Edmonton sotr

Yeah I figured as much. That's ok. You pretty much know everything I'm going to go over anyway.

I was recording the camcorder tape to VHS and where we have the duel right now is truly incredible. I'm really liking the way it flows and how it's turning out so far. I also think the run time will go longer than we originally timed because the dialogue will run longer and the natural editing process will extend it a bit. We shouldn't have too much more to work on before it's done.

 

Hey gang,

the production meeting on Sunday needs to be slightly pushed up by half an hour. It will start at 3:30 instead of 4:00 because I need to be on the other side of town by 4:30 for another appointment.

I hope everyone can still make it who's coming.

EDIT: Added 11:15 pm Thursday August 4th.

Today was the first day of fight training for Erin and once again she has proven to be an excellent student of her role. Through some basic repetition she was able to effectively perform the moves to the entire first act of the Aliska Vader duel. She had a pattern that took us 4 hours to refine committed to memory in 20 minutes. I couldn't ask for better.

We still need to slow her down a little, put a little more eye candy-ish flash in her movements becuase she's a little too efficient and work with her footing but this potential is just frightening. I can't even keep up with her.

Her style of standing is also putting an interesting dynamic into things.

The force is strong with this one.

 

where is the meeting on Sunday? If I get up intime I would like to try and be there. I know it's late but I would still like to help out.

 

The meeting is at my place, 13111 87 st.

It starts at 3:30 and ends at 4:00

 

I look forward to hearing about what was discussed

 

The meeting was short and sweet. I brought up the topics that were most pressing at this moment which are set design and booking stormtroopers.

I feel more educated about the process needed for troopers and I think it was a good basis for future meetings.

The next meeting will run longer because there will be more to go over and I'm going to include more interaction as well. I'll also be locking down the time and date to be unchangable since I think that's what threw things off this go around.

I want to thank Connor for coming. I know it's not easy having to catch rides and if I had it to do over again I would have touched more on his progress with the saber designs.

What I would like to do now is set up a schedule for set design and building. We can knock some of the smaller cockpits out of the way very soon and I will have storage space for the other set pieces very soon.

I urge anyone who has the time and interest in building sets to email me. I will be fronting the costs of materials of course and this is an element of the film that will be a very hands on, fun thing to work on.

 

I don't know any set building skills... and I don't think any of the other girls do either. As much as I want to help... I think I would be quite useless and be an annoyance to everyone more than anything. Plus how are the actor people suppose to fit in practising lines and battles (for some) while trying to build the sets???

 

Erin you've taken on enough already.

Your role is the most demanding one in the film because we need to build it from scratch in every respect. From refining your saber technique to rehearsing your lines so that we're prepared when the times comes to shoot.

I'm just asking for volunteers for the set building. If you don't feel you have anything to contribute to that aspect of production then by all means, feel no obligation. I don't want to obligate anyone to do anything, because then the fun of it disappears and the project falls apart at the seams when people start treating it like work.

I want everyone to get something out of the experience, and for it to enrich their lives with whatever level of involvement they feel comfortable with.

I already have a pretty good idea about how to construct many of the set pieces but I need help putting it into action. I'm farming out the Leia costume to Jennifer Gerritson of Calgary Force because I can accept that I don't have the capacity to do everything at once. I'll be personally taking on the Antilles and Aliska projects for costumes as well as Treyla Sielle, the Twi Lek waitress, but again, Michelle (CF) who is now playing that part will be supplying basically everything except the boots, headpiece and body paint.

I would like to work on Dash myself but I have to wait to see if I'm making that costume for an actor who is 5'10 (Ted) or 6'4 (Joss). I like Joss' more youthful appearance for the role but Teds voice is great for the project so I may end up combining the elements together and dubbing one over the other. None of this is set in stone yet or anything.

Once I've gotten a Canadian credit card (in process right now) I can start moving on getting the ebay sales listed for additional budgeting for the immediate time.

 

sweet, I still need some one on one time witht erin too, but maybe I'll just pm her and see if I can work out a time with her,

 

I'm sure it will be valuable to show her the precise form and style to certain moves. Last time we left off at the leg kick.

It would be most excellent if she could make it to one of our Saturday choreography sessions and learn some of the moves as we set them down.

The only thing about that is that sometimes we change things around but then again it's nothing that complicated.

Switching gears real quick.

For all you techy people or those who are just mildly interested for that matter, the films principal footage will be shot using the Panasonic AG DVX100A Mini DV camera. I chose it based on its ability to shoot in widescreen at films frame rate.

The sound will be recorded using a microphone that is yet to be chosen but I am narrowing that down to possibly something from Azden.

The sound will be routed to a recorder that records directly to compact flash memory cards in wav format, the Marantz PMD670.

Some good news is that the camera has dropped approx $750 since the last time I checked.

 

Hey Mark,

Sorry that I did not attend your meeting. I actually really wanted to attend but, some silly thing like emergency surgery on sunday afternoon kept me from coming! Saturday evening while playing basketball I ruptured all the ligaments in my left ankle and had to spend the night in the hospital and go into surgery on sunday. Bummer. Hope all went well.

Jason

 

Panasonic widscreen Mini DV camera..........$4239.00

Marantz Compact Flash audio recorder.........$802.00

AudioTechnica directional microphone..........$270.00

Adjustable Beyer Aluminum mic pole.............$180.00

6 10' x 18' blue and green screens...............$607.00

4 adjustable screen holders........................$270.00

4 Sets of independent lighting sources........$1820.00

Approx out of pocket costume budget.........$2000.00

Flying 2 guys up here to do Han & Chewie...$2500.00

PowerMac G5 PC w/educational discount.....$3515.00

Shake 4 Compositing software...................$3000.00

SoftImage CGI software...........................$2000.00

DVD Studio Pro.......................................$400.00

Adobe After effects.................................$200.00

Approx value to set building materials........$1500.00



Seeing our names plastered across the big
screen knowing tens of millions of Star
Wars fans worldwide will see our
collective efforts when the film releases....Priceless

 

Col glad to hear were working towards that. No offense here Mark but I've been doing this a long time and I can't just work with the director and not a fellow choreographer and trust the director to show her what she needs and not just what he wants. That aside I'm pretty open minded.

 

Ok, maybe it's late and I'm tired but I can't understand that sentence lol.

I'm confused as to what you're trying to say. Anyways we'll figure it out, whatever it is.

 

Souds like he is saying he needs to teach the fighting himself, he can't teach it to you and then have you teach it to the fighter.

 

Oh, ok, ***** why didn't ya just say so? lol

No problemo

 

Yeah that's it, thanks John

s'ok mark I still love ya bro

'We are lions!'

 

Hey Everybody! (Hi Dr. Nick)

Ok, anyway, everyone I would like to introduce you to Grant Hartman, friend to Jimmy Siokos and Wookiee extraordinaire.

This fellow did such an amazing job on his Chewbacca costume that LFL thought it prudent to recruit him to do events for them in their own Chewbacca costume. He has the mannerisms and voice down to a tee and claims that his Chewie growl has even replaced the existing growl in some television commercials state side.

With any luck in the known Universe, he will be playing Chewie in the film, take a gander . . .


http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a171/Kit_Fisto/Episode%203%20and%20a%20Parsec/Chewie1.jpg

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a171/Kit_Fisto/Episode%203%20and%20a%20Parsec/Chewie2.jpg


not bad huh.

 

...WOW

 

that would be perfect

 

I was on messenger with Nite_shift of the Calgary force last night going over software possibilities. There's a software title called Alias Maya that does an amazing job of animatics. He showed me some basic rendering of a clone trooper he made doing some basic stunts.

It looked remarkable considering he was just barely playing around and not getting that serious. It seems to be more geared toward doing backgrounds and ships, with less focus than SoftImage on strictly character creation.

Though I will undoubtedly have CGI characters in the background and droids doing funny things in the scenes, Maya appears to be able to do all that while still being able to do backdrops and space craft.

I think for my purposes it will be less specialized on character creation than SoftImage, but prove to be more versatile overall. It's also less expensive.

 

I know that Maya has been used more and more extensively in big movies doing such stuff as the Sand Storm in The Mummy and the larger battle scenes in Lord of the Rings... and if I'm not mistaken, a free copy can be downloaded from their website as long as it's for personal use.

 

IIRC, the free copy has a watermark on the animations you create

 

Yeah I didn't think they would be handing that out like freeware.

I've been doing some research and the differences between complete and unlimited are not enough for me specifically to justify a $4000 price difference.

I estimate that by the time I'm ready to purchase a licensed copy of complete will run between $900 and $1500 which is not bad at all.

I also estimate Shake to go down in price slightly as well but it's abilities in version 4 are astounding.


I found my boots for Antilles. Score

 

I've been giving this a lot of thought. I've slept on it and gone over it a hundred times in my head but I just keep coming up with the same answer.

The matter of casting Darth Vader.

Here's the problem. Anyone who has a Vader costume is either too short or too unavailable to put in what's required to play the part.

Here's the solution. I will play the Dark Lord and bring on a second unit cinematographer to shoot those scenes. The reason this will work is the following.

I already have the cape, inner robes, GT armor and boots. I also have a very good belt with boxes but they don't light up so I'll be getting a new one. The only thing I'm missing is shin guards, chestbox, gloves, a cod piece and a deluxe helmet. I will wait until about 6 months from now to make the body suit so that I don't make it too small.

I already know the entire fight sequence and that will not change at any point.

Since the most action oriented parts of the Vader scenes require very little cast and crew on set at one time I can direct and act simultaneously. It may take longer this way but I see little alternative.

The scenes where Vader speaks to officers are low key, and easy to instruct on how to compose the shot. A trained monkey could shoot those scenes.

Furthermore Jason and I do not have a huge disparity in height so it's possible that I could get back behind the camera for the light saber duels and he could don the suit. The couple of inches height difference may prove to be more agreeable for the Aliska fights anyway. Just one more possibility.