Fires and 1st Day of Shooting

Hello all, from sunny and warm Minnesota! Well it has been amazingly nice until today... the rain finally caught up with us. So since I'm stuck inside I'm posting a brief update on my internship and some photos. Yesterday was the official first day of filming on the set. The upcoming fire photos were taken somewhere else and not anywhere near the set. It was pretty exciting to be in on the real thing after so many months and years of just shooting stuff for fun or at school. Matt and I had to be on set to check every shot that showed any of the green screen or would require any sort of visual effect. Just watching the process makes you have a whole new appreciation for the movies. It was only the first day so things will probably get faster as we go, but it pretty much took 20 or so people on the crew, plus actors and extras all day to shoot a less than 2 minute scene of two actors walking down a corridor talking. With make-up, wardrobe, lights, grips, sound, camera operators, and assistant directors all doing different stuff on set it was always bustling with people. The highlight of the day for Matt and I was when we realized the catering table was right outside of our office. :)

On to the pictures!
1- The old Mill down by the river in Minneapolis
2- Myself, Jesse and Brendan on the walk bridge with Minneapolis in the background, having fun with some long exposure shots.
3-7- These next photos need a longer explanation.
Matt and I are currently working on creating an establishing shot for a city in the movie that has a huge flaming light house tower. Without getting into too much detail we basically needed to film some real fire to put into our entirely digital tower and city. So to film this we drove out to one of his friend's houses out in Wisconsin. The dude had a nice sized garage they use for working on farm tractors. So the roof was pretty high... I gave 2 paper towel rolls and 7 or so TP rolls a pretty good gasoline soak and then we lit them up... So lets just say after that we weren't worrying about whether we could make the flames high enough... they were licking the ceiling... So after we had learned that we didn't need as much fuel we did manage to get our shot done. After packing up all that crap (8 to 15 different stands for trackers, backdrop cloth and stands, 4 to 6 lights and stands and like 200 paper trackers...) we l eft the farm in Wisconsin at like 2 AM and then had to drop off all the crap at work... LATE NIGHT! But I think the shot is going to turn out pretty freak'n awesome. More photos of the fire element VFX shoot.

8- Filming a test of a cart catching fire.
9-10- First day of filming on set.
11- The actors and director running through the lines.

Thats all for now. I hope that for my next update I might be able to post some shots of the 3D city I'm building or maybe even some short movies of actual footage.

A Return to Intern

Another long cross country drive completed and I'm back in Minnesota. This trip seemed a little easier because halfway through I stopped in Colorado and skied for two days with the Balgaard brothers. I've just made it through one crazy week, getting back into the swing of school and starting up my new internship. The past couple months at home now seems like the summer break I never had. But I'm remembering the drill out here quickly.

I absolutely love my internship. I get my own dual core G5 with a 30" monitor to work on and I'm currently in-charge of creating digital 3D roofs for all of the sets. The set buildings only go up to 12 or 14 ft. and there are no roofs. So I have to match all of the textures and then come up with some medieval styles roofs to throw on top. This probably sounds cooler than it really is. I basically sat and painted digital shingles for 20 hrs. this week... but for some reason this is still fun for me. ;) Other than the roofs, Matt and I have done a lot of consulting with the rest of the sets & props crew as to what stuff they need to actually build for future sets and what we can digitally create and add later. We've also been looking ahead at the storyboards and trying to figure out what we will need to be able to pull off for each shot. Its kind of a lot of pressure to be working in a studio with a huge team of people and to know that they are all relying on you to be able to make everything they build and shoot look good. Of course I'm just the VFX intern so the pressure is really all on Matt. (lucky lucky me) Overall it's a really fun place to work but that may change when we start filming at the end of the month...

Oh and I just remembered that I promised to give more info on the company and what we are actually trying to do. Basically the company I will be working for has been created and funded by a story and board game company that wants to make movies of one of their stories/games. We are currently working on two 45 min. episodes that will be released on DVD and possibly broadcast somewhere. I haven't read the complete scripts yet but the movies are basically going to be similar to something like Lord of the Rings. Elves, Orcs, sword-fights, heroes and stuff like that. The first two episodes are supposed to be completed this Fall. On to the Photos!

The Photos
1 A road with a crazy name in the desert.
2 Parked at a scenic overlook in Utah.
3 Standing on the edge.
4 I don't think people realize how beautiful a bunch of rocks can be until you look out at something like this.
5 Driving down a canyon.
6 Charlie and Elroy packing up after an amazing powder day at Copper Mountain.
7-9 The annual cardboard box races at Copper. The best part was when one of the missile shaped boxes ran through the fence and into the crowd! Sorry no pictures...
10 Nebraska's beloved gateway museum. Elroy and I actually stopped and went inside.
11 Passing through the old fashioned way.
12 Flaming sword test (not at work) ..!.. The weapons guy was trying to find a practical way to create a flaming sword.
13 This is just a recent print design that I did for Kelly's store. I really enjoy doing projects for her because she wants me to experiment and do something different.

Thats all for now. Not sure when the next update will be with the crazy schedule. But when I do update I will try to get some pics of that 30" monitor. (for Weston) ;)

As always keep in touch and let me know what you've all been doing!