VIDEO!!!

Hey everybody!
Jen and I finally got most of our ducks in a row and put a video test together! Here we are just dancing around with puppets to a song. It's the first time either of us has really done any puppeteering, so go easy on us... this is also the first time we've built real foam puppets, thank you Project Puppet. As I've written before the greenscreen is simple gartorboard painted with home depot house paint, and nailed to the studio's rafters. We just used the final cut pro color keying settings for this one. Next time we do an after effects pass first. OH Yeah! AAAnd we accidentally left one of the lights off so the puppets are dark on one side! We rock so hard...still it came out all right, I think.

Just to remind us what we're dealing with...

Hey everybody! We had a particularly great Friday gathering. It turned into the first day of shooting! Here's the pics of the surprise effects shoot we had.

Danica, the ship's captain, and Kevin who is playing one of the crew members were the first to arrive.
Danica is helping us keep the paperwork trains for the production running on time, on top of leading our little crew of misadventurers.

This is Christian! He's our awesome new D.P.


Here he's setting up the lighting for the alien city. He called us a couple of days ago, and told us he would have access to a red camera, and thought it would be great, to film some of our miniatures in high-def!!! I spent the whole next day fixing up the city, which had fallen into disrepair, over the years, to get it camera ready.


Our friend Joe Russo stopped by to help spin cities and wiggle fishy ships around. He didn't know, that he was gonna be pressed into service, doing manual labor on his friday night.
He just thought he was coming over for beer and pizza.


Here we are wiggling around the aforementioned fishy ship.


Mike stands ready with the egg whisk... just in case.

You can never be too careful!


Here's joe still waiting for his beer.


Mike jumps into action plying his whisk like a master!

Thank all that is good on this earth, that mike was on hand, to perform such an awe inspiring display of whiskery! Thanks to mikes fast whiskeration, we thankfully, will never know the tragedy that almost occured.


Christian sets up a lighting effect that Joe Russo suggested.



Here, we're rehearsing what it would look like. Marc is spinning the Russo contraption.

It ended up looking great!

Christian behind the camera checking out the shot.



Getting the back of the ship.


We also started figuring our our costumes. Kevin is modeling his crew jumpsuit. It's the only one that's working out so far!!! bummer...



As usual Marc is the last man standing. Here he is on his way out..

Goodnight Marc.


Thank you everyone for a great fun Friday night!
J.G.O.

It's about time!

Hey everyone. As some of you may know, we are neck deep in puppet building! We are flying fast and furryous! Cutting fleece and foam, glueing stuff burning ourselves with hot glue guns and poking ourselves with needles. I've never has this much fun in my life! We have filmed some video tests and I hope to post them soon, until then take a look at these few pics of our process.




Here's another shot of the puppet bay in the studio.



And here's one of jen building one of the little buggers! she's working on a foam skull for a girl puppet.


We are using patterns fromProject Puppet a great source for simple professional puppet patterns!


Here's a pic of Marc testing one of the early prototype puppets against a home made green screen I set up in the studio. I'm using halogen track lighting to illuminate it, and had the paint clerks at Home Depot mix up the brightest green they could muster up.... hope it works. We'll find out soon I guess!



Here he is setting up a test for motion tracking the screen of a robot puppet we are building.


And here's a pic of the studio as we set up another test with a couple of the puppets.

...Mmmmm naked puppet...

I am now in the middle of setting up the costumes and props for the show... lots of running around let me tell you. And putting together all the paperwork and schedules to try to get this thing done, bummer stuff man. On a brighter note We just aquired a DP!!! welcome aboard Christian! He's helped us to get out $#!+ together. Just having to explain what we are trying to do has sharpened our idea of what we need to do!. No big news I'm sure but a revelation to me. I got so much to do.... i gotta go to bed....

hope every one keeps checking in!

J.G.O.

UNDERFOOT

We are doing a bathroom remodel and we found this embedded in the middle of the room under our floor. Apparently it's been there since the 30's!


cool