Imaginarium Foundation

After an inspiring meeting the day before I was motivated to stay up late (after my day job and evening was done) to work on reconciling the storyboard’s Tyler pitched to the script in CELTX.

The first step of course is scanning in the index cards that Tyler inked the sketches of his shots on. 

That always takes me a little while for each scene.  I save a larger high-res version to be used in creating a Storyboard Video and a lower-res smaller version to be linked to the shot description in the CELTX screenplay file.

While in the process of working through these scans I got an IM from Rockdog and CGI artist in Florida.  Rockdog was introduced to us by our remote member, UK Rob another CGI artist extraordinaire.

I began working on trying to import the video from our last production meeting, from my new camera into editing software on my PC.  Jenkins helped me figure out the process via discussion over IM.

We have a plan and to the best of our ability we work the plan… when the plan really works its electric, our members are inspired and there is sense of reality in what we are doing.

Tonight was one of those kind of meetings.  Jenkins who leads the Production Design efforts in our group, along with many other talents he shared pitched vibrant and inspired designs for several different sets.  There was robust discussion about designs and concepts and he literally performed as he pitched the the sets… the man was on fire!

Tyler pitched the remaining sequence of an extraordinarily long scene.  His detail of the action diverted from the script, but his suggestions were very in tune with the style of the story.  They captured our vision of the film and served to improve the action originally written.

Perhaps adding to the excitement of the evening, I digitally recorded the pitches in our meeting for the first time, bringing an added sense of mission to what we were doing.  I hope to share that video here on this site, along with others, edited into short preproduction vinettes to give those following our production a taste of what an Imaginarium production meeting is like.

I had the whole day today to work on the film.  These days I spend most of time creating shot lists in the script program Celtx and linking them to the storyboard panels we have created so far. 

Our members, pitch storyboards that visualize their vision of the scene using the script as written as a starting point.  The pitch often elaborates on the action and develops the dialog.

Then its my task to take the pitches and approve the changes to the script, link the storyboard pitches to the Celtx script file and rewrite the script so it reconciles to the action and dialog in the pitches.

Its a time consuming process, but of course a labor I very much enjoy. 

I also spent much of the afternoon on chat discussing production management with a couple of our members.

Then in the evening I attended our weekly production meeting.  We had two storyboard scenes pitched and 4 set designs discussed.  Our soundscape members were also in attendence, stopping by to check in on the progress of the visual elements.  We discussed sound Fx libraries being built. 

Finally we talked about our plans for a milestone deliverable, a storyboard video with voice over dialog acted out, music and sound Fx.  We have or will have most of the elements necessary anyway as part of our preproduciton pipeline, so we wanted to produce something immediate and tangible for a our members to have.

I returned home to hammer out some more storyboard pitch reviews, linking to Celtx and revising the script.

I’ll be back to my day job tomorrow, so I don’t expect to do much on the “X and Y,” over the next couple of days, but I will try to stay on top of the recruiting correspondence.

We are always in need of more designers and visual artists.

rabat.mp3

Music clip from film temp tracks by David Binnig

Saturday is traditionally my movie day.  The day I get to do nothing but work on the movie in preparation for our weekly production meeting on Sunday.  Of course it doesn’t always work that way… and today was one of those days.  Life took over and I joined my wife visiting friends most the afternoon into the evening.

What I did do for the production was send out the weekly membership email, the IF Update.  That is how I communicate our progress and weekly agenda setting the team objectives.  I also let the team know in this update that I will be out of town most of September and we need someone else to host the weekly meetings and coordinate the agenda.

As it got later into the night I worked on a treatment for the “X and Y,” future story.  We have quite a bit of backstory material, but I have yet to release a future story.  The film is a story in itself, but there is a larger story arc that many of our committed members have continuously requested knowledge about.  I have resisted, but in the end, our members are our best fans, so I kind of owe it to them.

scene4draft.wmv

Save link above to view short animatic with a very dramatic coffee pot.  The coffee pot is our not so famous stand in for the embryonic chamber. Music by David Binnig.

Its been a long time since I posted.  Unfortunatetly its one of those things that feels like a heavier task the more time that passes.  So tonight I’m just going for it.

I don’t want to ramble for pages on everything we have done over the last six months.  To keep it simple we are still working through storyboards and set designs. 

As of tonight we have pitched storyboards for 77 scenes (over 500 panels) and have 30 scenes remaining.  We have completed designs for 19 sets, have 16 currently being revised and 19 not yet started.  Our set design process includes visual effects locations and other establishing shots, we don’t literally have 54 different sets where actors intereact with each other.

Tonight my “X and Y” activity was the exciting task of catching up on some recruiting correspondence with potential new members.

By Jill Mulligan