Technical Questions and Possible Answers

Okay, Here we go:

Creating the massive crowd of Thousands:

1) Massive - contact them and get an educational copy and mentor

2) Fusion - I just started a great tutorial on creating crowds of thousands and it looks like I can also do this in Fusion, but with live footage, which would look very real.  

3) Fusion also works with particles and animation walk cycles so I could used an animated cycle and treat it like a particle that is emitted from one pint, randomized in size and color and ad these elements to m crowd.

4 ) I will not model all the people so for the distant areas I could use something like Poser 7 which now takes motion capture and I could get realistic motion in the far off distant background areas. Live green screen footage for muddle plane and Live footage for Foreground.  I've got to get advice on how to do this. and start testing.

Class has begun

Well, I wasn't able to post as classes began and oh my the syllabus for the this project is quite challenging.  all good though.  I have gone back over some of my source in writing.  As writing is our concentration right now.  The books I read in prepartion for this course, as opposed to the old screen writing books for feature length films  were:

Writing Short Films (Structure and Content for Screenwriters)- Linda J. Cowgill 

and

Creating Short Screenplays that Connect (second edition)- Claudia Hunter Johnson

Great Books!!

So far feedback to the Cafe-5,000 Single Character Script has seemed most promising.  It is the most technically simpler to do.  But I am going to remain open minded as I get more industry opions.

Just another post about VFX Composition Examples

This is a link to the full making of John Adams Video:

Making of John Adams

Definitely much more than what I am doing, but the way I'd love it to be.

Music

Oh my!! There is sooo much great music to choose from.  

What I am looking at right now is the sond I heard at Judy's Church on Sunday.  I thought it wat by their Band Ocean's Edge, but it turns out it was by Jeremy Camp.  So I have found tns of songs I really like that have the Modern Spiritual Feel with a kick I want.  

Ocean's Edge:  " Your Word I will ever Sing"

You can here this song on the Band's opening page of their Web Site ( or in the store)

Click here to hear a sample of  "Your Word I will ever Sing"

Jeremy Camp:  "Beautiful One",  "Everything", "Open Up Your Eyes" and oh " Take a Little Time"  (I really like Open Up Your Eyes, but visually I would somehow have to change the end and match cut it back to a modern day scenario of "people being fed" That is getting what they need.  Perhaps in our times today that could mean setting the scene in a food kitchen instead of a diner, or the unemployment line.  I'm not sure.  Or it could just be the common everyday things we take for granted in life...I also think they used this for Narnia)

Rebecca St. James: Song of Love

Mark Roach:  You Are

I am really leaning toward Jeremy Camp.  gonna have to pray hard and make some calls on that on.  I would use the piano intro (about 30 second), then, if I could perhaps transition to the Chorus.  

Heres' a link to listen to  Beautiful One:  Click Here to hear Jeremy Camp's Beautiful One

Great VFX Refernce for what I want to do

The John Adams Programs from HBO is a great example of the type of project I want to accomplish:

Click here to watch the VFX from the John Adams Show

The effective use:

Green Screen

Set Extensions

Crowd Duplications

Virtual Set 

It's all Amazing!!   God willing, this is what I want to do.

Another great link to a Video that does similar stuff, but mostly the composition is this on:

Click to get to this great video made with only 3 People!!

Only 3 People, that sounds about as big as my crew may be....  anyway...

I researched costuming today.  I have a friend whose a professional costumer, but I know of the costume shop we've used from the Church Shows I help put together before which is very good and inexpensive.    I also found a couple sites with fake greenery for the foreground if necessary for characters to interact with. 

The Holy Land Experience

Today, Curt and I go to the Holy Land Experience here in Florida. I have been on "vacation" setting up the site and my Blogs. But as Curt says, there are no days off from Graduate school, just days with out class. And so today we go to the Holy Land Experience. I can not wiat to go to this recreation of Jerusaluem and see how they did it and what visual insight it will give me as I can not go to Isreal. I need to also take pictures of the animals and clothes. Texture images of Palm bark and leaves etc and also look at clothing styles. Oh I am sooo excited. Thank God for the Experience.

Visualizing the Bible

No matter what story I choose it is going to be challenging to accomplish.  These are miracles and that means what ever I chose to do it will be big and visually compelling.

The Feeding of the 5,000

The main character could put his hand on the image of bread, eat of piece, react, then reach for more and be in that world.  VFX creating the 1,000s of people would be demanding.

VFX:

Hillside Matte Painting

Green Screen production of a groups of 10 extras arranged in circle divided by 10, that I could shoot 10 times at 10 different angles to complete a full circle of 100.  And groups of 5 extras shot the same way to create groups of 50.  Also various children running around.  

Props- baskets, bread and fish

Costumes- 15 male costumes and 15 women costumes from the period, plus 10 children's costumes

CG- Set extension of Distant cities 

Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee.  

The main character could put his hand on an image of a boat, or maybe water, react to this, then be in that world.  VFX wise the sea will have to be rough, there's a storm brewing, fog in the distance etc.  And an image walking toward him and calling out. 

VFX:

A lot of fluid dynamics and particles for the water effects. 

Sea and Land Matte painting.

Green Screen production- Main Character in Boat, Jesus Walking on Water (Extreme LS) 

Boat Set Extension

Jesus Clearing out the Temple.

The Main character could put his hand on a stone wall of colonnade of a reconstruction of the temple and it can become real.  

VFX:

Set  Extension: Jewish Temple

Digital Set: Temple

Matte Painting: Jerusalem (seen through colonnades of temple)

Green Screen: Vendors, Exchange Tables Crowds, Pharisees, Teachers of the Law

CG: Cattle, Sheep, Doves

Looking at the Reality

Well, today I made my website, and finished all my blog sites for my Thesis Project- Living and Active.  I have already started doing VFX research months ago.  I had planned out my website in October or November of 2008.  I didn't know what I was going to do it on, but I knew that presentation is key and this was how I wanted to present my work.  

In the December episode of Creative Cow's magazine I read a great article called Fix it in Pre:

(click here to go to the article)

This is a great article on pre-planning your production process and what I loved about it was what they accomplished with a limited shooting schedule, limited talent resources, limited VFX shots and limited post time.  Basically everything I have to contend with in creating my Thesis Film.  But they wanted high quality.  That along with the experience I gained my first semester at CADA-NYU in trying to do too much with too little time and resources.  I came to the conviction to limit the time of my short to :30 to :60 seconds.  Use one location and make the VFX shots I have dynamic, powerful and few.  

Over the Semester break I hope to complete 3 versions of my script.  I have one so far.  I also hope to go through 7 Gnomon Workshops on Digital Sets, Compositing and Dynamics and Particles.  Plus other Lightwave DVDs on Lightwave, LWCAD, Set Extensions, Technical Direction and Vue 6.

Last week I watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow again.   This film was a major inspiration to me in regards to the possibilities for 3D.  I also watched the making of and the Director commentaries.  they basically shot the film 3 times before they went into production.  A lot of the VFX work they did for the look they wanted.  I realize I don't have to go that far.  I want a more realistic look, not that stylized.  But it was great to watch.

Now that  I have begun and as I have started m research looking at the biblical stories I would like to visually bring the life, the first on I have looked at is Jesus feeding the 5,000.  My script would require multiple duplications of extras on green screen to make a hillside populated with about 5,000 men and 3-4,000 women and children.  I am realizing that this would be amazingly grand, but perhaps too much. I'd either need Massize or have to populate with a program like Vue and use Poser animations in the far background.  Tomorrow in my Biblical studies I will look at Jesus teaching the unknown number of people at the Sea of Galilee.