Not alot going on these days; pretty bored. Not sure what i'm waiting for - looking to rent a little space I guess. But I could be doing other stuff.

We're recording the narrator tomorrow, so hopefully that'll get things rolling. I'll be able to get started on the 'animatic' version of the film - actual audio with storyboards filling in for scenes. Then i'll see what kind of a movie I have.

Progress on 'The Third Night' has stalled, which is pretty frustrating. Mike is a busy guy these days, so we haven't got in any editing time in a while. So far, it's been about a month and we've done about 5-6 hours editing total. Not very fast-moving.

RECORDING GEAR

After extensive dicking-about, I aquired some recording gear; one kick-ass microphone so we can rock it like Jurgen Gothe. And a digital-interface-recording-mixer-thingy-mcbastard. Together, we'll be able to record some very nice sounding audio.

We'll be recording our narrator Friday evening.

Our First Two Films

Here's where to find our first two films on line; on the old Zedtv website. Don't hold your breath though, they're not the greatest films made. I'm proud of what I did, and that I actually managed to complete something, but they're a bit 'rustic'.

Paste all this together into your web browser:

http://www.zed.cbc.ca/go?user_id=42917&c=contentPage

Here's the old crew, back in Jim's studio in Edmonton - Jim is the hair farmer on the right. That's Dave wearing a trucker hat with the top cut off (with a bread knife).

And here's a couple screen shots from 'The Masque of the Red Death'. I had to animate all those armatures at once. They we're all doing the same motion at the same time. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to pull it off.

I found some old shots us of working on 'The Masque of the Red Death'; a real golden oldie. Those were the days. We look so pink and fresh-faced. Now we're old, haggard and drawn looking.

That set was a pain to build. I really enjoyed smashing it after we were done.

I've been throwing various bits and pieces together, trying to get a feel for how i'm going to approach the background composites for 'The Hell Painting'. It's going to be a lot harder to mesh green-screened armatures with small-scale photoshopped/painted images/sets with one another than it was for 'The Third Night'. I think i'm going to have to do alot more hands-on building that i'd originally hoped. As soon as I have a place to do it, i'm just going to dive into the 'Interior studio' set pieces and see what I get. There's a good chance that i'll end up throwing out the digital work from my early attempts anyways, until I establish an aesthetic and way of working.

Not much to talk about these days, or no pretty pictures to show anyways.

We'll be booking some studio time in about a week or so, at which point we'll record the narrator's parts for 'The Hell Painting'. We'll rehearse our actor for that on one occasion before recording.

Mike and I are slowly plugging away on the editing of 'The Third Night'. He's a busy dude, so we're only having weekly sessions. Pretty slow going. The narration I gave to Mike is glitchy, so's I got to chop it up and process it again.

My title background, and end credits background. Whoop er doo.

THE HELL PAINTING

We auditioned four actors last night, reading for the male parts. I wasn't expecting much, considering the low pay, but some quite talented people showed up - was quite impressed. It turns out it was a good idea to do the voices before the production - they'll be setting the bar quite high for quality.