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.

An educational movie for aliens

This is our attempt at making an educational movie in the 48 hour film festival..

Brad Davison and I managed to achieve this much while still making time for a british comedian, a canadian folk band (I helped with lighting), a ridiculously drunk girlfriend and a whiney 2 week old baby.

The film stars me and Michelle Fitz-William, with Jamaine Ross and my daughter Kaiarahi Hitchcock. Jamaine and Michelle also did voices for The North Pole Deception, this is Kaia's first movie experience..



Next year we hope to allow more time in the weekend to work on the film.

Editing Again.

The film is now re connected in glorious HD for online editing by Luke McPake. Lots of updates coming this week..

48 Hours

Spent the weekend furiously making a film in the annual 48 Hours competition. This was my fourth year in the competition (but couldn't enter last year as we were in Cannes), and we seemed to have learned from all our previous mistakes.

I was part of a 2 person team with Brad Davison, but also had Michelle Fitz-William, and Jamaine Ross actorising.

The genre was "Educational Movie", so we made a movie for aliens who might want to invade and colonise earth. Unfortunately our film might have been a little over ambitious visual effects wise (considering neither of us can do VFX), so we didn't have time to do a proper fine cut. But we're happy with the film and all it's B-gradeness.

It's screening at the Academy Cinema in Auckland, next Friday at 8:30pm.

Online Edit

Online Editor and Compositor Luke McPake analyzed the film with me yesterday, and worked out the best workflow for creating an "online edit" of the film.

I have to export every shot in the film as an 8 bit Tiff sequence (folder of still images), which are 30Mb per file.

With 7200 total frames in the movie (at 12 frames per second), these images will add up to roughly 216 Gb of space. They will then be reconnected in After Effects, and we can start to mess with colour and visual effects.

Fair Trade Fortnight

Starting tomorrow. Why not do something selfless and buy yourself some fairtrade chocolate from Trade Aid?