I was only volunteering myself for 3D shit, for the record, and I'm still happy to do that. If BDA wants it, though, then by BDA it shall be had.

Okay!

First of all, I'm encouraged by the footage tests. This camera can do what we need it to do. Not perfect for high-quality 3D tracking, but totally doable. Plus, free excuses where necessary — I'll take it! Thanks for filmin' those. There's also the possibility, if the Avengers assemble and all that, that there'd be another camera to fiddle with. No matter what, we're good. (I'mma do a test 3D track on your forest shot now, just for funsies.)

As for screen replacements, I'll come back at ya with a full treatise on filming for that stuff. (And if you could do me a favor and hand it off to all the TV directors in Hollywood, I'd be much obliged.) Beyond the actual shooting requirements, though, my instinct would be to put screens where there currently aren't. The TV could certainly be one, but so could the whole chunk of suspended cabinets, spare walls, windows, etc.. We can go exactly as nuts as we wanna go. Honestly, since we don't have concept art to live up to, the effects we end up doing will be mostly based on how much the footage wants to cooperate. If we can get a rock solid 3D track of the RV scenes, the sky — and our roto budget — are the limit for how TRON we can go.

As for outside-the-windows stuff, my instinct would be to leave them wide open (IE, glass closed, shades open) and pitch black. We get a lot of options that way, but my favorite of them would be starfields. Could also do screens, or even just leave them as photographed. They might drop off into obscurity with the color correction anyway. In any case, solid black with a small handful of subtle tracking markers will be the best bet.

I'll start working on his ship design. In the meantime, what are you thinkin' as far as production schedules go? Now that you may have an army of woodland creatures driving out to help shoot, picking a date will make their lives easier to plan.

EX. SITE.

Tomorrow morning, six esteemed players of horn — I'm told that two are Brian Setzer alums — shall gather to record some very, very fancy parts of music. For a song called Limp Dick Christmas Lights.

Thus completing the production of this album.

Almost a year to the day after production started.

Ooooh, plus then someone with drawing arty skills could do the thingies.

*shrug*

I like it. At least as a piece of language technology.

On another tack, sort of similar to the lightsaber color thing; if Sith-boy has any interest in "designing" his ship, he can.

Like, even a doodle or whatever. The ship can be made to look "real" and detailed pretty much regardless of vague shape, so there's no reason he couldn't do a little sketch that would be used as a starting point. We just take that as "inspiration" and make a cool looking ship out of it, one that will be recognizably his design without sacrificing the... uh, overall artistic coolness that comes later.

Only thing is, the ship model is something we can start on right away, and probably should. If you think that'd be a fun way to go with it, have him knock out a doodle he likes. Otherwise we can just do some random cool ship.

Heh, BDA and Dave will be happy to know that I'm currently sitting on a dozen-or-so "advanced"-level AE video tutorials that I've been making in my spare time. They'll all be released in one big chunk. Not quite ready yet.

But... hardcore shit. The RP53 things were more basic and meant for first-timers; this new batch is the kinky stuff. Math, expressions, crazy-useful tracking methodologies, etc..

I get bored and I like making tutorials.

I still have the old "RP53" VFX Team lightsaber roto tutorials, somewhere, available for watchin.' You could definitely swing it if you wanted to give it a shot.

*shrug*

Okay! So, if I may.

1. Zarban.

When do you want to do this? What's your ideal timeframe?

You have a Rebel, can you (sometime before the actual shoot) throw me/us some backyard footage you've shot with it, just to get a sense of what we'll be working with? Include a few pans at a few different speeds, from meandering to whip. Also repeat this experiment in your kitchen at night with pretty dim light. (Point being, I wanna see what the camera does in deliberately low-light situations. Our RV might end up being dark, I wanna see if it'll be a problem or not.) The kitchen test could be done with the fridge door open, just so there's some variance going on.

Are you going to be recording dialogue? Got a plan for that? (Crazy as it sounds, I swear to god an iPhone can be made to do quite well for this kind of thing.)

Also, note, everyone is still expecting this to be a weird little dorky thing you shoot with a couple youngins,' nothing more. No pressure. We're just gonna go apeshit on the post side of it.   

2. VFX people.

Who is your daddy and what does he do? More specifically, please reply with a filled-out version of this:

My name is:
My email address is:
My level of expertise is:
My software (and version) of choice is:
FX techniques, pertaining-to-this, that I already know how to do are:
FX I'd like to learn, and maybe this could be my chance, are:
My availability is:

Post-Production people.

Owen and Dave have both expressed interest in cutting this. Anyone else? Whoever does cut it will (probably) be interfacing with Alex, because he won't be able to do much score-wise until he has a cut to watch, and won't be able to really dig into it until the cut is locked. So that'd be the order-of-operations. Potential editorial staff, what software are you working with for cutting?

I love videos like this.