Star Wars Episode III [COMPLETED]

by **ntbullock** » December 17th, 2004, 3:55 pm

Last night I did a little compositing. Today I'm getting ready to go out of town for some client work. I'm shooting all day tomorrow. I'll probably get back to SW on Sunday. Gotta make the money first...

by **ntbullock** » December 19th, 2004, 4:22 pm

Worked ALL day yesterday and made some good money. Back to SW. I posted some pics from our shoot the other weekend. Matthew Magee is a shutter bug and he took plenty. I narrowed it down and put them on the site. I'm going to try and do some compositing later tonight.

These other two costumes are going to be headaches.

by **ntbullock** » December 20th, 2004, 4:06 pm

It's amazing how ticky the compositing software can be. EVERY shot poses different problems to keying. If you're in the right mood this can be fun, but if you're tired this can be a pain to figure out.

I've been trying to catch up with everything we've shot. I've composited most of the major scenes already. It's turning out well. I'm by no means a first class compositor working with ideal footage for such work, but it's gonna be good in it's own right.

by **ntbullock** » December 21st, 2004, 10:32 pm

Today I've been going back and fixing some of the other shots that I had already gotten a good start on. There are so many shots to composite that it's hard to keep it all in perspective. So, I made a list of the ones I needed to make adjustments to, and I've been going through them. Plus, I am learning the software through use and it helps to go back and look at an earlier attempt. In some cases I've completely started from scratch.

I had to shoot some more smoke elements tonight. Not much, though.

Eric and I have been talking about this one medic background from the beginning. It's been hard to get. There aren't any 3D sets of one. So, we're trying to Photoshop us a medic room. We're both taking a stab at it with different pictures. So, we'll see.

by **ntbullock** » December 22nd, 2004, 6:03 pm

Tom Bergstrom has been working on the background from Palpatine's office. He's done a great job. So, I've started compositing those shots that required those backgrounds. Works very well. Now all we have left to get as far as backgrounds are concerned is that pesky medic room. We're working on it...

Mother has put together Mace's robe. It's rough, but we're going to put the finishing touches on it soon.

Matthew Beall has been working on the Episode III logo and will hopefully also do the Imitation Milk logo, as well. Both Matthew and Tom live elsewhere and are doing the work over the net. Amazing times.

Everything is coming along. In ways it's going slower than I had hoped, but it's going well so it doesn't really matter. There's never a shortage of something to work on.

Today I've been compositing. You'll read that a lot in the next coming weeks. Eric and I are getting together tonight to shoot an insert shot and some opening montage material.

by **ntbullock** » December 23rd, 2004, 12:38 am

We shot two things tonight. We had to get some close-ups of Vader's helmet for a montage and we decided to go back and shoot an insert shot to solidify another joke. It didn't take too long to shoot, but we had to polish Eric's very old Vader helmet.

I showed him what I had been comping together. We usually spend a little time out of our visits taking a look at some it and cracking up. Hey, at least we're laughing. Fun, fun, fun.

I'm gonna go capture what we shot tonight.

by **ntbullock** » December 26th, 2004, 2:58 am

The last few days have been Christmas holidays. I went out of town. Of course, I took my laptop with me and got a smidge of work done. Not much. I had a little freelance to catch up on and I had to do a mask on a Jar Jar composite to clean up his hand. Other than this I didn't get much done in the way of productivity, but had a good time with the fam.

Tomorrow I am to get together with Anthony to try and solidify his costume. Hopefully, Monday I'll speak with Jeromy about his Obi Wan costume. I'd really like to see these come together quickly. Until then I'm sure Eric and I will work on the droid.

by **ntbullock** » December 27th, 2004, 2:10 am

This afternoon Anthony, mother, and I finalized Windu's costume. I think it looks alright considering it's on the cheap. It'll suit our purpose.

Today I've been moving over what I had worked on over the holidays from my laptop to my G5. I finished the Jar Jar shot I had started on. I had also gotten a start on the opening of the trailer. I made it into a teaser trailer and I'll probably put it up tomorrow. Hopefully, this'll help garner some interest.

Monday I hope to get together with Eric and work on the droid if nothing else. I also am going to try and get on the Obi-Wan costume, too. It'd be nice to shoot this weekend.

by **ntbullock** » December 28th, 2004, 3:46 am

I've worked all day long. Most of it was freelance, but this evening Eric and I got together and FINALLY finished this silly little droid. Funny how you write it and it sounds simple, huh? This friggin' thing took us over 11 hours to create. Is it awesome, you ask? Why, no, it isn't. It's acceptable and funny lookin'. If we had done what we ended up doing then it wouldn't have take so long. Regardless, it's done and that was our last prop to create. Obi-Wan's costume is now the only thing left to create. We also finalized our last background. We were having problems getting a decent med room together. It's all coming together.

I released a teaser trailer today and got many good responses.

by **ntbullock** » December 28th, 2004, 9:16 pm

Eric and I met with Jeromy [Obi-Wan] today and scheduled to have a costume session Thursday morning. If we can pull his together quickly, which is possible, then we can have him on the shoot Saturday. IF, the big IF, we do shoot Anthony & Jeromy on Saturday then that will be the end of principle photography. The good thing is that a good portion of the compositing work has been started.

Scott [Emperor] should be coming up to help shoot and we'll most likely go ahead and record his dub. There's a ton of audio work to do on this project.

Eric and I are possible going to shoot the droid joke Thursday evening. If not then that'd be the only element to shoot past Saturday if everything goes as planned.

by **ntbullock** » December 29th, 2004, 3:19 pm

Ok, so I'm taking the day off. Sue me.

by **ntbullock** » December 30th, 2004, 4:24 pm

The Obi Wan costume meeting went well this morning, and mother is working on getting things ready for the big shoot Saturday. It's looking like there will be plenty of people there to help out this weekend. We'll have a great time, me thinks.

Tonight Eric and I plan on shooting the droid shots.

I've been pretty busy this week with freelance work, but I'm sure to get back to compositing soon.

by **ntbullock** » December 31st, 2004, 7:40 pm

We shot the droid joke last night. Surprisingly, I think it came out well. We'd been talking about this joke for the entire duration of the project, so it was good to knock it out. We had quite a few laughs. I captured the footage today and I might mess with it a little tonight.

We're still trying to get Jeromy's costume completed. We were supposed to get together today, but I couldn't get a hold of him. We shoot tomorrow evening, so mom and I [mostly her] have been working to get it done. She's been a great help with all of this. Right now Sarah and I are off to Wal-Mart to get some dye for the fabric.

by **ntbullock** » January 1st, 2005, 4:15 pm

Well, the dye was interesting. I'll skip what a hassle that was. Actually, it was kind of an anomaly. It really didn't make sense what happened, but we had a meeting earlier this morning and have come up with a quick solution. Obi Wan's costume isn't EXACTLY as we had planned, but it will suffice for the project. If the shoot wasn't this evening then we'd go further back to the drawing board. Mom's done some great work on the costumes and has been a real trooper about it [I guess I got that from her]. Either way, there are a few people coming from out of town to participate and tonight should be very fun.

Oh, and my New Year's resolution was to "Stay Cool". Feel free to use that if you didn't really have one.

by **ntbullock** » January 2nd, 2005, 9:56 pm

Well, quite a bit has taken place. All day yesterday was spent working on the project. There were little breaks here and there, but I'd say I put in at least a 15 hour day. We didn't get done shooting until 2:30 this morning.

We got a lot of good stuff and for the most part that was technically the last night of shooting. We had a really good time. Quite a few people helped out. Thanks guys [you know who you are]. I think I got about an hour and ten minutes of footage. I'm capturing it now.

Since my brother Scott lives in Baton Rouge I went ahead and got his voice over before he left today. He came up for the shoot. He had to do Palpatine, Emperor, and Jar Jar. We may have to do one or two things over, but he nailed most of it with ease. I tried to shoot last night where we wouldn't have to loop their audio. We'll see. I'll probably take the rest of the night off.

by **ntbullock** » January 3rd, 2005, 4:19 pm

Eric is coming over and we are going to choose the shots from Saturday's shoot. I'm also going to take all the lightsaber footage and give it to Eric because he's doing the sabers. That'll be one less thing I have to do. I'm also planning on shooting one last element tonight. I'll do this at home because it's small. After that then there shouldn't be anything else to shoot unless there's a pick-up shot.

by **ntbullock** » January 3rd, 2005, 11:48 pm

Eric and I went through the new footage and cut it down to what we're going to actually use. We edited together the saber scenes, so he could get started on those. We got some good stuff Saturday.

Dare I say this parody will be the "Team America" of Star Wars fanfilms. It's "out there" and down right ridiculous. I've been waiting to make something like this for years. My humor is a lot more vulgar than my current stable of movies depicts - just ask my friends and family. I can be horrible. This movie is a step in that direction. I'm just glad Eric didn't mind taking it there. We've had to step back a few paces at times, too. We don't want to be too far over that line of bad taste... just enough though.

I'm about to shoot the last element needed [that I can foresee]. It should take less than an hour.

by **ntbullock** » January 4th, 2005, 3:40 pm

Last night the last element was shot. That officially completes principle photography. Now, it's all post production from here on out. This is, of course, unless there are some pick-up shots to be done. I doubt this, but you never know. We'll figure this out within the next few weeks.

Well, it's back to solid compositing for me for awhile. We do have to record Eric's Yoda voice and I suspect that'll happen within the week.

Also, the extras have been assigned. Eric is creating the "Making Of" and Scott & Clayton are now putting together the bloopers. These should both hit the site upon release of the movie or very shortly thereafter. It's nice for me not to have to do this. Well, plenty to do...

by **ntbullock** » January 5th, 2005, 1:09 am

Just thought I'd share this ridiculous still from the galactic senate:

Yeah, that's Alf and the Cookie Monster. Are these not aliens that would be involved in the galaxy's best interests?

Sometimes I forget how silly some of these shots are after working on them for so long.

by **ntbullock** » January 5th, 2005, 8:44 pm

Today I cut together the major scenes we got from Saturday. I ran them by Eric and now I'm going to split them back up and start compositing them. I've got a couple of new backgrounds to take care of, but I think they'll be easy enough to obtain/create.

I originally saw this trailer being around 5 minutes long, but it looks like it'll be longer. I know I don't really want to exceed 10 minutes.

I've gotten a few things comped today and will get some more done tonight. Tomorrow I'm going out of town for most of the day, but we might record Yoda's voice over when I get back. Eric has been working on the saber shots and a couple of shots involving eye re-coloration.

by **ntbullock** » January 7th, 2005, 3:48 pm

Got back late last night but we recorded Eric's Yoda VO still. It didn't take too long to get, and Eric did a good job. He probably wouldn't tell you that, but I'm telling you that. That's just how he is, and that's just how I am. So there.

Scott and Clayton have been working on the bloopers and I saw some of the edits while I was in Baton Rouge yesterday. We think it's pretty funny. The process of creating this one might end up being funnier than the actual project. It's been a ton of work and just as much laughter.

Today I'm going to try and get some more comping done. Some shots require that I go back and mask out areas that didn't key well [ie hands]. This is rare, but it does happen. Eric's still working on the sabers. It's not a lot of saber work, but enough to keep him busy for a week or two. After that I'm hoping to get his help creating the movie poster.

by **ntbullock** » January 8th, 2005, 3:27 pm

I didn't get much done yesterday, but I dabbled with it. We looked at some saber footage Eric has been working on. It's totally acceptable. He and I have the same minor gripes about them, but honestly they'll do in a pinch. We're not going for any kind of special effects award here [although we did get one for "Glitch" - 'nother story].

I've made a highlighted version of the script that lets me know what I've already comped. It'll help me track how much I have left. Most of it is already composited. There's still a good bit to do, but it's not as much as I thought. There's roughly about 40 segments in the script. These segments can be from a single 3 second shot to a minute long scene. Out of the original script I've already cut about 5 of these out. Looking at the highlighted script I've got 6 more segments to comp. This isn't a hugely accurate depiction of how much is left, but it's some guage. After that then comes the huge process of fixing all the audio. The ole Fix 'N Mix.

by **ntbullock** » January 9th, 2005, 8:32 pm

Most of my afternoon has been spent finishing some masking on one shot, comping a new scene, masking the new scene a little, and laying down everything on the timeline in the order in appears in the script. Right now without credits, which won't take up much time, it's roughly 7 1/2 minutes. This will be paired down a little, but it's very representative of how long it will end up being. Right now I have greenscreen footage holding place for the shots that haven't been comped, but the scenes/segments have been edited. I'm working on the saber footage now so I can get it to Eric. We guesstimate that it'll take about a week and a half for him to complete the saber shots. I think I'll be done with a majority of the compositing by then, too. For the most part I'm pleased with how the composites look.

by **ntbullock** » January 10th, 2005, 12:30 am

Here's a brief example of what I've been doing. I did this shot last week sometime. In this example I didn't crop it for widescreen.

I start out with the original greenscreen footage. I de-interlace it and usually use a 4:1:1 color smoothing plugin:

Next I get my background in order. Here I've got Palpatine's office with an image mask over the window because I need to replace the city. I'm using still images for all the backgrounds, so any movement has to be created:

Here's a look at what I'm putting under the office. This will show through the mask of the window. I stitched together three large image files of Coruscant, rendered a few lines of traffic in 3DMax, and made a 2D animation in After Effects of the ships passing by:

I then add this to the office, increase the brightness, and gaussian blur it:

Next I key out the greenscreen. This particular key was done in Final Cut Pro using DVMatte Pro. I moved the subject to the right a little and added a slight noise layer over the background. I also blurred the office a tad:

I wanted to use DVMP on this one instead of Keylight in AE because DVMP has the light wrap feature. This takes the background and wraps it around, or bleeds, the edges of your keyed footage. It's a nice feature when you're subject is in front of a window or bright background. I also adjusted the RGB and tinted it for color-correction:

This is taste of what I've been consumed with lately.

Since my last post earlier today I've comped together 3 or 4 shots. I've gotten a decent amount done today.

by **ntbullock** » January 11th, 2005, 9:15 pm

Yesterday I comped a few shots and today I've done a couple. Eric came over tonight and I showed him the rough cut, which only has one scene left that's not comped. We'll have to do a lot of editing to create the pacing we were trying for.

I made a list today of every shot I need to rework or tweak. There were 17 shots I wanted to dabble with. These issues range from changing the color slightly of one element to completely redoing some of them. I hope to be pretty much done with compositing by the weekend. Here's hoping. I'm starting to get burnt out.

by **ntbullock** » January 12th, 2005, 5:40 pm

I've been working through my list and trying to "fix" these shots. I honestly don't think this project would be possible with just one piece of compositing software. I've got about 4 left on the list and they are the harder/extended ones.

I counted today the number of individual composites I've had to do for this project. It totaled 68. That's quite a few for one person who doesn't really know what the hell they're doing, but I'm managing. I didn't count the shots that I comped then later decided that it should be different so I recomped them, OR the shots I comped in one program, couldn't get it looking decent then started over in another program. Whew.

Eric's hard at work on the saber shots. He's bringing one over tonight for me to look at. I've still got one last segment to composite, which consists of 5 seperate shots. I'm still looking to be done by the weekend. Eric still thinks he'll be done soon after.

I'm looking forward to sfx and mixing, but it does take a long time. Especially, since there's so much voice-over work. I've never done this much VO.

by **ntbullock** » January 13th, 2005, 8:13 pm

I've got a couple shots left on my list and I've been meaning to get at that last scene. Something always seems to come up or get in the way. I'm at least still getting relevant work done. Eric's still working hard on the sabers. It's a slightly different experience placing sabers of footage that has been composited. It's been a learning experience.

I really hope my next camera, which will be HD, will have a better compression ratio than standard DV's 4:1:1. If you want to really see the flaws in DV then do compositing work. Ug. Either way, everything is coming along a tad ahead of schedule. Maybe we're right on it. Something'll come up that's ridiculous and push everything back. It usually happens that way. It'll be the simplest thing, too. I'm really going to try and get a rouch comp of that last scene. I at least rendered the backgrounds for it today.

by **ntbullock** » January 14th, 2005, 1:21 am

I've got a good comp of the last scene. Here's a couple of snaps of what I've been staring at for the past few weeks.

I've got some serious masking to do around fingers [shrug] on this one shot left on my list. Back to work, but I can see the light at the end of the compositing tunnel.

by **ntbullock** » January 14th, 2005, 6:50 am

Well, almost six in the morning and I'm finished going through my list. Every shot has a background plate, project file, and decent composite. From here I'll make minor cosmetics adjustments, but for the most part they're done. I feel better. I've also started listening to soundtrack music while I work and making some notations. Now I need sleep. There's still much to do.

by **ntbullock** » January 15th, 2005, 4:52 pm

Well, I'm making some very minor cosmetics changes to the shots. I do mean minor. I made another list today that had about 6 things to adjust and check. I'll rip through them and possibly start going through the VOs in ProTools.

Eric has had a time with the lightsabers. He's pushed back his completion date because he wants to do them better. He's having to completely redo shots. He's a trooper.

Star Wars Episode III [COMPLETED]

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