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.

Well this is a quick update, to say we’re moving forward, playing catchup mostly as there has been a nasty cold/flu thing going around. So on to the SFX list and the sound over the next few days. I still have a horrible hacking cough, which slows things down a  little but that should be gone soon.

Day Nine

And here is this weeks installment of the production stills. This was from the Atrium, with the green screen Work. We have some Publicity shots of Old Bob so we may put them out for all to see in the near future. So for now here is day nine.

[View with PicLens]

I’ll do a quick coverage with orders that are outstanding. I’m on top of the printer situation, I hope that at the end of next week I’ll have things ship shape and Bristol fashion, I’ll run the two designs as separate orders 1 week apart. So the Dr. Bob Design will get sent to the printers on the 19th.

Also we’re removing the Dr. Bob design on the 18th, other than what we have in stock it will be the end of the line for that design. We may even look to changing the Logo Design at Christmas, or launch a Café Press store, to offer a wider range of items.

However if you want your Dr. Bob design then you only have a few days left to get your orders in.

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It may be sunny outside but it’s a grim day on the balance sheets. Looking at what we have to achieve and how we are going to get things done on time and to the highest quality, sadly it all boils down to money. Even though we can do a lot with a small amount of cash, we still need the small amount of cash.

So looking at the bank accounts and the current rate of input, we need to get a swift cash injection over the next few weeks, so we can keep on schedule.

I don’t like posting about negative things but as were being open about how were making Casimir Effect I know one day this blog post would come. It was inevitable that we would need a swift cash injection at a number of points during this process and so far we have managed to get there by the skin of our teeth. So once again we are in a situation here, where things need to happen in the early stages of post production so we can get the film finished on time. However as always these are where the costs are. Such as ADR suite hire, software needed do all the SFX and post work, even software upgrades to keep the editing system up to the current standards so we can deliver the right files to the various people during this process.

We will also be removing the Dr. Bob Apparel design on the 31st of May 2010. If you want one of these now is your chance to put an order in. The printers have finally caught up and we collected all outstanding stock today and will post that out in the week. However after the 31st we will remove the Dr. Bob design and will be printing no more, so we will only have the items in our stock box.

The Crunch

We need cash, anything you can offer or do to help us is welcome, even if it’s only the spare change in a jar every pennies helps and we will be grateful for it, if we could get 100 people donating £10 then that would be a big step in the right direction. We have also compiled a list of other funding options:

• Donations: see the buttons at the bottom of this page, any donations from now on will get your name in the credits.
• Bid on something on our eBay page, everything that we have left over from the film must go and all items used will come with a certificate of authenticity.
• Buy items from our store. We have a lot of apparel, loads of prints; some signed, some unsigned, badges, keyrings and our main theme song.
• Fundraising around your social networks and groups, you can even tell them they will be helping independent British/European cinema.
• If you have anything knocking around taking up space that you think you might want to donate to us so we can sell it we don’t mind doing all the hard work for you. In the past this has worked well with signed posters, scripts and photos.
• Just generally be loud about the film, tell people why it’s important and that they can have their name in the credits if they help out. The more visitors and people knowing about Casimir Effect the more chance we will get people who want to help out.

Now the rough edit of Casimir Effect is past the midpoint we’re looking further into the future, everything from music, to the special effects. We have a bunch more meetings before we really get dug in, but we have established our post production and marketing budget goals. We are looking to raise £12,000 to cover post production and marketing. However we have a bit more time to raise these funds. This new goal has been split into two, the first £6,000 needs to be raised by the 1st October 2010 and will be mostly used for post production, the last £6,000 by 1st February 2011 which will be used for the preparation for film festivals.

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Like reaching our other goals we will be auctioning off a number of items including more film props, costumes and set dressing, and all those donation that have gotten us this far. We are also putting together a selection of limited edition signed prints that will be put up for auction over the coming months. As always we will be adding more items to our store, including signed versions of our regular prints. I have a bag with some more Torchwood goodies to be signed, and a few of the audio books Gareth did.

We’re also thinking of making some costumes for cosplay if there is interest, CJS ID badges custom made with your picture and name on them. As always we’re open for new ideas and suggestions as to what you would like us to do and we will look into getting them.

Sound and Music

As mentioned before Blue Gillespie’s tracks Paradox and Time Knot are for the film. Once we have the rough edit we will be looking at getting the songs as stems (each instrument in its own track) so we can remix and rework the songs for the sound track. However before that we have ADR (Additional Dialogue Replacement) to get done, once we have the ADR sorted we can start looking at getting the first full trailer out. But before then we hope to get a second teaser out.

Once we have the ADR sorted, our sound guys Espen and Ewoud will be spending the summer collecting sound effect and building banks of sounds. To create everything that is important to the world of the film, everything from a sliding cup to the hums and crackles of the time machine. When they are off doing this we will be working on the music and reworking the songs we have to create all the character themes and incidental music, that will set the mood and tone for each sequence.

Special Effects

This is the hardest part of post production and will require a large team working many hours to get everything that is needed. Once we have a rough edit we will be going through each scene deciding what effects are needed and what we would like to do but hadn’t thought of. Then we need to prioritise them so we can create our workflow for the coming months. Also it will tell us which scenes we need to re-edit first and allow us to structure our path to the final edit.

Everything from Rotoscoping (cutting out actors from the background, and replacing markers), to rendering new elements for the time machine and the future. Everything takes time and we need to start the complex things now and leave the easy things till near the end. Of course these special effects are also where most of our post production budget will go.

Trailer

As mentioned above we will be working on a new teaser once we have a rough edit, this will give you a taster for what we have coming. Than after that and we have some of the sounds in and music ready we will do our first full trailer and look to doing a longer trailer later in the year with some of the completed effects.

Sex Wales and Anarchy 3

And finally we will be at Sex Wales and Anarchy 3 this year, hopefully we will have a few scenes close to completion for people to see. However we are also running the film side of SWA, called SWA Film, we’re turning this into a mini film festival, with a prize fund at the end of it. The details will be on the SWA3 site in the next few days and hopefully many of the filmmakers that are following us will submit something. We are still looking for our judges at the moment but we’re hoping we can get some interesting names to help out.

Anyway it proves to be an interesting day with lots of fun and creativity and some good local bands to boot.