Category Archives: workflow
Progress
Good lawd, what a ride. It’s November now and peddle to the metal. Today I am going to finish revisions on the team and tasks document. Roto artists are providing a constant flow of results. Money is definitely thinning out … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, research, story, technique, workflow
Tagged focus, hologram reshoot, joe, post, roto, storytelling
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Holy something!
My dog, have I done a lot of work on this project or what?! In three words, yes, yes and yes. You know things are getting interesting when you wake up and have to babble ideas into your recorder because … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, organization, plan, practice, production and post, protocol, real life, research, workflow
Tagged artist, book of dog, contractor, mayan calender, prop, talent
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Assembling a VFX crew
As VFX director for DOG I continue to learn how to assembling and managing a remote roto crew. Here I review past lessons and my vision for the now. My first attempt was in May and after several false starts … Continue reading
Roto artist reference 2012
October 2, 2012, 6:15 pm Introduction x Daughter of God is a narrative short originally shot in 2006, now moving steadily through VFX towards a completion by the end of 2012. Though roto artists will be repairing some continuity and … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, real life, software, workflow
Tagged contractor, DOG, roto
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Queue for Fall 2012, v.9
How to wrap DOG when there are some significant items in the queue? I don’t want to get distracted by other projects, especially other people’s projects. Diverting energy risks the completion of DOG. There are a few objectives to handle … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, ideas, people, plan, real life, research, workflow
Tagged Artist house, beach, floor, greenhouse, raft, renovation, shack, structure
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August DOG plan
Looking at DOG and pushing for completion this fall, at least having most of the rigorous roto wrapped by end of August mid September. Ben’s going back to Western September 2. What can we accomplish together in the 3 weeks … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, plan, technique, workflow
Tagged dead birds, mask, red hallway, roto
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Protected: Festival of Nightmares
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Posted in Daughter of God, people, production and post, real life, time, workflow
Tagged ben woody, Deb Lake, Jeff Gibbs, Lars Kelto, Michael Moore, Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, susan sarandon, TCFF, Will Erickson
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Posts to post
I’ve been blogging in my mind for the last couple of months, here’s a sample of the topics I’d like elaborate on soonish. First, a crisis of confidence. Gosh, why blog at all? With the explosion of FB, a personal … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, hardware, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, software, story, technique, workflow
Tagged animation, ben woody, cows, doug michels, dragon frame, farm, flag of earth, h16, hello world, hobie, james allegro, james weston schaberg, Jeff Gibbs, nuclear power, patrick kelly, rosie, seti, shack
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Summer priorities
Before Lena Maude headed west, she grabbed the full set of Tony Robbins Personal Power. I have taken the course about 10 times since the early 90s and suggested she give it a whirl. Admittedly Tony is a little over … Continue reading
Cutting glass
Ben and I do DOG daily (have you met Ben Woody?) but my early evenings and weekends are dedicated to acquiring old Hobie 16s cheap – usually with soft decks and other structural issues. This is long range planning for … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, budget, production and post, real life, research, story, technique, workflow
Tagged ben woody, deck, fiberglass, hobie, hull, rotozip
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Artist reference May 2012
Introduction x Daughter of God is a narrative short originally shot in 2006, now moving steadily through VFX towards a completion by summer of 2012. Though roto artists will be repairing some continuity and production gaffs, we are mostly adding … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, real life, research, software, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged assignment, cell, communication, compensation, completion, contractor, DOG, roto, team, text, VFX, workflow
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Snip snip here…
04/29 Wow! In assembling the definitive essentials, I am finding more bits of fat to trim away… incredible! Beyond essentials, if we do flashbacks perhaps Uncle Joe could be making Christina tea when she comes in with the PKD book. … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, projects, real life, research, time, workflow
Tagged completion, contractor, DOG, edit, editorial, percentage, projection, roto, spreadsheet, svelte
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Today is the first day…
…of the rest of your life, Geritol. Use only as directed. Welcome back to the DOG progress report. Editorial on the first and second act is (dare I say it?) done. There are some weld edits which require a deeper … Continue reading
Progress on Gerry’s cabin
Gerry’s cabin or Act 2 is very close to it’s final iteration. The length was cut from 9:00 minutes to 8:15, 45 seconds. We lost some lag and tuned the performance by splitting several two shots. My first foray into … Continue reading
Interns and the last test of Version 1.0 2012
Trickster Pictures has two interns through the TBAISD Career-Tech Center’s Film and New Media Program – Cameron and Micah. They’ve been learning how to rotoscope using both After Effects and Mocha and will hopefully be able to contribute to DOG’s … Continue reading
Go Go Go Again
Budgeting for the completion of DOG distills down to a simple formula… Tasks / Team = Duration Each task describes a specific change to some shot, a shot defined as the IN point to OUT point of any edit. A … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, plan, real life, research, technique, time, workflow
Tagged budget, calculation, guess, intern, interns, predict, productivity, projection, schedule, shot, task
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Roto ramping up
April 2, 2012 I’ve identified the Essential tasks and have assembled a core roto team – this week is the shakedown cruise. I’ve got two interns and two contractors and am interested to see how much progress we make this … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, software, technique, time, workflow
Tagged ae, After Effects, artist, clock, contractor, DOG, essentials, mask, nuke, rate, roto, task, vector, workflow
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Artist reference version 1.1
Introduction DOG was originally shot in 2006 and was revived in the summer of 2011. The objective is to have a festival launch by summer of 2012. If you’re inclined to read this blog, you’ll notice that I have an … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, production and post, real life, research, software, technique, time, workflow
Tagged artists, guidance, protocol, roto, rules
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Artist reference
Introduction DOG was originally shot in 2006 and was revived in the summer of 2011. It’s a quirky first project which I’ve decided to see through to the completion and thus here we are. If you’re inclined to read this … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, workflow
Tagged artists, guidance, protocol, roto, rules
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What’s essential?
In theory, we could loose the intro to Joe, though that fucks up the ending with the surveillance of C and G, unless we introduce the interface on laptop with G, which has to stay anyway. Then the inference is … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, plan, production and post, real life, research, software, technique, time, workflow
Tagged calibrate, clock, code, director, essential, ftp, lingo, post, programming, pulling hair, roto, text, time, video
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Here we go again
That’s a delightfully ambigious post title for a critical topic – the schedule for completion. Am I reluctant to jinx myself with another prediction of imminent closure? Indeed I am! No more optimistic announcements, just the facts, ma’am. Last night … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, technique, time, workflow
Tagged ball park, budget, calculate, completion, cost estimate, data, estimate, expertise, guess, measure, prediction, productive, productivity, project, projection, rates, roto, schedule, scope of work, spreadsheet, time, VFX
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DOG – script revisions
The plan is to revise the DOG script based around existing live action and VFX elements, adding new elements only when absolutely needed. It’s faster to rewrite than it is to edit. Unfortunately, Final Draft doesn’t have a very robust … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, plan, production and post, real life, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged Daughter of God, deletion, DOG, inventory, notes, rationale, revision, script, technical, VFX
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Tech – FCPX file management
There’s all sorts of voodoo to reconnect files in FCPX. I am reminding myself that an AVCHD camera archive has to be mounted for FCPX to find the media. Also, there’s a protocol for moving events and having them be … Continue reading
Posted in production and post, real life, research, workflow
Tagged camera archive, fcpx, missing media, reconnect
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Internship – a symbiotic alliance for dream manifestation
Version 1.1 February 01, 2012 Version 1.0 January 31, 2012 I have to evaluate interns at the end of the semester using CTC’s form, so let’s look at the categories that are most important to Trickster Pictures. Read everything, there … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, workflow
Tagged career tech center, evaluations, interns, trickster pictures
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Inventory end within sight
I’m pushing mid September with this shifting milestone, and it’s all good. Since combing through my journals from 2006-2009, I’ve discovered more material scattered hither and yon throughout the full archive. I’ve not included analog storage like notebooks in my … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, plan, production and post, real life, research, technique, time, workflow
Tagged extension, inventory, journal, milestone, milestone missed, momentum, motivation, plan, practice, protocol, timeline
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Inventory milestone still pending
Another 7 days have rolled by and the inventory milestone is still on the horizon. It’s been a slightly traumatic week. I extracted DOG references from my personal journals from the years 2006-2009, which meant slogging through a lot of … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, time, workflow
Tagged Faisal Azam, inventory, journal, milestone, milestone missed, references
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Another DOG milestone… missed!
I’ve overrun the rescheduled inventory deadline, after only getting in about 30 hours in the last 6 days. What else was I doing? Some M3 business on Wednesday, the usual training, eating, sleeping, maintaining social ties, fixing things… Below is … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged a unit, Alan Watts, Ann Loeding, b unit, canada, eiji sumi, Faisal Azam, Final Cut Pro, inventory, milestone, objective, plan, prickles and goo, projection, test screening, tight, wide
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Inventory emerges
I’ve been poring over the drive “momma”, 2 terabytes (5 years) of accumulated DOG development. I had this idea that the content was relatively organized, but it turns out – not so much. Sifting through the hoary once upon a time, … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, hardware, people, plan, production and post, real life, software, time, workflow
Tagged alien aesthetic, Archive, audience, blog, cognitive wormhole, content cosmos, creative control, diskcatalogmaker, DOG, gigabyte, inventory, momma, oscar, supra-luminal, terabyte, VFX
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ECL interviews DK – 3:30 milestone
A transcription of pro tem Producer El Carne Loco’s interview with Director Dan Kelly regarding Daughter of God’s first milestone completion in 2011. ECL: Regarding the 3 minute version, what do you feel was accomplished, did it meet your expectations? … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged blonde, dan kelly, director, el carne loco, Faisal Azam
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DOG resurrection
She’s back! Daughter of God is in the house. 3:30 minutes The first objective was to post a micro version of the story (~3:00 minutes) by Wednesday 8/10. Between Sunday 8/7 and Wednesday 8/10 I was able to dedicate 11 … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged accelerated narrative, creative direction, dan kelly, director, DOG, dramedy, edit, editorial, el carne loco, Faisal Azam, producer, recap, sleek, uncle joe, vision
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DOG post-production meeting
After updating the archive’s catalog the last couple of days, (40 terrabytes worth), I was finally ready to crack the DOG project this morning. Upon reviewing the major sequences, I had a series of epiphanies. Inventory Cataloging the possibilities will … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged 3 movies, deliverable, DOG, edit, editorial, epiphany, Faisal Azam, inventory, milestone, nyc, production, script, sfx, story
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Awash in wildflowers…
…and basking in beauty, that’s the summer of 2011. Hello World has been beached (blossomed) for a solid year following her crippling injury 30 miles north of Chicago that ended our 2010 expedition. She’s communing with the flox and vetch … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, projects, real life, research, SFX reel, time, workflow
Tagged ALM, combat mime, compost, corn, distraction, DOG, garden, gertrude ekstatisch, girlfriend, hello world, horse manure, james weston, lauren di scipio, marijke church, michigan movie makers, mykl werth, nuclear, soil, solar power, sustainable, tai chi, tcff.org, traverse city film festival, will church
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The aesthetic and what’s next?
So we’ve pre-released the sfx reel and shared a little history. Now what? There are 4 sheets of newsprint in the backroom covered with to dos, here’s the jist. Two archival and non trivial projects are in the queue for … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, SFX reel, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged avenues, constant vigilance, good enough, kiss, perfection rejection, serving story
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V 0.9 Trickster Pictures SFX reel
This is for my extended inner circle of creatives, both producers that might have a micro budget and/or good things to trade and artists that might have a wild idea or fancy getting hired to help. Please upgrade your browser … Continue reading
Canyon Princess
Premise “Up on the canyon edge, there’s a ship that sails the sky. They say it carries a thousand ghosts who once ate black gold and lived as gods. Big waters brought it here before my grandmother was born. We … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, projects, real life, research, SFX reel, story, technique, workflow
Tagged aleister crowley, bricks, color correction, cruise ship, Daughter of God, Dave Crowley, kiss, roto, san juan, tracking
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Uturnpike’s drift
Premise Mysterious rows of snow covered cars snake into the distance. What happened here? Was a neutron bomb exploded nearby? Were the drivers raptured away by the returning Messiah? Why are the cars bumper to bumper in both directions? Unturnpike … Continue reading
Posted in Daughter of God, people, plan, production and post, projects, real life, research, SFX reel, software, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged 3D, ae, cars, dan kelly, documentation, DOG, Jeff Gibbs, low level, mocha, patrick kelly, pennsylvania turnpike, planar tracker, the road, tracking, uturnpike, viggo mortensen
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Commando Kill
Premise CK is a black ops super warrior run amok. His self determined mission is to bring down technical civilization by crashing key elements of infrastructure. He’s forever skulking around power stations and military installations, tossing precise sabots with economy … Continue reading
Posted in people, production and post, real life, research, SFX reel, software, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged 3D, bear lake, blender, box truck, brad kinnan, catastrophe, character, chinese, cigar, city of milwaukee, clouds, commando kill, composite, concrete, epa, fire, halloween, hazard, industrial, infrastructure, live action, mandarin, manistee, missile, msu, no smoking, penske, rocket, ron brown and sons, roto, sabot, sabotage, signage, super warrior, translation, us 31, vector, vixia hf s100
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Climate Change and digressions
Premise Climbing high above a menacing mega-weather system, the VIP passengers aboard the Execu-jet attempt an escape to gentler climes, anticipating warm backrubs and frosty cocktails. Hubris! Even the mighty kerosene sucking turbo engines cannot forever loft such a heavy … Continue reading
Posted in production and post, projects, real life, research, SFX reel, software, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged activist arrogance, ae, After Effects, boondoggle, california, cherry capital, climate change, container ship, convenience, environment, environmental debt, excess, genarts, global life support, hollywood, jamaica lynn weston, james weston lynn, james weston schaberg, Jeff Gibbs, jet, jet flight, Jonathan Kelly, landing gear, life support system, lightning, local growers, patrick kelly, privilege, right livelihood, roto, sapphire plugin, stabilized, stabilized footage, strobe flash
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Documentation protocol
Documentation protocols under consideration, for collaborator review. The next step in getting the lads to blog. 1. Technical terms are bolded and either briefly defined on the first use or linked to a definition on our other project sites, wikipedia, … Continue reading
17 months for 3 minutes
That’s how long it took to develop the (preview) of the motion graphics and special effects reel, from inception to launch. Let’s see… that’s 170 days per minute, 3 days per second or 2 hours and 15 minutes per frame. … Continue reading
Posted in budget, Daughter of God, people, production and post, real life, research, SFX reel, time, workflow
Tagged inception, launch, motion graphics
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Behind the scenes
Here’s Version 0.9 of the Trickster Pictures SFX and Motion Graphics Reel. Please upgrade your browser Excerpt from Kellys’ secret blog, December 2009. This is an outreach to potential clients, based on bliss projects. The theory is that if … Continue reading
Posted in people, real life, research, SFX reel, workflow
Tagged 16 bit, 32 bit, 8 bit, aesthetic compromises, apocalypse, avenues, bliss projects, canyon princess, clients, climate change, Colorista, colorista ii, commando kill, comps, control, eternal opus, firefox, ganesh, h.264, indy producer, motion graphics, obsession, painter, painting, physical reality, power mask, precomp, safari, schlock, secret blog, upload, uturnpike, youtube
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R and D for Science Fiction Musical
Gosh, it’s nearly midnight, but I’ve gotta write a report on the recently initiated R and D for the Trickster Pictures project, Science Fiction Musical. James Weston and I are making narrative dance projects by recruiting talent from Mykl Werth’s … Continue reading
Posted in budget, hardware, people, plan, production and post, real life, research, story, technique, workflow
Tagged Crystal Lake, dan kelly, erin louise hoagg, ice, james weston, panasonic hds-tm700, patrick kelly, tiffany ingalls, vixia hfs-10
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Trickster fx reel
The lads and I are assembling a motion graphics and fx reel. Making a range of support services available to other Michigan film makers could be a lucrative niche. The idea is to repurpose elements from past and current projects … Continue reading
Posted in people, plan, production and post, real life, research, software, technique, workflow
Tagged choreograph, combat mime, commando kill, detroit, fight, fx, motion graphics, stage violence, weapons
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The clean shaven look
I did it. Redesign and radical simplification of http://ondesire.com has been implemented. There’s more to come but the major scaffolding is in place. Here’s the landing page. Pretty sparse eh? The idea is push some of the complexity deeper into … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, software, story, technique, workflow
Tagged blog, bounce rate, design, fred oeflein, landing page, movies, navigating, ondesire, overwhelm, structure, tamarack software, views
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I’ve cloned myself
Just over a year ago I started cloning myself. I am amazed to announce that the process is complete, pretty nearly. As long as I am alive and ever changing my clone is also a work in progress. Last night … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, Daughter of God, hardware, people, real life, technique, time, workflow
Tagged Archive, clone, cloning, conquistador, credit card, firewire, SATA, terrabyte
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Meeting 10-03-06 ondesire landing page
We’ve had two dream team meetings, in Brooklyn (Faisal, Erica and Dan) and yesterday in Beulah (Steve Elrick, Melonie, Jonathan, Lucas Kelly and Dan). Inviting collaboration and contribution was the focus of Saturday’s meeting. Components of the ask package for … Continue reading
Posted in Around Lake Michigan, Daughter of God, people, plan, real life, story, technique, time, workflow
Tagged androgenous, artifacts, blog, confuse, dan kelly, definitions, erica velis, Faisal Azam, future sustainable civilization, Jonathan Kelly, lucas kelly, media, melonie, music, steve elrick
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Three blogs
With three blogs, when will Dan have time to make movies? This whole blog experience has been startling. I’ve scribbled my life away trying to sort out my feelings, document flashes of genius and decrypt the future… but my audience … Continue reading
Trickster Pictures Collaboratory
Meanwhile on Earth… The internet is a global conversation. A variety of strange web entities have appeared to enable this – forums, chat rooms, voice over IP, and even video conferencing – Jonathan recently posted his take on this. The … Continue reading
Getting the lads to blog
This is mostly directed to Jonathan with a heads up for Patrick, the other 2 directors on the motion graphics reel. This is all issues we’ve discussed before, eg documenting lessons and process. The car renderings must be 3968×2288, not … Continue reading →