I’d mentioned in my Derailed post that we had to shoot another scene, and I wanted to talk about it a little bit. The shoot happened on August 16th, with a small crew, outside the Brevard Museum of History & Natural Science — which is the same museum we shot Dudley in.

In the original script, the film opens with an establishing shot outside “Ye Olde Museum of Modern Art,” and then quickly moves inside to a dark and somewhat creepy scene where Pupsock and Wendell corner Princess Stacie’s kidnapper, Dirk.  If you know the characters, this is a funny scene.  However, since this is the first movie I’ve done with them, you don’t know the characters.  So, while you’re trying to figure out what kind of movie you’re dealing with, the movie is pretending to be something it’s not.

In order to combat this problem, I went ahead and expanded the first scene from a simple establishing shot into a quick little scene with Pupsock arriving at the museum and coordinating the plan of attack with Wendell over walkie-talkies.  It kinda ruined the nice reveal we have of Pupsock in the creepy scene, but it sets the tone for the rest of the movie so well, that it was a worthy sacrifice.

Once we had the scene written, there was still some question as to when we’d actually shoot the thing.  I’d been working on the special effects in my spare time, not sticking to any schedule, other than I was eager to be finished.  When I talked to Jamie Donmoyer, the brilliant puppeteer who served as Pupsock’s main performer (the also-brilliant Amy Strickland filling in for one day) about her schedule, she informed me that she’d be in New York for a while, puppeteering on Disney’s Johnny and the Sprites.  She’d be back and forth between Orlando and NYC, but pretty much the only day she could do it would be August 16th.  Luckily, this was between gigs for producer Tom, so he was able to bring out the Blue Juice Films light kit, and serve as DP.  So, we were on.

This left not a lot of time to plan, not to mention building the “Ye Olde Museum of Modern Art” sign.  So, I sprung into action.  Most of the crew weren’t available on such short notice, so I ended up building the sign myself, and was pretty pleased with the result.  Used a big piece of plywood, with a peg-board-like material covering it.  Jigsawed a curve to the top, and connected it to two fancy fence posts.  I put two-foot squares of plywood on the posts, so they could stand free while supporting the sign, and made the sign detachable for easy transport.  Well, as easily as one can transport a large sign and fence posts.  Which is not very easily.  Lastly, I bought a bunch of letters from various craft stores, spray painted them, and glued them to the sign.

The only crew I had were Tom as DP, Chris Santora - who served as Practical Effects Lead and Assistant Director on the main shoot, and Kevin McGuire - the voice of Pupsock, who both served as “General Shemps,” a.k.a Production Assistants.  I didn’t originally want to bother Kevin about the shoot, because he’d just bought a house and had been busy getting it ready to move into, but no one else could make it, so I decided to give him a call.  It turned out he wanted a break from working on his house, so he came out and was invaluable.  Tom was able to put both Chris and Kevin to work, and only needed me occasionally after I had blocked out the scene with him.  This left me free to work with Jamie, so we could be on the same foot before shooting began.

We were shooting outside at night, and it took longer than expected to get enough light on the museum to be able to see it.  However, once we got rolling, everything was awesome.  A couple of bumps at the start, but we had just enough crew that I was able to sit right next to Jamie, and it didn’t take too much coaching for her to just nail the scene.  It’s so much fun working with her, because she puts so much life into Pupsock, it’s a joy just sitting there and watching it happen.  After the first couple of takes, Tom and I just kept looking at each other with big grins on our faces.  Whatever doubts we had about whether or not this was the right way to open the movie just vanished.  The new opening is gonna be awesome!

I just finished re-compositing the last of the too-clean-looking Wendell shots, as mentioned in my Derailed post. It was actually an interesting experience, going back to the first few shots that I worked on, seeing how far I’ve come in just the last few months. Makes me excited to see how good I’ll be a few months from now.

I had to relight one scene (4 shots), and that gave me a chance to tweak the animation a little bit. These were shots I did maybe two weeks ago, and I’ve already grown a lot since them. It opens up the question of whether or not I should go back and redo some of the first shots, or just press on since there is so much else to do. I probably see how I feel after finishing my first pass at Wendell, the fog, and the flying carpet scene. I may have time for reanimating while it’s in audio-post with David Wallace and scoring with Philip Yon. Or I may want to sleep.

This has been a busy week — at home, anyway.  My daughter, Anastasia, turned 2 on Tuesday the 21st.  Coincidentally, my editor’s son, Christian Miller, was born on Tuesday.  So now they have the same birthday, though Anastasia has laid claim to it for far longer.  So, I spent a lot of time with her, and not so much on the movie.  Because of this, I’m moving my personal Wendell deadline to Labor Day.  I’ll have a 3-day weekend from the day job then, and no toddler parties planned, so I should have plenty of time to crack down.

What I did have time for, however, was this:

I created a 3D environment in After Effects, based on a painting that local artist Danny Schmidt did special for the movie.   I cut out pieces of his beautiful painting, recreated it in After Effects, and composited Pupsock & Wendell into it.  This was my first finalized shot working with green screen and virtual sets, so I was very excited about it and took the time to get things right.  I like this picture, but it doesn’t really compare to how awesome it is seeing the shot in motion.

Jim finished off another Giacomo shot, which will find its way into a new trailer I hope to have ready in September.  Then, I put him to work on the hardest Giacomo shot in the film, which I hope he will blog about soon.  Hint, hint.

Finally, I’ve gotten roughly half of the recomps done.  I hope to be finished with that annoyance by Wednesday.

I mentioned in the last couple of posts that I had spent a good bit of time last week working on figuring out a way to make Wendell be more integrated into the live-action shots. Well, I finally came up with a good look for the first scene and have gotten a couple of people to sign off on it. Ultimately, I’m the director, and so I’m the only one who really needs to sign off on the shot, but when you’re wearing many hats, it’s always a good practice to get the approval of those you trust. Especially on things you’re new at doing.

Anyway, I thought you may be interested in seeing some comparisons on the shots I’ve been working on. Here are the two main shots I’ve been working on.  For each image, original is on the top, new on the bottom.

Shot 2J

Shot 2L

Basically, it involved playing with the levels on Wendell, doing a stronger Match Grain, matching with the live-action layer, and two blurs. The first blur goes along the edge of the Alpha Channel, making his outline less harsh. The second is a lighter blur over the rest of him, just to soften him up a bit. The second blur is a little stronger in 2L than in 2J, because I wanted the focus to be more on Dirk (played by Jeff Goguen) than on Wendell.

As mentioned, all of my effort for the previous week has been put towards getting a better composite on Wendell and the new shoot. I’ve been calling it a reshoot, but it isn’t replacing anything we already shot, just adding on.

Luckily, there’s good news on both fronts. The shoot got rolling a little later than expected, but we pulled it off without any real problems. Jamie Donmoyer was able to take a break from working on Disney’s “Johnny and the Sprites” to come back home and help us out. Her performance as Pupsock was amazing, as always. Producer Tom Mumme DP’d the shoot, and we pretty much just looked at each other with big grins after each take. Also, my sign came out pretty good. Which is nice.

The crew was rounded out by AD Chris Santora, who was called into service as a Dolly Grip, and Kevin McGuire, who came on-board at the last minute and really saved our butts. He helped out Tom a great deal, and played Wendell so Jamie would have something to work off of and I could focus on directing her.

I played around with several different effects in After Effects to get Wendell to look more organic and not just pasted onto the scene. There were two shots I worked on, to get a look I liked and see if I could reproduce it. Tom and Chris both gave their stamp of approval, so I’ll be able to move on — hopefully getting most of the shots re-comped this weekend.