Group shots...

So yet again another trial and error shoot i thought this one would of been good... but it just crashed and burned like the rest...

The BIGGEST problem i face is getting actors/actresses who are dedicated and can act on command... even if theres no lines for them to say...

i also came down to the problem of TIME! theres only a distinct time in a day that i could shoot due to people being busy with other modules etc... and then to top it... i had no lights to use externally BECAUSE some geeza decideds to rent all 12 battery lights out for the canon xf100's for 3 weeks for some underwater photography project hes working on so... yet again had to wing it and see what kind of result i came out with....

ALSO the makeup i jsut want happy with it looked alot better than previous... more realistic on camera in the dark... but i KNOW i can do better im a perfectionist... noting but the best...

and yet again the actors/actress only had time for 2 hours... so thats like 20mins per person makeup... RUSHED would be the word....

so as you can tell the realism is starting to come... but because of the timing that the actors/actress gave me... i could only apply facial makeup.... THIS is not what i wanted... but i went with it.... maybe i could of used some for crowd shots...

who knows it might come together....

So i dedcided to go abit more blacker around the eyes and use the outside of my thumb to blend into the skin... fake blood to cover any inperfections...

Together... they look really good... individually they look okay... but as you can see from the group shot the lighting outside was gone past repair... since i got them all makeup'd up i thought i should go outside and atleast try and get some salvage able shots... by this time i had a splitting migraine i had people complaining at me from all fronts saying we should of done it earlier...  or is it nearly done ive got work to do...

THIS REALLY GOT MY ANNOYED...

but i thought right maybe i can turn up the colours and boost it in post... even if i have to rotoscope... it had to be done was coming down to D DAY... and i needed strong work to produce...

so im thinking yeh we can work with this....

These were looking like the only salvagable shots... obviously i tried to correct them in post but only made it worst... turns out the footage was interlaced... and it turns out that i knocked the settings when we went outside considering i had no light... turns out i recorded in SD so i was more than annoyed with myself... and the moaning that came from people about how they felt silly acting when people were watching them... it was just amatuerish a little so i just thought maybe its best that i render this off as a TRIAL SHOOT... and learn from my mistakes...

SO all these SD files... coming up to short of 5GB in dark lighting... were trial and a big fat ERROR....

With the weather like it was i was worried that id be shooting everyday for 6 weeks to just get some footage i could use so i thought maybe i should change it to a day shoot then i could use the lighting from the sun instead of relying on dark scenes for zombie films...

MAYBE i turn it into a following of a zombie while it searches for its last meal? or just a discovery of the life of a zombie... with emotional music to make the viewer evoke strong emotions for the zombie feeling self pity and a natural liking to the zombies?

Grace around town...

So as i said in my earlier post i went out with my friend around town not really knowing what i want to produce so working with that i thought it would be an excellent tester shot of full makeup and work out what i do want and what i dont want and play about with the colour correction to see which film look i want.

I worked out around some close shots using the blue sky as a background.

In this picture i worked with the colour balance and tried to blend it all together but in the end i just didn't like the feel of it. From this shoot i new what i needed to do with the eyes (blacken them off but make it look natural work some skin pigments into the eye sockets and blend them out using my thumb with water....)

I made a short colour correction video for youtube that i wanted to show off in the blog that shows of a shot i quite like... 

I thought id be stabilising alot of shots but for a zombie film you want it to be as raw as it can be i felt from watching alot of zombie films i noticed that you have almost like a fixed position on the zombies face that the camera would track, it resembled a very gorilla style way of shooting. That i wanted to mimic in future shoots.

Stress is becoming an issue

I have so much to do, yet so little time to do it... ive decided i hate the functionality of the xf100's and much prefer the dslr feel and have been waiting out for the 5d's to come as promised by jeremy but as the stores tell me there not going to be ready for some time now... so i had to make do with the xf100's ERGH!!!! not happy!

I used the Nikon D900's to do the tester with and that was quite easy to use might transfer back to that at full frame 25 frames per second on a 1080HD record...

while doing this project ive also got tons to do like make a website and animate a 3d model... its ridiculous how much its piling on yet i have no motivation to do it... and on top of that the prosthetic makeup... just isnt coming together like i hoped it would turns out im not that good at applying makeup.. GO FIGURE!

Arr welll i went out the other day and filmed one of my friends in the burnt down area around my flat... worked out quite nicely but i kind of winged the shots.. wasnt really sure what i wanted to do... so we had fun with it... BIG NO NO!

ALWAYS PREP ALWAYS PLAN ALWAYS GET THE SHOTS YOU WANT!!!

you only have a SMALL WINDOW OF AMPLE OPPORTUNITY WHILE FILMING!

Ive got 4 people on tuesday to film... so im going to get out the NIKON D900 and do alot of stable tripod shots... and try and use the Steadi cam rig that JOSH has from jeremy... so hopefully that will give me some good shots...

ive been looking at a few locations and getting an idea of how i want some shots to be portrayed so i have a very good idea... only downfall is im going to need some hotbox lights depending on the lighting on the scene and i really want some form of 'corpse' like bodies in the shot...

I'M ALSO TRYING TO GET THE GREEN SCREEN BOOKED! so i can green screen some 'survivors' on top of building tops etc... gives it more of a dramatic feel... no?

TO BE CONTINUED