Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
I have said many times before; Spectre is a movie about returning to life.
It has been a year and a half since we filmed the movie. And while we it is not finished yet, the project is very much alive. The last year-and-a-half for me has been focused mostly on family and my day job. My wife and I are raising two energetic little boys now, so the film has had to take a necessary back seat for a while.
But I’ve never lost sight of the goal. Every single day the film has been on my mind in one way or another. Remember that this project has always taken a while to produce. The 19 page script took several years to craft. That’s just the way we rolled with it considering that it was a “side project” in our everyday lives. We filmed the movie over the course of eight days, and have since taken our time in preparing the way for the final stretch.
So what has been done so far? Well, we’ve gone through several rough-cuts. The first “assembly” edit of the movie was 36 minutes. The edit after that (which I actually think of as the first true rough-cut) was 24 minutes. The current edit is sitting pretty at 19 minutes long, which is dead-on exactly what we expected with our 19-page script.
We’ve done a lot of visual FX tests. We’ve experimented with color correction. We’ve experimented with music. We’ve experimented with alternative ways of telling the story.
And now, we’re actually tracking shots, building and animating 3D models, implementing visual FX (lots and lots of particle systems… sigh), and doing sky replacements.
In the very near future we’re going to start publishing weekly updates to this blog. You’ll hear from me, as well as our Art director, our Director of Photography, the lead actor in the film, and from one of our fight choreographers. Each of us will talk about our areas of focus and give you some insight into what its like to attempt to make a professional-quality short film with a mini budget and lots and LOTS of time.
This is an exciting time, and I hope you’ll continue with us on the journey. We just opened up a Facebook page, so if you’re on Facebook, head over there and become a fan.
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“Just in time for the holidays”, the Spectre sword is now available to own exclusively through Arms of Valor. The swords are high-quality, battle-ready weapons forged by Darksword Armory. They are exact replicas of the sword seen in the film. Which… yes, is definitely still being worked on, despite the lack of updates on [...]
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Editing is coming along slowly but surely. Things are always busy, of course, but I’ve recently been making an effort to find some time as often as possible to work on the rough cut of the movie.
One of the tools a filmmaker has at his or her disposal is a process known as color [...]
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We wrote it. We filmed it. Now it’s time to edit it.
To mark the occasion of going into post-production, I’ve updated spectre-movie.com with a few neat things. First, I’ve updated the main page of the website to be far more interesting than the one that was there before. Take a look if [...]
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So much for my “daily update” during production. As you can imagine, things were a little busy. One of the big things I was reminded of during our shoot was how tough it was to be both a director and producer at the same time. You have to separate the two and [...]
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I’m exhausted. Bear with me. So much has already happened in the last 2 days that it deserves a real solid summary.
Unfortunately, that summary won’t come from me today. Too tired, and too much yet to do before bed. In brief, however, we had a full day of [...]
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“I have hunted you for a long time.”
Today is the first day of production on Spectre. It feels strange to be marking this post in the “production” category. This is both the first of that section, and the last of the pre-production one.
In a few hours, the cast and crew will [...]
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At this point, a lot of people have read the script for Spectre, and many more (such as you who are reading this) have read at least a summary. Several people have asked if I “got the idea” from ______(insert fantasy book)_____. The answer is, yes and no.
I was about [...]
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“Tonight, when the second moon sets, the Temple will be overrun by ghasts. Go there. You can still be its shield.”
These are the words spoken by the mysterious little Girl-in-Blue who haunts Garin, our main character, and drives him into action, and leads him to the most important decision of his life. Garin, a [...]
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We’re about six weeks away from going into production on Spectre.
It’s both incredibly exciting, and overwhelmingly scary to be so close to production time where it will come to life. This movie is the most ambitious production I’ve done, but amazingly, I find myself equal to the challenge so far.
If [...]
