The North Pole Deception

Finding Time

2009-09-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

After a couple of months hiatus, Colour Grader Luke McPake and I both have some free time coming up to finish the last 4 days of Online Editing, not including Sound Design, which will be done immediately afterwards.

Unfortunately I've missed a few of the major film festival deadlines, but there are always more festivals around.

Big Thanks to Trade Aid for sponsoring us some fair trade coffee to get it done!

Post-Production on hold.

2009-06-21T22:44:00.000-07:00

I'm currently preparing for the final week shooting Kaikahu Road (as Director of Photography). Filming 4th-8th July on RED HD.

To keep up to date on this production you can become a fan of Kaikahu Road on facebook

North Pole Deception After Effects Master Timeline:

Lots of layers required to grade one scene in the elve's house:

The Factory!

2009-06-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

Not quite final comp. Machine behind the front one is actually supposed to be a different one.

Looking for a Genie

2009-06-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

I decided I need a little bit of help finishing everything I'm working on at the moment, so I did a quick search on Trade Me for a Genie.. a real life, three wish granting Genie.

I had a few promising leads, so I asked questions on several auctions (scroll to bottom for questions)...

Genie Depressed Bottle
Ancient Lamp "I don't deal in fake rubbish"
Yasmin Genie #3
Genie Bottle
Lavender Oil in Genie Bottle
Blue Genie Bottle
Retro Genie Bottle
Alladin Large Genie Soft Toy Plushie

Back to finishing NPD online tomorrow..

Malcolm Xmas.

2009-06-18T01:42:00.000-07:00

Original footage

Television grade (looks brighter on CRT):

Hand-held motion tracking

2009-06-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

I filmed a door with a cross on it today with shaky hand held camera.

Now we need to motion track these videos frame by frame in after effects to make it steady, then copy the motion onto some of my steady elf interview shots, and kapow! The elf interviews have the illusion of looking hand held, and therefore, seem more "realistic".

On it goes..

2009-06-08T01:34:00.001-07:00

Still experimenting with colour grading and artificial lights etc. Sequence isn't on my computer so I don't have footage yet. Will upload some still by the end of the week.

Colour Grading

2009-05-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

I don't have stills yet, but we've been experimenting lots with the colour grade. Because it was shot at 4k (double the size of full HD) there is a lot of colour information to play with. We're also messing with lighting highlights, and overlaying some subtle effects to make things seem a bit smoother. Colour grade is expected to be roughly complete by Wednesday (cos' we're shooting a music video on Thursday).

Australian based Sound Designer Michael Taylor is now on board to fix up the sound and master it all properly!

This means the film is being produced in four countries... New Zealand, America, Australia... and the North Pole.

This is a rough factory composite, with a temp grade... I'm photoshopping a background for this week.

An educational movie for aliens

2009-05-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

This is our attempt at making an educational movie in the 48 hour film festival..

Brad Davison and I managed to achieve this much while still making time for a british comedian, a canadian folk band (I helped with lighting), a ridiculously drunk girlfriend and a whiney 2 week old baby.

The film stars me and Michelle Fitz-William, with Jamaine Ross and my daughter Kaiarahi Hitchcock. Jamaine and Michelle also did voices for The North Pole Deception, this is Kaia's first movie experience..

Next year we hope to allow more time in the weekend to work on the film.

Editing Again.

2009-05-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

The film is now re connected in glorious HD for online editing by Luke McPake. Lots of updates coming this week..

48 Hours

2009-05-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

Spent the weekend furiously making a film in the annual 48 Hours competition. This was my fourth year in the competition (but couldn't enter last year as we were in Cannes), and we seemed to have learned from all our previous mistakes.

I was part of a 2 person team with Brad Davison, but also had Michelle Fitz-William, and Jamaine Ross actorising.

The genre was "Educational Movie", so we made a movie for aliens who might want to invade and colonise earth. Unfortunately our film might have been a little over ambitious visual effects wise (considering neither of us can do VFX), so we didn't have time to do a proper fine cut. But we're happy with the film and all it's B-gradeness.

It's screening at the Academy Cinema in Auckland, next Friday at 8:30pm.

Online Edit

2009-05-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

Online Editor and Compositor Luke McPake analyzed the film with me yesterday, and worked out the best workflow for creating an "online edit" of the film.

I have to export every shot in the film as an 8 bit Tiff sequence (folder of still images), which are 30Mb per file.

With 7200 total frames in the movie (at 12 frames per second), these images will add up to roughly 216 Gb of space. They will then be reconnected in After Effects, and we can start to mess with colour and visual effects.

Fair Trade Fortnight

2009-05-01T00:23:00.000-07:00

Starting tomorrow. Why not do something selfless and buy yourself some fairtrade chocolate from Trade Aid?

Baby Kaia

2009-04-27T03:51:00.000-07:00

As expected... slight delays as my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl today!

Overdue baby

2009-04-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

Am less than an hour away from heading into the hospital. Our first baby is 2 weeks overdue today so doctors are going to see what they can do to "speed things up" and get it into the real world.

I'm very nervous despite Marama being the one who has to do all the hard work.

I'll most likely be a dad by the time I get home, which is quite a strange feeling.. We've been getting calls from friends and family every day asking for news so it will be good to finally have an answer for them. Boy... or Girl...?

Final-post-production

2009-04-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

I submitted a 90% complete work-in-progress copy of the film to two film festivals because the deadlines were closing. It feels like the film is finished now, but it's not quite.

My schedule now, is to have the "online edit" complete by the end of next week (including final sound mix); which involves motion tracking several shots to give the impression of a hand held camera, bluescreen compositing (just one shot), and colour grading... Although this schedule may be put out by the arrival of our first child.

I'll put together an online trailer as soon as the colour grading is done.

My festival plan is to try a few A-list festivals this year (the film commission's faves), then submit to animation and human rights film festivals throughout 2010. It's such a long process - I'm ready to start on my next project already!

Supporting Oxfam

2009-04-21T02:34:00.000-07:00

Strangelight Animation is now endorsing the work of Oxfam, fighting poverty and injustice around the world. Any potential profit from the The North Pole Deception will be donated to their efforts.

Next time you want to get someone a present, try www.oxfamunwrapped.org.nz.

Strangelight.org

2009-04-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Sound design almost finished, rough cut almost locked down!

New website in development on strangelight.org!

Will put together a film trailer as soon as the colour grading is done!

Wrap on Principle Photography!

2009-04-18T03:01:00.000-07:00

The animating is done!

Now I just have to fine cut the film, fix up the sound design, and get my online editor Luke McPake to colour grade and composite a couple of VFX shots and the film is finished, finally!

The Naughty or Nice machine

(the screen will say Naughty or Nice, and if it says naughty the light below turns off)

CAUTION Wet Blood

3 Shots to go!

2009-04-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

A bit of "culture jamming" from Malcolm Xmas, the activist from Elf Liberation Front..

Behind the Rock Salt...

New sets in progress

2009-04-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

These sets are to be finished, dressed and animated over next few nights.

Old phone books holding the set together with a bit of gaffer tape...

Haven't got a photo yet, but I actually painted a bunch of these steel hooks to look like candy canes... In the North Pole, they use candy canes as grave stones...

8 Shots to go.

2009-04-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

Need lots of candy canes to finish the film, but they're hard to find out of season (I'm sure I stored a box of them somewhere!).

Built half a street scene tonight, and only have one more big scene to go.

And by big, I mean... only 4 shots lasting a total of 18 seconds... I would stay up all night getting it done but the baby could come any minute now.

9 shots to go!

2009-04-13T01:12:00.000-07:00

After spending a day in a small room fine cutting, my wife Marama wanted to get out of the house tonight so we walked down the road and had a play with long exposure photography...

Yeovil Road by night...

Auckland city from Te Atatu Peninsula (with dancing ghosts)

30 second pose.

Am currently rendering the film (for playback) to do some fine cutting (it took 9 hours to render the entire 11 minutes last week).

"They'd replaced me."

2009-04-12T03:17:00.000-07:00

I completed a 5 second clip and an epic 35 second interview shot of Malcolm Xmas today (pictured above). To be a little bit different, this shot will have his face blurred out to make him anonymous, and he makes gestures with his arms. Just in case, I animated his mouth as well, and just kept his eyes in the dark.

It came out quite well, except the computer crashed and wouldn't reload all of my file, so I had to animate a big chunk of it twice - which was rather painful. It takes about 25 minutes to save a 30 second shot (which is about 10Gb uncompressed), so I have to choose my save times carefully at the end of a sentence (because a lot can change on it's own in 25 minutes).

My workspace (the large tin under the computer was my tripod today! - I just taped the camera down and it was sweet!). That's also a lawn boules set holding up the wall against the baby cot.

Reported Mishaps This Year

2009-04-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

Malcolm Xmas character is basically finished, I just have to spray paint some graffiti for the wall behind him and I can start animating him.

13 shots to go!