Friday, May 23, 2008

NEW SET, and ANOTHER MILESTONE

justin is in the garage right now shooting our NEXT TO LAST SHOT on Gerald's Last Day. it's the INTRO exterior set outside the pound.

so yesterday we said GOODBYE to the CAGE:


it was fun to tear down the CAGE, cuz putting the INTRO up felt like coming full circle, since the intro set is the first one i made and it's the first real shot justin did (except he did it in smaller frames and we've shot the rest of the film in HD, so he's reshooting it today so it'll all match up.)

it's also the set that got me into this whole crazy mess of stop motion, so i was feeling a bit nostalgic about it..........it all started innocently enough: "hey babe, could you make me some bricks out of scuply"......2 1/2 years, hundreds of bricks, four sets, tons of props, a million puppets, lots of edits, and many many lists of scheduley stuff later the course of my life has taken a whole new direction! pretty cool.

SO today our garage is full of BRICKVILLE:




















GIANT WOMAN ATTACKS BRICKVILLE!

Saturday, May 17, 2008

TAKE A SHOT!

Shel here:

last week when justin was crunching on all his freelance jobs, progress on our film was starting to feel too slow (especially this close to the end when all we want to do is go full throttle)..... so he asked me to take a few shots.

who? me?!? um, YEEEAAH!!

so that was very much fun. here's a couple of them, they're very simple reaction shots.


EDWARDO CONSIDERS GERALD




EDWARDO SERIOUSLY CONSIDERS GERALD

and now justin is free of his freelance jobs, so FULL THROTTLE it is.

FOUR more shots and we are done shooting this film!

if all goes smooth, we'll be done shooting in two weeks.


Possible hitch: we were down to our last little girl puppet and she's not holding up so well.....she might not have made it through her big 8 second acting shot ("Daddy, Daddy, can I have this one?")...so i made another one just in case....the cool thing is i made her, from the armature to the eyeballs, in 28 hours. that is the fastest i've ever popped one out so i'm walking around feeling pretty cocky about it (the hot weather helped to dry her quick between pastes and paints).








QUICK NEW GIRL
(Justin and Nicky sculpting in the background....ya'll are going to FREAK when you seen Nicky's new sculpture--oh, sorry, i mean POWERFUL DIARAMA!!)


NOW ONTO MY SET PUZZLE: i'm still working out how i'm going to build a grassy hill top for the pups to walk up.....long tie downs over a styrofoam hill sounds easiest to me.....(to construct anyway, but tying down sounds awkward consdering the angle and the length).....and i'd rather not use styrofoam for ecological reasons.....paper mache? also i want to make it so the tie down holes don't show, i haven't had to puzzle that out yet since i just made the pound set holey all over, so that will be interesting. since the puppets will be walking up a dirt path, i think i can predrill holes and fill them with clay....or maybe have justin drill as he goes.....hmmm that could solve the wierd angle problem too, but again a hassle while animating.....if any of you all have experience with hill sets, (the camera is at their backs as they walk up a hill) i'd love to hear about it. i would bend thin plywood over a frame, but the trick is that we want the hill to not only arch forward to back, we also want to see the line of the hill arching left to right (so the puppets are really up on the tip top of a hill). DOES ANYBODY KNOW....can i make paper mache steady enough to not WIGGLE between shots? justin's not easy on a set and this is a tricky shot--6tie downs/frame. i gotta go hold a puppet while think about it, i'm not going to figure it out sitting here! in any case, i'm happy to say it's coming up quick so i'll have figured it all out soon!

IT'S GETTING VERY BUZZY AROUND HERE!

we'll keep you posted.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Example - a Fail vs a Success

Hey guys,

Lots of cool stuff hapening.....I thought Id share my latest Fail....and then my reshoot SUCCESS that followed.

FAIL


SUCCESS


The biggest difference in the 2 soots was that one of them I only had 2 jobs...the other I was pushing 6....Ha!!

its WAY ....easier to concentrate with less variables......

good news......I am down to 2 jobs....and am excited to say goodby to the other by the end of next week.....things are starting to really go into finishing mode here.

I plan on takeing off a couple of days next week to finish the last interior shots.....as well as 3 weeks in June - July just to take a vacation! sweeeet!!!

I got a bunch a cool new stuff to share with you guys and shels got some cool info to share too....

jriggity

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

news

Shel here:

It's late. I'm tired. I'm going to bed. But I thought I'd just post a little tid bit here first.....Cuz it's late and Justin is tired and he is not going to bed.

Tonight was art night, we have weekly family action night and family pile on the couch for movie night too but art night is my favorite night cuz i love the casual conversation that comes up as we all are focusing on our various projects. (I fixed up some props for the pound exterior set and made some progress on the poodle puppets for the reshoot of the opening shot in a couple weeks, maybe less),














some props
After we put the kids to bed Justin and I rapped alone on the couch about our days. funny, we've both been thinking about the our FUTURE FEATURE today which is a coincidence (or a co-inky-dink as my grandpa would say) cuz it's been on the back burner for awhile. Fun to stir the story up again. We both love the characters and the environment and the relationships we have come up with, but the story still has some holes.....we know that project will end up being way more work than either of us can imagine so the story has to be AWESOME and CLEAR enough to keep us passionate about it during the (years of) hard bits.

When we tore ourselves away from eachother Justin went into his office to finish up something for one of his CG jobs ("It'll be really quick", he says) before heading out into the garage to RESHOOT our adoptor walking across the stage while our hero sits there and watches him go by. It's a short walk unless you're counting how long it will take to shoot, in which case it's a really long walk......an all nighter.

I can't wait wake up and see it. the film is 95% edited (at least on small frames, i'll edit the real BIG frames after we've removed wires and flicker and such in photoshop). i have to say i am loving editing, every time Justin sends me a shot (he e-mails them to me) i gobble it up and add it to our edit. it's so exciting to be filling in all the holes! especially since there are so few holes left! i think the story is coming across strong. it'll be thrilling to hear music supporting it!

.....and we just added some great new VO from our daughter aedon that really brought the whole little girl section alive......


Aedie Voice Over from handmadeheroes on Vimeo.

last year when we did the original VO she was a little too young to direct, but she totally got it last week (one of the perks of taking years to make a film!) we are so happy to be able use her sweet voice cuz it's so cool to have her be a part of the project, but also cuz it makes for a serious sucker punch near the end of the film.

Justin has about 4 more nights of shooting on this set and then about 1 night each on two more sets--one of these-the happy hill set-i've yet to build, but while i'm doing that justin will be working on the 2D segments for Gerald's thought bubbles.
and then we are done shooting this film.
(not including the little opening and end credit tidbits, those will be shot on green screen).

people keep asking me when it is going to be done and i feel like i've been saying 2 month for a month now and it feels like it'll still be at least 2 months......hmmm......it's kinda scary to leave the SHOOTING stage, just cuz the POST stage is unknown. not having been there before, we really don't know how long POST will take or what new challenges it will bring, but bring them i'm sure it will!

i guess that's another post.

oh yeah, and here's a bad pic of justin getting interviewed by MOLI.COM.

the 2-man crew they sent to shoot him were both independant documentary film makers by night themselves, so they "got it" and asked good questions and were fun to hang with and talk to.....here's to making new film maker friends!

goodnight, i'm going to go sleep for both of us!