Post-Production on hold.

I'm currently preparing for the final week shooting Kaikahu Road (as Director of Photography). Filming 4th-8th July on RED HD.

To keep up to date on this production you can become a fan of Kaikahu Road on facebook


North Pole Deception After Effects Master Timeline:

Lots of layers required to grade one scene in the elve's house:

The Factory!

Not quite final comp. Machine behind the front one is actually supposed to be a different one.

Looking for a Genie

I decided I need a little bit of help finishing everything I'm working on at the moment, so I did a quick search on Trade Me for a Genie.. a real life, three wish granting Genie.

I had a few promising leads, so I asked questions on several auctions (scroll to bottom for questions)...

Genie Depressed Bottle
Ancient Lamp "I don't deal in fake rubbish"
Yasmin Genie #3
Genie Bottle
Lavender Oil in Genie Bottle
Blue Genie Bottle
Retro Genie Bottle
Alladin Large Genie Soft Toy Plushie

Back to finishing NPD online tomorrow..

Malcolm Xmas.

Original footage

Television grade (looks brighter on CRT):

Hand-held motion tracking

I filmed a door with a cross on it today with shaky hand held camera.



Now we need to motion track these videos frame by frame in after effects to make it steady, then copy the motion onto some of my steady elf interview shots, and kapow! The elf interviews have the illusion of looking hand held, and therefore, seem more "realistic".

On it goes..

Still experimenting with colour grading and artificial lights etc. Sequence isn't on my computer so I don't have footage yet. Will upload some still by the end of the week.

Colour Grading

I don't have stills yet, but we've been experimenting lots with the colour grade. Because it was shot at 4k (double the size of full HD) there is a lot of colour information to play with. We're also messing with lighting highlights, and overlaying some subtle effects to make things seem a bit smoother. Colour grade is expected to be roughly complete by Wednesday (cos' we're shooting a music video on Thursday).

Australian based Sound Designer Michael Taylor is now on board to fix up the sound and master it all properly!

This means the film is being produced in four countries... New Zealand, America, Australia... and the North Pole.

This is a rough factory composite, with a temp grade... I'm photoshopping a background for this week.