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More zombie movies...
Traveling to Kelowna, BC, on Sunday to go work on Fido, a low budget Canadian zombie movie. Picking up my friend, the other VFX supervisor, at his place at 6:30, and then we're driving up the Coquihalla. Should get in by midnight-ish. Taking up the two iPods, but since they're both first gen with the original batteries, I'll be surprised if we have tunes for the whole drive.
What's up with these zombie movies? They're definitely enjoying a comeback; that, and zombie games, of course. I guess these things come in cycles. We're also working on George Romero's new zombie movie, Land Of The Dead (trailer available at the Quicktime website). Worked on a couple cool shots where a few zombies meet pretty ugly endings. Fun!
This new zombie is different, however - it's a comedy/spoof on 50's nuclear family lifestyle. I think it'll do well.
No time to play games these days, between the baby, work, after-hours work, and other obligations... I'm neck-deep in corporate tax preparation right now, I need to get that out of the way before June 11th - not for tax reasons, but for work. More details later. I've also been learning Shake, Maya, and boujou on the side, all for this upcoming project that may start sometime around June 11. As a supervisor, I don't need to know how to use the software, but I find that my experience with the tools makes me a better supervisor, and always helps when in a pinch - I can't count the number of times i've sat down at Photoshop to bang off a matte painting when I couldn't afford a matte painter, or whip off some quick comps in After Effects when all my compositors were too busy. I think Maya is too complex for anyone to get good at it without devoting all their time to it, but getting comfortable with the navigation tools, the render settings, and the camera (motion path, film back, etc) will all be invaluable for this new project.
And tracking, too. boujou seems like magic until you throw a shot at it that it can't handle, and then you're farked. Tracking is an art in to itself - not just the matchmoving part, but physically putting tracking markers in the frame that'll work for the shots. Start stacking up long lenses, moving actors, short depth of field, and three puppeteers filling the frame around the puppets, and there's not much room left for 8-12 tracking markers. Seems like director's wishes are always one step beyond the upper limits of new technology.
Interesting, this blog thing. I don't know if I'll keep it up, I'm feeling guilty enough already of not contributing enough to IMG as one of their "regular" writers. Speaking of which, I'm meeting Cliff Johnson, creator of Fool's Errand, three-in-3, at the carnival, etc, at a bar by his place on the drive back on Wednesday. Got a bunch of questions for him regarding his new title, which (with any luck) will be appearing as an IMG feature near you. That is, after I finish my current IMG article...
But back to the blog thing. At first I didn't think this was for me, and I'm still kinda leaning that way. Do I really need to allow anybody who has internet access a look into my life, my thoughts, anything to do with me? Will anybody care? Probably not. Who really cares?
Anyway, I'm gonna give this a shot for a while and see what comes of it.
Cheers,
FBC
Posted on May 27, 2005 at 4:15 pm
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