Shoot the tube!

The new render machine has finally been completely configured and is now operational. It was a pain to duplicate the file system, but this latest version of the tube drop finished in less than a half hour (as opposed to rendering overnight) making it all very worthwhile. The quality is low, but those hundreds of boxes are all photoreal as are the markings on the envelope. Still need to lay in some mail that got stuck in side crevisses and also have a few others dropping by as secondary movement, but this is coming together nicely.

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Felix sees more smoke

Here's the beginning of Mailmen with the smoke shot and a really great wipe transition that really energizes the entrance of the firemen. I had thought that the seam between shots would need artificial touchup, but at a third of a second, it wipes too quickly to notice the hard edge.

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Felix sees smoke

A nice easy effect - added smoke to the opening of the Mailman's sequence. The smoke is stock footage that originally was shot against a black background. Using an additive compositing layer, the background disappeared nicely leaving a seamless effect. A slight blurring and 150% slow motion placed it just a bit better. On to the next..

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More with Franklin's room

As a followup, here's the sequence with slight retouches and starting to get into the audio work of reverberating the newscasters's voice and establish dimension..

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Art Direction for Franklin's room

This particular shot posed a few problems as it slows the pacing of the story right in the center. Two additions here in this low quality render. A nightlight in the back (which will be slowed down) keeps movement as Franklin comes in. In addition, after he turns on the tv, what used to be a dead zone is now covered with the plate sliding off the cover of the tv. This then match cuts to the view of the tv to cement the idea of it turning on.

Leverage clocking in at 12 minutes

There's been a slight change of pace as two older projects are heading out to festivals. For those of you who follow Leverage, here is the current work-in-progress. Just need to iron out some of those music cues. (NSFW for those of you at W!) And here's the better link to blip.tv's servers to watch it.

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