compositing

Lessons Learned - Check it works and again

Alan — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:30:54 +0100

Check with your client before you delete anything

I was the client the other day and this happened to me.

Compositing

I'd passed the compositing tasks out to someone else. I sat in for a few minutes to check that it was going as I wanted it and make some decisions about how it would look. e.g. I'd prefer to have less foreground and no green showing rather than have the green showing in order to get the foreground complete.

I received a message a few days later and went round after a few days to pick up the results. The project had been rendered and had been burnt as a data file onto DVD.

I was able to view the rendered movie the following day. The compositing was great, a brilliant job on the chromakey process, especially when you consider the bad quality of the sources that I'd provided. Unfortunately, the background was only changing scene every second or so, not every frame as it should have been.

The compositor had deleted the source foreground and background files before I'd had chance (less than a day) to check the work.

Results

I've written about testing before. I've just experienced the effect of someone else not testing their work. It's put back the movie a couple of weeks, due to our conflicting diaries.

The format of the rendered file wasn't usable in Logic either. That's a big deal for me. I could have converted it, but I'd prefer to have it rendered into that format in the first place. Fortunately the file was still playable in VLC so I could see the quality and the juddery background.

Lessons that we both learned

Supplier should check that files are in a suitable format to the client before removing
Supplier should check that the client formally accepts the product

A comparison

I work differently, I still have the source files and rendered files for the Memory shorts a year after the event and I've still definitely got the files for the more recent Venn short which is a few months old now. If anything, I've got the opposite problem and I may have too many copies of the same files. I tend to have a decent backup routine in place anyway. It's sometimes the ad-hoc backups that I do in addition to routine backups that can cause confusion.

Tales from the commercial world

I've worked in a few industries. There are a couple of nice concepts that I've worked with:

Customer Acceptance. There should always be a documented process for what the customer has to do to sign-off the product. If there isn't one, it's usually one of the first things I write and get agreed, otherwise it's asking for trouble later on. The work doesn't count as being accepted until the client signs the acceptance.

User Acceptance Testing (can you tell I've some background in ICT?)/ Operational Testing. Leading up to the Customer Acceptance is a phase in which the customer tests the product. The product should be tested against defined criteria (defined and agreed by the supplier and client). In my case I'd have said that the foreground and background would be rendered at the same framerate, I'd have stated the resolution, the delivery format, when I expected it by, etc. It can get very formal, very quickly. Unfortunately, the more formal it gets, the less in touch we all become with whether the client likes the product or not.

Use in a Live Environment. No matter how much a client likes the product, they still may not sign to say that they accept it. Possibly from being too busy, possibly wanting it improved (forever and forever), possibly from trying to avoid paying or a variety of other reasons. A nice clause is to state that use of the product in a live environment constitutes acceptance. For media, there's copyright which supposedly makes it easier, after all clients should obtain an appropriate licence to use your media. So no matter how much they argue or ask for a better version (whether reasonable or not), it becomes more awkward for the client to use your product in their finished product and then say it wasn't good enough.

Starting up a Production Company

Alan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:17:58 +0100

I've been starting up a Space Opera side project; it's part hobby, part ambition, part potential company. I haven't figured out how I'll set the body up, I'd like it to be close to a co-operative whatever the formal structure is. The principle is that everybody can get a share based on what they put into it. I've using the phrase "production company" loosely since it may not actually be a company.

I'd like all roles to be based on people receiving a percentage share of the profits. Profits are unlikely to be achieved in the first few attempts, so I'm looking for people who are committing to a year or more of part-time involvement. Less involvement, less percentage share, more involvement, more percentage share. It's nice and simple at that level, gets more complicated the deeper you delve. It's similar to what's going on at Spinneyhead Presents, especially Venn.tv, but I'm likely to be more formal about what people are getting themselves into.

1 Who are we looking for

Compositors, 3d modellers, animators, script-writers, "set" designers, costume designers, legal advisors

It will be based in Manchester, UK because that's where I am, but we should be able to accommodate remote involvement if we have the right tools and the right approach.

2 My Roles

As I'm driving this forward, I'm happy taking on the following roles:

Director*, Producer, Composer, Sound Designer, Accounts, Website Designer+, Website Administrator+

*I'm happy to share direction if the right person wants to get involved.

+I can provide hosting and let someone else design if needs be. Otherwise if I end up doing it, it'll be a Drupal site, a bit simpler to this one though and probably more community-oriented. I may look further into Filmforge, a version of Drupal for filmmaking communities.

3 Extra needs

Hardware, tech and props, we'll need:

greenscreen/blue screen background
lighting
props
costumes
editing software
camera or two
microphones

These can either be bought, cobbled together or sourced from donations/sponsorship. Depending on how we progress, I may have access to some of it.

4 Editing Software

As for editing software, I've tried a few of the freeware/open source offerings and there's nothing suitable from my perspective. So we'd have to pick up something. Possibly FCP. As for modelling and animation, I quite liked Blender especially the rate at which it's progressing and increasing in functionality.

5 Licence

I'll have to get my head around this part. The short answer is that everyone has a right to what they create. I like the idea of it being upfront and fair.

However, the creator would have to provide a licence to the organisation to use and modify their creation. It will have to have some obligations in the licence, e.g. if you decide to get involved and create something, then if you back out after a couple of months, the organisation should still have the right to use your creation. I'd like it if the organisation would let people leave nicely, always better that way, but I'm aware that if a costume has been filmed, then the actor, director, cameraman, etc have already put effort into that shot so it would be awkward to remove it. So there you go, the organisation would have a right to use the creation, but may not exercise it.

Same goes for scripts, audio, video, models, etc.

We'll get some legal advice before going too far down this route. Mainly what I don't want is for someone to back out, then claim after 5 years (e.g. when it's published on network tv) that they have a right to more profits than the share that they originally signed up to. It's a matter of protecting everyone's investment (investment of time, creativity and money).

6 No Copying

Similarly, I don't want to infringe on anyone else's copyright. So this will not be a piece of fan fiction nor will it feature 3D models of ships that we don't have a licence for. Original content only, through and through.

By adhering to this, we should have a greater distribution potential.

7 Production values

"As good as it can be and that little bit better"

I want to find something between a good tv series and a quality movie out of Hollywood.

I know that we're likely to be deficient in a few areas, especially equipment, experienced actors, experienced modellers/animators, but there are a lot of aspiring people in this world. Just because they don't have the high-paying studio job doesn't mean they can't produce the quality. It does mean that there is increased risk in that they're unproven. But let's take that risk. Worst comes to the worst, we don't use their input and we get someone else in. It's a delay. It happens even with professionals. It'll be frustrating but it won't stop the project dead.

I also know we won't be using massive rendering farms running the most up-to-date software. We'll have to make do. But if it takes a week instead of a few hours to render a sequence, then we will live with that.

Organisation Structure
I referred to a typical issue with start-up production organisations in an earlier article. It revolves around trying to be fair to all involved, but acknowledging the worth of every input.

For instance, if one member has spent a year creating a product, how does another member get a share of the profits if they're only adding in a few hours worth? That doesn't allowed for the skewed financing and earnings in typical movies. For instance, on big budget movies, actors end up with a lot of the money, but the time they spend on a project isn't as much as a composer. That's assuming they have equal talent as well. How can a young 21 year old actor have as much experience and talent as a 50 year old composing veteran. What it doesn't take into account is the ability to pull in the public. Very few soundtrack composers have world-wide stature and I can't remember anybody saying they wanted to go and see a movie that night because of who scored the soundtrack.

The counter-side to this is that actors who will get involved in the startup projects are less likely to be major Hollywood players and so shouldn't be able to command the higher shares.

I'm half-tempted to try a few different but openly-declared ways of funding this.

I'll address them in another article. If you've got any information on your own organisation structure, let me know or post it in a comment. I'm interested to hear how others have done it.

Recruiting members

Alan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:13:22 +0100

I'd figured that with the amount of people trying to get into the movie industry as animators, compositors, etc plus those who are just involved as a hobby, there must be many sites about 3d modelling. Expect to find me on a few as I look to recruit members to my current Space Opera side project. The side project is becoming more major the more I think about it. Ideally I'll find a site or two that I can become a longer-lasting, active member on rather than the type of visitor who only registers in order to leech people away.

I think I should talk about the word "recruit". It's a bit of a dirty word if there's no upfront money involved. Everyone wants to get paid for what they do. Why shouldn't they? The issue that most projects have is that there's no funding. In other cases, it's that the organisation structure is non-existent, ill-defined and probably not suitable.

Whatever organisation I get involved in - whether it's one I set up myself or one I join - it has to be fair to the people who are in it. That means being upfront about the payment, and more likely whether there's going to be any payment, the effort involved, the rights of ownership and the licensing involved.

Star Wreck

Alan — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:18:53 +0100

I've been thinking a bit more about the Space Opera side-project. Although I expected to have to leave this for a few months while I'm completing a consultancy project instead, I've found my mind playing around with a few ideas.

Partly, I've been trying to figure out how possible is it? It's the sheer technical scale that causes the problems. Set design, costume design, modelling, animation and then having enough computer power to render and edit it. All that's without thinking of the more major issues of plot, characters, etc.

And then I saw Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning. Ignore the fact that it's a parody and a fan film of Star Trek and Babylon 5. Look at the production qualities. Not perfect but incredibly good for a budget movie. I said not perfect, but actually they're better than a lot of sci-fi Space Operas that have tried appearing on our tv screens. This is from a small team over 7 years. I'm very impressed. The kit used wasn't brilliant, they used similar ideas to what I've been thinking about with large durable greenscreen/bluescreen and DIY worklamps and yet they still made a feature-length movie. I'm still impressed.

I'm looking forward to Iron Sky for that the fact that they've learned more, it's not a parody and it's not a fan film.

First Experience with Blender - second visit

Alan — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:11:15 +0000

To get myself to the initial stage of creating a Space Opera, I'm putting my own words into practice and using Blender for the first time ever. And I like it. It's actually way more advanced that most of the video editors I've tried using recently even though that's not its speciality. The interface is a bit awkward especially as my wireless mouse has a scroll feature for the 3rd button, but doesn't have a 3rd button itself. I could emulate the press and may look further into that.

I've included the first rendered movie. It's not much to look at and there's no music. But it didn't take long to do, about an hour or so, without little in the way of reading instructions. I'm positive that someone with more experience in Blender than me could do it in less than 10 minutes, and make a better job of it.

Edit - I had a nice article here, but my first real mistake with the authoring tool ScribeFire has left me with the server version of the article deleted and no copy at hand. It was purely user error, I saw the messages and I deleted the file from the server and then locally as well. I can see some advantages to changing the user interfaces to help prevent that.

I can remember saying that I was impressed with Blender and breaking my thoughts into sections. Unfortunately, I can't remember what those thoughts were, let alone what the sections were. Sorry about that. I hope you managed to catch it in the few days it was up.

Rather than tread over old ground, I'll move onto new articles and also ensure that there's a better backup in place now that site's hosting an increasing number of articles. Maybe I need to apply the same backup strategies to this as I do to music works or consultancy documents where they're backed-up and each version is recorded separately.