So! Now that we have a little meta opener, let me get you caught up!

When I was over in France, I couldn’t believe how much I was going to get done in the first month after I got back. It was going to blow people’s minds! We were going to be releasing episodes every few weeks! Unending supplementary material! Tutorials, soundtracks, shorts, revamped website! It was going to be wild!

It’s been almost a month and a half since I’ve gotten back, and all we’ve released is a little “We’re back!” blogpost. So what’s going on? It’s not that we haven’t been doing stuff- we’ve had a half dozen shoot days, which is pretty darn good! And for most of the rest of the time we’ve been working pretty steadfastly on CG. We’ve built complex sets, we’ve torn them back down, we’ve tried to awkwardly recycle them. We’ve gone location scouting, we’ve had rehearsals, and V.O. sessions. We’ve done a lot! I’m really all about the final product, and typically don’t worry so much about the process- but I think a time comes when it really makes sense to break things down to see if there are any big things I could be doing to get these episodes out faster.

So what are the things keeping this episode from already being out?

ABSURD SENSE OF EXISTENTIAL URGENCY: So for a while I was living the freelance life basically 24/7, and it was fantastic, and with a bunch of fun folks, but I really couldn’t wait to get back and work on “my” stuff. After going to bed every night, I would become almost intoxicated with the notion that almost anything could happen if you just sent out the right emails. Wanna go camping? Pick a date, and email folks inviting them to come along! Wanna shoot a scene? Just send some emails! Wanna start a band? Send some emails, and set up a jam date! And the thing is: it was basically entirely true! I filled my first few weeks back with so many meetings with incredible folks, and jam sessions, and film shoots, and just great stuff. If I could maintain this all the time, so much would get done! But I can’t! Because unfortunately, this lifestyle very quickly lead to…

EMOTIONAL DRAINAGE: This is a crazy huge factor! For me, anyway. I’d scheduled so much crazy stuff for when I got back from France that I didn’t have a single day to breathe for the first couple weeks. I found myself getting sarcastic and snappish, and even though I was surrounded by my favorite people in the world, I really just wanted to take a few steps back for a few days. And I wasn’t the only one feeling it. There was a night where we were standing around and realized, “Hey- we have all of the equipment rented and actors- we could shoot those final few shots!” And even though it would have meant we were basically done filming the episode, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT: I dunno! Sometimes I drink a coke to replenish glucose and combat ego depletion (cause it talked about that in this book I bought at an airport once. It seems like it maybe works, actually?), and caffeine can be a wonder as well. Still though, there’s a part of me that wishes I didn’t have to chemically wrangle my brain when I need an extra little bit of emotional “oomph”. There are a few shoots I haven’t tackled yet because I literally can’t summon up the emotional energy needed to get in contact with everyone and balance the schedules. We have Paige Day, who’s brilliant at coordinating and organization and emails and other such fantastic things, but for some reason the idea of putting all of the contacts in her hands so she can do the thing she’s good at fills me with exhaustion. I think I’m worried I’d put the same amount of concern into the process, but without having direct control, it’d just fry my brain or something? Anyways, it’s mostly stupid, and I should get her all that contact info!!!*

SCOPE CREEK: Hahaha, yesssss! This is a big one. We took a look at our 5 minute space opera scene at the beginning of the episode, realized it didn’t have enough context to be as emotionally relatable as it could be, so we shot a whole other scene. Another minute and a half of greenscreen, which will need an entire new collection of 3d environments and props modeled. I say it’s totally worth it, cause otherwise it’s just a bunch of crazy CG where you go, “Yeah, that’s a lot of CG, but what’s-a-goin’-on?” And as the scene gets more and more polished, the bar for what we’re willing to do to make the scene as good as possible keeps shifting. I’m going back and fixing things that I thought were absolutely good enough a few months ago. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle: once you spend enough time on something, you feel compelled to spend more time fixing all of the things that you perceive might have invalidated that initial time investment. You do this for ever.

EQUIPMENT: Okay. I didn’t even want to put this one in here, but it is relevant. Cause man, I have a bunch of conversations with folks, and so many times it ends with them saying “I’m going to make my amazing film, but I just have to wait until _________”. And as often as not, that blank has to do with equipment. Here’s the thing: it’s not true. It really isn’t. Probably. If you’re not filming on your DSLR, getting the new Blackmagic Cinemathingamagig isn’t going to suddenly make all the chips fall into place and turn you into [some witty pop culture reference for "somebody who's going around filming great stuff all the time"]. Because, to my eye, the camera is one of the easier parts. Getting folks together, coordinating shoot days, and having a good idea of what you want to do with the camera, all strike me as significantly more difficult (you wanna see an incredible example of working within your immediate means?). That said, I’ve let equipment get in the way for the past few weeks. There’s a lens we want to buy, and I haven’t bought it yet. But I don’t want to run down to Glazer’s and rent it, because then that’s wasting money if we’re just going to be buying it anyway- but we haven’t bought it yet (because I’m waiting to see if it goes on sale, or something. I dunno.) The end result is that we’re all not shooting things, because we don’t have the lens we want. That’s dumb! Do we need the lens? Errrr-wellll…. no? Yes? It’ll make the scene look significantly better. But eventually you have to ask, “is my quest for perfection impeding my ability to actually do anything?” I dunno!

ORGANIZATION: Organization!!! Organization is fantastic, and tricky. I’ve been on projects where everything is tracked and laid out and bullet pointed and spreadsheetified, and we sit back and go, “Ah, this is so great! Look at all these checkboxes!” and we wait. And we wait. Because even though we have every possible facility for organizing our progress, it’s all moot if we don’t have any progress to organize. So I have mixed feelings about the total value of organization. That said, there’s one question I love to have answered by a spreadsheet, and that’s, “What makes the most sense for me to be working on right now?” What, if handled today, would eliminate the most roadblocks in the future and empower the most people to keep working on their respective stuffs?  Or, “Why can’t we shoot that scene tomorrow?!?!” But organization in and of itself is no method of progress, unless you’re able to use it to streamline the workflow (or make people happy. Lots of people are happier when things are well organized, and I can appreciate that).

SLEEP SCHEDULE: My schedule is pretty nasty. Our whole house here generally gets up anywhere between noon and two in the afternoon, and we stay up till the wee wee weeeee hours of the morning. There are pros and cons to that; when you’re working at night, you can get into a great groove, and get a whole bunch done, but more and more often I’m looking at the time, going, “oh! It’s 9pm! Time to relax!” without realizing that if I were on “normal person time”, it would only be lunchtime. Then we spend the next 7 hours chilling at the bar down the street, having a jam session, watchin’ weird movies, and going on walks. Which is nice! But not always the most productive. The one good thing about it though: when I wake up that late in the afternoon, I definitely get a charge of guilt energy for a while, where I feel like I have to make up for the time I lost sleeping- the downside being that the more productive those first few hours are, the earlier I’m likely to be all, “time to veg out!”

IT JUST TAKES A WHILE: Yeah, I said it! 115+ of the most complex shots we’ve ever done, featuring full CG environments and ships and digital doubles and animated characters. Like, I know I’m talking a lot about how I wish things were going faster, but once you see this episode, you’ll probably be all, “Ah, well yes. That makes sense.” At least this is what I hope you’ll be like.

All that said, I’ve just spent an hour typing up a blog post I could have spent getting final picture lock, so I’m gonna get back to it!!!

*Okay. Here’s what I think it really comes down to. If you’re making a project like this, just for fun, the line between “doing a thing we’re all enjoying/benefiting from, haha, isn’t this great!” and “exploiting your friends” is a very blurry one, and primarily comes down to expectations and attitudes. A lot of times these expectations aren’t said outright (because lots of times, we don’t even consciously acknowledge them), so in order to make sure everybody’s having a good time, I have to constantly be taking readings- checking out folks faces and body language (which is why phone calls are infinitely preferable to texts, and real life is infinitely preferable to phone calls). You can usually tell when somebody’s enjoying themselves, and if they’re not, it’s a very short road to them feeling like you’re taking advantage of them, which is one of the worst things I can think of. The tricky part is that when we’re at a shoot, it’s very easy for me to overlook someone’s signals, because I’m worrying about tracking focus, or amount of daylight left, or performances, or any number of a hundred variables, and when I’m already that close to the wire it only takes one offhand comment from someone to totally derail me for the rest of the day- heck, a whole week. So in the end it’s not that I’m an empathetic person by any means- it’s just that I literally stop functioning if I think somebody’s angry at me. I’m terrified of that. And the most difficult part of filmmaking for me, actually, is trying to balance all of those expectations, and make sure everyone feels they’re getting stuff out of it. Continually doing this gamble with people I care about, and hoping I don’t get it wrong. If there’s a part of me that ever burns out, it’ll be that part first.

Dr. Lemur’s Fine Brew. The ultimate spring break.

I flew back into Seattle last Saturday, and have been meeting up with various folks since then. Our current goal is to try to get an episode out every month- haha! We’ll see how it goes! I’ve been gone over in Europe most of the time since the first episode was released, and it’s hard to get the momentum up when everyone is busy and spread all over, so I’m curious to see what we can do now. I have a wee bit of money saved up, so I’m gonna throw as much time into this as possible. Here’s what’s gone down in the past month:

1. —A NEW SPACE? We’ve been working out of our house, and recently we moved from a house to a much-smaller apartment. It’s delightfully urban, but not much in the way of a workspace (we have a pile of stuff called “The pile of stuff that would be in a closet if we actually had a closet”). Charlie Daugherty just told us about a rad space just a few blocks from us we may be able to make use of. It’s a delightful space, full of great people- we’ll see how that goes! I’ll let you know.
2. —NATE TAYLOR is in Seattle! He came here from across the country for many reasons- but the big one is to work on Dynamo with us! I’ve been collaborating on things with Nate for 5 years or so via the internet (he did a bunch of work on Project London, and has already helped out a ton on Dynamo via the internet), and it’s so crazy fantastic to finally be living with him in person. He’s a great conceptual artist, 3d modeler, rigger, animator, musician, and just all around staggeringly pleasant guy.
   

   Paige Day and also Nate Taylor

3. —PAIGE DAY came across the country with Nate! They are a unit! The best unit! Holy cow.  I’d never met her before, but holy cow- she’s fantastic. She has actual training on film sets, and is all set to take on organizing the show- from setting up shoot dates, to tracking the progress of VFX shots. She’s also an absurdly talented animator/artist in her own right. We all went down to Gasworks last night and Paige explained some of the organizational techniques we could implement.
   

   There were laptops with spreadsheets. And there was also wine.

4. —PAUL SPOONER is another CG guy I’ve worked with in the past. He’s an absolute genius, modeling machine, and inspiration as a human being. Also he builds robots. As his job.
5. —THE TIME-OFFSET SCRIPT, created by Gert De Roost! I’m gonna be writing up a whole post about that, pretty quick- but it was a lifesaver for the airship scene.
   

   This picture doesn’t show off the muzzle flashes well, because it’s not like they’re all muzzleflashing at the same time- cause- I mean that’s exactly the point.

6. —A LOT MORE WORK ON THE SPACE OPERA SCENE. Between Nate, Paul, Gert and myself, we’re hoping to smash out a whole bunch of stuff super quick and get this locked down. We’re already allllmost done.
7. —SOREN’S SOUNDTRACK. Soren has been working on a soundtrack for the space opera scene- he just really needs picture lock.
8. —A MEETING! A bunch of folks are meeting up for a BBQ soon, so we can really get all of our ducks in a row and counted before they hatch in a basket. We’ll really know what’s what after that.
9. —SHOOTS! Lots of shoots! We’re going to try to post tons of little updates and tutorials and things, so you’ll know we’re still alive (though not so many that it slows down Dynamo production, cause that could be a thing).

Anyway! Good talking to you, and join us for a very exciting couple months!

-Ian

Oh man did I forget to put the weinerphone piece up there? I think I may have!

BUT! We do have a teaser! Normally I’m like, “Psh- a teaser for a thing that’s only 15 minutes anyways? Just release the actual thing!” Except that this is taking us 6 months. That said, two of those months are doing contract work that should supply enough money so that we can work on Dynamo full time for a while. Which is basically the most fun thing I can imagine.

ALSO! Here it is!

Watch this video on YouTube.

So! We were all on the same continent, had a slew of fantastic Lastwear costumes, and a rough plan. But what we didn’t have for sure was a place. Initially, the plan was to film everybody one or two at a a time on a tiny 4′x8” greenscreen. I- how did I even think that would work? I mean, we would have figured something out. But that’s just not much space.

Victory Studios is a mainstay of the Seattle film industry, with a couple greenscreen stages available for rent, but I figured the fees would be too steep for us. The night before the shoot, though, a new acquaintance called up Victory, and as it turned out they had a big production filming on their main stage and were willing to swing us a great deal to film on their secondary stage, provided we not disrupt the other production. Which leads to a very important lesson I’m still trying to learn; you gain nothing from just assuming defeat, and lose nothing from asking. I’m always way too quick to figure I’m bothering somebody, and I’m sure I’ve missed out on some great opportunities because of it.

So after calling a dozen folks with frantic plan updates, the next day found us all walking in the doors at Victory, setting up, and trying to finagle a dozen folks into post-apocalyptic/steampunkish fashions.

I still know depressingly little about lighting (it’s on the to-do for 2013!), but oh man oh man- we had some great help in that regard. I’d done some freelance work with Wesley Slover’s friend Joel Clare before, and he helped us get the location, and also let us use some of his great camera rigs. Gabino Mabalay brought his photographic expertise, and some of his equipment to help out, and was fantastically understanding of the balance between wanting to get the best results, and needing to keep things moving as quickly as possible. We also made a new friend in filmmaker Marshall Langohr, who was manning the studio that day. My father unit, Bryan Hubert, was also there to help operate the boom. Ahhh- so nice to have an actual dedicated sound guy on set (we do our darndest, and Scott has a great ear, but he’s usually otherwise occupied).

When we started shooting, we still didn’t know exactly what we were going to get. We kicked the whole thing off by shooting random elements; single folks climbing ladders, people firing in a row, random people getting shot. Anything we thought we’d need to be able to populate the background of the scene when it came time for compositing. Even if we were just reshooting the same thing again, I always tried to shift the camera angle slightly, or change something, to give us a wide variety of content to pull from.

Next we had to film the cockpit content- this one was a bit more structured. We blocked the whole thing in out in a few minutes, and spent our final hour on set getting sufficient coverage and reaction shots. The tracking is a bit tricky in some cases, since the tracking markers were out of focus in the background, and we were shooting so quick that there’s sometimes only one or two markers visible- but so far it hasn’t posed any huge problems.

There’s an issue I’ve seen, even in super-crazy-large-budget-productions, where it’s immensely evident what was shot on a greenscreen studio. Not because of the lighting, or keying artifacts, or anything like that, but because the film suddenly becomes compositionally bland. Whereas usually the DP would nicely balance the foreground character with the background content, when lacking a background, the inclination tends to be to pull back, and the end result almost looks like a stage play. That’s where pre-planning can come into play; designing the CG environment so you can still envision the composition as you set up your shot.

Anyway!

Up next: Assembling it into something! 

Here is a quick tip: if you want to release your web series on any sort of schedule, don’t start it with a friggin’ five minute sci-fi war scene intro. It’s possible the kids at school will say “yeah, that’s pretty cool”, but gosh darn, it takes a long time. And goodness knows that I am ethically bound to release to you, dear reader, regular updates.

So how does one reconcile the desire to release some sort of regular content with a wildly erratic episode release schedule? After many sleepless nights stressing over the well-being of your media appetite, I’ve finally settled on a suitable resolution: some sort of frequent production updates! A token! A gesture! But one which I hope will satiate your disconcerting lust for distraction.

So at the risk of showing a bit too much (read as: “*spoilers*”), over the next few weeks we’re going to break down how we’re going about making a (scene from a) crazy trans-dimensional airship/space opera using freely available tools and almost no budget.

CONCEPTUALIZATION

The truth is that this scene had shockingly little pre-production. We had a couple story points we wanted to establish, and as long as we hit those, I knew we’d be able to make something rad out of whatever we got. I was over in Amsterdam working on Tears of Steel, and only had a bit over a week back in the States. I’d met the Lastwear (click that link!) folks a couple years before, as they were selling their mind-bogglingly fantastic clothing at a mutual convention as Project London (a film I directed a few years back). They’re an unstoppable force of creativity, and I’d super wanted to film something with them for a while (though we did collaborate a bit on some of their earlier 48-hour work). The day before hopping on the plane back to Seattle, I sent an email bouncing the idea of filming a huge airship battle off of them. They were all for it, and by the time I’d landed they’d coordinated a dozen rad folks to play crewmen and were well underway designing new types of hats for various factions. So great! They’re actually in pre-production working on their own webseries right now, and I cant’ wait to see what they do.

Rowan Rhys as Thom B. sewing up a new hat design.

hat pieces!

While I was on the plane, I put together a few sketches. Basically the bare minimum for what we needed to film on the green screen stage. Quick impressions, a bridge layout, and a few jotted notes. The amount we were winging this is a little incredible (and worrying, at the time). We also knew we were going to be doing most of the work in post, so we really only focused on the basics that would allow us to figure out how to arrange folks on the greenscreen. Some of the lastwear folks have also made an interest of designing airships- I’ll see if I can get a link to some of their designs at some point!

conceptual doodles (if you click, you can see all these pictures bigger. It’s fantastic)

The scene takes place in Shadow State 2 (seen in the 3rd episode), where everyone lives in immense cities hanging from an infinite rock ceiling. One of the more interesting parts of the conceptualization process was figuring out how that could be integrated into some of the war strategy. More on that later…

Stay tuned for the next update: Shooting!

Watch this video on YouTube.

In which Axle Rubix kills an avid reader.

1. Open Blender. Ian sent me a picture of the general rough idea of ship he wanted me to model. I started laying out basic shapes. Note that I do pretty much all of this with a Subsurf modifier on, rather than applying it later. Because that way I get a better idea for the actual final shape of curved pieces.

2. Refine shapes, add more pieces. I wanted to have all basic elements in place before I really started detailing anything.

3. Start adding random details like plate metal or whatever. Realize I forgot to add landing gear. Add it. This stuff will probably all change anyway.

4. More details! Really, the things that sell a model once you texture and light it are as follows:
A) details, especially the type of stuff you take for granted like rivets and connection points.
2) inconsistencies. Nothing is perfect. Here I added saddlebags and too many exhausts to be reasonable cause I’m kinda working with a “hot rod” type theme.

5. Realize I forgot to add front landing gear. Facepalm. Double Facepalm. Add the front landing gear, plus more random details. ALSO AT THIS POINT, realize that the highlight color and picture format I’ve chosen are really horrible for this blog post, but it’s too late to turn back. Eat some peanut butter.

6. The finished (for now, until I add guns) model.  This model isn’t really going to have any superduper closeup shots, so taking that into account I’ll do more little seams and rivets when I get to texture work. Note, however, a couple of these random details added anyway. There is now geometry in the engines that better matches the “hot rod” styling. On the landing gear, I’ve added a bunch of completely nonfunctional detail bits just for show! Because a little bit of added visual interest goes a long way. Just, y’know. Don’t overdo it. Otherwise it gets cluttered and confusing.

SO. That was a very skimming-the-surface, generally insufficient review of the modeling process I used for this plane! … Ship. Spaceplane. WHATEVER. It’ll be in the air. It has rockets on the back of the engines so it’s adaptable.

Keep an eye out for the imminent release of Ep. 4! I’m sure you’ll enjoy it at least as much as I’m enjoying this spoonful of peanut butter. Which is a lot. Really, you guys. Peanut butter is amazing.
Cheers!
Nate Taylor

Here’s a wallpaper, if you like such things! A frame from the ‘spisode.

cheers!

We’re currently aiming to release the next two episodes by the end of 2012. Episode 4 should be out any week now, but Episode 5 won’t be out any sooner than October (which is closer than you think!) The first 5 episodes serve as kinda a first season (or, more like a pilot, when viewed in their entirety, I guess), with episode 5 being a finale deal, as we regather energy and get started on the next chunk. I’ve been over in Amsterdam since February, so we’ve only been able to work with what we shot before then, and we’ve had to do a lot of reinventing to get stuff to work that we would normally fix with a pick-up or reshoot. That’s why we’re holding off on ep 5, though- so we can film a few more quick scenes to make everything really fit together.

Question: Man, why do these things come out so slowly?

Answer: Psssssshhhhhh! Cause they’re a lot of work! But it’s true. They could be coming out a lot faster. Having a full time job that takes up 10+ hours a day doesn’t leave much time for Dynamo work. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends, but soon The Mango Experience will be wrapped up, and I should be able to devote more time to this thing!

We also have an ever-increasing pool of incredible helpers. Nate Taylor is using some of his insanely precious time to work on the opening scene of Ep 5. Wesley Slover, Tim McCann, and Brendan Hogan are sitting in the wings just waiting for me to have picture lock on Ep 4, so they can start making fantastic sounds. The more help we have, the crazier we can make these things, and the faster we can get them out there. If you wanna be involved in this crazy thing, definitely send us an email at Karmapirates@gmail.com! Currently there isn’t any money involved in this thing, and we’re just doing it ’cause it’s fun to make things’.

Question: Why do people type “whilst” so much on the internet? We know you don’t say it in real life. Is it just to sound smart? Because you just sound awkward.

Answer: That’s a good question.