I still have a blog?

Wasn’t I supposed to blog every day? Or at least every day I worked on the student film project? Shoot, I keep forgetting. Well, there are actually a reason or two for my absence this time. Firstly, I’ve been ill, still am after a manor of fashion. The same illness has been bothering most of the team by now. First Andreas, then Aleksander and now me. Jamie is the only one to have escaped it yet. Secondly, after a lot of discussion, we abandoned the Synergy story and wrote a new one, which in turn meant that we had to redo “a few” things. So amidst all the coughing and general confusion, blogging fell a few notches on the priority list, I must admit. Once again therefore, I’ll try and cram a weeks worth of work into a single, humongous blog post.

First things first. As we had a few problems getting the first story to work, we settled on a new one. The team gathered for a few hasty meetings and came up with a new story with the working title “Fetch!”. The most recent draft of the treatment, at least that I know of, goes like this:

Fetch!

(working title)

DESERT day. LOW ANGLE CAM. Small FLOWER in focus. Ground starts shaking as from giant footsteps. PULL-FOCUS to reveal WOMAN and ROBOT-DOG walking down straight, endless road. Woman reading manual “Travelers best friend”, Robot-dog pictured on cover. Woman starts playing fetch with Robot. Spots RABBIT. Woman’s stomach growling. Produces knife. Sneaks toward fluffy prey. Robot trails behind. Robot, desiring to help, overreacts by initializing destruction-mode, platforms large missiles, blows bunny to smithereens.

Montage begins. Rising action. Shot pace quickens:

CAGE TRAP. Robot holds rope, woman sets bait. Robot is distracted, drops cage over lady, rabbit jumps close, eat baits, continues jumping.

Commands Robot to set up TENT. Robot sets up upside-down.

Lady in foreground, flips manically through manual. Robot climbs in tree in background, like a monkey.

Woman tries to throw SPEAR at bunny. Robot thinks they play fetch, catches spear split-second before kill.

Lady in foreground, flips manically through manual. Robot chases rabbit like a bull, holding fingers like horns.

Woman tries to set up tent, robot mess up somehow. Tent collapses.

Lady in foreground, flips manically through manual. Robot dances ballet in background.

Woman lights match to make fire. Overenthusiastic Robot “helps” with FLAMETHROWER. Torches campsite. Including tent.

Montage ends.

Woman sits in foreground, manual lies on ground beside her. Robot prances in background. Flying sheep + kafooom. Jumps about again. Total CHAOS. Robot aware of depressed lady. Sudden SILENCE. Robot hand enters frame. Gives flower from opening shot to woman. They walk into sunset, playing fetch.

The girl and the robot will have the same basic designs as in the previous story, though we will change a few things to make them fit in a bit better. Having blocked out the new story, Andreas, Aleksander and Jamie have spent their remaining time knocking out the storyboard at school. For my part I’ve been taking it a little bit easy because of that illness thing, but have a few things to work on: Mainly environment concept art, brushing up on FumeFX, finding music/sounds for the new story and create a camera shutter for the robot’s “eye”:

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This might be overkill for the actual film, but I got a bit carried away. Main thing is that I know how to make one I’ve been going through some sounds in my library as well and next I’ll tackle FumeFX and the environment.

Lastly, I upgraded the site to WordPress 2.7.1 and the latest build of K2 yesterday. The upgrade didn’t go as smoothly as usual, but I believe everything should be working properly now. If you spot some bug still present, leave me a comment somewhere on the site and I’ll look into it as soon as I can.