An opportunity!

Strangely enough, I have absolutely no homework and a three-day weekend, so what better to do than film something? I got the four-second scene where Minono first appears done, so I will continue with that tonight perhaps. I'm slowly learning how to work After Effects, which is good. Hopefully I will be able to pull off some pretty good stuff with that once I learn how to do it whenever I get to post-production. Ha! "Officially" I now have 21% of the filming completed (20.75% to be exact,) so I'm making some kind of progress. I will definitely be taking the little opportunities like this throughout the school year to get what I can done on this; maybe by the time next summer rolls around (the last of high school!) I will have finished quite a bit more than I had previously planned. I shalt keep thou updated.

Plans and other things

Well, as you can tell, I haven't updated the blog in a while. School has started again in full force, so filming is out for a while. I may start scripting some other stuff and whatnot; who knows. I got roughly another two minutes of footage done this summer all together, which is really lame compared to what I technically could have done with all the free time I had. Oh well. I'll probably move on to a smaller project for the time being, but do keep in mind that I am not officially "giving up" or canning TDS in any way. I will finish, although the time of release is rather uncertain at this point. Don't hold your breath by any means. Don't even get close to the pool!

As for future filming endeavors, I don't know what kind of contests are going to come up in the near future, but I will most likely carry out one of my long-planned-but-never-filmed projects, like that one about the three guys that crash land in the desert. Or I also might start doing some things with a Harry Potter type film that I've been playing around with for a while that I never really did anything with. There seems to be a strange lack of Harry Potter films as compared to the other syndicated LEGO products like Batman and Star Wars that are in their "natural environments." That is to say that films like "Harry Potter and the Muggle Commando" don't really count since they're not taking place at Hogwarts or anything. And I've had a long-time obsession with Harry Potter, so maybe I'll do something with that in the future. As I'm sure I've said many times before, only time will tell!

BRAWLing, no smoking allowed

I am currently working on my entry for the first annual BRAWL (Brickfilm Rapidly All Week Long) contest. My entry, "Point of No Return" will be premiering Saturday along with all the other entries, so it should be pretty exciting.

As for That Darn Smoker, he is on hold for this week. I may get some slight filming done before school, but I still have to read a biography for summer English assignments. Nevertheless, I will push on, although I may never finish. Just to let you know! But I may be moving on to other projects for the time being, such as this film, but not necessarily a contest entry. So that's what goes on hither. Hopefully I'll get some good ratings in the contest judging since all the big wigs aren't entering.

Back and not sick as well

Unlike last year, I am not sick this time. Yay! My roommate wasn't sick this time (it wasn't the same person anyway), so that means I'm perfectly well. Also unlike last year, the THAC is not looming, but instead the BRAWL (Brickfilming Rapidly All Week Long) Contest. I will probably be entering that one; I'll have to see what the theme is and if I can come up with any good ideas.

I got another 5-second shot done of That Darn Smoker approaching the forest. I think the pan I did was a little too fast; I might need to redo it. Otherwise, I will continue today with shooting the scene where Minono first appears. I have the lines from Smeagol for that scene, so that should work out nicely. Hopefully I will get this whole forest scene done soon enough so that I can move on to the next part.

Reporting from Colorado

Well, here I am at my orchestra camp. Obviously I can't film here, but at least there's free internet access. Anyway, I'll probably be participating in the BRAWL Contest, so that will halt filming for a short time after I get back. Obviously the filming will not be done by the end of the summer unless some sort of miracle happens, so maybe I should just call it quits for this year. Who knows. Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to it, but it's not going to come out any time soon. But it will come out eventually. We hope. Until then (next Sunday) I shan't be updating.

Year 2, Day 36: Four minutes filmed!

Woot. I've officially reached the four-minute mark on filming, which means that I'm 20% through with filming if the footage is actually going to end up being 20 minutes long, but I'm thinking it will probably be a little shorter than that but closer to 20 minutes total with credits and whatnot. I got a second or so done last night with another 3 seconds done tonight, all of which were fairly hard to film since I had to film Darn ducking behind a trash can, which is not easy! So the animation suffered a little bit, but at the same time I was able to get some cool headlight effects with my LED booklight.

I finally got my forest set up with some model trees (made for model trains) I bought at Hobby Lobby (for $30! Rrrr.) So that problem is now taken care of and I can start filming that whole sequence, which probably accounts for the next three or four minutes of the film. A lot is dialogue, so I should be able to film that quicker than the rest of the stuff I've been doing. Hopefully. The next scene up is where Darn meets Minono (graciously played by Sméagol) and then goes into the tree, hopefully not to be shot by the Anti-Smoker Society agents! We'll see. And I still need to take those pictures of the various vehicles and post those.

Also, I'm heading off to my orchestra camp Sunday and will be gone the following two weeks, so don't be expecting any updates during that time, at least not ones about filming. Although I do have telekinetic powers. I just don't like to use them.

PROJECTED LENGTH: 20:00
LENGTH FILMED: 4:01
PERCENTAGE OF PROJECTED LENGTH FILMED: 20%
PERCENTAGE OF SCRIPT FILMED: 24%

Year 2, Day 30

I've continued to build the forest set. It's turning out very nicely, especially since I have an overabundance of green 1x6 bricks from my structurally insecure model of the Bank of America Plaza, which subsequently fell down. Anyway, that's coming nicely; I'll post some pictures of that when it's done and the high-profile ambulance soon. Once this set is done I should be able to film at least the next 2-3 minutes of footage, since the following two scenes all take place there. The first is where Darn meets Minono, then the following one is the next morning when he is nearly shot by the A.S.S. patrol guys. Hopefully I can get some of the filming on this next scene done before I head off for my orchestra camp again on July 13. That gives me about 8 days I guess. No promises! Except the pictures. Those will be forthcoming.