Thanks to the efforts of DJWebb we have a location to shoot “Ameviathan: The Green Machine”. Not only is it a location, but it is a location that reaches far beyond my wildest dreams.
Tentatively, on March 17th, 18th and 19th we will be shooting at Camp Fairlee Manor. I’ll be posting a schedule Sunday or Monday of what will be happening leading up to the shoot. Stay tuned.
Thanks again Thom.
The past weekend was a good weekend and a simultaneously frustrating one. Rather than ending on a sour note however, I’m going to get the bad out of the way first.
The bad is that the Thompson-Neely Gristmill is a no go for a location. After weeks of phoning the people at Washington’s Crossing, they’ve finally gotten back to me and told me that filming there will be impossible due to recent flooding. So it is back to the drawing board with locations.
Without harping on about it, this means my initial plans to start on the construction of the Green Machine this weekend will be postponed at least until next so that I can scout for locations this weekend.
This, however, brings me to the good news, the Green Machine itself. Previously I lacked any real plans by which to build the machine. Thanks to meticulous efforts of Peter Kisner (Dragon) and his recent post, I now have an excellent set of plans to work from. I can’t begin to express just how excited I am to build the Green Machine. I hope I don’t hammer any nails into my feet.
The other good news is that the boxes are done. Currently there are about 45 green boxes in total. While I’d like to paint more, at this point I doubt I will because of transportation and manageability considerations. About the only thing I’ll probably do to them is give them a second coat of paint at some point in the future.
The movie, however, calls for more than 45 boxes. Tim’s suggestion to address this issue was to try digitally compositing some extra boxes into a shot. So over the past weekend, we filmed some boxes and did some tests. You can view our tests here.
In the first part of the clip there are some boxes that aren’t really there (on the left side), while the second half of the clip shows the original shot without the composited boxes.
I started writing this review at least six months ago but got side-tracked at the time. Since the subject of video games is again on my mind for other reasons it seemed like now’d be an appropriate time to finish it off.
Warning: Minor spoilers.
At Loki’s suggestion I did some designs for a potential green machine last week. The major parameter for this work was that the machine should be able to eject or “throw” the boxes that were painted last week. Also, if possible, it should be machine-ish in appearance and have a part which appears to break off in a jagged crack at the end of the scene.
(click picture for detailed view)
Hopefully the following diagrams, along with accompanying text, will assist in achieving those meager goals.
People "effected" with what they know. Unsurprisingly. Wasted and mundane - It is card repeated for Joan Baez some 70's cult. In the greenhouse galaxy dreams of Walden die.
Silent Running (1972) is a film directed by Douglas Trumbull.
Every time I make a mess, I find an angel.
Hoe I lang voor de dag dat mijn lippen deze prachtige geest kunnen opnieuw raken. Vind me en koop me voor Thom en hij zal u dubbel betalen wat u betaalde. Chestertown en de andere steden op de oostelijke kust van Maryland dragen dit niet, alstublieft me helpen dit vinden. -Thom
When I was a little kid I wanted to grow up to be a donut shop. I thought being a donut shop would be good career for me. I liked the color red, flashing lights, ladders and Dalmatians. Today I may work in IT, but when people ask me what I do, I tell them I'm a donut shop.
Idea. The Future isn't tomorrow. It's today. Super-Technology. Super-Code. Super-Alphabets. Think. BIG.
I painted 30 boxes (part of the props for Ameviathan: The Green Machine) this weekend and I am officially very nervous. While the boxes are looking good, I keep wondering how I’m going to pull the rest of the movie off. And to be honest, I really don’t know.
On a slightly unrelated note, I thought I’d plug Celtx, a freeware scriptwriting program which I have been currently using to write up the final draft of the Ameviathan: The Green Machine script. While Celtx doesn’t read your dialogue in Mac voices or do format in styles ranging from Warner Brothers to the TV show Alias like Final Draft, it also doesn’t cost $250 for Final Draft.
Celtx also comes with a bunch of other neat little perks, like reports (for organization on shooting days) and scene and character anaylsis. Of course, as freeware, the program isn’t without its bugs. For example, I’ve had some trouble backspacing and editing written text. Nonetheless, as freebies go, it gets my seal of approval and is making my script look far better than anything I could do in MSTurd.