When I tasked myself to work on the script as I've mentioned previously, I knew there were a number of criteria that had to be met, for production reasons and so forth. I spent about a week just letting the thoughts rumble in the back of my mind as I pressed on with other issues. To be fair, I really wasn't looking forward to writing a first draft. It was a daunting task: take everything we've written before, capture the spirit of it, remove the fluff, polish the good parts and implement as much as we could into a compact spot. It just wasn't something I was looking forward to, but having a bit of time to let the ideas marinate did me some good. Best yet, it let the good ideas stand on their own and the bad ones fade to the background. I found I could focus on what was important when all the ideas of our previous script weren't jumping out at me at once saying 'well what about me?' So finally, I gathered my courage and dived in- and it didn't take longer then about five hours. Not too shabby for a days work. Next I'll be sending the draft to my other colleagues for them to review and I'll be setting up an appointment with 'James', a previous writer I've worked with to smooth out any details. Honestly, I don't foresee the script taking too many revisions, perhaps changes in verbage or slight actions sequence changes. But nothing dramatic- which is good news.
Having such a concrete script from the get-go also means organizing the film in a much more productive way. Storyboarding is an easy one to spot, but there's other advantages. Like the complementary use of B-Roll. For those who don't know, B-Roll is typically used in advertising. In a feature film for instance there's often a 'Secondary Film Unit' which goes around and shoots all the filler stuff- like rolling landscapes, the big master shots of a city, or other details that the main shoot isn't focused on. It's a time saving move for the production. Well, Ranger Corps don't have a second unit to go out and film with, and going to locations like Hawaii to film would certainly cost us a lot more than the roughly $500 we have to make this film. So that puts us in a pickle it would seem. But that's where B-Roll comes in. B-Roll is essentially the same thing, but more often than not it's filmed by someone else, so there's no control over what is being shot- but because there's so much footage you usually can make good use of some of it. You just have to be creative.
In the case of Ranger Corps, filming in Hawaii was out of the question. We're filming in Florida, so we do have some varying levels of passable jungle- but where we're lacking B-Roll can sometimes be used to fill the gap. Knowing this beforehand and designing the script with this in mind, has meant I can produce an animated storyboard, complemented with B-Roll, and temporary audio to create the film in pre-production before ever having to set foot outside. It's a big step forward for us, as it shows us a glimpse of what we're shooting and has huge implications from a storytelling point of view. As it stands currently, about half the film has been constructed this way and I imagine after tonight the latter half will also be constructed.
Last but not least, the Gallimimus model is nearing the end of it's texture stage of production. It's been nice to work on an organic model again, as it's been a while since I've animated anything, much less an organic. But truthfully, I over did it. The model really doesn't need to be as fancy as I made it for the screen time it'll in. But hey, it was nice to get things moving again. Next comes rigging, in which I place a bone structure in the creature to give it degrees of movement, then the run cycles begin, then animating the sequence, then rendering, compositing... and finally it'll be done. But the big thing is just finishing the textures.
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