It's not real!

I'm going to be a bit naughty here but I'm not apologising.

Our filming of Scene 8 of Winter, a few weeks ago now (how time flies) has been getting the CGI treatment and you know how they do those split screen thingies showing the very same shot before and after? Well I'm not doing that.

But I am going to give the feel of it by showing you two shots, a before and an after, just not cleverly cut together and probably not the same bit. It's naughty because this is not the finished CGI but I'm just so excited.

So here's a photo from the studio, you can see our two actors behind all the equipment in the brightly lit greenscreen area:

And now here's a similar shot, early version, with the CGI in place:

And I think that's pretty cool.

That was interesting

Two days ago we shot Scene 8 of WINTER. Why just scene 8?

A couple of reasons: we needed to test out the whole green-screen production process; and we needed a promotional snapshot to look for more funding.

Scene 8 has several factors to its benefit: it features two of the three main characters, it's their first meeting, provides some background food for thought, some mystery, and it features major CGI work.

The CGI involves the night-time set on a Victorian street, rain, moving steampunk elements and live action incorporated into it. It's a perfect introduction to both the story and our ability to achieve the effects required.

Chris, the Director, is frantically editing in order to deliver the scene to the CGI chap who will integrate the set and moving graphics into the scene.

And the finished product goes to Cannes. Which is where your funding comes in.

http://igg.me/p/93585?a=405734

To help us finish the whole thing and deliver.

Shooting Schedule

I have been very busy the last few weeks.

One of the things that made me busy was a meeting we had on April 7th. When I say "we" I mean myself and the director, Chris. We met with our co-producer Tricia.

There are three types of producer in the world: The ones who say they are producers but never actually do anything; the ones who put packages together (money, directors, actors) but don't do the nitty-gritty of production; and producers who do the nitty-gritty of organising a production to make it happen.

You see it was a few months ago that I decided that unless I got my act together and started making WINTER happen, it wasn't going to (this is no criticism of Chris, by the way, he has an extremely demanding day job). It had been two years, and while the script had been developing nicely nothing else was happening.

Tricia is a type 2 producer. And at the meeting she mentioned that if we had something we could show - an actual produced scene with all the trimmings - then when she was at the Cannes Film Festival in May she'd be in a position to promote WINTER to major investors. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, she said, but you need something to shoot with.

We had been planning a test shoot on May 6th anyway but this put a whole new light on it. And, to mix metaphors, lit a fire under us.

If there's a way in which Chris and I are similar, we both respond very positively to external deadlines. And this deadline was a killer: create a complete scene 8, with computer graphics, of very good quality and deliver it by 15th May. Seven weeks.

With Chris working an 80 hour week and me changing contracts. I imagine most people would consider it impossible, but it isn't.

As of this moment: we have cast the male actor required (the female was already cast); we have a modern, fully equipped, green screen study booked for 3 days - at no cost. We have crew in place, the composer is ready to go and, fingers crossed, the computer graphics will be produced by a professional company for a fraction of the usual cost. And we're halfway through.

The only issue is money, as certain things must be paid for. To that end we started up a crowd-funding project on IndieGoGo. We are hitting our marks and we will succeed but it would help, seriously, with back-up pennies.

So help out project: http://igg.me/p/93585?a=405734 and choose from our excellent perks.