Progress Report : January 2011

It's been a busy weekend so I thought I'd post a quick update on where I am with the Two projects that I'm currently working on.

The Sarlacc Sketch

The Sarlacc sketch has been filmed!  A big thanks to James and Chris for their in-front of camera heroics.  Despite several technical problems we shot the whole thing in just under 3 hours.  It was a lot of fun and I'm really pleased with the footage we got.  This could very well be our best sketch yet!

The new 3CCD camera worked brilliantly too, the picture quality is excellent.  I'm not sure if that means this camera is better than my old camera, or whether we just got more things right this time in terms of lighting and dressing the set.  Here's a screen cap. from the shoot without post-pro.

Release Date : End of February

Brian Park : Part 2

I can't believe the first episode of Brian Park was uploaded last June!  It's been hard to get motivated to work on part II.  I think it's a good sketch and it's definitely on par with the first one. For some reason though I've been bumping it down my to-do list whenever something more exciting comes along.  But no more!!

Currently I have two thirds of the sketch lip synched and about a third of the body movements animated.  I'll keep chipping away at it this week and perhaps I'll be able to hit the big render button next week!  In the meantime here's a shot from the opening titles of the sketch just to prove it's real!

Release Date : Beginning of February

Mind The Gap

James, Chris and myself are filming the Sarlacc's pit sketch tomorrow.  There's a couple of last minute complications which I wasn't expecting but it's nothing that a bit of running around screaming wont solve.

It's 1am and I've just finished painting this prop warning sign.  Tomorrow I need to write up the script in the proper format.  Dress my living room so there are lots of tracking points for the camera matching.  Work out my story board, but most importantly!!  I need to go to Morrisons and get some Monster Munch.

Promotional Videos

I've just finished filming and editing together this promotional video for a friend's company. It's my first non-comedy project so I'm pretty pleased with how it came out. I know these kind of promotional videos are becoming more and more popular so it could turn into a nice little sideline.



Oh and my new 3CCD Camera arrived from eBay today so we are all set for filming the Saarlac sketch this weekend. I picked up a Panasonic HDC-SD5 for £170.

Sarlacc Test and Rolling Shutter

Well It didn't take very long for me to get excited about another sketch idea!  Maybe the last time I posted here I was just fed up from the 3 week long cold that I had.  But anyway, we're shooting this new live action sketch next weekend  (fingers crossed).  I don't normally post the scripts to sketches here but no one reads this blog anyway so it's probably OK :)  Belly of the Beast

I've also shot some test footage just to check I can actually pull off the F/X required.  This is a shot of a Sarlacc in my living room.



Boring Techy Problems Bit

I use a piece of software called PFhoe Pro. which analyses the hand-held footage and re-creates the camera's movement in my 3D application.  This then allows me to add CG elements to live action footage.

I've been struggling to get a decent camera track ever since I bought the software, despite well lit scenes, using a home-made steadicam, making sure there were lots of reference points, panning the camera slowly.  Nothing I did would ever get a good track.  I was about to give up when I stumbled on a forum post saying that Camera tracking was very difficult with cameras that have a rolling shutter.

...Huh?

So I did some research and found out that cameras which uses CMOS sensors would almost definitely have rolling shutters.  Doh!  My Sony HDR-SR5E uses one of them.  I decided to dig out an old standard def. camera I had lying around which luckily used the other type of sensor, a CCD.

I didn't really expect such a dramatic improvement so I was blown away when I saw the almost perfect Sarlacc track above.  Especially since I spent zero time removing bad tracking points or tweaking any of the settings.  It just worked!

My problem now is, do I shoot this new sketch in standard def. on an old camera that uses miniDV tapes, has a bad mic. and is a pain to use.  Or do I try to shoot it on my HD camera and hope I can limit the rolling shutter problem in post.  I did spend several hours messing around with VirtualDub and the Deshaker plugin which is supposed to reduce rolling shutter artefacts.  But to be honest I found it difficult to use and I could not get it to produce satisfactory results.

The third option is I could buy a new CCD based camera :o)  I'm a little tempted to do this because I'd love to do more CG/Live action stuff.  But I need to decide whether I go all out and replace my HD camera, or whether I just dip my toe in the water and get a cheap one.