The Production Beast

Well, I gots me a job, and after the first month I can wind down for a day and post some strange things. Like, I suddenly shoot, edit, and design graphics for local car commercials. I build and disassemble a Jimmy-Jib Triangle and shoot with a Varicam. If I said I could do any of this with confidence before starting this job, it would be a stretch. But if I were to look around for anyone more qualified, I'd be hard pressed. In any case, here I am plugging 50-60 hours a week on salary with the understanding that I am to build up and maintain the largest production company in this little city. There will be some misunderstandings, (it's not a well-oiled machine) but for now, I work hard and talk little. And drink.

Production is a funny thing. Having been around so many different productions gives one a strong sense that no one production is bound to be alike. There are similarities. Grip work and Production Assistant work are a great place for someone like me: I do what is asked, power through the strange, and come away having observed every single mistake and communication breakdown that has occurred. After several overlong days of coming home with split fingernails and hands smelling of blood and metal, as if you'd been rubbing a lucky coin pilfered from a gangster, one can relax and pay bills. It's honest work in a creative field. Then again, there's also shooting six cars while strapped into the flatbed of a pickup truck going 70 MPH over a bridge. Don't worry, I'll strap myself in, I say, meaning really, If I'm going to die, it will be because I strap me in wrong, and no on else. Also thinking, No worries. I've done this before. Ignoring the lesser voice that says, "Last time was safer."

I'm not really a cinematographer, but I am an artist and this jives with me as a shooter. Production experience has been invaluable to me, and being an artist (whatever that brings with it) had been simply an afterthought out of tune with money most of the time. But why separate the two? Why separate any experience? Am I to find a career as a fractured, schizophrenic talent? Fuck 'em. I'm a production guy, a painter, a writer. Animator, server. Who cares.

I think I've been in Greenville, SC for too long. Small towns and I do not agree on many things.

Meanwhile, I have a commission for a large oil painting due in April, a webcomic about to launch (Guardians, please let this issue post now, I've been sitting on it for two months) and, yes, a film about an elephant to work on again. When I can.

Sept. 2011

I am still alive, and I apologize for not posting. The job situation in my life has changed recently, allowing me more time for my XL friend (the month of August in particular brought some grand developments, including the best animation to date,) but with this change also brings a threat anew: poverty. I have been working on M since July of 2008, and as of July 2011 I've set a soft deadline of April, 2014. With everything going on outside of the project, I am unable to justify spending immediate time making the latest work available for viewing. Nevertheless, there are those interested in helping- and I am soon to enter a recruiting phase for scanning, cleanups, and color flatting. In the meantime, enjoy a pic from my secondary project [hopefully a moneymaker to free up some time and funds for this ongoing pachyderm epic] the unearthly graphic novel Bloodless.

Paper-to-Post Pipeline

I've devised my methods- save the main coloring processes, which I still need to nail down for the narrative portion of the film. I think I'll keep that pretty traditional (three-tone) for the first pass and augment with an additional beauty pass. Until I get there, though, I've devised the scanning/compositing methods and chosen the final output res.

The scanner I picked up is a Mustek Scan Express Pro A3 1200, which fits 16f (12.65X17") sheets comfortably. The drivers are a bit dated, but it's inexpensive and TWAIN compatible with photoshop -- and that's all that matters.

Scans will be 16-bit color @ 200 DPI. Why not grayscale? Personal preference. I'd rather avoid a grayscale->RGB conversion step in my photoshop phase. Even tho macro automation makes it fast, I don't want to deal with software conversion of colorspace or bit depth between the scan and the composite.

Been working with After Effects for 2D stuff until now. This time, I'm bumping up to Combustion 4 for almost all output. Output will be Digital Cinema 4k 1.85:1, or 3996 × 2160. About twice current HD. This is pretty close to actual film, the difference being that the crop to 1.85:1 will occur during the actual composite. (For those not interested in techie stuff, skip: Combustion 4 doesn't actually include a comprehensive image sequence editor. There is an edit node, but having 60-150 images in line as a footage layer proves pretty unstable and actually makes for a huge hit to performance. There's also a fine .TIF sequence import, but since it only allows for single frame numbers, it's far too labor intensive to reorder any drawings as the animation may require. So I'll be importing the individual drawings into AE or similar motion graphics suite, and exporting these layers as uncompressed .movs with premultiplied Alpha to import into C4 as footage. It'll work, even on my 6-year old G5 rig. It's actually not too taxing on the machine until you try to render a preview to RAM- which is when 1/4 res proxies come in handy.) The goal here is to create something that can withstand the next rollout of HD media, which will be larger than 1920X1080 (1080p.)

Finally, instead of just a trailer- I've decided to execute a whole sequence of the film to use for fundraising. I think the film timeline is too large and varied to open up with a musical trailer mishmash, so I'll hit the story. After that, I'll see if a teaser or two is in order for publicity and go from there.

At last..

Some animation. Had to test the scanner, so I used M23_Shot286. Scanner works, Mutwale lives. 523 shots to go.

Need to double-check the timing- I don't have the drawings themselves, so I don't have the original charts. The pencil test seems correct, the alpha composite seems a tad slow.

More as it happens.