It’s official! All the pictures elements are all done. It certainly wasn’t easy – and there has been a lot of brain numbing rotoscoping the last few weeks, but all the effects are done, the grade is complete and everything is ready and waiting for the final soundtrack to be attached. These are certainly exciting times! It just amazing how much time, effort and energy goes into a tiny little three minute trailer. But from all accounts, it’s certainly been worth it. The footage looks incredible, and the effects (despite being made on a shoe string budget) don’t come up too badly. Now all we have to hope is that when people actually watch the trailer, it makes them want to see the feature length film! Only time will tell…

As always, time has flown, and deadlines are getting closer and closer. In a perfect world, we’d like to have everything completed by next Friday 7th. Whether or not we’ll be able to complete that deadline, well, only time will tell. Everything seems to be going pretty well. Colour grading is currently being tackled, and most of the visual effects are now completed – we’ve only got a few of the more tricky ones to go. The biggest worry we have currently is whether or not we’ll have the score completed by then. But fingers crossed! Another, more subjective problem is working out what we actually do with the soundtrack! To voice over or not to voice over, that is the question.

The whole post production process has certainly been an exciting and challenging one! We’ve definitely spent a fair bit of time hanging around at the Red User forum, trying to work out the best workflow with our limited resources and budget (you can read one of our threads here). But, so far, so good, and we’ve been able to develop a nice little pipeline that seems to be working. At some stage in the future we’ll explain everything in nitty-gritty technical detail.

I’ve unfortunately got to get back to work – so this is just a very quick little update. But rest assured, we’ll be posting more and more stuff in the lead up to 2009. How scary is that? The year is rapidly coming to an end.

Until next time…

Zap! One minute it’s September, and the next it’s all of a sudden October. It’s certainly been an incredible year and it’s rapidly disappearing. So what’s been happening since my last post – well, like always, lots! This week we successfully locked down the picture edit. It certainly wasn’t easy, and our Final Cut Pro project file has so many different edits and versions within it, it’s ridiculous, but we made it in the end! But, even though this is a big step in the right direction, there is still a very long way to go, and we don’t have much time to do it all. The musical score is under way, as are the many visual effects – but even after we complete these things, we still need to do the final colour grade, the sound design, edit and mastering, plus get the final product onto all the various media and formats for distribution. Although we’re not in a bad position, we’ve basically got three or so weeks to wrap everything up, so the pressure is definitely on! So with that said, I’ve got to get back to work. Eventually (probably next month in all honestly), we will get around to uploading all the things we’ve been promising for months, like some more production stills, video blogs, camera tests, etc. But in the meantime, here are some happy snaps from a recent green screen shoot for the Sakooz trailer. We had to shoot some character pick-ups for some of the visual effects. To save money, we only build one alien character (Pinky), but for the purposes of the trailer, we’re shooting some material of the Pinky character against a green screen, then grading the costume to a different character (i.e. blue) and then digitally inserting the shots into the scenes, so that there’s more than one creature. Because the additional character only appear very small in frame, we can shoot these elements on a HVX202 (as opposed to a RED, which we used for principle photography). We also used a different cast and crew for these pick-ups. A big thank you to Julia for jumping in the costume! Judging by the photos though – it looks like she had at least a little bit of fun…

As promised, here are some absolutely gorgeous photos taken by the incredible Michelle Leong from Day Two of the Sakooz shoot. There will be lots more of these fantastic images to come in the weeks ahead, but until then, enjoy…

Also, just to give you a quick update, we are still madly cutting together the trailer. We’ve gone through a few drafts now, and are still experimenting trying to put together a trailer that explains the story (but doesn’t give everything away), introduces the characters, looks and sounds amazing, and isn’t boring or clichéd. It’s not an easy task, as we’re limited to what we shot on our very hectic five day shooting schedule – but it’s a lot of fun just messing around with the edit and trying new things. One of the big problems I’m finding so far is putting together a sequence that won’t confuse the audience too much – because I know the story so well, it’s easy to forget what the audience do and don’t know. Also, a lot of things that looked good on paper, simply don’t translate through to the screen – so it’s a challenge thinking outside of the box, and messing around with the edit to give certain shots new meaning and context.

I’m off to Sydney tomorrow for a few days for work (so that I can pay off some of my Sakooz debts!), but when I return it will be full steam ahead again in the edit suite. Also, still on the to-do list, we will eventually put up some more detailed posts on what happened during the shoot, and add some more videos and photos. We’ll also start putting an official Sakooz website together, in which you’ll be able to view and download higher resolution versions of the above photos (and lots more)! So stay tuned – lots of exciting things are certainly coming up! We’ll also EVENTUALLY put up all the camera test stuff we talked about months and months ago, plus some R3D files for people to mess around with.

Until next time… Chris!

Once again, apologies for the lack of communication since my last post. It’s been a very, very busy time! Not only have I been flat out with everything Sakooz related, but I’ve also been working non-stop on other students third year films. I’ve had a pleasure of working on some really AMAZING student films the last month or so. One of the most recent films I worked on, was filmed on a breathtaking farmland location out past Ballarat, and had Adam Arkapaw behind the camera (shot on Super 16mm). Having just seen the rushes – I must say, the footage looks INCREDIBLE! Congradualtions to Tim, Bec, Cec, and Jordy – you have done an amazing job pulling together such a fantastic crew, and I can’t wait to see the finished result. It’s going to be one very beautiful and moving short film. Congradulations! I really can’t wait for the 2nd of December, which is the Swinburne Graduation Film Screening at ACMI. There really is going to be some amazing work up there on the big screen.

Ok – so what’s happening Sakooz related? Well… unfortunately it’s been quite a slow couple of weeks. After completing principle photography, I started on a hunt to try and lock down a professional trailer editor. Although I had an AMAZING response, and lots of people really wanted to help out (especially as many of them hadn’t had a chance to cut together RED footage yet), no one was willing to sign up given the deadlines. And so, after many discussion with various editors and mentors, I have decided to cut together the rough cut myself, and then get advice from various people to complete the edit. So yes, I guess I’m also going to have to add “editor” to my credit list. Luckily however, because the footage just looks so good (and I really love what footage we ended up with) – it’s quite fun to cut together. It’s hard work however, because you have to cut basically mute – as there’s very little location sound, dialogue and we don’t have any music yet. But hey, nothing like another challenge!

So yeah, we’re basically stuck in “post production hell” at the moment. Hopefully we’ll have the picture locked by the first couple of weeks of October. Fingers crossed! As promised, we’ll also be adding stories from the principle photography on this blog, as well as photos over the next few weeks. Here are some little happy snaps for you to have a look at for the time being… Enjoy!