It's hard to tell what the hell you're looking at with this clip. Did a quick bit of animation, then processed the frames (three exposures to each final frame) through the HDR software. The ISO was high and the F stop low and the lighting dim; i.e., non-ideal conditions. The main battle to date has been with flicker. Suprisingly, I found a wee change in camera angle made the difference between horrible and flicker (first clip) and almost acceptlble flicker (last 1 second clip). The battle now is with film grain; to discover to what degree grain is instrinsic to cranked-up HDR settings.

I also found that extreme motion blur barely registers when you're working on as 'shot-on-ones' clip. The effect is much more pronounced when shooting on twos. We're gonna shoot on ones.

We're planning on doing lots of digital manipulation to the shots, blur in particular - this is made comparatively easy by the fact that the puppets will be greenscreened into the backgrounds. I have high hopes for the greenscreening process - there wasn't an attempt at matching lighting with these two shots (puppet and background), but they fit reasonably well.

Sometimes, when i'm feeling less than thrilled with the results of costume making, etc., i'll photoshop em' into an HDR set pic to see how things are going. With these two, I cranked the HDR settings - pretty over the top. On the top one, I then cranked the contrast. A bit silly maybe, but I think it's neat. Though, just looking 'neat' can be a bit of a trap. The aesthetic has to make sense in context with the story/approach to the story. Rather than slapping on an 'artsy' aesthetic without a second thought.

The three puppets all together, with the contrast all whacked out. It's getting harder to work on these things - i'd really rather be making finished shots. The magic dies to a degree when everything is closed to finished - you can see how good they are/aren't going to look, and all the final work is just housekeeping. As well, the glitches keep piling up. Eventually they form a big enough pile to be a genuine pile of suck. But I think they can be used to do something good. Haven't seen them yet with proper lighting, and in motion.

Sleeves, cuffs, and shirt. Think I liked the shirt better light. Oh well.

I took off the jacket sleeves; replacing them with separate, thin sleeves. Those other ones were just too stiff - really restriced the arm movement. And Johannes' big scene consists mostly of him waving his arms around.

I'm going to see if I can't finish this costume by tommorrow. Gonna be effecient, and have disiprine.

Trimmed the apron to get rid of the 'flare' Added paint splotches galore, and dirtied up the jacket. I might end up making the jacket quite dark; works better with the backgrounds and in relation to Cornelisz. Gonna do a couple photoshop tests first, though.

Johannes, coat and apron. I'm going to sand the jacket to make it nice and threadbare. Also goin to trim the apron a little - don't like the outward flare. Then, I think i'm going to put a wash of green over it, to make it less red looking. So it'll go better with the fawn coloured jacket. Also going to smear lots of paint and grease on the apron.

Johannes outfit, in progress. Have done quite a bit more since this, but this is all I gots for pictures.

I'm actually working again! Far out. Didn't bring any pictures though.

Lights should be here any day now. Can start working right away when they show up.