A little preview
| Production | 1 CommentEven though the production of our film is paused for a while, we’ve got enough news to share. This time we wanna show you a short animated clip that we made some weeks ago.
We’re happy about any kind of feedback! If you got questions about any part of the production, fire away. 
Murphy’s Law
| Production | 1 CommentIt seems that this week is ruled by Murphy’s Law : “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”.
While many of our team members have to write their bachelor thesis and therefore have little time for working on our film, the worst mishaps are happening right now. First, a third 500Watt spot burned through. Then, in the middle of a shoot, the camera shut down, which didn’t seem too much of a problem at first, since it continued working after switching it off and on again. However, after the shoot we found out that one of the pictures was distorted due to the breakdown. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to replicate the picture with the help of Stop Motion Pro, but there’s still a little glitch in the animation.
Today an even bigger accident happened: While I moved one of the coyotes eyes with a pointed dental tool, a big chip broke off. Fortunately the next few scenes involve the coyote looking through a pair of binoculars, so we can postpone the repair work on the eye.
Despite the delays we managed to shoot another 6 seconds of footage. It’s not very much, but well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. 
First results
| Production | 1 CommentThis sunday we finally shot the first frames for the film. After getting up late and some initial planning we had about 3 hours left for the shoot. A dazzling total of 36 frames, equalling 3 seconds, were the result. Well, with a little more practice the output will hopefully increase to 2-5 seconds per hour.
- First, two of our large 500Watt spots burned through. They were almost unused, but the storage of several years seem to have shortened the lamp life.
- The pictures look different on each of our monitors. A calibration is useless without some kind of reference. Maybe we can borrow a calibration device and software from someone?
- Despite being fixed, one of our rocks moved when I touched it. We tried to put it back to its original position, so hopefully it won’t show on screen.
- The webcam showed a different angle and area than the DSLR camera. In the next shots we have to align them, to optimize the feedback during animation.
- Last but not least some of the joints of the coyote puppet are loose. This affects the precision of posability and sometimes we need several attempts to move it the way we want. Since the puppet is needed for the shoot, we can’t fix that right now.
Here’s a picture of the scene with temporary background for the right mood:
Less light!
| Pre-production » Production » Set design | No Comments“More light” demanded Goethe on his deathbed. We had to fight with the opposite. True the motto “one has it the other one not”.
Due to the white walls in our studio, a small spotlight is enough to flood the room with light. Of course that is not what we desire. The light reflections of the walls and ceiling complicate the illumination of the set tremendously.
For small rooms it is therefore important to choose a wall and ceiling color as dark as possible. Since we only rented the room, we can’t just paint the walls black of course. The only possibility for us was covering the wall and the ceiling with dark sheets. Thanks to our patented “spotlight frame” this was an easy task for us.
The people behind Ponanza
| Announcement » Production | No CommentsTo step forth from the anonymity of blogging, we took a picture of our team.
Two of our female members are missing in the pic, but our main character joined us for the shoot.
The technology behind Ponanza - Part 2
| Production » Post-production » Tests | 1 CommentSpecial Effects
For the effects in Ponanza we’ll use Adobe After Effects as well as two marvellous additional programs: Primatte Keyer and Particle Illusion.
Primatte Keyer is a plug-in for After Effects to remove bluescreen from videos. With this program we can replace the blue background, that we’re shooting in front of, with any other background we choose. That way we can concentrate on the “earthly matters” during animation and add a sky later. To test the efficiency of the plug-in we used this picture with a complicated blurred background:
The quality of the Primatte Keyer amazed us. The blurred edges were no problem for the software. With just a few clicks of the mouse we achieved this result:
Particle Illusion is a program that generates “particles”. You can create realistic effects like fire, water, smoke, rain or snow with it. It’s a little more complicated to operate, but it also comes with a huge selection of presets that can be used instantly.
We’ll use it for desert dust and several other effects.
Our pictures were kidnapped
| Announcement » Production | 2 CommentsOh bugger! First Zoto, the provider we store our photos at, isn’t available due to maintenance work and now this…
They now charge money for their service and as long as we don’t pay our pictures don’t show up in the blog any more. Now we have to decide wether we pay the “ransom” or move our pics to another provider. We already got lots of new photos waiting to be posted.
The technology behind Ponanza - Part 1
| Production | 1 CommentTo also give an insight into the technical aspects of our production we will write about the equipment and software we use.
The camera(s)
To record our film we use a digital SLR camera, the Canon EOS 350 D. The pictures are taken in the highest possible resolution (6 megapixels), so we later have the option of changing the visible area or do fake zooms and pans. Additionally the high resolution allows us to transfer the film onto 35mm film if we want to. The camera is connected to a PC via USB cable which allows us to control and trigger it without touching the camera.
Our second camera is a webcam. It is also connected to a PC, using the animation software Stop Motion Pro. With this program we can view the recorded pictures in sequence and thus test the animation. It also is possible to compare the live picture with the last recorded one. That way you can see how much the puppet was moved and the position can be refined. In the worst case, for example when a puppet or prop is knocked down, you can use this function to readjust everything. Later we use Adobe Premiere to assemble the separate pictures into a film.
Helpful donation of aluminum wire
| Production | No CommentsThanks to the support of Drahtwerk Elisental we now have enough aluminum wire to build our puppets’ armatures.
An armature is like a wire skeleton for puppets which supports the clay from the inside. It has to be sturdy enough to stabilize all poses of the puppet, but flexible enough to move the puppet during animation. The immobile parts of the armature, like the chest and pelvis, are made of epoxy.
At last - we’re not homeless anymore!
| Production » Film budgeting | 1 CommentFinally we have found a room to make our film in. After several rejections or horrendous prices we tried again at the University. Since the semester break has arrived, most of the premises won’t be needed for lectures and we can use one of the rooms for our production. In a few days we’ll start moving into it.
