even wired up that character. The irony is that character speaks all his lines directly into another, wired-up, character. So it's all good actually. Even though he wasn't wearing his transmitter, his receiver was turned off, and the channel he records to was deactivated.

§§§

Picture-wise we've been having some epic battles with autofocus. I have every reason to believe the haze has been tricking the focus and making it "pump". Which is spectacularly annoying. But we have figured out the better way to flop the focus into manual and to keep the pumping from happening. That just... took a while.

One more before we go out to shoot the next day

Sarah Schoofs and Tony Travostino

Day 5

Empty set.

I took very few stills today. But lots was shot.

One More Just for You

Frame grab with Sarah, Tony, Bob.

1401 day 4

Version one of the picture on Sagan's shrine. These are Joe Chapman's costumes, actually, Tony is wearing one of Joe's old flight suits!

We based the image off this Vietnam-era image.

They may get a CG Goose ship behind them.

Set by Joe Chapman and a gang of others. The working panel is amazing. And just look at the amazing lighting by the Queen of Mars! That's Sarah Schoofs and Bob Teague (costumes by Caitlin Cisek).

More Sarah and Bob.

This is what this enormous flipping set looks like. It's huge, no? All Joe's designing. A further list of the artists involved to come...

Tony Travostino will not believe that the meteorite could be a rescue ship... or worse...

Bob Teague was woken early in the morning to an emergency. All the sweat is real. ;-)

Day 3 Data Dump

Most all these pictures were taken by Tony Travostino, although not all of them.

Laura here is holding her own tap. You'll note she doesn't have it plugged into anything.

Here I am grabbing a closeup of Amanda Sayle -- she's not in costume, just wearing the head pieces.

Shooting in the sand is, as it turns out, really freaking hard to do. The Blackmagic Production 4K is nice. Shooting to SSD seems okay. The camera itself is awkward to hold. Putting an eyepiece on it is very very fiddly (so we didn't do that) although putting a remote eyepiece on a 20-foot piece of BNC coax was very nice -- better than dragging a monitor on set which would be blown out by the sunlight anyway.

Laura Queen of Mars, me, Sarah Schoofs. Note forcefield plinth in foreground.

We were very very fortunate on costs on this trip. We got about the lowest prices one could get to Denver from the New York City area. And the house we stayed in is absolutely amazing. Another huge help was that Chester Poon immediately volunteered to cook dinner for us -- twice! We had delicious home cooking based on his Hong Kong mother's recipes which really and seriously need to be printed elsewhere.
We brought plenty of water but oddly we didn't get dehydrated so much as had to deal with a lot of sand. In our ears. Up our noses. My nose is chapped from being sandblasted.

Sarah Schoofs and Chester Poon. Not only was the sand everywhere, but we had to cross a very wide muddy creek on our way to and from the dunes.

We did get busted though. On our first day we went way north to the middle of nowhere. On the second day we were much closer in to where people normally came onto the dunes. Day three I decided to hike on land that was flat as possible (and, honestly, which gave some of our best views. Helpful hint: don't actually shoot in direct line of sight of the visitor station.
A ranger came out and asked what we were doing. We said we were making a family movie. He lectured us that we can't be making anything for a commercial purpose. He told us that people could see us (and our guns which are legal but, you know, they're wacky guns being waved around), and that the ranger station closes at 4:30. We took the hint, quickly finished a scene as the freaking hail moved in, and packed up and walked across the creek again and hid in the car until the rain/hail storm was over.

Delta, Amanda Sayle, goes across the dunes. This is not a still from our 4K. In the motion version you can see the sand kick up -- it's pretty spectacular.

Every day someone dropped a walkie talkie into the creek. I mean, right? Yesterday was Laura. Today Tony took the honors. Laura's was found by a citizen who got on the channel we were using and said hi and that they'd drop it off at the visitor center. We picked that one up today. The other was found upside down in the mud by the creek. They both seem to work.

This closeup of Sarah Schoofs is an ungraded screen grab from the BMPC 4K. All detail is retained. And no rolling shutter.

Caitlin Cisek's costumes give a great solidity to the design. The contrasts are just right.
Plus I'm doing something close to no directing on this picture. Everyone is just doing stuff that's perfect. We're getting a lot of the decisions. We're enjoying wide shots and closeups.
Physically it's hard to shoot in. There's a good hour drive from our B&B to the Dunes. Then there's a mile walk over a mud flat and then sand. If you're ambitious, you then go another several hundred feet up. If you don't mind spending hours getting to location on foot you can get complete solitude and do whatever you want there. We did not spend that kind of time (which is why we got a talking-to by the ranger.

Laura, Queen of Mars; Andrew Bellware; Sarah Schoofs, Chester Poon, Tony Travostino, and Amanda Sayle at the Yak N Cracker which was a place I was so excited about as soon as I'd heard of it that we just had to go.

Day 2 1401

I know, I'm actually pointing in this shot. Isn't that the most cliched thing in the world?

Andrew Bellware, Laura Schlachtmeyer, and Sarah Schoofs. Picture by Tony Travostino.

It's not hot out there. But it is dry. And it is over a mile in elevation. Here we're at about 8200 feet.

Sarah Schoofs took a picture of me after I got to the top of this one dune. We're still several hundred feet below the summit.

I like the Blackmagic 4K camera. It's a bit unwieldy though. The autofocus, at least at an f22, seems to work pretty well. I haven't figured out how to really make the iris button do what I want.
Making backups at night is actually a fairly big job. It takes several hours. So far I've blown through about 360 GB on the internal drive. And you know with how fast we shoot that's because the 4K (even at ProRes instead of RAW) eats data for breakfast.
There is dust everywhere. In my pants' pockets, in my (ugh) ears, and all over props and costumes. We do everything we can to protect the camera.
Tomorrow is our last day out in the field. I have one pickup I need to get I haven't told the cast or crew about. Hopefully nobody will notice that I'm doing it.
One of the first tests to your cast and crew is passing across a 750 foot mud plain. For some reason I have been consistently more luck hopping from mud clod buried just below the water. But note you will become completely wet this time of year.
When we got back all tired from shooting, Chester Poon made us an amazing dinner - a very Hong Kong rice noodles and chicken (and a tofu option). He added enough garlic, that's for sure.
We're on schedule. Moar soon.
Now I have to get a lot of sleep.

1401 Day 1

Tony Travostino and Sarah Schoofs.

Walking on sand dunes is just about the hardest thing I've ever done.

Sagan

Sarah Schoofs. Basic desert look, scarf down. 

Note daylight setting on camera, shooting in fluorescent light.

Caitlin Cisek adjusts scarf in the up position. 

Apparently anything we can do in order to go in a Lawrence of Arabia direction is good.

An indoor look (unfinished).