Time for a Breather

It's been a couple of weeks since my last blog, but that doesn't mean nothings been happening!  It's been a really busy period so it's about time I take a breather and sit down to work on my blog

Since my last blog entry I have worked on getting prepared for the first weekend of our film shoot. 

For me that meant sorting out my paperwork and completing Visual Effects Breakdowns for every shot.

I also created templates especially for this project to ensure that I was collecting all of the relevant data from the film shoot, which is really important for once we begin compositing.

I got the chance to test these out over the weekend of the 2nd of May when we began our first lot of filming.  It was exciting to be on my first film shoot and I had to learn quickly how things work on set.  It really puts into perspective the amount of talent that there is within our group (both crew and actors)- something that isn't always obvious until you see people in action.

Unfortunately we had a few issues come up on our second day of filming, as we were unable to shoot on our preferred location and the weather was limiting our other options.  There was still some amazing footage shot this day from other scenes and it was great how our team picked itself back up and carried on despite less than ideal circumstances.

The issues from that day have come with a great amount of lessons learnt, and we have decided going forward to shoot the remainder of the shots inside on a Green screen.  That is going to mean that my job on set becomes even more important so that we can later get some great plates from the environments we had hoped to film in which will match the footage.  There's also going to be a greater amount of compositing involved this way, but it may end up being an easier job as we will not need to match the backgrounds already in shot.

It's a new experience for the film crew to light and film in front of a green screen.  With this in mind we ran some tests over the weekend.  I wanted to test camera tracking as I haven't had to use it in any of my projects.  It will be great to know how far we can push things before they start looking awful.

We also tested on set lighting of actors in front of the greenscreen, but ran out of time for a flat lighting test.  I'm hoping to get a basic scene ready in Maya at some point that I can look at with our DOP so that he can get an idea of what we can do as far as matching or relighting a shot.      

For our tracking test I used yellow tape on the green screen.  Often in the industry a green tape of a different shade is used which helps with the removal of the trackers.  It seems we have some dark green tape that I could try next time round.

I am still working on testing the track but am hoping to get it done ASAP.

In my off time I have been continuing to help out with getting the sets ready, just by completing odd jobs here and there.  One of the things I have been working on is sewing flags to be used for set dressing.

I've done quite a bit of sewing for set dressing over the last few weeks, as I have also sewn flags for the interior shots, the baby blanket, two bags and a variety of pouches.  Those three years of sewing classes have come in handy!


These hanging decorations I made were used as decor for young Kristana's home during the shoot on the 2nd.