Last day of work before Christmas and as always it's a struggle to get everything done. In this case, everything means getting enough of the animations set up for rendering to keep the PC busy over the break.
I managed to get a lot of it done, and added some alien colonies and "world ships" to the project. Having done the interview about solar sailing, I've realised that the research I did into the process was flawed. Apparently the best design for an interstellar solar sail is a spinning circle - and not the square shape I designed (based on the designs made for travel within the solar system). I redesigned it, and put together what I hope will be a neat sequence of the sail approaching the sun and then opening.
We'll see how it comes out after Christmas.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
3d animation
More 3d animation today. I got stuck in a quagmire in trying to create some simple explosion flashes for one particular clip and it took me most of the morning. I think the results will be good though.
On my last documentary, I did a lot of 3d animation and it was pretty intensive stuff (trying to re-create extinct animals is a lot harder than fictional spaceships!). However, the mistake I made was to think in terms of shots.
I’d produce a shot of a shark swimming along, then a shot of it from a different angle, then a shot of it swimming towards the camera. A shot of it chasing something – and so on.
While this worked OK, it didn’t create much drama. What I’m trying to do this time is to think in terms of sequences – telling little stories. So instead of having a spaceship flying through space, I’m showing it setting out, traveling and arriving somewhere. I’m paying more attention to how the shots tell the story and I think it’s paying off.
Not only does this mean I can create interesting sequences, it also means I can re-use shots more usefully – showing parts of a sequence to wet the viewer’s appetite while my interviewees are describing the ideas that make up the sequence and then showing the whole sequence as a scene to bring everything together.
At least I hope that’s how it will work. When you’re working with CGI – particularly when you’ve got no budget, it’s important to get the most out of your shots (I don’t mean by repeating them ad-nauseum by the way – I mean by using them to build up expectation and satisfying it).
On my last documentary, I did a lot of 3d animation and it was pretty intensive stuff (trying to re-create extinct animals is a lot harder than fictional spaceships!). However, the mistake I made was to think in terms of shots.
I’d produce a shot of a shark swimming along, then a shot of it from a different angle, then a shot of it swimming towards the camera. A shot of it chasing something – and so on.
While this worked OK, it didn’t create much drama. What I’m trying to do this time is to think in terms of sequences – telling little stories. So instead of having a spaceship flying through space, I’m showing it setting out, traveling and arriving somewhere. I’m paying more attention to how the shots tell the story and I think it’s paying off.
Not only does this mean I can create interesting sequences, it also means I can re-use shots more usefully – showing parts of a sequence to wet the viewer’s appetite while my interviewees are describing the ideas that make up the sequence and then showing the whole sequence as a scene to bring everything together.
At least I hope that’s how it will work. When you’re working with CGI – particularly when you’ve got no budget, it’s important to get the most out of your shots (I don’t mean by repeating them ad-nauseum by the way – I mean by using them to build up expectation and satisfying it).
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
rendering and cheap stock
Rendering
As usual, half my 3d renders came out great, the other half look a bit ropey. It’s the usual problem – creating a model which looks great in certain shots and certain lighting and then trying to take the camera far too close and for far too long, so all the poorly finished detail gets brought to the fore.
It’s always better to make your models more detailed than you think you’ll need otherwise you end up spending a lot of time tweaking the shots in post production to make them workable. Ok, I’m not trying to produce Star Wars here, but I do want viewers to suspend their disbelief. I think I can work with most of what I’ve rendered, but some shots may need to be done again with more favourable lighting.
I found another stock video site to add to my list of places to go for cheap stock footage:
Take a look at www.revostock.com – that’s after you’ve checked www.video. shutterstock.com, www.istockphoto.com and www.pond5.com
As usual, half my 3d renders came out great, the other half look a bit ropey. It’s the usual problem – creating a model which looks great in certain shots and certain lighting and then trying to take the camera far too close and for far too long, so all the poorly finished detail gets brought to the fore.
It’s always better to make your models more detailed than you think you’ll need otherwise you end up spending a lot of time tweaking the shots in post production to make them workable. Ok, I’m not trying to produce Star Wars here, but I do want viewers to suspend their disbelief. I think I can work with most of what I’ve rendered, but some shots may need to be done again with more favourable lighting.
I found another stock video site to add to my list of places to go for cheap stock footage:
Take a look at www.revostock.com – that’s after you’ve checked www.video. shutterstock.com, www.istockphoto.com and www.pond5.com
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
spaceships, satellites and saving the rainforests
More spaceships
A day for animation. My rendering machine has now got some good shots to mull over – hopefully by the end of the week, there’ll be enough rendering to keep it busy over the Christmas break.
That way, when I come back, I’ll be able to get on with the editing and I’ll start to see the shape of the documentary emerging.
These 3d animations will hopefully make pretty good stock footage – either as stills or as moving images, so I’ll make at least something back even if the documentary doesn’t sell.
If you’re ever animating space scenes, here are my top 5 tips:
keep it dark and bright: lots of dark areas keep everything mysterious. Put in just one or two very bright lights behind your subject – don’t be afraid to really ramp up the back lights, but control their position so they only highlight small features on your models.
Don’t be afraid to light each object separately: Space shots generally have a huge scale, and lighting which works for one object doesn’t necessarily work for everything else, so exclude your lights from all but the object you’re lighting at the time.
slow moving cameras: don’t rush the camera about – just make it perform slow, simple motions. Link the camera target to your moving objects and let it follow, but introduce a little drifting motion too.
Drift: objects drift around in space. They change direction slowly and don’t slow down or change direction unless they’re forced to, so make all movements graceful.
backgrounds: there’s a lot more to space than a few stars. Try introducing nebulae, suns, planets and galaxies to give the background some colour and show the movement of your objects.
An idea
Here’s an idea I’ve been toying with since I discovered that you can launch a 10x10x10cm satellite for about £30,000. I mocked up a couple of image ideas today to see how it would work (click on them to see the full size image).
The idea is simple enough:
To launch a satellite into orbit containing a digital time capsule in the form of an mp3 player filled with messages from the Earth – in the spirit of the voyager mission.
To invite anyone to submit text messages, photos, audio and video files to be included on the satellite via a website accessible globally before launch.
To charge an amount for the messages which anyone can afford.
To use the proceeds to buy and preserve an area of rainforest large enough to be visible from space
Possible extra aims:
To include on the satellite dna samples from the world’s most endangered creatures
To include on the satellite camera and other scientific equipment and make control and use of that equipment freely available to anyone via a website – democratizing space for everyone.
I said it was simple. But it’s also terrifying. The technical side isn’t difficult – or at least it’s not insurmountably hard. However, the scale of it is huge. Half of me thinks it’s so big I can’t possibly do it. I’d have to get corporate sponsorship, put together a satellite building team, get a major charity on board, get celebrity endorsements, get a global publicity launch going, get a team to build a charging system… and that’s before we even get to launching the thing into space. It’s so far beyond the realms of achievability that it’s ridiculous.
And then there’s the other half of me. The half that thinks that this is an idea which will appeal to an awful lot of people. That there’s the potential here to raise an incredible amount of money for an environmental charity… and that having had the idea, I can’t possibly not do it.
I’ll let you know which half wins.
A day for animation. My rendering machine has now got some good shots to mull over – hopefully by the end of the week, there’ll be enough rendering to keep it busy over the Christmas break.
That way, when I come back, I’ll be able to get on with the editing and I’ll start to see the shape of the documentary emerging.
These 3d animations will hopefully make pretty good stock footage – either as stills or as moving images, so I’ll make at least something back even if the documentary doesn’t sell.
If you’re ever animating space scenes, here are my top 5 tips:
keep it dark and bright: lots of dark areas keep everything mysterious. Put in just one or two very bright lights behind your subject – don’t be afraid to really ramp up the back lights, but control their position so they only highlight small features on your models.
Don’t be afraid to light each object separately: Space shots generally have a huge scale, and lighting which works for one object doesn’t necessarily work for everything else, so exclude your lights from all but the object you’re lighting at the time.
slow moving cameras: don’t rush the camera about – just make it perform slow, simple motions. Link the camera target to your moving objects and let it follow, but introduce a little drifting motion too.
Drift: objects drift around in space. They change direction slowly and don’t slow down or change direction unless they’re forced to, so make all movements graceful.
backgrounds: there’s a lot more to space than a few stars. Try introducing nebulae, suns, planets and galaxies to give the background some colour and show the movement of your objects.
An idea
Here’s an idea I’ve been toying with since I discovered that you can launch a 10x10x10cm satellite for about £30,000. I mocked up a couple of image ideas today to see how it would work (click on them to see the full size image).
The idea is simple enough:
To launch a satellite into orbit containing a digital time capsule in the form of an mp3 player filled with messages from the Earth – in the spirit of the voyager mission.
To invite anyone to submit text messages, photos, audio and video files to be included on the satellite via a website accessible globally before launch.
To charge an amount for the messages which anyone can afford.
To use the proceeds to buy and preserve an area of rainforest large enough to be visible from space
Possible extra aims:
To include on the satellite dna samples from the world’s most endangered creatures
To include on the satellite camera and other scientific equipment and make control and use of that equipment freely available to anyone via a website – democratizing space for everyone.
I said it was simple. But it’s also terrifying. The technical side isn’t difficult – or at least it’s not insurmountably hard. However, the scale of it is huge. Half of me thinks it’s so big I can’t possibly do it. I’d have to get corporate sponsorship, put together a satellite building team, get a major charity on board, get celebrity endorsements, get a global publicity launch going, get a team to build a charging system… and that’s before we even get to launching the thing into space. It’s so far beyond the realms of achievability that it’s ridiculous.
And then there’s the other half of me. The half that thinks that this is an idea which will appeal to an awful lot of people. That there’s the potential here to raise an incredible amount of money for an environmental charity… and that having had the idea, I can’t possibly not do it.
I’ll let you know which half wins.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Audio problems
Interviews
Looking back at the interviews done on Friday, the content is good and both interviewees were animated and interesting.
I’ve decided, however, to go back to letting my camcorder handle the audio levels automatically. Even though this does create problems when the camera doesn’t adjust fast enough to changing sound volume, it’s far better than me trying to control the sound levels myself. I’ve got far too much to do already as I’m working alone and setting up the lighting and camera as well as doing the interviews and adding sound control to that is a recipe for disaster. I’m giving myself far more problems in trying to do it. On this occasion, the problem was that I set the audio too low so boosting it means there’s a fair amount of hiss in the background. I can get rid of it, but it’s another layer of fussing during the edit I can do without.
Animations
I spent the afternoon putting together some final renders of some of the animations used in the documentary. This always takes longer than you think it will, because the lighting and camera angles always need messing around with.
The models have already been made, and I’ll I needed to do was set them in motion. Still it’ll render overnight and hopefully I’ll have something decent by tomorrow.
Cubesat
I’ve also emailed the makers of the cubesat micro-satellite system and got pretty positive responses. This is the first step of research in a new documentary idea I’ve got. Actually it’s more than a documentary idea – I want to save the world – and think I can do it with a $50,000 satellite…
The new documentary will allow me to follow some people who are building these micro-satellites as school projects. Hopefully, I can gather a few experienced people to help in this ambitious project – or at least let me find out if what I’m proposing is possible.
More on that later…
Looking back at the interviews done on Friday, the content is good and both interviewees were animated and interesting.
I’ve decided, however, to go back to letting my camcorder handle the audio levels automatically. Even though this does create problems when the camera doesn’t adjust fast enough to changing sound volume, it’s far better than me trying to control the sound levels myself. I’ve got far too much to do already as I’m working alone and setting up the lighting and camera as well as doing the interviews and adding sound control to that is a recipe for disaster. I’m giving myself far more problems in trying to do it. On this occasion, the problem was that I set the audio too low so boosting it means there’s a fair amount of hiss in the background. I can get rid of it, but it’s another layer of fussing during the edit I can do without.
Animations
I spent the afternoon putting together some final renders of some of the animations used in the documentary. This always takes longer than you think it will, because the lighting and camera angles always need messing around with.
The models have already been made, and I’ll I needed to do was set them in motion. Still it’ll render overnight and hopefully I’ll have something decent by tomorrow.
Cubesat
I’ve also emailed the makers of the cubesat micro-satellite system and got pretty positive responses. This is the first step of research in a new documentary idea I’ve got. Actually it’s more than a documentary idea – I want to save the world – and think I can do it with a $50,000 satellite…
The new documentary will allow me to follow some people who are building these micro-satellites as school projects. Hopefully, I can gather a few experienced people to help in this ambitious project – or at least let me find out if what I’m proposing is possible.
More on that later…
Friday, December 14, 2007
Interviews
Interviews
Today I went up to Manchester to interview some of the scientists at jodrell bank who are involved in the search for planets orbiting other stars. Interesting stuff and apparently with new developments due on line in 10 years or so, they’ll be able to detect the constituents of the atmospheres of planets in other solar systems. They tell me that they’ll be able to be almost certain if there is life from these measurements. In a few years, we’ll know if we’re alone – or at least we’ll know if we’re not.
They seemed quite surprised that I had a camera with me (I think they thought it was audio only. Still, they adjusted quite quickly. The interviews went well, and they offered me some footage of the telescope which I can use in the documentary. They’re going to start making video in the next few months so I offered my help – the least I can do I think given that I’ve taken up their afternoon.
With these two interviews, I’ve got the first section of the documentary covered. I’ve got the solar sailing bit covered. I’ve also got the faster than light section covered. What remains is the part about how to sustain human habitation during a 50+ year journey to the stars (I’ve got someone lined up to interview about this), a section on fusion ramjets and other super-rockets, and a section on terraforming (which I think I may have an interviewee for, but I’m not sure).
It’s probably time to start editing and working on the animations.
Today I went up to Manchester to interview some of the scientists at jodrell bank who are involved in the search for planets orbiting other stars. Interesting stuff and apparently with new developments due on line in 10 years or so, they’ll be able to detect the constituents of the atmospheres of planets in other solar systems. They tell me that they’ll be able to be almost certain if there is life from these measurements. In a few years, we’ll know if we’re alone – or at least we’ll know if we’re not.
They seemed quite surprised that I had a camera with me (I think they thought it was audio only. Still, they adjusted quite quickly. The interviews went well, and they offered me some footage of the telescope which I can use in the documentary. They’re going to start making video in the next few months so I offered my help – the least I can do I think given that I’ve taken up their afternoon.
With these two interviews, I’ve got the first section of the documentary covered. I’ve got the solar sailing bit covered. I’ve also got the faster than light section covered. What remains is the part about how to sustain human habitation during a 50+ year journey to the stars (I’ve got someone lined up to interview about this), a section on fusion ramjets and other super-rockets, and a section on terraforming (which I think I may have an interviewee for, but I’m not sure).
It’s probably time to start editing and working on the animations.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
A Sale - a palpable sale!
A Sale - a palpable sale!
Spent some time today re-writing the documentary transcript so that it made some kind of sense. It felt like a thankless task, but when I emailed it to the distributors, the return email informed me that the company who’d asked about the HD version of the shark documentary has bought it!
That means I have to get a HD master done – a job I don’t need right now – but I’ve at least got my first sale of the documentary.
The price is £2000 of which I’ll get £1,400. This for me goes some way to proving that I can do this – that my documentary work can sell and that it’s worthwhile working on all my other project ideas.
Great news. and I can go up to Manchester to record my Jodrel bank interviews with renewed confidence.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Lost in Transcription
Lost in Transcription
Having to get a script of my shark documentary for the distribution company presented a bit of a problem. Either I was going to have to write it out myself or I’d have to pay someone to do it.
I found a company on the Internet who would do the transcription for just $0.60 per minute – and who I could use completely automatically – uploading a mp3 file and paying by paypal.
The company (http://www.e24tech.com/) claims not to use computer software to transcribe, but I got back paragraphs like:
The secondary occupation of the sea spy mammals in the form of whales particularly seals. Meant a certain amount of competition for food, but also a food source in them selves in order to process them a whale caucus do enough damage to disable it and it requires very efficient biting mechanism and very efficient teeth.
…so judge for yourself.
Even though I’m now going to have to go through and correct the script, I still think the service is well worthwhile – and so cheap I don’t mind doing corrections. I think I’ll get all my interviews transcribed so I can do a paper edit – something I couldn’t have thought of before.
Having to get a script of my shark documentary for the distribution company presented a bit of a problem. Either I was going to have to write it out myself or I’d have to pay someone to do it.
I found a company on the Internet who would do the transcription for just $0.60 per minute – and who I could use completely automatically – uploading a mp3 file and paying by paypal.
The company (http://www.e24tech.com/) claims not to use computer software to transcribe, but I got back paragraphs like:
The secondary occupation of the sea spy mammals in the form of whales particularly seals. Meant a certain amount of competition for food, but also a food source in them selves in order to process them a whale caucus do enough damage to disable it and it requires very efficient biting mechanism and very efficient teeth.
…so judge for yourself.
Even though I’m now going to have to go through and correct the script, I still think the service is well worthwhile – and so cheap I don’t mind doing corrections. I think I’ll get all my interviews transcribed so I can do a paper edit – something I couldn’t have thought of before.
Friday, December 7, 2007
No go for pre-selling and stupid mistakes
Pre sales
Electric sky have had a meeting and decided that although they like the idea and think it will sell, they don't think they can pre-sell it. I can see their point - we'd be asking people to pay a high price for a low budget documentary from a small producer with limited track record.
It's quite possible TV companies would look at the budget and at the scale of the idea and think it couldn't be done to any decent standard. However, I like taking on impossible projects, and I think it can be done!
The great thing about attempting the impossible is that you get a lot of credibility when it works, and only sympathy when it doesn't. Nobody's expecting very much, so whatever you do is going to impress!
I planned the project without pre-funding and although it would have been nice, it's not neccessary as long as I can convince myself I'll make sales in the end.
not having pre-sales also releaves me of the need to produce a trailler - so I can concentrate on the main programme.
Stupid mistake
Ok - we all do it, but here's my stupid mistake of the week - which I discovered when capturing my footage:
I did the interview - fine.
I rewound to check everything had recorded - fine
Just as I was leaving I saw an opportunity for a cut-away and filmed that.
Of course I didn't re-cue the tape, so I recorded my cutaways over the first 2 minutes of the interview.
doh!
Luckily, it was just the interviewee introducing himself and getting comfortable - no useable material was lost.
Still, it's so easy to do - one of the downsides of working on your own is that you're trying to do everything at once and there's nobody there to stop you messing up!
Satellite
I decided this morning that I think I’m going to try to launch a satellite. More on that ridiculous scheme later if it comes to anything…
George
My baby George has been taken into hospital for observations on his heart, so I'll be visiting a lot and probably will have to slow down work on the documentary for the next week or so.
http://christiandarkin.blogspot.com/2007/12/more-tests-and-fete.html
even so, I'm hoping to do some shooting at Jodrel bank next Friday.
Electric sky have had a meeting and decided that although they like the idea and think it will sell, they don't think they can pre-sell it. I can see their point - we'd be asking people to pay a high price for a low budget documentary from a small producer with limited track record.
It's quite possible TV companies would look at the budget and at the scale of the idea and think it couldn't be done to any decent standard. However, I like taking on impossible projects, and I think it can be done!
The great thing about attempting the impossible is that you get a lot of credibility when it works, and only sympathy when it doesn't. Nobody's expecting very much, so whatever you do is going to impress!
I planned the project without pre-funding and although it would have been nice, it's not neccessary as long as I can convince myself I'll make sales in the end.
not having pre-sales also releaves me of the need to produce a trailler - so I can concentrate on the main programme.
Stupid mistake
Ok - we all do it, but here's my stupid mistake of the week - which I discovered when capturing my footage:
I did the interview - fine.
I rewound to check everything had recorded - fine
Just as I was leaving I saw an opportunity for a cut-away and filmed that.
Of course I didn't re-cue the tape, so I recorded my cutaways over the first 2 minutes of the interview.
doh!
Luckily, it was just the interviewee introducing himself and getting comfortable - no useable material was lost.
Still, it's so easy to do - one of the downsides of working on your own is that you're trying to do everything at once and there's nobody there to stop you messing up!
Satellite
I decided this morning that I think I’m going to try to launch a satellite. More on that ridiculous scheme later if it comes to anything…
George
My baby George has been taken into hospital for observations on his heart, so I'll be visiting a lot and probably will have to slow down work on the documentary for the next week or so.
http://christiandarkin.blogspot.com/2007/12/more-tests-and-fete.html
even so, I'm hoping to do some shooting at Jodrel bank next Friday.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
kit satalites and solar sailing
Today was a long day - as I write I’m on the way back from Glasgow. Set out at 7:30 - trying to buy a ticket, the ticket seller at East Dulwich tried to charge me £250 and refused to sell me the £98 ticket for my journey saying that it wouldn‘t be valid even though I‘d checked it online. I went to Euston where they told me the £98 ticket was fine and there was some problem in their system. That problem ammounts to attempted fraud in my opinion and I’m sure plenty of people have been duped into paying £150 extra for their ticket.
Anyway - the journey was fine - the train is such a great way to travel in the UK. I don’t think I could have done a return trip in a day - even by plane. And rail travel has such a limited carbon footprint. It also allows me to work - and I virtually finished scripting the documentary on the way up.
Glasgow was of course soaked in rain, but the interview was great - Colin was articulate and interesting. I’ll put up some of the interview once I’ve had a chance to take a look at it.
Again, my minimal set-up of HD camcorder, 3 lights, a lapel mic and a reflector proved more than acceptable (although a radio mic might be a good investment).
I could undoubtedly get better pictures by working in a larger way and have to keep re-examining why I don’t do it to make sure I’m doing the right thing:
If I had a lighting cameraman with me, and a full set of lights, the interviews would look a lot better. However, I’m forced to ask at what cost?
Well, let’s see:
Lighting cameraman: £350
Lighting setup and camera: £200
Transport - well, we couldn’t go by train - would have to drive, so that means transport costs of about £100
We couldn’t do it in a day, so that’s double the rates
That’s about £1,200 compared to the £100 it cost me to go alone. The cameraman and equipment would have to be booked in advance, so I couldn’t be flexible about times and places. Which brings me to the final and most significant point:
If I’d done it with a full lighting set-up, we’d have been 2 hours lighting the interview and we’d have had to crash into Colin’s office making enough disruption to have the organisation’s health and safety crew on our backs. The whole interview would have been a lot more hastle and taken most of my interviewee’s day, so he probably wouldn’t have been able to agree to it - even if his organisation had said yes.
Instead of which I could fit in around his schedule, there was minimal disruption, a relaxed and friendly chat and time enough for a pint before I got on the train home. I think the loss of arty interview shots is a price worth paying.
Although it just occurred to me as I write: I should have filmed some of the interview with the interviewee reflected in the solar sail foil he had hanging around the office. That would have made for a lovely shot.
Funny how these things occur to you just after you need them.
never mind.
One thing colin did mention which I find fascinating is that you can now buy space probes in kit form and have them launched for a minimal budget (50,000). In other words, universities can design their own payloads (providing they’re under 1kg and within a certain size limit) and put them into space. This is a fantastically inspiring notion and I’m definitely going to look into whose doing it!
Anyway - the journey was fine - the train is such a great way to travel in the UK. I don’t think I could have done a return trip in a day - even by plane. And rail travel has such a limited carbon footprint. It also allows me to work - and I virtually finished scripting the documentary on the way up.
Glasgow was of course soaked in rain, but the interview was great - Colin was articulate and interesting. I’ll put up some of the interview once I’ve had a chance to take a look at it.
Again, my minimal set-up of HD camcorder, 3 lights, a lapel mic and a reflector proved more than acceptable (although a radio mic might be a good investment).
I could undoubtedly get better pictures by working in a larger way and have to keep re-examining why I don’t do it to make sure I’m doing the right thing:
If I had a lighting cameraman with me, and a full set of lights, the interviews would look a lot better. However, I’m forced to ask at what cost?
Well, let’s see:
Lighting cameraman: £350
Lighting setup and camera: £200
Transport - well, we couldn’t go by train - would have to drive, so that means transport costs of about £100
We couldn’t do it in a day, so that’s double the rates
That’s about £1,200 compared to the £100 it cost me to go alone. The cameraman and equipment would have to be booked in advance, so I couldn’t be flexible about times and places. Which brings me to the final and most significant point:
If I’d done it with a full lighting set-up, we’d have been 2 hours lighting the interview and we’d have had to crash into Colin’s office making enough disruption to have the organisation’s health and safety crew on our backs. The whole interview would have been a lot more hastle and taken most of my interviewee’s day, so he probably wouldn’t have been able to agree to it - even if his organisation had said yes.
Instead of which I could fit in around his schedule, there was minimal disruption, a relaxed and friendly chat and time enough for a pint before I got on the train home. I think the loss of arty interview shots is a price worth paying.
Although it just occurred to me as I write: I should have filmed some of the interview with the interviewee reflected in the solar sail foil he had hanging around the office. That would have made for a lovely shot.
Funny how these things occur to you just after you need them.
never mind.
One thing colin did mention which I find fascinating is that you can now buy space probes in kit form and have them launched for a minimal budget (50,000). In other words, universities can design their own payloads (providing they’re under 1kg and within a certain size limit) and put them into space. This is a fantastically inspiring notion and I’m definitely going to look into whose doing it!
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
interview questions
Interview questions
Wrote a brief outline with a few questions for my interviewee in Glasgow tomorrow. Giving him the questions in advance will hopefully mean he can prepare a little – even if I deviate on the day – which I’m sure I will.
Tomorrow will be a long day – leaving here at 7am going right up to Glasgow by train, doing the interview and getting more or less straight back on the train to come home by 1am.
Ordinarily I’d break the journey, I don’t want to be away from Lisa and little George. It looks as though George is going to have to go into hospital and I don’t know when.
Wrote a brief outline with a few questions for my interviewee in Glasgow tomorrow. Giving him the questions in advance will hopefully mean he can prepare a little – even if I deviate on the day – which I’m sure I will.
Tomorrow will be a long day – leaving here at 7am going right up to Glasgow by train, doing the interview and getting more or less straight back on the train to come home by 1am.
Ordinarily I’d break the journey, I don’t want to be away from Lisa and little George. It looks as though George is going to have to go into hospital and I don’t know when.
Monday, December 3, 2007
scriptwriting and creationism
I found this frightening graph showing the percentages of people who believe/disbelieve evolution. I can only assume there’s either widespread ignorance or people are willfully fooling themselves because you don’t have to go to the Galapagos islands to see evolution in action – you just need to open your eyes.
scriptwriting
Today I’m scriptwriting – my background is as a writer (I’ve written for magazines, newspapers, theatre, radio and TV comedy sketches), but writing documentaries is an unusual discipline.
For a start, I’m writing the first script without having done all the interviews. The idea is to help me get an overview of the project so I know what I’m asking, what shots I need and what 3d animations I’m going to need to do. This means I’m working in the dark because I don’t know what exactly needs to be said or how much of the script will end up in the finished piece.
What I can do is more or less script the main introductions to parts of the story, and the storytelling scripts which will describe the CG action. Later I’ll re-write to give me a tighter script once I start editing.
I’m also not sure of all the facts and figures yet, so I’m leaving a lot of blank spaces. I usually write the general sentiment but leave out the facts replacing them with a series of question marks. That way I can fill them in easily when I come to do the final script, but don’t need to keep stopping the flow of writing to check my facts.
I write on the basis that a narrator will probably speak about 120-130 words per minute.
Here’s a brief section:
The beauty of the ships which carried the first humans across the oceans was their simplicity. The elegance of their design meant that these craft were cheap to build, easy to maintain on long journeys and carried no fuel. Could interstellar craft ever be designed on these principles?
A spaceship leaves Earth orbit. It will travel at .???12????% of the speed of light and yet it has no engines. It’s destination is deep in space, and yet it’s initial heading is straight into the heart of our solar system. In fact this ship is about to make the most dangerous maneuver of its journey: it makes its way directly towards the burning sun.
As the ship heads closer to the sun, its shielding begins to burn off. It’s vital that the craft gets as close as possible to the sun, but the closer it gets, the hotter it gets and the more chance there is that the radiation will destroy its systems and kill any living thing on board.
When the ship is within ????????? of the sun itself and its external temperature has exceeded ??????????? an internal mechanism is triggered to unfurl its solar sail – a sheet of unimaginably thin foil hundreds of meters across.
Instantly, the ship begins to decelerate, the solar wind – the pressure exerted by the light pushing on the craft’s sails is enough to propel it away from the sun and into space.
As the craft moves further from the sun, the solar winds become less strong, but in space, there is no friction. The ship’s acceleration becomes less and less, but by that time it has reached ?????????????????????.
Solar sails are not science fiction. The solar winds are a real phenomonen – in fact current craft have already used them to make minor corrections to their course. Purpose built sails are already being tested. And the technology is mature enough to allow scientists to create real designs for spacecraft.
Friday, November 30, 2007
solar sailing and nuclear pulse engines
We are Sailing (solar sailing)
Today’s job was 3d animation. I managed to get the designs done for two of my spaceships: the nuclear pulse ship (which I’d already built for an illustration a while back, but which needed animating). The ship is traveling very fast, but it’s powered by nuclear (or antimatter) explosions being dropped out of the back of the craft one after another. Each explosion is supposed to be a fraction of a second apart, but because that wouldn’t be easy to see I’ve gone for a matrix style slow-down effect.
The other craft is a solar sail – a very elegant idea (which I’m going to do an interview about in Glasgow next week– I’m hoping to go up from London, do the interview and get back home the same day!). the solar sail animation shows the sail being deployed as the ship approaches the sun – it’s a tricky maneuver and the camera angles aren’t great yet – I’ll have to refine this one!
Today’s job was 3d animation. I managed to get the designs done for two of my spaceships: the nuclear pulse ship (which I’d already built for an illustration a while back, but which needed animating). The ship is traveling very fast, but it’s powered by nuclear (or antimatter) explosions being dropped out of the back of the craft one after another. Each explosion is supposed to be a fraction of a second apart, but because that wouldn’t be easy to see I’ve gone for a matrix style slow-down effect.
The other craft is a solar sail – a very elegant idea (which I’m going to do an interview about in Glasgow next week– I’m hoping to go up from London, do the interview and get back home the same day!). the solar sail animation shows the sail being deployed as the ship approaches the sun – it’s a tricky maneuver and the camera angles aren’t great yet – I’ll have to refine this one!
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Website update
Spent much of the day updating my website to include my animation work and to make it less dependent on science imagery. You can see the results at www.darkin.demon.co.uk. I've now got some of the science animations into a reasonable format, so I was able to create an animation showreel for the site.
I also added to my budget on google adwords.
The idea of adwords is that you give google a daily budget which it spends on placing your advert as a sponsored link when anyone searches for a given set of words – like 3d illustration for example. It’s a good system which has brought me work in the past and costs only as much as you want to pay.
You pay only when someone clicks on your add – and the cost depends on the keyword searched for and how many other advertisers are bidding for it. consequently, it costs about 15p to get a click based on “illustration” (so please don’t click on my link – type the address instead!).
If you’re going to start up a google adwords account, take my advice and don’t keep checking how many clicks you’ve had – you can waste a lot of time doing that!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
nicole kidman daniel craig and hugh grant
Yesterday I went into town to do a little shooting – I wanted a few cut-aways indicating things like speed, travel, light, global warming and time distortion. All of these things happen quite regularly in central London, so I thought I’d be OK.
The main focus was to get stop motion video clips – and to do this I used an ordinary camera set on 3megapixels and tripod mounted. I then took photos one after another.
I was a little annoyed when I found I couldn’t get into Soho because the police had closed off the streets, but less so when I realized that Leicester Square was playing host to the premiere of “the golden compass”.
I decided to stick around. This might be a good opportunity to get some footage for stock libraries…
Because I was there at about 2pm, I was able to pick out a pretty good space. Right opposite the sky TV spot on the red carpet. A band of autograph hunters had already begun to gather (I was stood next to someone with a T-shirt bearing the words “you are looking at the next Mrs Daniel Craig” and with a poster which got a lot of press attention for her. She was interviewed by about 4 news teams.
About 3 hours later, someone from the X-factor production came by trying to whip the crowd up into a fervor about the fact that the remaining contestants were coming to the premiere. They wanted to get some interviews and shots giving the impression that somebody cared. They’ll have their work cut out editing the results, I think! a guy nearby gave an interview, but he was really taking the piss.
So much of TV is so crap!
Anyway, eventually (around 6 – after I’ve been waiting around for 4 hours in the cold). The stars started to turn up and I was in a great position to get shots of Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig (who of course agreed to marry the woman next to me) and Hugh Grant. Of course the X factor people were there, but I didn’t want to waste too much tape on them!
Here’s some of the results:
Anybody know where’s a good library to sell stock footage of celebrities? I don’t want to think I stood in the cold for nothing!
CG stock
At the same time, I’m trying to render out some stock footage for the science library – the 2nd computer has been rendering for a couple of weeks now and it’s time to turn the 8,000 single frames of video into high quality HD clips. Not surprisingly this is really choking up the computer… everything is slow – including writing text files. What can I do while this is going on? Well, I’m trying to do admin, but it’s infuriating because everything is so slow.
Electric sky now tell me there’s a company interested in broadcasting the shark evolution documentary! Great news, but they want a HD version. I’ve only had a SD version made up because it costs so much to get the HD transfer done. Never mind, if they say yes, it’ll be worth having the master done.
Interviews
I’ve now got confirmed interviews with Jodrell bank and with an expert on solar sailing – both in the next couple of weeks. That should give me enough material to put together a trailer to start selling “going to Gliese”.
Hopefully I’ll get some feedback on the synopsis and budget next week.
The main focus was to get stop motion video clips – and to do this I used an ordinary camera set on 3megapixels and tripod mounted. I then took photos one after another.
I was a little annoyed when I found I couldn’t get into Soho because the police had closed off the streets, but less so when I realized that Leicester Square was playing host to the premiere of “the golden compass”.
I decided to stick around. This might be a good opportunity to get some footage for stock libraries…
Because I was there at about 2pm, I was able to pick out a pretty good space. Right opposite the sky TV spot on the red carpet. A band of autograph hunters had already begun to gather (I was stood next to someone with a T-shirt bearing the words “you are looking at the next Mrs Daniel Craig” and with a poster which got a lot of press attention for her. She was interviewed by about 4 news teams.
About 3 hours later, someone from the X-factor production came by trying to whip the crowd up into a fervor about the fact that the remaining contestants were coming to the premiere. They wanted to get some interviews and shots giving the impression that somebody cared. They’ll have their work cut out editing the results, I think! a guy nearby gave an interview, but he was really taking the piss.
So much of TV is so crap!
Anyway, eventually (around 6 – after I’ve been waiting around for 4 hours in the cold). The stars started to turn up and I was in a great position to get shots of Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig (who of course agreed to marry the woman next to me) and Hugh Grant. Of course the X factor people were there, but I didn’t want to waste too much tape on them!
Here’s some of the results:
Anybody know where’s a good library to sell stock footage of celebrities? I don’t want to think I stood in the cold for nothing!
CG stock
At the same time, I’m trying to render out some stock footage for the science library – the 2nd computer has been rendering for a couple of weeks now and it’s time to turn the 8,000 single frames of video into high quality HD clips. Not surprisingly this is really choking up the computer… everything is slow – including writing text files. What can I do while this is going on? Well, I’m trying to do admin, but it’s infuriating because everything is so slow.
Electric sky now tell me there’s a company interested in broadcasting the shark evolution documentary! Great news, but they want a HD version. I’ve only had a SD version made up because it costs so much to get the HD transfer done. Never mind, if they say yes, it’ll be worth having the master done.
Interviews
I’ve now got confirmed interviews with Jodrell bank and with an expert on solar sailing – both in the next couple of weeks. That should give me enough material to put together a trailer to start selling “going to Gliese”.
Hopefully I’ll get some feedback on the synopsis and budget next week.
Monday, November 26, 2007
proposals and budgeting
Tomorrow I’m planning to do a little filming on the streets of London – getting a few cut-aways…
Proposals
Spent today putting together a proposal document for the documentary. This is primarily so that Electric sky have something to talk about when discussing trying to get pre-sales for it. I’ll eventually have to put together a trailer – but I want to wait until I’ve got a little more footage.
They asked me to put together a synopsis, a list of interviewees and a budget. Writing synopses is always hard, but like any writing work - once you get a few key paragraphs in place, it tends to fall together. I put a few pics in (a couple of my 3d models and some shots from nasa) and the list of interviewees I’ve already put together.
I know the synopsis usually comes first in any film project – primarily because you can’t usually start work without it. however, I’ve got the camera and I’m going ahead anyway. Still, the synopsis is a good discipline – if you write it without knowing pretty well what you’re trying to do, it will become clear that there’s something wrong when you read it back. If your synopsis is waffly, then your project is probably not well enough focused.
Here’s mine:
Duration 50 mins
Going to Gliese is a 50 minute documentary exploring the possibilities of examining, visiting and eventually colonizing a planet orbiting another star.
It’s the story of how mankind’s first steps out into the universe might be made and it uses a mixture of interview, Nasa footage and computer animation to look at the technologies – both available and speculative – which might allow us to see more clearly, and eventually visit unimaginably distant worlds.
Every problem Earth has comes down to one thing. Too many people and not enough resources. But in April 2007, mankind caught a glimpse of a future in which those constraints no longer mattered.
In the constellation of Libra, astronomers discovered a planet orbiting a nearby star. Planets around other stars had been discovered before - What was different about this one was that it had the potential to be habitable. The planet Gliese 581 c is slightly larger than the Earth, but it is likely to be covered with oceans and continents just as the earth is.
For the first time in human history, we are able to detect earth sized planets orbiting other stars and as our ability to see these planets increases, so we can begin to discern more and more about the environments around our neighboring stars.
The distances to these stars are huge, but scientists are already developing methods of propulsion which have the potential to reduce journey times to our nearest neighbors to just a few decades.
At the same time, the groundwork is being laid for the kind of sustainable, sealed environments which will allow humans to make long interstellar journeys and set up bases on other worlds.
Some of the technologies we’ll explore are already here - like the ability to see distant planets. Others are tested and on the way to becoming a reality - like ships which “sail” on the solar winds. Others represent engineering challenges, but are based on established knowledge – like nuclear powered ships and artificial biospheres.
Still others explore more exotic scientific possibilities – such as the “terreforming” of other worlds into Earth like planets, and faster than light travel making use of loopholes in Einstein’s theories.
The possibility of colonizing other worlds sounds remote – but will you still think so when you’ve seen “Going To Gliese”?
The budget is a little tougher… I’m the only one working on the project, and I’m doing it pretty much for nothing. Calculating how much I should be paying people is a bit of a shot in the dark… if anyone out there has opinions on this budget, I’d love to hear them!
Proposals
Spent today putting together a proposal document for the documentary. This is primarily so that Electric sky have something to talk about when discussing trying to get pre-sales for it. I’ll eventually have to put together a trailer – but I want to wait until I’ve got a little more footage.
They asked me to put together a synopsis, a list of interviewees and a budget. Writing synopses is always hard, but like any writing work - once you get a few key paragraphs in place, it tends to fall together. I put a few pics in (a couple of my 3d models and some shots from nasa) and the list of interviewees I’ve already put together.
I know the synopsis usually comes first in any film project – primarily because you can’t usually start work without it. however, I’ve got the camera and I’m going ahead anyway. Still, the synopsis is a good discipline – if you write it without knowing pretty well what you’re trying to do, it will become clear that there’s something wrong when you read it back. If your synopsis is waffly, then your project is probably not well enough focused.
Here’s mine:
Duration 50 mins
Going to Gliese is a 50 minute documentary exploring the possibilities of examining, visiting and eventually colonizing a planet orbiting another star.
It’s the story of how mankind’s first steps out into the universe might be made and it uses a mixture of interview, Nasa footage and computer animation to look at the technologies – both available and speculative – which might allow us to see more clearly, and eventually visit unimaginably distant worlds.
Every problem Earth has comes down to one thing. Too many people and not enough resources. But in April 2007, mankind caught a glimpse of a future in which those constraints no longer mattered.
In the constellation of Libra, astronomers discovered a planet orbiting a nearby star. Planets around other stars had been discovered before - What was different about this one was that it had the potential to be habitable. The planet Gliese 581 c is slightly larger than the Earth, but it is likely to be covered with oceans and continents just as the earth is.
For the first time in human history, we are able to detect earth sized planets orbiting other stars and as our ability to see these planets increases, so we can begin to discern more and more about the environments around our neighboring stars.
The distances to these stars are huge, but scientists are already developing methods of propulsion which have the potential to reduce journey times to our nearest neighbors to just a few decades.
At the same time, the groundwork is being laid for the kind of sustainable, sealed environments which will allow humans to make long interstellar journeys and set up bases on other worlds.
Some of the technologies we’ll explore are already here - like the ability to see distant planets. Others are tested and on the way to becoming a reality - like ships which “sail” on the solar winds. Others represent engineering challenges, but are based on established knowledge – like nuclear powered ships and artificial biospheres.
Still others explore more exotic scientific possibilities – such as the “terreforming” of other worlds into Earth like planets, and faster than light travel making use of loopholes in Einstein’s theories.
The possibility of colonizing other worlds sounds remote – but will you still think so when you’ve seen “Going To Gliese”?
The budget is a little tougher… I’m the only one working on the project, and I’m doing it pretty much for nothing. Calculating how much I should be paying people is a bit of a shot in the dark… if anyone out there has opinions on this budget, I’d love to hear them!
Jelly and fingerprints
As a side note, I saw a great piece in this weekend’s Bad Science column in the Guardian. It said basically that all the talk about biometrics as the antidote to terrorism and fraud is so much tosh. Apparently you can fool a fingerprint detector 80% of the time using nothing more sophisticated than household jelly!
You can also create a useable fingerprint from a mark left on a wine glass for about £20.
People put so much store in technology without ever examining it – as long as enough long words are used people just switch off and accept what they’re being told.
I’d love to do a documentary where I (or some other geek) shows the viewer in “cookery programme” style how to fool fingerprint machines, break into others computers using wireless networks in starbucks, buy fake passports, get doctorates, or buy people’s credit card details from Russian fraudsters (another piece in this weekend’s guardian).
It’d be fun – but probably a little risky!
I could even do a piece on home bomb making…. Perhaps not.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Natural History
Last night I went to meet a friend, at the Natural History Museum. He’s a researcher into fossil fishes and helped a lot on my last documentary. I also gave him some of the animations from the programme and he used them in a talk he gave to some students.
Apparently, two of them came out of the talk wanting to be paleontologists! And the museum itself is delighted with those talks – and with the part the animations played in them. When I was making the programme, I approached the museum and after a couple of meetings, they decided that they couldn’t let me film inside the museum without paying them. I offered them use of the animations in return, but they declined… so, now I’ve let them use them for free!.. hmm…
My friend has given me a lot of information about the way the museum works, and I’m hopeful that together we can set up some way that I can become involved with them… I’d love to interview their palentologists for a record for the museum.. I’d also love to do some animations and illustrations for them.
There’s also the fact that an image library I work with wants to start selling video clips and filming at the museum would give them a lot of clips to add to their library – perhaps the museum would allow this for a cut of the profits.
My friend is going to try to set up a meeting with the talks organizer. It’s a start.
Distribution
Electric Sky, the distributors of my last documentary say they’ve had screeners requested by 30 TV companies so far – that’s a good start and hopefully some will turn into sales. I estimate that if we get 8 sales over the next 5 years at an average of £3,000 per showing, then taking away the distributior’s commission, I’ll have justified making the documentary.
Electric Sky also said they might be able to pre-sell my new documentary – that would be a great weight off my mind, allowing me to commit time (and money) to it without worrying that it was eating into my income and not providing me with anything in return.
In order to do that, they want a trailer, a synopsis, a list of interviewees and a budget breakdown. Hopefully after I’ve done a couple more interviews and some animation I can do a trailer. The budget will be tougher… I’ve no idea where to start since I’m the only one working on the project and I’m not paying anyone! I guess I’ll just have to work out how much hiring people would cost and make that my wage for doing each job… I’ll probably be shocked when I work out how much I ought to be paying (and being paid!).
Anyway, people are being slow to respond about interview dates. Time to give them another prod on Monday.
Queing up
Still trying to render some more stock animations – there’s now about 75 queued up on my PC and it’s rendering day and night – each 10 second animation takes about 8-12 hours to render. I’m hoping these stock animations will sell – but I’ve no guarantee…
Last night I went to meet a friend, at the Natural History Museum. He’s a researcher into fossil fishes and helped a lot on my last documentary. I also gave him some of the animations from the programme and he used them in a talk he gave to some students.
Apparently, two of them came out of the talk wanting to be paleontologists! And the museum itself is delighted with those talks – and with the part the animations played in them. When I was making the programme, I approached the museum and after a couple of meetings, they decided that they couldn’t let me film inside the museum without paying them. I offered them use of the animations in return, but they declined… so, now I’ve let them use them for free!.. hmm…
My friend has given me a lot of information about the way the museum works, and I’m hopeful that together we can set up some way that I can become involved with them… I’d love to interview their palentologists for a record for the museum.. I’d also love to do some animations and illustrations for them.
There’s also the fact that an image library I work with wants to start selling video clips and filming at the museum would give them a lot of clips to add to their library – perhaps the museum would allow this for a cut of the profits.
My friend is going to try to set up a meeting with the talks organizer. It’s a start.
Distribution
Electric Sky, the distributors of my last documentary say they’ve had screeners requested by 30 TV companies so far – that’s a good start and hopefully some will turn into sales. I estimate that if we get 8 sales over the next 5 years at an average of £3,000 per showing, then taking away the distributior’s commission, I’ll have justified making the documentary.
Electric Sky also said they might be able to pre-sell my new documentary – that would be a great weight off my mind, allowing me to commit time (and money) to it without worrying that it was eating into my income and not providing me with anything in return.
In order to do that, they want a trailer, a synopsis, a list of interviewees and a budget breakdown. Hopefully after I’ve done a couple more interviews and some animation I can do a trailer. The budget will be tougher… I’ve no idea where to start since I’m the only one working on the project and I’m not paying anyone! I guess I’ll just have to work out how much hiring people would cost and make that my wage for doing each job… I’ll probably be shocked when I work out how much I ought to be paying (and being paid!).
Anyway, people are being slow to respond about interview dates. Time to give them another prod on Monday.
Queing up
Still trying to render some more stock animations – there’s now about 75 queued up on my PC and it’s rendering day and night – each 10 second animation takes about 8-12 hours to render. I’m hoping these stock animations will sell – but I’ve no guarantee…
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
warp drive
Warp drive
Yesterday, I spent the whole day designing a warp drive ship. Ok – not something many people do for a living, but what the hell! I’m trying to base my animations for Going To Gliese on as much of the real physics as possible.
Warp bubble creation is really expensive in terms of energy (current calculations suggest you’d need ¼ of the mass of the sun just to create the bubble)… so I’ve made the ship spherical so as to use the bubble shape to its best advantage. The front of the ship needs to be heavily shielded because as it travels (actually it doesn't move- space is compressed and expanded around it!), there's a lot of energy build up at the front.
I’m imagining that there are four stages:
1) the ship itself
2) The actuator array: a donut shaped object around the ship which produces the warp bubble. The actuator array is outside the bubble and projects it inwards to surround the ship at its centre, then moves away to a safe distance. At the edges of the array are negative energy generators – perhaps whirlpools like mini black holes or galaxies. Or perhaps, more elegantly, there’s just a pipe around the outside acting as a cyclotron
3) The accelerator array: a ring, or more likely a series of rings arranged like the barrel of a gun. These are made up of discrete particles – small disposable objects which are projected one after another into the path of the bubble, detonating to cause a disturbance which sets the ship in motion and being destroyed in the process.
4) The decelerator seed: basically a single actuator particle placed in the path of the oncoming ship designed to detect the disturbance in spacetime and detonate to collapse the bubble.
Here’s a clip:
Yesterday, I spent the whole day designing a warp drive ship. Ok – not something many people do for a living, but what the hell! I’m trying to base my animations for Going To Gliese on as much of the real physics as possible.
Warp bubble creation is really expensive in terms of energy (current calculations suggest you’d need ¼ of the mass of the sun just to create the bubble)… so I’ve made the ship spherical so as to use the bubble shape to its best advantage. The front of the ship needs to be heavily shielded because as it travels (actually it doesn't move- space is compressed and expanded around it!), there's a lot of energy build up at the front.
I’m imagining that there are four stages:
1) the ship itself
2) The actuator array: a donut shaped object around the ship which produces the warp bubble. The actuator array is outside the bubble and projects it inwards to surround the ship at its centre, then moves away to a safe distance. At the edges of the array are negative energy generators – perhaps whirlpools like mini black holes or galaxies. Or perhaps, more elegantly, there’s just a pipe around the outside acting as a cyclotron
3) The accelerator array: a ring, or more likely a series of rings arranged like the barrel of a gun. These are made up of discrete particles – small disposable objects which are projected one after another into the path of the bubble, detonating to cause a disturbance which sets the ship in motion and being destroyed in the process.
4) The decelerator seed: basically a single actuator particle placed in the path of the oncoming ship designed to detect the disturbance in spacetime and detonate to collapse the bubble.
Here’s a clip:
Monday, November 19, 2007
To do list this week
Edit the footage shot at the BIS into a DVD they can use and keep.
Arrange the remaining interviewees – in Glasgow, Jodrell bank, Bristol and London… I have some other people to contact (at Nasa and the British space programme), but I want to get the Jodrell bank footage shot and a snippet online first since it gives me more kudos for my potential interviewees.
Talk to CurrentTV and Electric Sky about the project and get them on-side if possible.
Meet up with Raoul at the Natural History Museum and find out if he can help me set up meetings about shooting stock footage (for the image library I work with) and about the possibilities of working with them on some projects… I’d really love to be working with the NHM.
Release forms
Somebody on the doculink yahoo group was asking about property release forms, so here’s the text of the property and interviewee release forms I use:
LETTER OF RELEASE
To: Christian Darkin
From: [●]
Date: [●]
Dear Sirs
“interstellar travel” (the “Project”)
I hereby confirm and agree that I have consented to contribute to the Project and that I am aware that my contribution will be recorded on tape or film for the purpose of inclusion in whole or in part.
I hereby agree that you may use (or refrain from using) and edit in any manner you may think fit, the recording of my contribution. You may use my contribution for any purpose in the Project and for any purpose in connection with the Project, as you may in your absolute discretion think fit. I agree that you may use my contribution throughout the world, including by using it in whole or in part in any publication, television broadcast or any other form of dissemination.
I waive all moral rights in my contribution to which I might be entitled in any country and assign to you all copyright in my contribution for the duration of the life of the copyright. In addition, I give all consents necessary for your use of my contribution for the purposes set out in this letter.
I also agree that you may use my voice, name, likeness and biographical information in relation to any use to which you may put my contribution and/or any information or views expressed therein in any advertising and publicity relating to you or the Project.
I warrant that nothing said or implied by me (or in any documents or photographs disclosed to you by me) shall infringe the copyright or any other rights of any third party or be defamatory or infringe the right of privacy of any third party and I agree to indemnify you and your licensees or assignees against any costs, claims, demands or expenses arising out of any breach or claimed breach of this warranty.
I shall not be entitled to any payment from any source arising out of or by reason of any use to which the contribution or any recording thereof may be put.
Yours faithfully,
………………………………………………………
Job title:
………………………………………………………
LOCATION AGREEMENT
To: [●]
Date: [●]
Dear Christian Darkin
BIS (the “Property”) - “Interstellar travel” (the “Project”)
We write to confirm our agreement that, in consideration of our arranging to film scenes and make recordings for the Project at the Property: -
1. You hereby grant to us and persons authorised by us (and warrant that you are entitled to grant to us) the [exclusive] [non-exclusive] right during the Period to enter upon the Property and to film, photograph and record all or any part of [the interior, the exterior and the contents of] the Property and for such purpose to bring onto and into the Property such persons and equipment as we may deem appropriate.
2. The “Period” shall mean (i) from [●] to [●] [and (ii) such other days or half days as we may mutually agree].
3. All rights in the films, photographs and recordings made and/or taken by us at the Property shall vest in us and we shall be entitled to assign, license and/or exploit the same by all means and in all media as we may at our absolute discretion elect. We shall be entitled to refer to the Property by its true name or by a fictitious name or not to refer to the Property by name and shall have no obligation to you to include any or all of such films, photographs, recordings or transmissions in the Project or to exploit the Project.
4. You hereby agree that you will not make any changes whatsoever to the Property or its fixtures and fittings both during the Period and for a further period of [six months] commencing immediately upon expiry of the Period.
5. We shall indemnify you against any damage that may be caused to the Property by the negligent act or omission of ourselves or our agents, employees or invitees.
6. This Agreement [shall be freely assignable by us and] shall be governed by the laws of England.
Please indicate your acceptance of the foregoing by signing and returning to us the enclosed duplicate of this letter.
Yours faithfully Accepted and agreed by:
..................................….. ..................................…...
for and on behalf of for and on behalf of
[●] [●]
Spent today cutting a DVD for the British Interplanetary Society – doing an edit for their records was my way of thanking them for their help since I can’t afford to pay my interviewees.
It’s also a good way to become familiar with my material and cut out the useless parts of the interviews. Hopefully editing the documentary will now be easier.
The result will be a little rough – i.e not really a professional broadcast piece, but it will give them a good record of their day. If I’d been covering it properly, I’d have wanted at least a couple of cameras and crucially better mics for the event itself.
Stock videos
Rendering for my stock videos is going painfuly slowly - I've had my 2nd PC rendering day and night for a week and it's done about 10 clips....
Edit the footage shot at the BIS into a DVD they can use and keep.
Arrange the remaining interviewees – in Glasgow, Jodrell bank, Bristol and London… I have some other people to contact (at Nasa and the British space programme), but I want to get the Jodrell bank footage shot and a snippet online first since it gives me more kudos for my potential interviewees.
Talk to CurrentTV and Electric Sky about the project and get them on-side if possible.
Meet up with Raoul at the Natural History Museum and find out if he can help me set up meetings about shooting stock footage (for the image library I work with) and about the possibilities of working with them on some projects… I’d really love to be working with the NHM.
Release forms
Somebody on the doculink yahoo group was asking about property release forms, so here’s the text of the property and interviewee release forms I use:
LETTER OF RELEASE
To: Christian Darkin
From: [●]
Date: [●]
Dear Sirs
“interstellar travel” (the “Project”)
I hereby confirm and agree that I have consented to contribute to the Project and that I am aware that my contribution will be recorded on tape or film for the purpose of inclusion in whole or in part.
I hereby agree that you may use (or refrain from using) and edit in any manner you may think fit, the recording of my contribution. You may use my contribution for any purpose in the Project and for any purpose in connection with the Project, as you may in your absolute discretion think fit. I agree that you may use my contribution throughout the world, including by using it in whole or in part in any publication, television broadcast or any other form of dissemination.
I waive all moral rights in my contribution to which I might be entitled in any country and assign to you all copyright in my contribution for the duration of the life of the copyright. In addition, I give all consents necessary for your use of my contribution for the purposes set out in this letter.
I also agree that you may use my voice, name, likeness and biographical information in relation to any use to which you may put my contribution and/or any information or views expressed therein in any advertising and publicity relating to you or the Project.
I warrant that nothing said or implied by me (or in any documents or photographs disclosed to you by me) shall infringe the copyright or any other rights of any third party or be defamatory or infringe the right of privacy of any third party and I agree to indemnify you and your licensees or assignees against any costs, claims, demands or expenses arising out of any breach or claimed breach of this warranty.
I shall not be entitled to any payment from any source arising out of or by reason of any use to which the contribution or any recording thereof may be put.
Yours faithfully,
………………………………………………………
Job title:
………………………………………………………
LOCATION AGREEMENT
To: [●]
Date: [●]
Dear Christian Darkin
BIS (the “Property”) - “Interstellar travel” (the “Project”)
We write to confirm our agreement that, in consideration of our arranging to film scenes and make recordings for the Project at the Property: -
1. You hereby grant to us and persons authorised by us (and warrant that you are entitled to grant to us) the [exclusive] [non-exclusive] right during the Period to enter upon the Property and to film, photograph and record all or any part of [the interior, the exterior and the contents of] the Property and for such purpose to bring onto and into the Property such persons and equipment as we may deem appropriate.
2. The “Period” shall mean (i) from [●] to [●] [and (ii) such other days or half days as we may mutually agree].
3. All rights in the films, photographs and recordings made and/or taken by us at the Property shall vest in us and we shall be entitled to assign, license and/or exploit the same by all means and in all media as we may at our absolute discretion elect. We shall be entitled to refer to the Property by its true name or by a fictitious name or not to refer to the Property by name and shall have no obligation to you to include any or all of such films, photographs, recordings or transmissions in the Project or to exploit the Project.
4. You hereby agree that you will not make any changes whatsoever to the Property or its fixtures and fittings both during the Period and for a further period of [six months] commencing immediately upon expiry of the Period.
5. We shall indemnify you against any damage that may be caused to the Property by the negligent act or omission of ourselves or our agents, employees or invitees.
6. This Agreement [shall be freely assignable by us and] shall be governed by the laws of England.
Please indicate your acceptance of the foregoing by signing and returning to us the enclosed duplicate of this letter.
Yours faithfully Accepted and agreed by:
..................................….. ..................................…...
for and on behalf of for and on behalf of
[●] [●]
Spent today cutting a DVD for the British Interplanetary Society – doing an edit for their records was my way of thanking them for their help since I can’t afford to pay my interviewees.
It’s also a good way to become familiar with my material and cut out the useless parts of the interviews. Hopefully editing the documentary will now be easier.
The result will be a little rough – i.e not really a professional broadcast piece, but it will give them a good record of their day. If I’d been covering it properly, I’d have wanted at least a couple of cameras and crucially better mics for the event itself.
Stock videos
Rendering for my stock videos is going painfuly slowly - I've had my 2nd PC rendering day and night for a week and it's done about 10 clips....
Friday, November 16, 2007
Filming at the BIS
Yesterday I spent the whole day at the British Interplanetary Society Warp Drive symposium. A small event gathering scientists interested in faster than light travel by manipulating the fabric of spacetime.
Ok, it sounds pretty outlandish.
However, not to misrepresent them, they’re actually physicists interested in the mathematics of some strange phenomena thrown up by Einstein (among others). They’re not talking about developing a warp drive any time soon. In fact they’re not even convinced it’s possible.
What they are saying is that there are some intriguing possibilities in current theories which don’t rule out the possibility of traveling faster than light. In fact, exotic ideas like other dimensions, wormholes and negative energy are quite well accepted in physics – however bizarre they might seem. And the idea of time passing differently depending on where you’re standing has actually been tested and found to be true!
Anyway, the event was small – about 40 people – and most of the presentations were beyond me – the maths is just too complex.
Everyone’s welcoming and helpful and they set me up in their library – very quiet and easy to light. But it gets to midday and I haven’t done any interviews. It’s difficult to get anyone alone for long enough.
Eventually I manage to get 4 interviews. One of which I’ve not lit very well – his face is quite dark - but I can rescue it in Premiere.
Another has sound problems – I’ve decided not to let the camera handle the audio adjustment automatically because last time I did I was interviewing someone about shark teeth and every time he got to the end of a sentence, the volume dropped, so the camera adjusted the mike up. Then when he started talking again, he was a little too loud and it took a fraction of a second to adjust down again.
This was fine most of the time, but if the sentence started with a hard consonant (like the T in Teeth for example) it distorted slightly.
However adjusting manually this time gave another problem – I adjusted the mic and started the interview. The mic was rubbing against his jacket, so I asked him to move it. that meant it was closer to his face and I got the same problem again because I was concentrating on the interview and didn’t notice!
The other two interviews are pretty good – although they’re more rushed than I’d have liked as I had to do them at lunch and at the end of the day. I didn’t get time to have much of the lunch – which was good because I didn’t tell them I didn’t eat meat and they served lamb. I didn’t want to say anything because they were being so generous and helpful.
I recorded an hour of the question and answer session at the end of the day – mainly for the society’s benefit. The sound won’t be good enough for broadcast. However, it will work as cut-aways hopefully.
A necessary waste of time
Today I spent the whole morning capturing, and looking at my footage and editing the following 2 minute clip. Probably I won’t use any of it.
However, I can’t help thinking it’s a worthwhile exercise at the beginning of a project like this. It reassures me that I will be able to get something useful out of what I’ve shot and gives me some kind of handle on how the programme might eventually look.
It feels like I haven’t done anything, but at least now there’s something concrete to show potential interviewees – I’ll have to get it up on my website.
I got a reply from one of the magazines I wrote to about the possibility of covering the conference … the editor said I should get back to them if there was anything interesting at the event. My feeling is, however, that they’ve already covered the basic warp bubble idea and I lack the understanding to delve deeply into the specific and rather vertical subjects discussed at the event, so I don’t think I’m going to be able to offer anything to them.
However, the BIS are interesting people and friendly. They’re also hosting a big conference next year in Glasgow… maybe if they like what I’ve done with this one, they might actually hire me for that… you never know.
Yesterday I spent the whole day at the British Interplanetary Society Warp Drive symposium. A small event gathering scientists interested in faster than light travel by manipulating the fabric of spacetime.
Ok, it sounds pretty outlandish.
However, not to misrepresent them, they’re actually physicists interested in the mathematics of some strange phenomena thrown up by Einstein (among others). They’re not talking about developing a warp drive any time soon. In fact they’re not even convinced it’s possible.
What they are saying is that there are some intriguing possibilities in current theories which don’t rule out the possibility of traveling faster than light. In fact, exotic ideas like other dimensions, wormholes and negative energy are quite well accepted in physics – however bizarre they might seem. And the idea of time passing differently depending on where you’re standing has actually been tested and found to be true!
Anyway, the event was small – about 40 people – and most of the presentations were beyond me – the maths is just too complex.
Everyone’s welcoming and helpful and they set me up in their library – very quiet and easy to light. But it gets to midday and I haven’t done any interviews. It’s difficult to get anyone alone for long enough.
Eventually I manage to get 4 interviews. One of which I’ve not lit very well – his face is quite dark - but I can rescue it in Premiere.
Another has sound problems – I’ve decided not to let the camera handle the audio adjustment automatically because last time I did I was interviewing someone about shark teeth and every time he got to the end of a sentence, the volume dropped, so the camera adjusted the mike up. Then when he started talking again, he was a little too loud and it took a fraction of a second to adjust down again.
This was fine most of the time, but if the sentence started with a hard consonant (like the T in Teeth for example) it distorted slightly.
However adjusting manually this time gave another problem – I adjusted the mic and started the interview. The mic was rubbing against his jacket, so I asked him to move it. that meant it was closer to his face and I got the same problem again because I was concentrating on the interview and didn’t notice!
The other two interviews are pretty good – although they’re more rushed than I’d have liked as I had to do them at lunch and at the end of the day. I didn’t get time to have much of the lunch – which was good because I didn’t tell them I didn’t eat meat and they served lamb. I didn’t want to say anything because they were being so generous and helpful.
I recorded an hour of the question and answer session at the end of the day – mainly for the society’s benefit. The sound won’t be good enough for broadcast. However, it will work as cut-aways hopefully.
A necessary waste of time
Today I spent the whole morning capturing, and looking at my footage and editing the following 2 minute clip. Probably I won’t use any of it.
However, I can’t help thinking it’s a worthwhile exercise at the beginning of a project like this. It reassures me that I will be able to get something useful out of what I’ve shot and gives me some kind of handle on how the programme might eventually look.
It feels like I haven’t done anything, but at least now there’s something concrete to show potential interviewees – I’ll have to get it up on my website.
I got a reply from one of the magazines I wrote to about the possibility of covering the conference … the editor said I should get back to them if there was anything interesting at the event. My feeling is, however, that they’ve already covered the basic warp bubble idea and I lack the understanding to delve deeply into the specific and rather vertical subjects discussed at the event, so I don’t think I’m going to be able to offer anything to them.
However, the BIS are interesting people and friendly. They’re also hosting a big conference next year in Glasgow… maybe if they like what I’ve done with this one, they might actually hire me for that… you never know.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Space
As research I watched some of the BBC documentary series “space- with Sam Neil” last night.
It was a feast of extremely well shot whit-less rubbish. Beautiful visuals and absolutely no content to speak of. The presenter (who they’d obviously spent a lot of money on) continually repeated the same blindingly obvious statements and tiny pieces of information (which never got explored or justified) over and over again in different expensive looking locations along with repeated CG shots which told you very little.
They talked about the problems with rocket propulsion by racing a dragster against a smart car – pointing out that one went fast for a short distance and one went slow for a long way. Pretty, but frankly a waste of screen time.
I know, I know – “show don’t tell” but really – I think there’s a place for “tell”.
I, on the other hand don’t have the budget for expensive visuals. I can’t arrange a drag race, I can’t send my interviewees up in a balloon for no good reason. I can’t hire a Hollywood actor and put them on a yacht to explain solar sailing.
If I’m to compete with this, I have to do it with content. I have to have strong interviewees, interesting stories, carefully researched perspectives and well written narrative.
Maybe that’s the way you avoid dumming down in TV – take their budgets away. Certainly without a budget, there’s nothing to hide behind if your show isn’t up to scratch.
However, I do have an advantage over these high budget efforts. It’s just me, I’m doing the research, the interviews and the writing as well as the animation and editing. That means I won’t loose the thread of what’s going on. I know the research, so I know (hopefully) what to ask at the interviews. I know the interviews, so I know what I’m looking for in the edit.
Also, when I find that an approach isn’t working, or a new possibility appears, I don’t need to ask anyone. I can just follow it. I can junk the whole programme if I don’t think it’s working and nobody’s going to sue me. I can change the subject and it won’t matter.
I can be flexible. I can also fit in around interviewees – going to wherever they are and fitting in with their schedule. This means I can’t shoot the interviews in hot air balloons, but it also means I can get interviewees I wouldn’t get if I needed them to commit days or weeks of their time to the project. I can be in and out in an hour, and I can do it without any fuss.
Questions
I spend the morning trying to work out sensible questions for tomorrow’s interviews. I’m not an expert in warp bubble mathematics, so I’m hoping I can make some kind of sense and that I haven’t got anything terribly wrong. I think I’ve got a handle on the basics, and as long as I can get the interviewees to explain themselves in fairly plain language, it should work fine.
I print out the questions and copies of the most important documents I have – the location and interviewee release agreements. Without these, my documentary will be useless – un-saleable. Everyone who’s interviewed and everyone who appears needs to sign a form and every location needs to be cleared. I always carry spares.
I also realise I’ve got no business cards, so I quickly hash some up on photoshop.
Shooting Kit
I check and pack my shooting kit for tomorrow. My kit is a little unconventional, and doesn’t make me look very professional, but it seems to work for me and I can set up in minutes:
Camcorder, battery and charger (sony HDR-HC1)
Plenty of tapes and gaffer tape
Tripod (not a proper fluid head one – a lightweight tripod more suited to stills work)
Microphone and spare (both tie-clip mics purchased from Maplins) – I’d really like a decent on-camera directional mic, but don’t have one. I’m using mono mics plugged into a stereo socket – all I need to do is copy the tracks across during editing. Stereo mics and a mixer would be useful, but I’ll have to do without.
Gels –a pack of different colours - never found them particularly useful, but I carry them anyway.
Lights: a standard lighting kit costs about £1000 and fits into a small trunk. My lighting kit consists of 2 x150w work-lights and 1x500w work light – all from B&Q. total cost less than £20. they come with big crocodile clips so you can clip them to doors, furniture, etc. however, I usually just use the big one to raise the light level in the room rather than trying to do anything fancy.
1x reflector – dirt cheap from ebay - this is a new purchase so I’ve never tried it before. I’m going to use the gold side (it has gold, silver, black and white) to try to give my interviewees a slightly warm look. Let’s see how I do.
1x green screen cloth – probably won’t need it, but you never know. If the background is really crap, I can always superimpose a new one. My lighting kit really isn’t up to chromakey , but my software is top of the range, so I’ll be able to wing it if I need to.
Oh- and a map of where I’m going!
And that’s it. all of it fits snugly into a satchel and a convenient suicide-bomber style rucksack.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Funding my documentary
Ok – I’m not spending money on the documentary, but I am committing time to it and that’s a cost in itself. On Thursday I’ll be spending the whole day at this warp-drive symposium - So how to justify my time?
I quickly look up the UKs astronomy magazines and email their editors offering to cover the conference for them. If any are interested, then there will be a few other interviews in this project that I might be able to turn into features.
Qualty control
Just heard that Shark story (http://www.electricsky.com/catalogue_detail.aspx?program=1694) passed electric sky’s quality control!
Phew!
I was worried because I’ve no idea what grounds distributors use to judge the technical quality, so I was making my own judgments all the way along! It also cost 650 pounds to get the finished doc transferred from a hard drive to digibeta (they also required a DAT8 tape with various channels separated out). I wasn’t looking forward to having to do that again since it added a third to the cost of my documentary.
Anyway – great news – now I just need someone to buy it from Electric Sky!
I’ll probably hear if anyone has in about 5 months time.
Ok – I’m not spending money on the documentary, but I am committing time to it and that’s a cost in itself. On Thursday I’ll be spending the whole day at this warp-drive symposium - So how to justify my time?
I quickly look up the UKs astronomy magazines and email their editors offering to cover the conference for them. If any are interested, then there will be a few other interviews in this project that I might be able to turn into features.
Qualty control
Just heard that Shark story (http://www.electricsky.com/catalogue_detail.aspx?program=1694) passed electric sky’s quality control!
Phew!
I was worried because I’ve no idea what grounds distributors use to judge the technical quality, so I was making my own judgments all the way along! It also cost 650 pounds to get the finished doc transferred from a hard drive to digibeta (they also required a DAT8 tape with various channels separated out). I wasn’t looking forward to having to do that again since it added a third to the cost of my documentary.
Anyway – great news – now I just need someone to buy it from Electric Sky!
I’ll probably hear if anyone has in about 5 months time.
Monday, November 12, 2007
I’ve been sent the abstracts for the papers being presented by my potential interviewees at Thursday’s warp drive conference. I don’t understand much of any of them. This is going to be a challenge.
How am I going to come up with a series of sensible questions the answers to which can be edited into something understandable?
Here’s an expert:
First of all, it can be seen that if we restrict ourselves to deal with superluminal warp drives then it turns out that the interior of warp bubble becomes endowed with thermodynamic properties analogous to those of black holes, with the temperature in the spaceship rising up as its apparent velocity increases. Second, the size of warp drives in the current accelerating universe would readily inflate comovingly to the expansion of the universe so that these drives may eventually lead to violation of the conjecture of quantum interest according to which a negative energy pulse must always be over compensated by a necessarily existing positive energy pulse by an amount proportional to the time elapsed between the two pulses. On the other hand, stable and sub microscopic warp drives pervading the quantum spacetime foam can accrete cosmic dark and phantom energy in such a fast way that their size and the energy involved at the bubble are expected to increase so rapidly that they would actually become gigantic in the far future. Perhaps we ought to change mind and, instead of trying to image the advent of an advanced civilization able to construct a warp drive and place superluminal travel in the realm of proper technology, we simply let nature act as the true spontaneous constructer of macroscopic spaceships in the future.
Hmm…
on friday, Lisa was attending an Occupational Therapist housing conference in Brighton
I spend the morning walking around Brighton listening to a podcast on robots… that’s not totally random. I’m adding to my list of projects by planning to make a documentary (or more likely a three part series) on the state of robotics and artificial intelligence. It’s a subject that fascinates me and there’s so much going on with implications that most people aren’t even aware of.
My current idea is to make 3 50 minute episodes about robot bodies, robot intelligence and the connections between robots and humans. Should be fun, but Going to Gliese is the priority one right now.
One of the podcasts is about a competition for robot cars held last year – teams managed to convert a car to drive an 130km desert course entirely on its own.
Apparently this year’s task is to drive a course in an urban area.
Artwork on sale
I pop into WHSmiths and see a dinosaur DVD bundled with a magazine type book. It’s got the Natural History museum logo on it and I’d love to be making video with them as a partner, so I’m interested in this publication and buy it.
I open the magazine and find one of my Stock images has been used as a pull-out poster in the middle of the mag. It looks great. A few pages further on they’ve used another of my pics – a much less careful piece of work which they’ve chosen to blow up far too big. It looks rubbish.
The DVD accompanying the book was made in 1993 and looks awful. There’s some live footage shot at the museum, some creaky dialogue and some CG which looks like it came out of a videogame. The 3d glasses provided don’t seem to work.
I resolve to try to get a meeting with the museum and propose something a little more grown up…. I’m not sure what yet though.
Steven Poliakoff (I’m sure the spelling’s wrong) and editing
There’s an evening dedicated to the writer director on this weekend. He makes some great films and actually has control over them. When asked how he stops TV execs ruining his work, he said that on “shooting the past” he was told to speed it up and make it more action packed. He simply refused and the result was so popular (as popular as the Eastenders Christmas episode) that nobody stops him now.
We then saw one of his films – a monologue. It was rubbish.
I start wondering whether having other people with some control over your creative work is good or bad overall. For me, collaborative work has strengths – in that the jokes are better, the focus is sharper and the adherence to storytelling or other perceived ‘rules’ of creative work tends to be better because there’s someone there stopping any one person going off the rails.
However, most artistic projects go beyond the rules and the instant impact and only those working constantly on them can ever really get the whole picture. If someone taking a brief (or even a sustained) look at the finished product has control over it, they whittle it down to focus on their perception rather than the whole – more complex – picture.
This gives collaborative projects on the whole more impact and instant appeal, but less complexity and lasting strength.
In my own case, I often find when I’m working to a brief where the commissioner wants to change a lot of what I do, there’s often a very positive result – I end up improving the work. However, this only happens up to a point – beyond which the work starts to become too de-focused and the original ideas are lost or distorted.
Stock footage
I’ve been told that one of the specialist picture libraries I contribute to is planning to launch a video clip library – great news for me because it means I can sell stock footage in a meaningful way.I’ve got stock videos on a few sites already – but they don’t make much money right now.
The reason is they’re mostly microstock sites (eg. http://www.footage.shutterstock.com/) and you only get a few dollars per sale. I’d rather be doing more specific animations that will be worth more and I can spend more time on.
Also it will give me the opportunity to animate some dinosaurs and spaceships!
Anyway, this library is going to have to get off the ground with a base of animations fast, and for that reason, I want to go through my still image scenes and see if I can create simple, but interesting animations with them very quickly – i.e. just animating the camera to spin around a 3d model for example.It’s not much fun, but because I’ve already put lots of effort into the models, the animations should look good with little effort.
I’ve now given my PC something to think about – probably enough High definition rendering to last a week or two! I really must figure out how to network the machines into a render farm...
How am I going to come up with a series of sensible questions the answers to which can be edited into something understandable?
Here’s an expert:
First of all, it can be seen that if we restrict ourselves to deal with superluminal warp drives then it turns out that the interior of warp bubble becomes endowed with thermodynamic properties analogous to those of black holes, with the temperature in the spaceship rising up as its apparent velocity increases. Second, the size of warp drives in the current accelerating universe would readily inflate comovingly to the expansion of the universe so that these drives may eventually lead to violation of the conjecture of quantum interest according to which a negative energy pulse must always be over compensated by a necessarily existing positive energy pulse by an amount proportional to the time elapsed between the two pulses. On the other hand, stable and sub microscopic warp drives pervading the quantum spacetime foam can accrete cosmic dark and phantom energy in such a fast way that their size and the energy involved at the bubble are expected to increase so rapidly that they would actually become gigantic in the far future. Perhaps we ought to change mind and, instead of trying to image the advent of an advanced civilization able to construct a warp drive and place superluminal travel in the realm of proper technology, we simply let nature act as the true spontaneous constructer of macroscopic spaceships in the future.
Hmm…
on friday, Lisa was attending an Occupational Therapist housing conference in Brighton
I spend the morning walking around Brighton listening to a podcast on robots… that’s not totally random. I’m adding to my list of projects by planning to make a documentary (or more likely a three part series) on the state of robotics and artificial intelligence. It’s a subject that fascinates me and there’s so much going on with implications that most people aren’t even aware of.
My current idea is to make 3 50 minute episodes about robot bodies, robot intelligence and the connections between robots and humans. Should be fun, but Going to Gliese is the priority one right now.
One of the podcasts is about a competition for robot cars held last year – teams managed to convert a car to drive an 130km desert course entirely on its own.
Apparently this year’s task is to drive a course in an urban area.
Artwork on sale
I pop into WHSmiths and see a dinosaur DVD bundled with a magazine type book. It’s got the Natural History museum logo on it and I’d love to be making video with them as a partner, so I’m interested in this publication and buy it.
I open the magazine and find one of my Stock images has been used as a pull-out poster in the middle of the mag. It looks great. A few pages further on they’ve used another of my pics – a much less careful piece of work which they’ve chosen to blow up far too big. It looks rubbish.
The DVD accompanying the book was made in 1993 and looks awful. There’s some live footage shot at the museum, some creaky dialogue and some CG which looks like it came out of a videogame. The 3d glasses provided don’t seem to work.
I resolve to try to get a meeting with the museum and propose something a little more grown up…. I’m not sure what yet though.
Steven Poliakoff (I’m sure the spelling’s wrong) and editing
There’s an evening dedicated to the writer director on this weekend. He makes some great films and actually has control over them. When asked how he stops TV execs ruining his work, he said that on “shooting the past” he was told to speed it up and make it more action packed. He simply refused and the result was so popular (as popular as the Eastenders Christmas episode) that nobody stops him now.
We then saw one of his films – a monologue. It was rubbish.
I start wondering whether having other people with some control over your creative work is good or bad overall. For me, collaborative work has strengths – in that the jokes are better, the focus is sharper and the adherence to storytelling or other perceived ‘rules’ of creative work tends to be better because there’s someone there stopping any one person going off the rails.
However, most artistic projects go beyond the rules and the instant impact and only those working constantly on them can ever really get the whole picture. If someone taking a brief (or even a sustained) look at the finished product has control over it, they whittle it down to focus on their perception rather than the whole – more complex – picture.
This gives collaborative projects on the whole more impact and instant appeal, but less complexity and lasting strength.
In my own case, I often find when I’m working to a brief where the commissioner wants to change a lot of what I do, there’s often a very positive result – I end up improving the work. However, this only happens up to a point – beyond which the work starts to become too de-focused and the original ideas are lost or distorted.
Stock footage
I’ve been told that one of the specialist picture libraries I contribute to is planning to launch a video clip library – great news for me because it means I can sell stock footage in a meaningful way.I’ve got stock videos on a few sites already – but they don’t make much money right now.
The reason is they’re mostly microstock sites (eg. http://www.footage.shutterstock.com/) and you only get a few dollars per sale. I’d rather be doing more specific animations that will be worth more and I can spend more time on.
Also it will give me the opportunity to animate some dinosaurs and spaceships!
Anyway, this library is going to have to get off the ground with a base of animations fast, and for that reason, I want to go through my still image scenes and see if I can create simple, but interesting animations with them very quickly – i.e. just animating the camera to spin around a 3d model for example.It’s not much fun, but because I’ve already put lots of effort into the models, the animations should look good with little effort.
I’ve now given my PC something to think about – probably enough High definition rendering to last a week or two! I really must figure out how to network the machines into a render farm...
Just so you know where I am, here are the sections on the documentary from the last few days of my personal blog (http://christiandarkin.blogspot.com/)
I was trying to put all my work into one, but I've now split it up, and this blog deals with my documentary filmmaking work.
I've decided to make a 50 minute documentary for television. I'm going to do it entirely off my own bat with no funding and no backing in the hope that I can offer it to a distributor who will sell it to TV channels around the world. I'll then get royalties on it.
Apparently, this is a dumb idea because you don't make nearly as much money out of selling stuff that's already been made as you'd make out of convincing a TV channel to fund you (apparently 2-3000 for a showing of a pre-made documentary vs 100,000 for making one!)
so why do it like this?2 reasons:
1) I can make just whatever I like. I can follow my interests and I've got nobody telling me to sex it up, dumb it down or hire ant and dec to present it.
2) I don't have to spend 5 years (not an exaggeration) trying to convince people to fund my idea - I can have the idea today and start working on it tomorrow. I've just finished my first documentary (http://www.electricsky.com/catalogue_detail.aspx?program=1694) done this way (on the evolution of sharks) and I'm pleased with the results.
Did it make money? I don't know - the distributor has taken it to an international TV market in Cannes and is trying to sell it now... stay tuned to find out whether I have any success.
meanwhile I've decided to make another.... "Going to Gliese" (www.darkin.demon.co.uk/gliese)if you've ever wondered whether mankind will ever make the leap from this solar system to colonise planets in other star systems, Going to Gliese is the documentary for you! it'll outline the challenge and talk to leading experts in the various technologies needed to colonise the stars.
I'm going to make this programme using interviews and 3d animation - and I'm going to do it in High definition. so nothing too ambitious, then...
it turns out that the British Interplanetary Society (a name which sounds like it's from an HG Wells novel - can't wait to meet them) are organising a symposium on the science of faster than light travel for next week. This means there will be a lot of experts from around the world there - all of them potentially great interviewees for my documentary "going to gliese". I've written to the organiser and the society who both seem happy for me to come along and film. In return, I've offered to video the event and turn it into a dvd for their archives or their website.
Offering favours like this is a great way to get co-operation for your film project. They're getting something out of it, so they're happy to be involved. it'll take me some time to do, but it'll keep everyone happy.
I'll let you know how I get on in hyperspace next Thursday....
News from my previous documentary, Shark Story (on prehistoric sharks): I approached CurrentTV -http://www.current.com/ a tv channel set up by Al Gore to 'democratise TV' - the idea being that you submit short (up to 10 minute) documentaries which, if they like, they pay for and transmit. I met someone from the channel and sent them my doc which they thought would be great edited down to 10 minutes.
Just heard back from the channel's Head of Accusitions who turned it down.
That's a pity - but she did say I could contact her next week about other projects, so I don't think it's the quality of the programme she's concerned about. I'll have to find out a little more about what her criterior is because the channel seems like a useful outlet.more on that next week...
I was trying to put all my work into one, but I've now split it up, and this blog deals with my documentary filmmaking work.
I've decided to make a 50 minute documentary for television. I'm going to do it entirely off my own bat with no funding and no backing in the hope that I can offer it to a distributor who will sell it to TV channels around the world. I'll then get royalties on it.
Apparently, this is a dumb idea because you don't make nearly as much money out of selling stuff that's already been made as you'd make out of convincing a TV channel to fund you (apparently 2-3000 for a showing of a pre-made documentary vs 100,000 for making one!)
so why do it like this?2 reasons:
1) I can make just whatever I like. I can follow my interests and I've got nobody telling me to sex it up, dumb it down or hire ant and dec to present it.
2) I don't have to spend 5 years (not an exaggeration) trying to convince people to fund my idea - I can have the idea today and start working on it tomorrow. I've just finished my first documentary (http://www.electricsky.com/catalogue_detail.aspx?program=1694) done this way (on the evolution of sharks) and I'm pleased with the results.
Did it make money? I don't know - the distributor has taken it to an international TV market in Cannes and is trying to sell it now... stay tuned to find out whether I have any success.
meanwhile I've decided to make another.... "Going to Gliese" (www.darkin.demon.co.uk/gliese)if you've ever wondered whether mankind will ever make the leap from this solar system to colonise planets in other star systems, Going to Gliese is the documentary for you! it'll outline the challenge and talk to leading experts in the various technologies needed to colonise the stars.
I'm going to make this programme using interviews and 3d animation - and I'm going to do it in High definition. so nothing too ambitious, then...
it turns out that the British Interplanetary Society (a name which sounds like it's from an HG Wells novel - can't wait to meet them) are organising a symposium on the science of faster than light travel for next week. This means there will be a lot of experts from around the world there - all of them potentially great interviewees for my documentary "going to gliese". I've written to the organiser and the society who both seem happy for me to come along and film. In return, I've offered to video the event and turn it into a dvd for their archives or their website.
Offering favours like this is a great way to get co-operation for your film project. They're getting something out of it, so they're happy to be involved. it'll take me some time to do, but it'll keep everyone happy.
I'll let you know how I get on in hyperspace next Thursday....
News from my previous documentary, Shark Story (on prehistoric sharks): I approached CurrentTV -http://www.current.com/ a tv channel set up by Al Gore to 'democratise TV' - the idea being that you submit short (up to 10 minute) documentaries which, if they like, they pay for and transmit. I met someone from the channel and sent them my doc which they thought would be great edited down to 10 minutes.
Just heard back from the channel's Head of Accusitions who turned it down.
That's a pity - but she did say I could contact her next week about other projects, so I don't think it's the quality of the programme she's concerned about. I'll have to find out a little more about what her criterior is because the channel seems like a useful outlet.more on that next week...
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