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The CGI and VFX thread!
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  • I used C4D. My software of choice for modeling for film-based graphics. But yea, parts of it were a bit tedious... the basic form was modeled with hyper-nurbs, which I then converted to polygon mode and sliced out the geometry for extruding the paneling. It's hard when it's a personal project and there's really no deadline... but I've got to just finalize the geometry and start on the texturing soon. Then find a garage or industrial space to build the film-able cockpit for the actors... :)

  • Here's a third reel update. This one focuses on my work in independent film, where there's often little or no budget for effects but high quality is still desired. A good chunk of it has me as one of the clients too, lol. About half of this is recently salvaged footage from the first independent feature that my brother and I made back in 2001 called Xtracurricular. It's one of the first narrative features shot on Sony's HDW-F900 Cinealta. I was able to bring up our old Cinewave editing array and scrounge around for more recent codecs offering backward compatibility.

    We ended up having to raise finishing funds separately which delayed our HD post from beginning by the better part of a year but we were shooting in June 2001 which puts Lucas and Rodriguez (by a hair) ahead of us and maybe a handful of others. Post took roughly two years to complete, shifting to nights and weekends, after going back to work for big facilities in Hollywood. But we did it, and I got it rep'd after AFM 2004 and from there it was taken out of our hands, having given over controlling interest as a means to get it completed.

    REEL BREAKDOWN: (bit.ly/15oR3UV)

    There's some overlap in here from my "Got Blood?" reel, because outside of my work on Queen of the Damned and Dracula 2000 the bloody stuff has all been for indies, but I've trimmed it some.

  • @BurnetRhoades That's some nice work Sean. You really crowded that stadium ;)

  • Hah, yeah, we actually had a fair amount of people show up to shoot the game. We got on the most popular radio morning show and announced that we needed folks for the filming of the football game and that we were going to hold a raffle for prizes. We gave away videogames and movies, I'm pretty sure a PS2 (this was 2001) and then, at the end of the shoot, a big screen TV. We ended up shooting clear until dawn and folks had to be there at the end if they wanted that TV. Almost all of them stayed!

    We had a few hundred show up, which wasn't enough to fill the bleachers on both sides. Not hardly. But for all of the scenes with our actors it was perfect and they, psychologically, helped out our football players who were all players for the high school we shot at. So we just concentrated on getting the performances we needed and I knew I'd be busy later on. This was in June and that Fall, during the normal high school season, I came back to shoot crowd plates from various angles.

  • Are computer generated visual effects really ruining movies?

    We believe that the reason we think all CG looks bad, is because we only see "bad” CG. Fantastic, beautiful, and wonderfully executed CG is everywhere - you just don't know it. Truly great visual effects serve story and character – and in doing so are, by their very definition, invisible.

    Written and Narrated by Freddie Wong Edited by Joey Scoma Assistant Editor - Joshan Smith