Test of the candle light business. Not bad, but needs some sexy 80's saxophone.

The background plate for this shot setup (of which they is six of em) has been hard. It was originally shot for a daylight scene. I've been trying to shop it up to match the animated elements. Almost there. The shadows on Lord Willy are too cool. But that'll be easy to fix.

Here's some of the many layers and masks needed for the candle set up. They are, from left to right and top to bottom:

Final composite

Lord William highlights layer

Lit candle shot

Processed and separated candle highlights

Dark shadows layer

Red backdrop for matting the candles

Matte for table edges & Lord William

Matte for candle edges

Matte to remove darker parts of candle highlights

This ain't an actual shot - it's the final setup for all the candle and lighting stuff. Contrast is too high, and there's some glitches with the candle highlights overlay. The nice thing about the setup though, is that I can vary the colour and darkness of the highlights and shadows independantly until i'm happy with it.

First five takes from scene 16. The unprocessed raw footage, without lighting effects and candle shenanigans. They also need some holds added. The first shot is suspect; what the hell is doing with his spoon? Waving it around? The last shot (Bravo!, etc.) is a failed take. He starting falling over near the end. And the arm movement is goofy.

First almost-full test of setup for scene 16. Too dark. And Lord William ain't moving, which makes things harder.

Working on scene 16 now. Gonna be another monster.

Cornelisz shows up in the court of Lord William; Corndog asks him to burn a carriage for him - a model for the centrepiece of the painting.

The original plan was to have the court full of soldiers (see pic with tons of soldiers). After some brain-based storming, we figured that it wasn't appropriate. Needed something more intimate. So we've decided to have the scene at night, and Lord William has a dinner spread (or post-dinner, with the dishes still there). And candlelight. It's going to be a real challenge to pull this off.

Here's a couple rough test shots (candle pics).

Look at dis boid. And dat boid.

The bird's pretty shitty. Which is why it's small in the composition. Birds are really goddamn hard to make. Why did I pick birds? Why'd it have to be birds? I realized though, that our visual-metaphor-bird doesn't have to be seen super close up to work. It just has to register as a boid.

There's just two shots of Lord William left to do, and that's it for the scene. Except three shots of the tiny bird in the little cage. Should be a fast job for those shots, as there's only going to be significant movement in one of the shots.

I finally got to put some of this stuff together for the final version, and slap on some colour and assorted bullshit. It's pretty exciting - stuff actually happens in this scene. Human drama and whatnot.