• From: Norway
  • Registered: 2009-12-01
  • Posts: 1,465
  • User Karma: 248

Topic: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

For those of you who listen to The Extended Edition, you'll know by now what the Traveler is.
In short, it's a web series revolving around a Time Lord in the Doctor Who universe known as the Traveler. Or Travis, for short.

We started pre-production in February and had nothing but trouble with this until June. In late June, we started production, which lasted for two days, after losing our script writer for no apparent reason, and the lead actor. We were lucky enough to get both replaced with no more than two weeks notice until production, and it really shows in the footage. I was never 100% happy with what we shot, but made due with what we had.

Post production was done throughout July, with several VFX artists helping out, editing being locked, and ADR sessions undertaken. Everything was going as smoothly as it could, all things considered.

But then the worst thinkable thing happened. A hard drive crash managed to rid me of all the footage, all project files, ADR files and anything even slightly related to TRAVIS. The only thing I'm left with is VFX plates for two shots, and a "locked" edit of the first episode, neatly tucked onto youtube. So, in THEORY, we could download it off of youtube, and work on that. Practically, this isn't even a slightly viable option, and now we're left with starting from scratch.

So what has this taught us? A couple of things.
1. Plan better. Run and Gun doesn't always work. We didn't plan out the production well enough, and it really shows in the footage.
2. BACK THE FUCK UP EVERYTHING ALWAYS.
3. Don't assume your friends can act. Even though Magnus did a stellar job based on the fact that he can't act, and took directions very well, it's not up on the level I wanted it to be.
4. Keep buying the cast and crew pizza. They love it.
5. Never give a script writer 1 week to write an episode. Just don't. It'll be compromised and it won't be as good as you hoped it would be.
6. BACK THE FUCK UP EVERYTHING ALWAYS.


So, what now?
Well, a couple of options. Either I just scrap the whole project altogether, or, I get the original crew back, including the main man for the episode, who has time to do it these days, as opposed to a month or so ago, pick a better location, plan it out better, even storyboard it, film the hell out of it, and back it all up on a daily basis.

This also gives me an oppurtunity to do what I originally wanted: to shoot it in RAW. I'm getting a 5D Mark II, which is very able to shoot RAW, whilst recording sound separately. It'll give the image a better treatment, and I think I'll be way happier with the footage this time around.

Any tips here? I'm rewriting the script to be closer to 10-20 minutes than the actual 5-ish minutes this one turned out to be.




And, as a bonus, since it'll never see the light of day anyway, here's the aforementioned youtube video:


EDIT: The Black Magic Cinema Camera 2.5K just dropped a whopping $1000USD. Should I take that into consideration? The crop factor is pretty ugly(at 3x35mm), but the quality is rad.

Last edited by Tomahawk (2013-08-02 10:01:26)

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: State of Idaho
  • Registered: 2010-12-08
  • Posts: 2,367
  • User Karma: 289

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Well, I can't comment on the camera aspect of things but having worked on and attempted to produce a couple of just short projects not even HALF as technical as yours, I would say that you've learned a lot. Giving the script writer plenty of time to hammer that out.

Um, yeah, not all my friends can act (I don't even think I can very well) so being picky, choosy, and selective are your friend, even in a project like this.

Do you have someone who can storyboard? How long is the lead man available?

God loves you!

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Chicago-ish
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
  • Posts: 741
  • User Karma: 149

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

All my hard drives are mirrored, some within Win7 and some hardware based. I have a few RAID-5s as well. I have some insane number of Terabytes, all told. But I've fried drives, power supplies, motherboards and videocards but have never lost data...Not counting that first time.

(UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Norway
  • Registered: 2009-12-01
  • Posts: 1,465
  • User Karma: 248

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Erich: He's basically always available, just not in the window we had; he's my brother. Second lead in WHOISH!.
Drew: I've had hard drives fail on me before. This, however, is a new one. Shouldn't have failed.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Red Deer, AB
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
  • Posts: 4,044
  • User Karma: 664

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Not to hijack the thread, but Drew how do you set up your backup drives? That's something I really need to do.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

BigDamnArtist's Website

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Chicago-ish
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
  • Posts: 741
  • User Karma: 149

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Tom, new drives fail on me all the time, I don't trust them until I've burned them in. I've probably warrantied a dozen drives in my life, some just click-dead when you plug them in, but some seem okay for a while until they get hot. I decided it was best to expect them to fail and have redundancy, sometimes multiple redundancy.

BDA,
Simplest is a Win7 mirror. Install two identical drives, then use Disk Manager to set them up.

Next step up is a mobo mirror (RAID 1), if your board supports it. These perform better, but I worry about the data if the mobo dies.

Next up again is a dedicated add-in card that provides RAID capability. I have one that communicates to a pair of little SanDigital 'toasters' with 4 drive bays each. I run those as RAID 10: two drives are paired up to (almost) double read/write speed, then that data is cloned to the other 2 paired-up the same way. I have lost drives from this array several times, and power supplies in the toaster boxes themselves, data survived.

Finally, I like the Western Digital 2-drive NAS boxes set up as mirrored. Slower, but you can put them in another room for disaster security on critical data; irreplaceable family photos and such. Newegg just had a 4T on sale for $280, and I see it's just arrived at my house...that'll bring me up to 36T spread over 8 IP addresses, not counting boot-drives. All of that is mirrored or RAID5, so I have something like half that in actual capacity.

Last edited by drewjmore (2013-08-02 21:41:23)

(UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: State of Idaho
  • Registered: 2010-12-08
  • Posts: 2,367
  • User Karma: 289

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Tomahawk wrote:

Erich: He's basically always available, just not in the window we had; he's my brother. Second lead in WHOISH!.
Drew: I've had hard drives fail on me before. This, however, is a new one. Shouldn't have failed.

To quote an old computer science instructor of mine "If it has moving parts, it can fail."  hmm

My personal recommendation (but I am usually one to be slow and cautious and entirely to ambitious for projects) is to write the script. Give yourself the deadline, complete it, let it sit, then go back over it. Do a table read, revisit the script, iron out the rough spots.

Then storyboard. I think that will give you a much better time table for this project. Having time tables helps so much, especially for projects like this.

I know, I know, I make it sound so easy wink

God loves you!

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Norway
  • Registered: 2009-12-01
  • Posts: 1,465
  • User Karma: 248

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

We had time tables. They were just downright ignored. The scriptwriter I hired decided to go AWOL after a month or so without doing anything. He was even promised money for the job.

But now, we've an already shot film that showcases where we went wrong, and what to improve on it. Writing it myself shouldn't be that hard this time around.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: State of Idaho
  • Registered: 2010-12-08
  • Posts: 2,367
  • User Karma: 289

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

I know the feeling.

At least you have a reference point of what went wrong and learn from it. My friends tried to go from a shot in a day lightsaber battle to a 90+ page treatment of a fan film...no way that could go wrong.

Good luck. We're all counting on you wink

God loves you!

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Indiana, USA
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
  • Posts: 2,747
  • User Karma: 516

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

The only purpose of something like this is to have fun. If that's not happening, there's no point. Set it aside as lessons learned, I say. Start over when you've got the WHOLE THING scripted out, not just the first ep.

That said, the script is alright. And you're acting is terrific. The camera work needs to come up three notches to match.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Zarban's Website

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • bullet3
  • bullet3
  • I Know Regular Expressions
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2010-06-23
  • Posts: 1,350
  • User Karma: 204

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Ya, at this point my first 3 video-related projects completely failed to get off the ground, and I've learned more and more on each one. There is an exceptional amount of planning that needs to go into doing this sort of thing right, so while it's learning the hard way, I think you're learning important lessons.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Norway
  • Registered: 2009-12-01
  • Posts: 1,465
  • User Karma: 248

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

You'll all also be incredibly happy to know that "Road Trip" was on the same disk.



Which is now being run through by a little app called Disk Drill, courtesy of work. Thus far, it's managed to pinpoint 1500 video files, and is plowing them all back into reality.

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down

  • From: Buffalo, NY
  • Registered: 2010-01-08
  • Posts: 2,037
  • User Karma: 202

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

If you'd like to film a SF series about four eyed monkey girls and giant squirrels, I can whip up some scripts smile

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down

  • From: Indiana, USA
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
  • Posts: 2,747
  • User Karma: 516

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Tomahawk wrote:

You'll all also be incredibly happy to know that "Road Trip" was on the same disk.

Goddammit, this is a conspiracy! SHYAMALAAAAAN! TRAVOLTAAAAA!

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Zarban's Website

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down

  • From: State of Idaho
  • Registered: 2010-12-08
  • Posts: 2,367
  • User Karma: 289

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Zarban wrote:
Tomahawk wrote:

You'll all also be incredibly happy to know that "Road Trip" was on the same disk.

Goddammit, this is a conspiracy! SHYAMALAAAAAN! TRAVOLTAAAAA!

Maybe its a story about the Traveler preventing the creation of the Road Trip. Its a time travel conspiracy story. We all know how good those our wink

Oh, and thank you, Tomahawk's work, for the assistance smile

Seriously, we should send them a fruit basket wink

God loves you!

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Norway
  • Registered: 2009-12-01
  • Posts: 1,465
  • User Karma: 248

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Managed to recover what I believe is 99% of the shots from the Traveler, and the Road Trip. They're currently named video_0001.mov and so forth, due to the filenames being lost, meaning I'll have to cut everything again. The road trip is a pain in the ass to edit to begin with. Now, without any sort of ...sorting, this'll be.. well, fun.

Unless they're still on the FTP and I can just download them in the correct order again tongue


TRAVIS has to be edited again, if at all. Losing the files taught me a lot. It doesn't look the way I wanted it to, and it certainly doesn't sound good at all. I don't know. I'll complete it, and once it's done, I may even release it. If not publically, I'll show it around.

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down

  • From: Norway
  • Registered: 2009-12-01
  • Posts: 1,465
  • User Karma: 248

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Update.

After going through all the files, I've come to the conclusion that I lack about 10-20 shots. Some of them were crucial in order to make the episode, as it was, coherent and sensible. As such, I've delved back into the editing bay(or the living room, whatever floats your boat), and some new ideas sparked.

I'm working on a completely different cut, and running the shot...shots as a before-the-intro kind of thing. Redesigning episode 1, as it were, and making this the intro, set before the actual "vortex tunnel intro" thing. I'm working slowly on it, but getting it to work. Even better than it was, considering I'm cutting most of the dialogue, and restructuring it.

Luckily, the coolest shots are still available to me, and all the BTS stuff was snuggly secured on an SD card, if it ever comes time to do that.

In light of these events, we're re-writing. Taking more time, and trying to set schedules for next year. Winter kicks in around here in November, and there's no way we're starting before that. If we were to start after, it'd be snow everywhere, and about 1 hour of light to film in. Not exactly optimal.

Anyone here up for helping with writing? I've got a general idea of where it's going in season 1, a rough outline of the major plot points and such, and how it's going to end. The hard part is filling those gaps, and making a consistent story that actually works.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: State of Idaho
  • Registered: 2010-12-08
  • Posts: 2,367
  • User Karma: 289

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

I have a week off of work and am more than willing to help write. Not sure if I can fill the gaps but I am willing to at least try.

God loves you!

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Norway
  • Registered: 2009-12-01
  • Posts: 1,465
  • User Karma: 248

Re: The Traveler - A doctor who based web series

Update.

So that took a couple of months. I have, however, reconstructed a new edit that kinda works, and I'm rebranding this thing to be "WHOISH! Part 2", in order to actually fulfil that "To be continued" thing at the end of part one. As such, I'm continuing writing a proper thing, and while it's going slow, at least it's moving on.

However, there are some irks. There's a few shots that I don't feel work as good as they should, and while I can do a bulk of the VFX myself, I'm not really great at matte paintings, or matchmoving 2.5D plates onto relatively bad shots.

If anyone wants to have a go, let me know. You'll get high-res plates and instructions, but sadly no fee. If The Traveller ever kicks off in the future(ie. I finish a story and make a script and shoot it), it'll all be on a budget, and I'll have gigs for you there, but for now, I just want to finish this thing.

Thumbs up Thumbs down