Moving...

For those of you who are following the post-prod progress, there's a bit of a delay as I am currently moving out of San Diego. Most of the packing will be done by the weekend and I hope to start posting then again. It's interesting to get my hands on a bunch of physical boxes again.

Ground level factory view

Two computed generated shots finish off the opening factory workers' scene. The large scale one is already posted below. The other comes right before it and is going to go behind a greenscreened BethAnn. Here's the basic geometry with lighting. This just needs a photoshop touchup for box details then it'll get dropped behind the live action footage.

Factory Floor sideshot complete

And here's the merged shot (10 seconds long) with color timing:

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For those of you who work with digital color, you can compare this version with the photo below in the last post. The look that I'm zeroing in on is two steps. One, boosting the overall gamma on the source footage and then compressing the shadows and highlights - end result, bringing out the midtones more. Second stage is duplicating the video on top of itself, blurring it substantially and then giving it a Soft Light overlay. That's the diffuse fantasy component right there. This still needs magic bullet digital noise removal, but that can wait until the very end.

Merged cg layout for Factory Workers

Here's a snapshot of a shot with cg added around it. It's not a perfectly natural blending, there would be too much touchup work to make the cg look photoreal, but with a little bit of foreground animation, there'll be enough to look at without fixating on the background detail. The live action version of this merge is coming very shortly..

Updated Factory Workers edit

Now that the basic cg backgrounds are roughed out, it was necessary to temporarily drop them back into the rough cut of the scene. The extra detail in the new shots can throw of the timing of the sequence, if for example, a detailed background requires a little bit more time for the viewer to process visually. Here's the new cut with the three major backgrounds added in (below). As you can see, it'll take some work to color match and tweak the lighting so that all the shots feel like they're in the same location, but the major work has been done. (And the green in the super wide shot is for green screen replacement - tiny supervisors will get added into that observation area)

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Factory Floor medium shot

So, in preparation for the massive long shot that appears a couple posts below, it was necessary to start orienting the viewer to the larger geography slowly by expanding one of the earlier shots - this side view of the factory line:



The basic geometry is there - all it needs is blurring on different layers to set depth, some color matching, some scuff on the boxes and some animated tombstones coming along the line and it'll all be ready to go!

Sanitized Leverage trailer

While this is veering off the main BoxWorld thread, I've been letting some Leverage stuff come to fruition while the Factory Floor set gets its last details. A sanitized trailer was needed for a wider publicity push. Babak pointed out a technique used by radio where audio is reversed in very short segments. Personally, I think it's hilarious.. see for yourself:

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The complete Leverage now online

The full version of Leverage has gone online at blip.tv. (For those you don't know, it's the short feature that was completed before BoxWorld started shooting.) It's pretty massive (250Meg), so it's not recommended for wireless connections. It's also in a large 720x480 format for fullscreen viewing. So if you watch in the smaller window, you'll see a swimming in the fine lines as the player tries to resize the image down on the fly. I need to recompress and re-encode at a smaller dimension for a smoother viewing experience.

Here's the link to see it at blip.tv where you can switch to full screen mode: http://blip.tv/file/224405/

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Movie website: http://www.tascfilms.com

Running time: 45 minutes

A failing technology company is on the verge of bankruptcy. Two desperate programmers and a receptionist take their chances and plunge headlong into a seedy world of corporate espionage and corruption.

Leverage is a short digital feature that pushes past the usual glossy office dramas found on television and into a grittier, more unflinching reality. Shot entirely in live, working office spaces, Leverage mixes the next generation of method actors with actual employees to achieve a unique documentary-style immersion into the story.

Leverage premiered at the Golden Lion Film Festival in Swaziland, Africa in 2006. Note: Due to the large file size (the file is 250 Meg), your computer may have trouble playing the video smoothly. If you would like a higher quality version, please go to http://www.westerray.com/mainsite/contact.html to contact us for dvd availablitiy. Thanks for watching and enjoy!

Revised Factory Floor

The last post with the Factory background was okay, but this isn't Box Street or Boxtown, it's BoxWorld! There needs to be a large scope at certain turns. At the end of the opening factory scene, a full panorama is needed to set a certain geography. here's a new shot of the factory floor. Video footage will get composited to add the workers down on the line as well as supervisors up in the hanging observation tower (where the red lights are signaling the end of the shift). Also, there will be a decent amount of conveyor belt propelled boxes shifting around down there to give it some life. The digital set gets revealed is a succession of three increasing larger scope shots. That, in addition to adding echo to the actors voices in the scene will acclimitize the viewer slowly rather than hit them over the head by dropping this shot in without any preparation. How long would it have taken to assemble this set (approx. 10k boxes)

New Factory Floor Built

I have a new digital background prepared that I'm considering for use in the one wide angle greenscreen shot of the factory floor. Below is the image with the live action action composited on top. The background started as a Maya render and then moved into Photoshop to get dirtied up and some irregularites added in to make it less symmetric. The background isn't detailed enough to hold up to a careful eye, but the shot is only five seconds and animated crates moving along the ceiling should create enough movement to keep the eye engaged.

First full edit of the TV system

Below is the complete rough cut of the TV tube system that finishes the Factory Workers segment. The sound is still rough and cuts out at points. Now that the effects shots have been added in, the timing has been thrown off. And some of the effects need to be revamped (such as the slide in after the prism shot). But this will serve for now - the emphasis goes to the factory floor in the first half. Once that's ready, sound design comes next and then it'll be possible to zero in on just the right tempo for this end section.

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Image Tracking Finalized for TV Mirror Shot

And here's the final shot with all the elements composited. The entire sequence should be ready in the next day or two.

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Image Tracking for TV tubes

Well, things have shifted gears finally. Forgoing Shake for After Effects, this latest shot isn't much to look at, but means everything. There is multi-plane compositing with the foreground mirror effect laid over top of the base footage. A traveling matte (not easily seen here, but it puts the tubes in front of the green screen mirrors) and finally, automatic image tracking and stabilization - those green screen mirrors match the shot footage in scale and position all done by computer. This is really going to clean up some of the shaky dolly shots later on. And then I can't wait to run Magic Bullet across all of this to wipe out the digital artifacting in the low light (this footage doesn't have it yet).

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