Done.

It’s done. Exit Strategy, is now a complete film. No more, playblasts or storyboard frames. No more scratch music, or over used screams. If feels good to be done, and somehow it ended up cohesive. We had a lot of problems working on this film, but somehow we overcame them. At this point I am pretty exhausted, and I don’t really want to look at it. I am sure by the screening I will be able to look at it with fresh eyes. I am happy with the way it came out. It works as a story and the people who have watched it so far laugh at the right places and get quiet at the ending. A few people wanted to know what was behind the door, while others just got it. Just the fact that people want to talk about it afterwards means that it has done its job. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of missed sleep. It’s very stressful making a film, but when it’s playing at the screening it will all be worth it.

shot 48....

It’s almost over.  Had the critique today and everything went smoothly. Seeing it almost finished, is great. When you are rendering for so many days, and you are looking at it one frame at a time it stops to feel like a film. It is such a slow process; you forget what it is all for, and so far I am happy with the final product. When you are looking at it for some many hours a day, you start to see flaws that are not even there. It’s crazy. It’s almost over and it’s going to be nice to step away from it and see it as a film. I have 4 more shots to go, just got done with one of the most troublesome shots to render. I had so many problems with it. Maya didn’t like shot 48, and wouldn’t even start to render it. It was just error after error. This went on until I deleted everything but Hugh and rebuilt the set. The lighting was a mess, just overall not a lot of fun. I got through it and now only have a few more to go; hopefully none of the remaining shots are like shot 48.

Rendering issues....

This week was supposed to be an easy one. Just hit batch render and go watch a movie. This is how it is supposed to work when it comes to rendering your film. This is not how it is turning out for team EFOF. We are all running into unforeseen rendering issues. Scott is having trouble rendering the shot of Hugh walking outside. Adam told me that St. Peter isn’t showing up in any of his renders because something is wrong with the wrap deformer. And I am having all sorts of weird render problems with the hallway shots. I am having everything from no door knobs, to not seeing the walls or floor textures. The best part about these issues is when I go a quick render everything looks the way that it is supposed to. I don’t know what is wrong with it. I solved these issues by painstakingly re making the set for each shot and testing it as I go. It is a lot more work than I should have to be doing at this point but, it has to be done. I think this film is trying to kill me….

Almost there....

It feels like we as a group have turned the corner and are heading in the right direction. Seeing all of the rough animation start to get cleaned up is a good feeling. The rough reel is starting to look like a movie. From watching the reel, it looks like everything is working and I don’t see any glaring errors that we made in staging. It seems to flow pretty nice, and it tells the story that we as a group set out to tell.

With the animation almost done it is time to get ready to start rendering. This is a little concerning because we still have some issues to iron out. Scott needs to animate the faces. Adam and I have to finalize the lighting rigs and get the shadows to stop looking so pixelated. We also have to find out the best way to attach the name tags to the characters. One last thing that is a problem for is in the ticker on the wheel in the Buddha room. It still is flopping around and I am not sure how to stop that for happening. Aside from these issues it seems like we are on pace to finish the film on time.

Working on the ending...

This week was another week of stepping sideways. I am still working on the ending of the film. I was having problems setting up the shots for the ending. From the start, I have not really like the fact that there is black inside the last room and that you can see it. My idea from the start was to not show any of what is in the room, but I just couldn’t figure out a way to do it and still tell the story. After class on Thursday, I now know how I am going to tell the end of the story. It feels good to have finally solved this issue that has been bothering me since the storyboarding stage.

more work to be done....

This has been a rough week for our film. Doubt about being able to finish the film as started to creep in. hopefully we can all get on the same page, change the things that need to be changed and get back on schedule. This week it was my job to work on the end of the film and get all of the rough animation done for the last hallways shots. I ran into some problems, with this task. First is the fact that Hugh’s feet are just too large for him to get up off the ground in any realistic way. I wasted a lot of time on that shot and tried 3 or 4 different ways, and none of those looked any good. I am just going to have to rework the shots to make it work. I think I am going to just have him stand up into frame and that should solve the problem. After I post this I am going to go work on those ending scenes, there is a lot of work that still is needed to be done.

more shots....

This week we did the first half of the animation. It feels good to be finally working on the character stuff. I was expecting some sort of issue with the rigs, but it went pretty smoothly. Hugh’s rig held up and I only ran into one problem. Some weird thing happened with the upper part of the rig were I couldn’t rotate or translate the controllers. I tried everything and couldn’t get it to work. So, after a good hour or so I just re referenced the Hugh rig back into the scene and it worked fine. It was weird animating a small thing like a close up on the Buddha wheel for 42 frames, but seeing it work in the rough cut was pretty rewarding. As of right now I am working on the end hallway shots. I am running into some issues with how the shots are framed, but I’ll figure something out. I am happy with the way that the film is turning out.