A few more bits and bobs from the matte painting circles. The images below show what a radical change can be made to a scene with a matte painting. This was quite a complex painting to do as a number of elements have been constructed from the ground up. This means taking still images of walls and textures to make buildings, and removing elements from the frame that don’t fit with the scene.

To create a sense of depth a foreground element has been added, and the wall extended with smoke billowing in the background, to give more movement to the scene. Again the nonexistent sky in the original shot has been replaced.

This shot follows on from the previous matte painting post where Alice has entered the bases perimeter, now making her way into the labyrinth.

As you can see by the comparison a lot of work has been done to grade and replace elements on the original shot to give you this final scene. This is the most complex static matte painting in Casimir Effect so far.

We’re squeezing things out slowly and things are moving forward. I have been working on some matte paintings, for the opening scenes. A matte painting is a static or animated image which has been painted or constructed from photographic elements and parts of the frame, to replaces a backdrop. These have always been part of special effects through the ages.

Here is a sample from one of the early scenes in Casimir Effect, the first image is the original plate from the footage and the second is the final matte painting composited together.

As you can see the sky has been replaced with something that is more dynamic and interesting. Also the log and signpost have been replaced in favour for the wall of the SPATZ facility.  The image has been graded to add more dynamic range. This has been done with two plates one light and one dark to make sure all the detail has been retained. Then some final tweaks for effect.

The wall was a challenge as it had to be constructed from still photographs of the Coal Exchange in Cardiff. I went down and took a lot of images of the walls and concrete in the area. Then constructed this wall and graded it to match the rest of the image. Once this was complete a door needed to be added, and as this is a military facility on a small island it needed to reflect that. So I dug out an old rusted bulkhead door frame and added that in.

I toyed with the idea of adding something in the background behind the wall but nothing seemed to work, so I abandoned that idea.  Also to make things harder this needed to be built at 4.5k to match the film footage and with many photographic layers it takes its toll on my computer. I suspect I may need to upgrade soon.

I have a few more matte paintings which I will upload over the next few weeks.

Other News

Just a quick snippet, well more than a teaser. I have been negotiating something interesting over the last weeks. Hopefully I can soon make an announcement, so keep your eyes peeled.

It’s been a rough few months for myself, illness has pretty much crippled me and meant I have only been able to keep a few things ticking over. I now have a massive backlog of work to catch up on, not only for Casimir Effect but all the other projects I’m involved with.

Now I’m back and fighting fit I can get back on with post production, I have been reviewing everything we need to do and it seems there is an awful lot more work than we first thought. So we are splitting the special effects into the ones needed to tell the story properly and everything else to make it look nice. This gives us a rough system to start prioritising things. However this doesn’t mean we’re going to do a rush job just to hit a festival date, as you only get one chance with a film so we want to be sure we have done the best we can.

So the release of the film will be delayed, provisionally until the end of the year so we can spend time on getting those finishing touches just right. The delay however has produced some good fruit, Clarky has completely reworked the music for the film the new songs he played me are awesome. With extra time we can put a lot more effort into everything and rework elements if needed.

Because of the delay I’m changing the fundraising deadlines and over the next few weeks will start getting the delayed action plan up and running. This means new merchandise, new stills and some new footage from the CGI tests and teasers. I have seen some of the work already, and have been working on the matte paintings for a few scenes, so you should start seeing things coming up soon.

We have come to the end of another year, and we hit the goals even if we over ran by a few days to get the last few pounds in. Some of the pressure is off for getting money in. Though we still need a small flow of money for odds and ends and to get the film out to festivals, however with more new merch coming, the sound track and the making of book we should see enough coming in to tide us over. We have a rough target to make £3000 by May 2011; this should cover us for our initial round of festival submissions. I have faith that we can all make the festival circuit and we will see many of our donators and fans along the way.  So…

A BIG THANKS TO ALL WHO HAVE HELPED

We made our 2010 goals.

The Final Production Stills

These stills are from filming day eleven, though we filmed for 12 days, we had a minimal crew on the last day so never got many shots for the archive.  So this is the last of them, I think next we will go through our development archive and see what we have in sketches and other odds and ends.

[View with PicLens]

We’re not for now, about £170 to go before the end of the year. And what an amazing year it has been, going through some of the past blog posts. It seems we have been on a fun and sometimes scary rollercoaster ride. To get to the point it has been fantastic and we couldn’t have done it without the help and support of the fanbase. We have seen the filming through, had clips and previews. Yet this is just a small part of the journey, we’re about half way there now. The edit is locked, the music is underway, and the sound is getting there and the CGI is being planned. Yet without you we couldn’t even be here without you, so a big thank you goes out to everyone who has helped, and always remember you are supporting independent film and creativity.

Yes there is still a journey left, once we have the post production underway, we need to start really digging into what festivals we can and need to enter. As we start looking around we will be looking out to fans to help research and promote at local festivals. We’re also hoping many of you can come to a festival, as we will keep a guest list for all those who have helped so you will get to see the film at a festival. Then as we have done each festival we can find independent cinemas for screenings, before we make Casimir Effect available for general release.

So in the New Year, we still have a fair amount to auction off, there is the soundtrack and the making of book. Also if we can get our head around any legal ramifications we may do pre orders on a limited run of the DVD, to be released after each countries premiere.

So for now let’s get that last £170 in the pot and move into the new year with big ambitions and the passion to carry them off.