Doink!

...because I've run out of witty titles.


Crosshares 5th October.

Watch it a few times, let me know if there's anything that stands out. Music will change, let me know if there's anything else I should add. Below are my notes I wrote to myself this morning...

Drums good...
Opening strings ok
Needs more punch on orchestral hits
Mixing of themes is nice though
Watch trombones on fade out
Bass thump needs to be pulled back

Middle battle theme ok?

Remove high trumpets and high trombones
Yeah, definitely lose the heavy thump of the thinking music.
...and the slow bits

Last battle theme has too many high bits. Something not quite right.
Steel guitar too high on velocity. Push back a bit.
Make quiet bits quiet - contrast.

Make sure there's plenty of falloff when bouncing...
ALSO! Higher sample rate when re-bouncing for next draft.

Oooh, and fyi: I love Logic. It is awesome. That is all.

Animation round 1!

Here be the first animated animatic! Marvel, comment and critique!!


Crosshares Previs 14th September.

And here's a newer one with better shots, nicer animation and better cutting. Albeit, no soundtrack...


Crosshares 15th September.

Re-visualised by a half

Crosshares previs mk02.

oOooh... shiny.

More Music

Hey guys, Bob's sent me another musical iteration. I've got some thoughts, but I wanna hear what you guys think first.

Have a listen: here.

Music, timing, fur and militant rodents.

So! More music!

This is getting closer to what I was hoping for I think. I've re-arranged everything to sound better and work together sounding similar, but hopefully not the same and too repetitive. It's only midi, so it's not perfect. Still, I'd like to think it's pretty damn close.

I've taken our first previs and stretched it around with AE to match our music timing to our key actions and cuts. It looks pretty nice to me, but I'll wait for your OK's before I go around saying it's perfect. I've added the timecode thing too so we know EXACTLY how long the shots are supposed to be, rather than just taking a good guess like we did last time. We'll still have the extra frames added in for the sake of editing and tweaking, but it'll be a lot cleaner work than last time.

Watch, listen and comment!

Music, timing and furry military rodents.

More Animusimatic

Some re-tweaks on the animatic. This is the animatic we're using for the pre-vis. There's some potential for some short in between shots here and there, but this is the definitive shot list from this point.

There were too many shot additions and changes to justify just using the old animatic and adding later. So! Here's the animatic with some tweaked music:

External link.

And this is our shot list to date.
Details will change, such as adding skies and background elements, but this is the nuts and bolts of it.

shot_01 zoom out from photo
· orange_model
· photo
· ground_plane

shot_02 top view of orange
· orange_model
· photo
· ground_plane
· rifle

shot_03 explosion off screen
· orange_model
· photo
· ground_plane
· rifle
· comrade_leg

shot_04 jump out trench then trip
· orange_model
· ground_plane
· rifle
· comrade_leg x2?

shot_05 look up. Explosion off screen
· orange_model
· ground_plane

shot_06 everyone is dead
· orange_model
· ground_plane
· rifle

shot_07 looking around
· orange_model
· rifle

shot_08 blue standing
· orange_model
· blue_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun
· rifle?

shot_09 close up on blue's face
· orange_model
· blue_model
· ground_plane
· rifle

shot_10 gross up close up

shot_11 orange sneezes
· orange_model
· blue_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun
· rifle

shot_12 silhouette, shotgun fires
· orange_model
· blue_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun
· rifle

shot_13 orange angry, runs
· orange_model
· ground_plane
· rifle

shot_14 blue cowers
· blue_model
· shotgun

Shot_15 action shot orange
· orange_model
· rifle
· ground_plane

Shot_16 action shot blue
· blue_model
· shotgun
· ground_plane

Shot_17 action shot orange
· orange_model
· rifle
· ground_plane

Shot_18 action shot blue
· blue_model
· shotgun
· ground_plane

shot_19 action shot orange
· orange_model
· rifle
· ground_plane

shot_20 action shot blue and orange
· orange_model
· blue_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun
· rifle

shot_21 orange trips
· orange_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun
· rifle

shot_22 rifle bounces away
· ground_plane
· rifle

shot_23 orange backs away from blue’s gun
· orange_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun

shot_24 blue hesitating with gun
· blue_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun

shot_25 orange flinching away
· orange_model
· ground_plane

shot_26 blue looking away, misfires, realizes gun’s not workin’
· blue_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun

shot_27 orange looks up, confused.
· Orange_model
· Ground_plane

shot_28 blue fiddling with gun, orange’s hand pops up, blue gives gun, orange fixes gun os
· orange_model
· blue_model
· shotgun

shot_29 orange offering gun back
· orange_model
· shotgun
· ground_plane

shot_30 blue receiving gun from orange, shaking hands, sudden realization, jump back
· orange_model
· blue_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun

shot_31 over shoulder of blue looking at orange, photo falls out.
· orange_model
· blue_model
· shotgun
· ground_plane
· photograph

shot_32 close up blue reaction to photo
· blue_model

shot_33 zoom to photo on the ground
· ground_plane
· photo

shot_34 blue pulls out wallet & flicks down
· blue_model
· wallet

shot_35 orange watching wallet cascading
· orange_model
· ground_plane

shot_36 blue is still looking at wallet cascading
· blue_model
· wallet

shot_37 blue POV of wallet photos, compares with orange
· blue_model
· wallet
· orange_model
· ground_plane

shot_38 blue recognizes orange, quick zoom to blue happily throwing gun & wallet
· blue_model
· orange_model
· ground_plane
· shotgun
· wallet
· photograph

shot_39 blue picks up orange in a hug
· blue_model
· orange_model
· ground_plane

shot_40 orange bewildered, looks down
· orange_model
· blue_model

shot_41 photos from orange’s pov
· photo
· wallet
· ground_plane

shot_42 close ups of photos
· photo
· wallet
· ground_plane

shot_43 orange’s realization
· orange_model
· blue_model

I've gotten feedback the hug is still weird. But the hug is also the best way to convey the emotions I think. Compromise: Blue still hugs Orange, but the first photograph at the end should be them shaking hands, not hugging.

I feel like lemonade.

More Musicianshippleness

So here's a new music iteration. I've edited the animatic slightly as we discussed, but nothing major has changed. I doubled the action sequence to make space for any fancy animation we may want the space for.

Which is all sort of redundant... the codec compression screwed the visual timing somewhat. But the music is still good, so shuddup and listen!

(This is the external link...)

Musicianshippleness

Some quick themes and ideas. I listen to it sometimes and it's a bit funny, but then I listen to it 5 minutes later and it fits really well.

Need sleep.

Watch movie.

Watch it on Vimeo here.

Nuff said.

Sketchy sketchy sketchy

So. Here's the world's roughest animatic. I knew there'd be a good reason behind doing this, and a lot has to do with the sort of music we'll have at certain points. Needless to say I'll be watching plenty of action comedies for inspiration...

My version of the storyboard trims down to 2:20 without any soundtrack reference, just going by what feels good. On and off I was listening to some of our inspirational songs (which I have more of btw), but there's no real continuity in listening reference.

I think this gives my idea across better than my disjointed storyboard did, so I'm really interested to hear what you guys have to say now that I at least think it's coherent.

Big Band version

I was a little uninspired to try anything truely drastic with the music, so I thought I'd try a big band arrangement. I also thought I'd try Vimeo.

Let's see if this works...

Click here to see it on Vimeo.

Strawberry Jammin'

Image via Wikipedia

Another music post. I was feeling to hot and melted today to do anything more physical than wiggle my fingers, so I wiggled them over a keyboard for a while.

This was the result, let me know if there's anything about it you think may contribute to our film. This is just on piano, but I could re-do it in a swing band style if I put my mind to it. Damn drum fills.

Jammin'

So here's a few quick musical things I was fiddling with today, just to get something out there for you guys to hear, and give us something to work from.

THIS is the basic drums I created. Yes, it's only midi at this stage. Quickly done after listening to THIS.
THIS is that plus some guitar I found and a bit of ambient sound thing.
And THIS is some horrible midi brass over all the above. You get the idea.

I'll make a post soon about how we can tag things for the sake of reference and all that down the track.