And for those that are curious, here is my Amazon spec.
Allow me an indulgence as I send a big shout-out to Dan Billet, Karina Bustillos, Curtiss Frisle and Michael Perkins for lending their voice talent; an extra shout goes to Dan for also acting in the film. I’d also like to thank Laura Emanuele for all her behind-the-scenes help.
If you’re curious, I posted a debrief where I get into the technical nitty gritty. Also, be sure to leave a comment.
So while I wait for August 24th to roll around (that’s when Amazon announces the 5 finalist for the audience award and the jury prize winner), here is my promised debrief. Warning, it is very tech heavy.
First, my 30-second spec combined live action and stop-motion animation. I’ve done one other film like this (check out CONVERSING). For that short, I shot both the live action and stop-motion animation with a Panasonic DVX100; I used iStopMotion to record the stop-motion animation to my laptop. The digital video was shot 30p and the animation 15 fps. I used a Sennheiser ME66 and ProTools 6.4 to record the voice talent. I edited the film with Final Cut Pro and mixed in ProTools. I was going to use the same setup for this project but I really wanted a higher resolution final so I thought I’d put the final cut through Instant HD and viola, I’m done.
Just one problem: the test I put through Instant HD didn’t look as good as I hoped. I don’t blame the plugin, I just didn’t know how to punch up the optimum settings for export. Plus I was haunted by this post.
I also had access to both a Sony A1U HDV camcorder and a Nikon D100 plus I was looking for a good excuse to learn After Effects so why not take the plunge with this project? Who doesn’t love a challenge, right?
So, first I recorded my four actors (big thanks to Curtiss, Dan, Karina & Michael for lending their talent) using the above mentioned setup. I quickly cut and mixed the dialog so I could sync it up to my “proof of concept” cut. I then shot the live action (an extra thanks to Dan) as 59.94 HDV with the Sony “fake” Cineframe 30 mode turned on. After shooting I immediatly transcoded all the footage to ProRes for the rest of post. All of that went according to plan. The animation, not so much.
I thought about shooting RAW files with the D100 but I’d heard from my photographer friends that it’s a whole other beast so I chose large RGB TIFF files (3000 x 2000) instead. Unfortunately, the camera came with one 512MB CompactFlash (CF) card. That card coulldn’t hold more than 17 shots so if I had any animation longer than 1s4f (1 second, 4 frames), I’d have to download the card, wipe it clean and pray I hadn’t bumped the camera in the process. Um, no thanks. I looked in the manual and it said the camera could handle the “promised” 1GB card but nothing bigger. Guess what? Today it’s hard to find a CF card smaller than 4GB. Thank the lord the 4GB card worked. Unfortuantely, that was just the start of my troubles.
After shooting my first stop-motion shot I immediately ran head first into another problem. Although I put the camera in full manual, including the iris, the camera still adjusted the f-stop by 1/3 to 1/2 a stop according to the built in spot meter. That meant that the brightness of some frames in a single shot would be different than the others. I’d have to correct brightness frame by frame. Tedious? Yes. Doable? Yes. But that wasn’t the biggest pain in my neck.
No, it was the camera and the CF card that almost killed me. The camera could shoot 6 shots before it needed time to write the images from the internal memory buffer to the CF card. It could take 2-5 minutes to write one image to the CF. But the bigger problem was downloading from the camera into iPhoto. This took around 20 minutes per download and once took almost an hour. This forced my one-day shoot to take twice as long. Ugh.
Once in iPhoto, I renamed and exported the TIFF files to an external drive. It was then time for some After Effects magic. I was glad AFX allowed me to import a folder of still images as a contiguous video clip. Once in a timeline, I corrected the gamma to fix for the iris adjustment. Damn, that took a long time and boy did I grind my teeth. After that I created JPEG proxy files for the TIFF clips (a very good idea that saved me a ton of time). I then created another AFX project where I would lay in the animated clips end to end to get a sense of editing and pace. And, as I had 3000×2000 images but knew my final output would be a 1920×1080 HD Quicktime, I decided to create camera moves in post. Oh boy, the results looked so good I couldn’t have been happier.
Also, at this point, I could fix any image problems while still in the highest possible resolution; the Clone tool became one of my most trusted tools and Keylight is awesome for green-screen work. Once that was done, I took each shot and output it as a 1920×1080 ProRes Quciktime so that I could combine my live action and stop motion in a single AFX comp where I could color correct with Colorista which is a GPU based plugin; As you’d know from a previous post, the TIFF files were too big for this.
Once I laid out all the clips, it was time to apply Colorista. I took the Stu Maschwitz method and used Adjustment Layers instead of loading effects onto the master clip. This came in handy when I wanted to swap out clips (which happened more than a few times). Each clip had one color correction layer and all the live action clips had a secondary correction layer so I could bring my actor’s eyes up out of the darkness. Lastly, I applied a final “looks” layer over the whole project.
On the sound side, I tried Soundtrack Pro but grew frustrated so quickly I fell back to ProTools for the sound edit, design and mix. I did have to add a bit of music and I used GarageBand to create the cues and then exported them to ProTools.
Lastly, FYI, it took 14 minutes to render out a 30-second clip in After Effects but I’m incredibly happy with the results.
Here’s hoping you get to see the fruit of my labors as a finalist.
Although I’m operating on a couple hours sleep (my shoot went long and we didn’t finish so we gotta shoot another day–F********************CK!), it’s time to pack for Comic-Con.
Bleary eyed, I gazed at the Thursday schedule. Things of potential interest:
Wow, I’m really punchy, surly and tired. My sister’s gotta drive us down to San Diego. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to Comic-Con with my sister. She actually proposed the trip to me. I think this is the first pseudo-family vacation in over a decade. Let’s see if we get in a massive fight.
Um, ignore that last statement. I just need to sleep.
Today is my shoot day. That splash of panic has washed over me. Now I’m but resolve and a few random to-do’s (I sure hope Rite Aid sells a 1GB CF card).
24 shots in one day, most of them involving stop-motion animation. This will be a long day.
Wish me luck.
Tomorrow: on my way to Comic-Con
A quick what-I’ve-been-up-to-and-will-be-up-to:
And so ends today’s update. FYI, I’ll try to blog more consistently from Comic-Con. Over and out.
First, I’m a tough critic that hardest on works so close to excellence that they can brush the fringes of cinematic immortality. Those are the films that frustrate me the most. And so we have CORALINE.
This film could have easily (SOOOOO easily) been better. When I say better I mean this could have been a film for the ages instead of a diverting trifle no one will remember a year from now. How could this film have been easily fixed? First and foremost, the pacing was WAY off. The film moves so slowly that neither child nor adult could stop themselves from fidgeting. You have to give us a story that moves along at a proper clip. Instead, the filmmakers gave us a script structured in episodes that didn’t build off each other. When the filmmakers should have been ratcheting up terror, suspense or marvel they hashed out lethargy.
Part of this comes from a navel gazing related to the animation. Yes, the animation is marvelous and the world a masterpiece of macabre design but we’re living in a time where photorealistic dinosaurs are a more than just a possibility, they’re all over our media. You can’t just give us pretty pictures.
Second, the voice acting was average at best and that’s a terrible thing to say about such an amazing cast. There was zero chemistry between the performers and the fact that they’re recording their parts in isolation booths makes no difference. Just look at the amazing chemistry on the long-in-the-tooth SIMPSONS.
What a pity for a film that finally made proper, scratch that, that finally made artful use of digital 3D technology. Here’s hoping someone else uses this flick as a stepping stone for something greater.
In a previous post I introduced you to the Worry Beard. Well, now that I’ve wrapped principal photography, it’s time to lose the Worry Beard.
Adios Worry Beard from Tony Arias on Vimeo.
Finally, I can start post. So, are there any editors out there that wanna help a brother out?
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