Let's not confuse wanting to tell a story in a motion picture format with what Hollywood does. The motion picture industry is a closed system. Any innovations in equipment, software, systems are developed on the outside, then they are squeezed into the Hollywood filmmaking "system"... a kind of retrofitting to force these new technologies to work with a system defined nearly a hundred years ago.
But now, tools and technologies are enabling people with ideas and talent to actually create content that rivals the product put out by the Hollywood systems. However, the biggest obstacle in our way seems to be an impulse to try and emulate the Hollywood system.... to try and mimic their workflow and go into debt trying to purchase all the equipment and tools that a real production needs.
I feel that there should be an alternate system..... one that is suited to this spinoff industry.... one with new paradigms, new standards, and a new delivery system to our potential audiences. A system where actors do not get paid, they are partners. Where all the money spent is devoted to the minimum amount necessary to acquire the desired image. A system where we can share assets and materials simply to help each other get better. And most importantly, a system that has a no-cost, no-barrier-to-entry delivery system so that large numbers of people can view the end result of our endeavors.
This system needs to be built - but it needs to be built outside of Hollywood, outside their system... an open system.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Give It Up!
It's a simple and bold proposal - All filmmakers(rebels) using CG/effects who are operating outside the "system" should share their assets -period.
If you are not under studio control - Rebel filmmaker - you should post your models, textures, CG scripts, effects setup, even tutorials (time permitted) online for FREE. Why would anyone need to waste time modeling birds, WWII soldiers, and airplanes when someone has made a photoreal, multi-resolution one in their spare time? Post it! Even if you are making your film that you have spent the last 5 years writing and planning, post your assets! Give them to the community at large.... and we will all be better off for it.
You have to remember, even if you gave the public all of your footage and assets.... it most likely would not hurt your film. It takes your unique talent and skills to make your film.... and even if someone else had your tools, they could not make your film.
If everyone in the rebel filmmaking community would share high quality assets... then everybody's films could benefit. These kinds of shifts in thinking need to start somewhere, and I am in a position to start the process. I am part of a small group planning a shoot early 2009, and we need many 3D setpieces and characters built. But when we have them built, we will also post them for download... for free. It is costing us a fair amount of money to build these, but the next guy will pay nothing! And maybe next time, we'll pay nothing for high quality assets.
We'll be posting WWII era characters in different resolutions, barns and farm equipment, and a creature or two, along with all the textures. Again.... remember.... it's not the assets... it's the talent that makes good use of them. You cannot post talent. Don't worry, giving it up will not hurt you!
If you are not under studio control - Rebel filmmaker - you should post your models, textures, CG scripts, effects setup, even tutorials (time permitted) online for FREE. Why would anyone need to waste time modeling birds, WWII soldiers, and airplanes when someone has made a photoreal, multi-resolution one in their spare time? Post it! Even if you are making your film that you have spent the last 5 years writing and planning, post your assets! Give them to the community at large.... and we will all be better off for it.
You have to remember, even if you gave the public all of your footage and assets.... it most likely would not hurt your film. It takes your unique talent and skills to make your film.... and even if someone else had your tools, they could not make your film.
If everyone in the rebel filmmaking community would share high quality assets... then everybody's films could benefit. These kinds of shifts in thinking need to start somewhere, and I am in a position to start the process. I am part of a small group planning a shoot early 2009, and we need many 3D setpieces and characters built. But when we have them built, we will also post them for download... for free. It is costing us a fair amount of money to build these, but the next guy will pay nothing! And maybe next time, we'll pay nothing for high quality assets.
We'll be posting WWII era characters in different resolutions, barns and farm equipment, and a creature or two, along with all the textures. Again.... remember.... it's not the assets... it's the talent that makes good use of them. You cannot post talent. Don't worry, giving it up will not hurt you!
Unlocking the Potential
I write this at a time when the paradigm of filmmaking is shifting. Sure, we have witnessed the steady progression of tools, equipment, lowering of barriers over the last 5 years, but now... suddenly...we are seeing the major players in digital filmmaking breaking down those barriers. I feel that there are many digital filmmaking rebels out there that have been waiting in the wings...waiting for the pieces to fall into place so they could take a stab at storytelling without committing themsleves to the endeavor and telling their family and friends they are "making a movie" - cue eyerolls.
There is a large crowd of hobbyists, enthusiasts, and professionals who want to create something to watch, something interesting to themselves and, hopefully, to others. These are what I call "potential filmmakers", people who are not sure they can make a movie, even a short film, but who want to try as long as it doesn't put them into debt or ridicule. Their measure of success is not a finished film, or profit, or festival acclaim, or Netflix rental... it is more that they OWN the possibility of doing all those things. Let's face it, almost no one in this community gets a movie deal, or makes any money off their films, but many thousands of "potential filmmakers" want to buy their ticket to try. They want the freedom to be able to turn a vacation or road trip into a location shoot, simply because they happened to be in the right place at the right time. To know that playing around with an edit could end up being the fuel that starts them on the big push to make a real film.
These possibilities have been around for years... technology has been in place to try and test ideas. But now its a little different. Last year, you had to dream about either taking out a mortgage to dive into RED or some other high end package, or you played around with the HV20 in your backyard. But next year, you will probably own one of three new DSLR's and, using the lenses you already own, be able to produce shots that... in their deliverable viewing format (.MPEG-2, .MOV, .WMV) are nearly indistinguishable from those 'dream' cameras.
The DLSR movie camera opens up some serious possibilities for the "potential filmmaker". It basically unlocks the potential. I have spent my professional media career in visual effects making nothing into something... and now that nothing can start out looking like something... which makes it far easier to impress people. Now... the last barrier... the one most cannot see until its too late (and they fail)....is talent.
There is a large crowd of hobbyists, enthusiasts, and professionals who want to create something to watch, something interesting to themselves and, hopefully, to others. These are what I call "potential filmmakers", people who are not sure they can make a movie, even a short film, but who want to try as long as it doesn't put them into debt or ridicule. Their measure of success is not a finished film, or profit, or festival acclaim, or Netflix rental... it is more that they OWN the possibility of doing all those things. Let's face it, almost no one in this community gets a movie deal, or makes any money off their films, but many thousands of "potential filmmakers" want to buy their ticket to try. They want the freedom to be able to turn a vacation or road trip into a location shoot, simply because they happened to be in the right place at the right time. To know that playing around with an edit could end up being the fuel that starts them on the big push to make a real film.
These possibilities have been around for years... technology has been in place to try and test ideas. But now its a little different. Last year, you had to dream about either taking out a mortgage to dive into RED or some other high end package, or you played around with the HV20 in your backyard. But next year, you will probably own one of three new DSLR's and, using the lenses you already own, be able to produce shots that... in their deliverable viewing format (.MPEG-2, .MOV, .WMV) are nearly indistinguishable from those 'dream' cameras.
The DLSR movie camera opens up some serious possibilities for the "potential filmmaker". It basically unlocks the potential. I have spent my professional media career in visual effects making nothing into something... and now that nothing can start out looking like something... which makes it far easier to impress people. Now... the last barrier... the one most cannot see until its too late (and they fail)....is talent.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Lighting Vs. Renderer
After I just finished around 100 shots for two video game promos, I became truly aware of what made those shots pretty to look at versus how technically realistic a lot of vfx shots look these days. Granted, the shows were supposed to look cartoony, and I had only myself to fall back on, and I had about 1/24th the time allowed a Pixar film, but the images looked decent and satisfied the client nonetheless. And this time around, I found myself finally going back to artistic decisions and fundamentals instead of technology to get my final images.
This brings up my point. It is not really necessary, and often unappreciated, to bring a crazy amount of technical realism to the final images. What is really important, however, is that you imply realism where needed and focus it where it counts. For example, I found myself needing to produce a jungle type forest at night, with character lighting and set that would have a feel similar to Pixar's The Incredibles. So off I went, looking into all types of forest and vegetation simulators, terrain generators, and rendering technology. After about ten days of R & D, I realized that the animatic suggested lots of shallow depth of field shots. I realized that I was trying to mimic reality, so I could then blur it beyond recognition in post. In any given shot, I would only see maybe 15 trees and bushes in all their high quality glory, the rest could be lower resolution textures and geo, even cards.
Ever since I perused the matte painters' web sites - (http://www.goodbrush.com/ ... http://www.mattepainting.org ...etc) , I started to try and incorprate more art into my technical shots. Color hue/ value are so important to understand how we perceive sharpness, foreground/background, and what is the focus of a scene. Then there are the limitations and strengths of the human vision and perceptual systems that play a big role in getting a good shot. For example, lighting reds, oranges, yellows up front, and having greens, blues, purples in the background automatically creates a sense of depth to the viewer due to the speed at which our brains process different wavelengths of light.
What surprised me was that I was able to achieve the result I wanted with very little overhead (ie. rendering time) just by going back to art fundamentals of light, hue, values, and composition. In fact, I used 3dsmax's scanline renderer for everything. As long as I let my textures and surface properties do most the work, I could get great looking elements very quickly - about 30 sec to 1 minute per frame. If something was in the shadows or was getting blurred, all I cared about was its value/hue, not its detail. And if it was off camera, it did not exist. It was very liberating not having to worry about details in the renderer that were going to get lost in comp. In the end, lighting was what made the images, not the renderer.
Some stills are here: http://mmoses00.cgsociety.org/gallery/
This brings up my point. It is not really necessary, and often unappreciated, to bring a crazy amount of technical realism to the final images. What is really important, however, is that you imply realism where needed and focus it where it counts. For example, I found myself needing to produce a jungle type forest at night, with character lighting and set that would have a feel similar to Pixar's The Incredibles. So off I went, looking into all types of forest and vegetation simulators, terrain generators, and rendering technology. After about ten days of R & D, I realized that the animatic suggested lots of shallow depth of field shots. I realized that I was trying to mimic reality, so I could then blur it beyond recognition in post. In any given shot, I would only see maybe 15 trees and bushes in all their high quality glory, the rest could be lower resolution textures and geo, even cards.
Ever since I perused the matte painters' web sites - (http://www.goodbrush.com/ ... http://www.mattepainting.org ...etc) , I started to try and incorprate more art into my technical shots. Color hue/ value are so important to understand how we perceive sharpness, foreground/background, and what is the focus of a scene. Then there are the limitations and strengths of the human vision and perceptual systems that play a big role in getting a good shot. For example, lighting reds, oranges, yellows up front, and having greens, blues, purples in the background automatically creates a sense of depth to the viewer due to the speed at which our brains process different wavelengths of light.
What surprised me was that I was able to achieve the result I wanted with very little overhead (ie. rendering time) just by going back to art fundamentals of light, hue, values, and composition. In fact, I used 3dsmax's scanline renderer for everything. As long as I let my textures and surface properties do most the work, I could get great looking elements very quickly - about 30 sec to 1 minute per frame. If something was in the shadows or was getting blurred, all I cared about was its value/hue, not its detail. And if it was off camera, it did not exist. It was very liberating not having to worry about details in the renderer that were going to get lost in comp. In the end, lighting was what made the images, not the renderer.
Some stills are here: http://mmoses00.cgsociety.org/gallery/
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Portfolio Concerns
Lots of talent out there. You look on http://www.cgsociety.org/ and see so many nice images (although I wish there were more moving shots instead of stills up there). And if you read the comments made to them, you get the impression that there are a lot of students and enthusiasts trying to get their work seen.
My experience with professional post production, both at larger studios and boutique shops, is that you literally have about 4 seconds to get someones attention. So, you have to find out what you are truly good at, or hands down, what you bring to the table when it comes to visual effects production. For me, I am a lighter, I create final images. Lighting, effects/TD work, compositing. There, that took about 4.5 seconds to say. Now, imagine a web page that gets that across in 4 seconds. That's about all you need on the front page. Simple links that go further into your past work experience, your methods, your philosophy/work ethic, and the software you prefer to use should be easy too get to, but not on the front page. If anything, your contact info should be always visible, on every page of your site.
As I write this, I am noting that I must change my own site (http://matt.moses.name/ or http://mmoses00.cgsociety.org/gallery/) to reflect this. But alas, as you get more professional work, the less time you have to do this, and the less important that site becomes due to the "referral" nature of this business. But I do wonder what companies would be calling if I had a better network setup to lead them to me. So, that is the point - Concise special skill, quality, and easy access to you can be a great enabler. After that, good work habits, calm demeanor, professionalism with others in a team environment are absolutely necessary.
So get some nice "moving" images, not stills together and make your 4 second pitch that demonstrates your core skills. Then put up a simple web page (one page will do) and tell the forums about it, post to the CG web sites, email someone at a studio's HR with a link, post it on http://www.linkedin.com/, etc., and get noticed. Just remember to bring your best to the table, and only show stuff that you would like to do 12-16 hrs a day!
BTW, I have used http://www.lunarpages.com/id/mattmo2 for my hosting needs for about 8 years, and they have been fantastic hosters. They have always kept upgrading their service, without upgrading the price. Click on the link up top right for info. That's my plug for now. :)
My experience with professional post production, both at larger studios and boutique shops, is that you literally have about 4 seconds to get someones attention. So, you have to find out what you are truly good at, or hands down, what you bring to the table when it comes to visual effects production. For me, I am a lighter, I create final images. Lighting, effects/TD work, compositing. There, that took about 4.5 seconds to say. Now, imagine a web page that gets that across in 4 seconds. That's about all you need on the front page. Simple links that go further into your past work experience, your methods, your philosophy/work ethic, and the software you prefer to use should be easy too get to, but not on the front page. If anything, your contact info should be always visible, on every page of your site.
As I write this, I am noting that I must change my own site (http://matt.moses.name/ or http://mmoses00.cgsociety.org/gallery/) to reflect this. But alas, as you get more professional work, the less time you have to do this, and the less important that site becomes due to the "referral" nature of this business. But I do wonder what companies would be calling if I had a better network setup to lead them to me. So, that is the point - Concise special skill, quality, and easy access to you can be a great enabler. After that, good work habits, calm demeanor, professionalism with others in a team environment are absolutely necessary.
So get some nice "moving" images, not stills together and make your 4 second pitch that demonstrates your core skills. Then put up a simple web page (one page will do) and tell the forums about it, post to the CG web sites, email someone at a studio's HR with a link, post it on http://www.linkedin.com/, etc., and get noticed. Just remember to bring your best to the table, and only show stuff that you would like to do 12-16 hrs a day!
BTW, I have used http://www.lunarpages.com/id/mattmo2 for my hosting needs for about 8 years, and they have been fantastic hosters. They have always kept upgrading their service, without upgrading the price. Click on the link up top right for info. That's my plug for now. :)
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