Put on your X-ray specs

I’ve sufficiently recovered from the weekend to blog a bit about the film competition. But I might fall asleep in mid-keystroke, so bear with me.
Well, this was the 4th one I’ve done, and frankly — even though it was the most technically complex film we’ve ever made — it wasn’t too bad. It all comes down to planning, really.
So, the big secret plan that I alluded to earlier? We did a film in 3D! Yup, I’ve been researching the possibilities for a few months, and managed to produce an 8-minute film with about 7 minutes of 3D content.
We did some test filming a week or so ago and figured out the best ways to move the camera and whatnot… but that was outdoors. Unfortunately, this past weekend it rained buckets and we had to move indoors. Luck was with us, as we were able to shoot in an actual studio and make use of a blue chroma-key screen.

While it was cool to shoot Chroma Key, it also meant a huge amount of work for me — if we had filmed outside or on locations, we’d have backgrounds. Instead, I had to get to work creating environments for the action to happen in and composite it all together.
And that’s what I did. It took 7 hours to shoot all the footage and 22 hours to edit it, create the 3D environments and special effects, and composite it all together.
At the last moment, while the finished movie was being saved to tape, the computer suddenly stopped sending audio. This was only minutes before we were supposed to turn in the tape! We started to think of different options to fix it; one of which was to record the audio playback and then dubbing that audio to the footage, and I started to do that — only to discover that the recording didn’t match the exact frame rate of the footage and lost sync almost immediately.
Literally 10 minutes before we were due to get the film in, we discovered a fix for the problem… by reading the manual. Duh.
In the end, we turned in our tape a 7pm, 30 minutes before the final deadline, and to add to the drama we handed the producers a handful of 3D glasses stamped with a custom message (did you know that Staples can make rubber stamps with your art while you wait? Amazing!).
I might have a link to watch the movie later this week; but right now I’m preoccupied with packing — the movers come Saturday — so it’s not high on my list. We’ll see where it fits in. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with these tantalizing tidbits from our 3D Musical Fantasy film “It’s All In Your Head.”