Report From the Shoot: Week 1 (2nd – 6th August)

Posted on 26/09/201322/01/2014 by Paul Charisse

All the crew and cast turned up promptly on the first day, except the director, who came down with flu the day before: typical. It transpired that the crew and cast had no need for his services anyway and Alex and the mo-cap team soon had everything up and running with the fitting and calibrating of the borrowed VICON super cameras. They provided fantastic coverage of all 4 actors at once, even with our set props occluding some of the action. No mean feat. This was a massive relief, as we hadn’t tested any of this kit and if it hadn’t worked with all 4 actors and set, we would have had a very short shoot! Meanwhile the rest of the crew got the actors suited up and tested out shot process with call sheets,props, set, facial cameras and audio and made ready to roll for the next days shooting. The following days saw us finally getting our teeth into shooting the film, and with some great performances down (including some splendid “wolf” fights on day 1) We got a good few of the early scenes in the bag. By Friday the set was running like a well oiled professional film shoot, which is testament to the hard work and dedication of all involved, as it’s a particularly complex process performance capture: It involves separate audio, facial and body capture with all the attendant umbilical cords and re application of face dots and markers etc. having be coordinated simultaneously. The sickly director dragged his sorry frame in on day 2 and croaked his way through the weeks directing, whilst attempting to not infect the actors and crew. Time will tell how successful the later was, fingers crossed. By Friday every one was tired but excited, as it has been a fantastic first week. Let’s hope it all goes as well in week 2.

Paul

Making the Movie

Posted on 26/09/201326/09/2013 by Paul Charisse

Paul here with a lot to report since my last post. Our research trip to the Carpathians was a great success and proved once and for all that lecturers have a much higher level of general fitness than the youth of today, with myself and Jackie bravely leading the assembled student throng up a mountain with not so much as a nibble on a bar of Kendal Mint Cake. (Although we were forced to eat snow after the gallons of fresh mountain spring water promised by our Turkish/Romanian host failed to materialise. I’d recommend Kendal Mint Cake for future ventures) The landscape was stunning and when not resting, the students collected a great array of visual research material which is already proving invaluable in concept art and environmental design (see below) and should give us an excellent texture library.

Our hosts were marvellous and kept us stocked up on local delicacies, hookah cherry pipe tobacco and almost infinite amount of sheep’s cheese, also patiently accommodating our daily requirement for “English Tea”. Their dancing also far surpassed our puny English efforts.

Meanwhile, back in old Blighty, the cast were having their faces submerged in blue jelly in aid of capturing their likenesses for the facial capture process. Ros, Teresa and Graeme worked like Troopers keeping the casting production line rolling all day and the actors were by all accounts incredibly brave, and remarkably relaxed in the face of total head marination (not sure i’d of been so calm)

Other exciting news: We have been lent an additional 8 top of the range motion capture cameras by VICON for the whole duration of the shoot (By top of the range i mean each one is worth twice what I earn in a year; students please don’t leave your energy drinks on these cameras) giving us a total of 20 cameras to cover our new larger mocap stage. According to Alex, our motion capture supervisor, they are pretty much the best motion capture cameras available to humanity, so we should be able to capture every nuance of the on set performances.

Our wooden set pieces are half way finished, with Roy doing a splendid (and very speedy) job of helping us turn our flat mocap stage into a mutable rugged mountain terrain. We now have a team of around 15 crew recruited to work on set doing the facial capture, prop and set construction, audio capture, motion capture and logistical support (including biscuits). We also have a lot of new team members in FOAMDigital and will be listing a new full crew and cast list when we build our new slimed down site in the next few months.(after shooting)

The script is now locked for the shoot, having had a quite a few tweaks and revisions (21 to be exact) resulting from a varied and reassuringly positive range of feedback (Thanks to all those who took the trouble to read and feedback) Particular thanks go to John Brice (http://www.solent.ac.uk/staff-profiles/John-Brice.aspx) who gave up many hours of his time advising, emailing and giving inspiration during the revision process.

We now have a full cast with the final addition of Martin as the Pipe Catcher; An actor of stage and screen with a wealth of experience in TV and theatre and the owner of a rather splendid voice. Rehearsals start on 25th July and shooting starts the following week ending 25th August. We are spending the remaining 4 weeks frantically making the final preparations to our on set pipeline and the mocap stage. It’s going to be an incredibly busy time but it’s all very very exciting, as we are finally putting everyone’s hard work into action and making the movie we’ve been planning for the last 2 years.

Signing off for now,

Paul

50 Sided Rubik’s Cube

Posted on 26/09/201326/09/2013 by Paul Charisse

It has been many moons (well 2) Since i last posted. Well things have been fairly hectic as we approach full production. FOAM digital now has 35+ people and we no longer fit in our meeting room, so we are looking to move from our existing premises (lecture room) into another premises (a bigger lecture room, if no one else is using it) Production has started on the construction of set props for the motion capture shoot and it looks like we’ll be able to create something resembling a set for the actors; window frames, doors, mantle piece, table etc. as well as 2 adjustable 8 by 3 foot ramps that we can use to make different surface inclines.. No really! You are on a steep mountain meadow!!

We also now have a complete first draft of the screenplay which is presently undergoing revisions. Our Art director Jackie has already scribbled all over it with art related requests (demands). So it will hopefully at the very least look good (arty). We now have a rehearsal and capture schedule that takes us from 25th July through to the 25th of August. This has been a particularly challenging task for the director, as he has found scheduling 45 scenes, with 8 actors, conflicting holidays, differnt combinations of actors in each scene and different set, prop and capture requirements akin to solving a 50 sided rubiks cube, underwater, whilst tap dancing. However, after a few nights of blankly starring at an excel spread sheet that is now too big to fit on a 40 inch plasma screen, we have a fairly concrete timetable for shooting. Still lots to do, as we still need to organise some of the more technical aspects of each scene and dry run the audio, facial and motion capture processes so we can keep the shoot moving along smoothly. Talking of dancing, We now have a new role in the team: student Natalie Curds has joined us to help organise some of the dance elements of the film and presently has the title “Mistress of the Dance” until we can work out what her job’s actually called. We also have a Music student, Thomas Duffin, who has offered to start looking at sound design, which will form a vital part in the overall narrative and atmosphere of the film. Also, our facial capture guy Geoff Samuels contunies to deveop his software and its coming along nicely; I know this because i now no longer fully understand his descriptions of how it works.

Cast news: Steph from our Gregg school contingent has now taken on the additional role of Stina’s Aunt. We have a new character: a boy in the village called “Petov” who we are now looking to cast as soon as possible. We have also started auditioning for the role of “Pipe Catcher”. All other roles are now cast. On the 2d art front, Dan Little our graphic artist has provided us with new logos for “FOAM digital” and “Stina and the Wolf” which are a vast improvement on the ones i knocked out last year.

Along side the production ramp up, we have also been developing a full film quality 720p demo sequence of footage taken from mo-cap right though to finished render and composite; complete with with foley, sound design and music. This is about 80% complete and we will post up the full sequence next month. For now. Here are some stills:

Stina Demo Stills

Other FOAM news: We now have a very large asset list for FOAM of all the characters, models and environments required for production. That should keep us busy for 25 years or so. Also, team members are now booked on to flights to Romania, so we can experience the Carpathian mountains for ourselves and hopefully bring some of that experience back with photos, drawings and video. (travelling out in 2 groups on 2 consecutive days.. the joy of on-line booking) Myself and Jackie will be flying out with 9 (at the last count) students. That’s all for now folks.

Paul

( Director of Spreadsheets)

Production Update

Posted on 26/09/201326/09/2013 by Paul Charisse

The last month has seen the production ramping up in preparation to tackle the complex shot process required to make the film. As the process planned is effectively the same as the one used in Avatar (quite a big production), we’ve been designing a pipeline to make all the departments hand assets between each other as efficiently as possible. We have a full production pipeline test planned this month where we hope to take a trial shot from motion capture (complete with facial capture and audio) through all the various stages to a fully realized shot that will see Stina in her native environment ( mountains or forest ) all done with audio and music. As well as testing out the pipeline, we hope to use this exercise to generate a finished sequence we can take to next years SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in America; hopefully we can raise some interest and maybe even some money for the rather large amount of computer storage space we are going to need to house the full production data.

Other news: Becky patiently allowed us to plaster her forehead with quick setting bandages in the interest of getting a life cast so we could custom fit her facial capture camera rig . (when we’d finally stopped laughing: The fetching combo of green garden bags, swimming cap and plaster of Paris was a bit overpowering) regrettably no photos were taken here.

Also, we have started work on a virtual camera for the mocap studio; This will allow us to use captured camera movements, which should hopefully add a live flair to the direction as and when we need it. We’ve also commissioned a talented wood worker to help us build set pieces (doors, tables etc) and modular ramps ( for changing floor inclines) for the mocap studio. These have to be as transparent as possible for the capture cameras to work, so this should prove suitably challenging. Luckily it looks like we’re going to move to a much bigger room for the summer capture sessions. So we can at least pretend we’re in a very small field somewhere high up in the mountains and not in Portsmouth town center (I plan to dress the walls with Alpine images and maybe nip down Quiksave for some Forest fresh air freshner.. If we have any money left by the summer that is) All for now.

Paul

New Cast and Production Roles Filled

Posted on 26/09/201326/09/2013 by Paul Charisse

Over the last 2 months the production has grown massively. We’ve had a very productive time casting and doing workshops at the Gregg School in Southampton, who have been extremely helpful in facilitating this process. The part of Stina has now been cast and is to be played by the student Becky Waldron. We have also cast the additional roles listed below. All the actress we saw were excellent and we’ve been feeding back a lot of the ideas explored in the workshop into the script.
Graeme and i have been hard at work organising the production process and writing the script. We have imposed a deadline of Easter for completing the screen-play, which should hopefully give us enough time for all the inevitable re-writes, external feedback and consultation. Graeme has also been doing a stella job on the website and has made what is going to be an essential production tool and hopefully a focal point for all the creative energy expended over the next few years. Please explore all the content we have on the site. We have lots of exciting new animation tests of the environment software we’re planning to use (VUE) and fluid dynamic simulations. Of particular note is Harry’s latest tests of waves hitting a beach which look stunning; Also some splendidly creepy new concept art from Chavdar. The production is intended to be an open process, so we will be updating and uploading new art work, animation and designs all the time. The public will be able to follow the development of the film right through to its world premiere in Leicester square 😉
I’ve also been setting up the VFX pipeline and we now have a good idea how the animation production will work. We have leads in all the main departments and a production coordinator to hold it all together. We were surprised by the number of applicants we got from within the university and are filling up the roles very quickly. We are planning the production to be a rich learning experience for the students involved and hopefully a lot of them will leave it with some good show reel work and a realistic experience of the feature film production environment.
We welcome the following new recruits to the team this month:

CAST:
Stina – Becky Waldron
Mahdid – Evie Payne
Abriana – Jade Guillford Laishley
Isabella -Steph Chapman
Lia -Eden Glover
Olaf – Lucy Gates

PRODUCTION:
VFX Producer – John House

MODELS:
Lead – Razvan Arventiev
Steve Wadsworth
Ben Hall

MOCAP:
Ben Vere
Joshua Philip
Peter Campbell Smith
Owyn Abram

3D ANIMATION:
Lead – Ollie McDonald

ENVIRONMENTS:
Sam Hoffman

CREATURES:
Lead – Marcus Mills
Roman Diapa
Timothy Wilson

All for now,

Paul Charisse (Director)

Pre-Production

Posted on 26/09/201326/09/2013 by Paul Charisse

So the film is staring to pick up pace with the pre-production now well under way. Some great new talent in modelling and environment areas with Harry Ellard already producing some splendidly dramatic work on the fluid dynamic simulations. The script revision has started in earnest with each revision bringing the themes and characters sharper into focus. The addition of Graeme Herwig as script supervisor has provided a much needed check and balance to my story telling skills and has already added a tremendous amount to the narrative structure and focus. We now have some storyboard animatics and it’s very exciting to see the first glimpses of the music working with the narrative.

We had our first round of auditions yesterday and the quality was frighteningly high, well beyond what we were expecting. Which is going to make choosing the final performers a real challenge.

The main character model is nearing completion with the facial animation system now reaching a somewhat ludicrous level of complexity (i just hope it doesn’t break as fixing it will be a project in its own right) But it provides the functionality to recreate some very subtle performances; useful as we have a fair few close ups planned. The modelling of the final character has sent me slightly do-laly, as getting the specific age with its request subtle proportioning, keeping a certain look to the face and all the animation controls with their deforming muscle volumes has been a nightmare of balancing and revision. Not to mention the accompanying sleep deprivation. I start back at uni lecturing in 2 weeks (actually looking forward to a break from modelling!) so am trying to get this all done by then.

We now have a fairly smooth mocap to rig pipeline worked out, although the cleaning of the motion capture could be fairly time consuming and we’re looking for help on this. We presently have about 10 people on the pre-production team but will be slowly expanding to full production capacity over the next 6 months. All in all the project is going swimmingly but rather a lot left to do 🙂

Storyboards Completed

Posted on 26/09/201326/09/2013 by Paul Charisse

Finished the first complete series of storyboards. The story arc and characters are now fleshed out and it a comes in at around 246 shots. Should keep us all busy for a while! I’m very happy with how the story and various layers of narration and symbolism have knitted together and am really looking forward to the process of working these scenes up with the actors and also developing some of the visual ideas I’ve hinted at in the boards. The story and characters have come a long way since i wrote the original musical score, so plenty of adjustments will be needed for the final scoring (this was pretty inevitable. Or though the lazy musician in me was kind of hoping it wasn’t !) And I’m thinking of involving some other people in the writing process for a few of the new themes, as I’m much too close to the music now to really know what is/isn’t working.
We’re holding our auditions in September, so should have plenty of stuff to workshop now. The Stina rig is almost finished and will be preparing it for a hopefully streamlined motion capture process over the next few weeks. Also going to start nailing the look of the environment and other characters, as i have the very talented artist Jackie West on as art director. So hopefully we’ll have some great visuals to work from soon.

Sucked into the Mind-Frazzling Vortex of CGI

Posted on 26/09/201326/09/2013 by Paul Charisse

So, I’ve been working hard on the Stina model the last few weeks. Modelling, rigging, testing and shader writing.

Although she’s CG, i really want her to have a physical and textural presence, so i’ve been working to get the shaders used on her cloths/boots/skin to have a real sense of depth and physicality. This has been a real challenge and pushed my creaking computer to breaking point. Unlike the good old real world, you have to work your arse off in CG to make things look translucent/rough/dirty… anything but smooth and shiny in fact! I’ve posted some eye tests where i’ve been trying to get the translucent jelly like effect of the white around the eye and the glowing gem like highlight you get cast across the iris. She will be doing a lot of eye acting, so the eyes need to really have it. Similarly with the clothes i’ve been experimenting with velvet like shaders to get a touchable, physical sense to the cloth.
I’ve also been trying to get the cloth to react well to the body. As with much traditional sculpture, i want to describe the body and it’s movements through the shape and movement of the cloth . (tests below) it all seems to be going well but has pushed my computer to the point where it crashes pretty much constantly. (Trying to secure funding for some new computer stuff, but as i’m in the education sector.. during a recession.. with a right wing government i’m not holding my breath)

These are admittedly fairly excessive production values i’m attempting.. verging on WETA DIGITAL levels, but as i used to work there it seem only right and proper. Of course, they have hundreds of skilled staff and a massive super cooled render farm. I have my home PCp.c. i bought in Portsmouth 2 years ago, and a dim memory of a well paid over worked job.

On the story front (easy to forget about story, once you’ve been sucked into the mind frazzling vortex of CGI) I’ve started storyboarding, which is a relief from the colourless tweaking of minute variables in digi-land. Its actually a relief to see the story arc and characters coming to life and getting lots of the themes i’ve been mulling over finally fleshed out. Unfortunately my drawing skills have become so god awful that only I’ll ever be able to make sense of the boards. To solve this, I’m planning on poaching a talented student to help me draw them (particularly as there’s about half an hour of them), as a director has, at some point, to start delegating. Even if he is a demented control freak.

About the Project

Posted on 26/09/201326/09/2013 by Paul Charisse

Stina and the Wolf is a project to turn a short story into a fully animated 25 minute film. At present i’m composing the music. It’s spilt into 5 movements (i’ve completed 4 so far) , each one based on the 5 acts in the story. Each piece is a narrative and attempts to combine orchestration and leitmotif to tell Stina’s story.

At present these pieces are sketched out on computer but hopefully (if i can organise funding) i plan to record them with a full orchestra. Being entirely untrained and having not the foggiest clue how to read music, I shall be working with a friend to help me through the final scoring and orchestration.

As for the animation itself. I am exploring lots of options at the moment. From full stop motion to painted and CG. I lecture in animation, so have an advantage. But i’m also very keen to involve other people in the process and am presently looking for talented artists to bring their own ideas to the project and help me visualise this world.