SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD

The days have been getting longer. And by longer, I don't mean the days are dragging out. It's more hours on the computer and less hours in bed. Came home at about 8pm yesterday, went through the day's work just to make sure I don't miss out anything. Made a few notes and preparation for tomorrow's early morning meeting via video conferencing. I got up at about 4am in time to get online and had a meeting with the producer and editor who are in Los Angeles. There, the movie is screened for me on a seperate live feed while I go through my notes and discuss with the producer about the final cut, whether there will be any changes from the VFX breakdowns that I finished, any scenes deleted .etc. This goes on till about 7:30am. And I have about 1/2 to shower and get ready before I get picked up to get to the VFX Studio.

This is my set up at the hotel. I have a seperate hard drive for my VFX stuff and notes for the movie The Gene Generation. So much for wireless technology, my desk is a clutter of wires, as usual...and empty Diet Coke bottles do not help either. The video conferencing program I am using is ivisit using the isight camera attached to the top of my laptop. This was taken after my shower so the session is closed. But there are 4 video windows usually, 1 for Keith (producer), 1 for Carmelo (editor), me and a live stream feed of the movie. We have one seperate window for any notes and stuff that we need to input. We have our own video-conference room so we keep it private, away from the public.

Speaking of which, notice some mentos and the diet coke bottle on my table. Scott, VFX Producer, told me that if you dump mentos into a Diet Coke bottle, it will cause a chemical reaction that makes the Diet Coke shoot 20 feet into the air and empties out a 2 litre bottle easily. I even saw some footage of it...now I'm tempted to try it...heh heh....

Click Here for the footage of The Diet Coke Geyser!!!

So...since I drink a lot of Diet Coke...I tried eating some mentos hoping I would puke out a foutain like that! I think I need more mentos and Diet Coke...the experiment continues for me...

OFFICIAL START OF 3D TEAM

Here are some pictures of the meeting with the VFX 3D team. These are the main people who will be building the assets of city. Each one of them is assigned a number of buildings to develop for the city and they spend days churning out the wireframe models for the city. The basis is that once the wireframes are built, I get to adjust where the buildings will be placed .etc. then we can start framing our green screen shots and others before the rendering and texturing begin. Then the 2D department will come down for the remaining process of compositing and gamma correction .etc.

This is the team, in the meeting headed by our VFX Supervisor, Simeon Asenov who has been working with WWFX for about 5 years now. He's basically handling the organization of the VFX Project while at the same time working closely with me regarding my vision. The guy in the blue shirt is basically my QC (quality control). He would be integral in making sure that everything is done the way I want it and that nothing goes out and is approved without his eye. Everything has to be done this way and that way, and he helps me with some of my stuff as well. But he is there for basically everything I discuss with the team, and he will make sure the appropiate notes are taken and instructions carried out.

Long haired guy is Simeon Asenov who is the VFX Supervisor. Can you tell he is a metal head? Heck yeah! Although, he did let me hear Bulgarian Rap...which...I will not comment about it. But Simeon will basically handle everything from the organization, time line, break down, you name it, he'll be on it. The guy watches more movies than me. Everyday, he would be watching one film. Before I came, he watched all the movies that The Gene Generation was inspired from and was basically in the right frame of mind when I arrived. I think the only thing he does more than watching movies, is working and drinking coffee (the guy can drink)

The guy standing by the door, is our VFX Producer Scott Coulter. He's the main guy who will handle the job as a producer but on the VFX department side. Yes, he gets the budget, negotiates and when there's trouble, he's on it (Which means delegating task and manpower around to get the job done on time, on target). He makes sure every department is keeping ahead of schedule together with Simeon and monitors the entire process of the film. He mainly has to think ahead and identify problems before they come, while the rest of the team is just basically absorbing ourselves into the cities of Demeter and Olympia.

Of course, Scott has to juggle between another 2 films as well, so he's always running around, people coming in and out of the office, meetings regarding future movies as well.

Guy on right photo with short hair, nearest to the Camera is Ven. He's the lead designer of Gene Generation. He looks nice from the outside, polite in character, well groomed guy....but man, his head is messed up! And I say that as a compliment. Ven designs all my 'Hero' shots and has more gross pictures than rotten.com. He did the entire city drawing / painting on his own and the Aereann Flyer design. Right now, he's working on a little design for the Transcoder, as we pay homage to one of the greatest Anime of all time, AKIRA!

So those 3 are my main guys, I'll keep you updated with their work as we go along. It's going to be a fun ride.