Prince Caspian Trailer

We got to see the trailer in the Framestore Cinema tonight. They showed it to us twice!

As we watched it, I actually got a little teary-eyed. I got sucked right into the story and I can't wait for the movie to come out.

My shot seemed so short in the whole thing, but it's there. Seeing our images with the sound, finally hearing Prince Caspian's voice, and seeing it all cut together, was amazing.

I've heard that it's playing in front of National Treasure II and The Golden Compass. Of the two, I'd recommend National Treasure II, but it's up to you of course. You can also wait a week or so and see it on the Quicktime page, but I don't know exactly when that will be posted.

It was great watching it in our private cinema, with all the people who were working on it. What a wonderful experience.

Dave

A Surprising Post

I was walking to lunch today with my colleague Brian. He was telling me a very interesting story. I can't remember what he was telling me about, because he suddenly hit my chest with his right hand. It stopped me cold and as I looked up, there was a post 1" from my face, dead center of my eyes! If he hadn't stopped me I probably would have broken my nose, or knocked myself out. I have no idea what he had been talking about because we both started laughing so hard about the incident, we couldn't get back to what it was.

That was a surprising post!

Dave

Office Party

Our producer Robin decided that there were enough new people on our show that didn't know each other and so she threw a party for us all to get to know one another. I've never been to a party in England before, and our office parties back in Redondo were usually barbecues. I wasn't sure what to expect, but decided I really wanted to meet some more people from the show, so I went.

It was at a bar/restaurant called Red Soho. We had the whole downstairs to ourselves. Robin paid for the bar and they served beer and wine. I walked up to the bartender, sounding very much like I knew what I was talking about and asked what kind of beer they had. He said,"Grolsch, Grolsch, Grolsch or Grolsch." I said,"I'll have one of those then." I really had no idea what I was going to choose if there were any choices, so that worked out perfect for me. I nursed that beer for about an hour and a half. They had a few finger snacks and that was it for refreshments.

On to the good stuff. I met a very nice guy who sits about three chairs from me by the name of Matt Bell. He's working on Aslan and Trufflehunter. He walked away from his desk for a few minutes this afternoon and his cell phone went off about three times. He has a very entertaining, upbeat song on his phone, but it's very loud. Some people got annoyed. Jacob emailed this picture to everyone on the FX team:

I talked to a number of guys who are in the Compositing Dept. They are all very talented guys who do amazing work, almost as good as William Furlong!

As usually happens at these kinds of gatherings, everyone hangs out with the people they usually hang out with. I was no exception, but I did try to meet some new people. There was one guy, Paul, who is the lead shader writer for the show, but his accent was so thick that I couldn't understand him much at all. He had a number of loud interesting stories to tell (apparently), so I listened and laughed when the other people did. Robin spent most of her time walking around, breaking up cliques and introducing people to each other.

One of my goals for the evening was to let Robin know how much I've enjoyed working for her these last few months. She's been pretty stressed out lately, and I wanted to let her know that from my perspective, she's been doing great. When I did get to tell her, I think she had a hard time holding back some tears. You know how it is when you're working really hard at something and it doesn't seem to be going well and you're still in the middle of it and it doesn't seem to be getting better any time soon and someone says anything nice and you just want to lose it? It seemed like that's where she was tonight. I'm praying for her big time.

When I got home, my whole family was fast asleep, at 9:30. Wow. I think that's a first.

Changes, Indeed...

In my last post, I said I didn't know what God's plan is. I still don't know the whole plan, but for now we're staying in England. Though we aren't working on the sequences that I thought we would be, the production staff has asked me to stay on and do other shots and FX. I'm very excited to be continuing on with the Narnian project. I've added a link to my "Related Links" bubble on the right to the Official Narnia website.

The trailer should be coming out soon, though I don't know exactly when. There is one shot in the trailer that I worked on. When it comes out, I'll tell more.

Here in London, it has started raining in earnest now. Today was the second full day of rain in a row and the forecast is for rain all week. Sunday was really cold, about 0º C. (multiply by 1.8 and add 32) 32º F. Monday and Tuesday were a bit warmer, though still very cold.

Sunday, after church, we went to a pizza place by my office that has medium pizzas for £3-£4. That's when it started to rain. After lunch we walked back past my office and stopped in for a restroom break and so I could use the internet to search for a store called Primark. We were told that Primark is a good, reasonably priced department store and we needed a coat for Kelly and a robe for me. The little ones fell asleep in the prams (strollers) in the freezing cold and rain on our way over there, but we made it. Primark turns out to be a nice Target type store, though it's all clothing. We didn't find a coat, but we did find a robe.

From there we took the tube and the train home. When we got home, Q couldn't find his baby doll. We searched all around and couldn't find it. He was very sad. Kelly had dreams about the doll. Then Monday night, we figured that he must have been left at my office while I was searching the internet. I called and the nice woman at the reception desk said he was there and that she would put my name on him so I could collect him in the morning. This morning I went down, collected him, brought him back up to my desk and put him on display right between my dual monitors. I got quite a few looks and a few questions about him. Not only did I have this dapper little boy doll on my desk, but he's got black skin. I just told everyone that he was my son's baby and that made him my grandson.

Here's some video. The quality is horrible, 'cause I got this with my mobile phone.


That's all I have for now.

Dave

Changes

Today marks a significant change in my activities here in London. The sequences we were working on for the film have been moved to another facility. While I'm sad that all the hard work that my colleagues and I have put into this won't be seen in the film, I still believe that God has a plan through all of this--I just don't know what it is.

But I know Him, and that's enough for me.

Dave

Natural History Museum

This is a skeleton of a Diplodocus. Some people think it's 150 million years old. I don't. Answers In Genesis has some compelling things to say about this. There are lots of websites about Creation Science. It's still cool to see this amazing beasts. They're HUGE!!

And here's my Noah's Ark collection...




I enjoyed being with my family at this interesting museum. We had a lot of fun being together that day.

When I was a kid, I remember going to the Natural History Museum in downtown L.A. and having a sack lunch out on the grass in front of the museum. I also remember loving the dioramas of the African savannah and the jungle scenes. But my favorites were the dinosaur bones. I don't know what it is about these creatures that fires the imagination, but they're so awesome.

I love giraffes. Maybe because I'm tall, but they seem so interesting. They're tall and graceful and gentle and powerful. And they drop their newborn 6 feet to the ground when they're born! The newborns can walk within hours of being born.

When I was in high school, I took a photography class and we went to the L.A. zoo for a photo shoot. One of my favorite pictures from that shoot was of an African Elephant's eye. I tried to recreate that shot here, but it's not the same. And my high school version was in black and white.

And Jonah...


One of the ways we choose what to do this day was that C really wanted to see the life size whale. It is quite a sight to see a life size model of a whale and then to think what it would be like to be in the water near one of these animals, let alone swallowed by one and deposited on the shore of a country that you don't want to go to, to tell the people there to repent, not wanting them to repent, seeing them repent, and then having to learn the lesson from God all over again. To think that being swallowed by one of these wouldn't make you just do whatever God said!

Dave

Alex

I found out today that Alex has a blog also. He's got some great photography on it. There's one of a fly up close that's amazing.

Check it out.

Dave

Working Environment

Here are some images I took with the camera on my phone. This first one is the view out our window, looking west along Margaret Street. I don't know what it is about this image, but it looks like a photo of a miniature model, but it is real. It must be the compression on the image and the lack of direct sunlight.


And this is Alex and Jacob deep into working on the rivergod. Alex is on the left.

And yes, that's Sarah Michelle Gellar in the background (the cardboard cutout version). I'm not sure where she came from, but I think she was in the office before the guys moved in.

London Fog

One of the traditional aspects of London that I've been kind of missing has been the fog. All the stories about the "pea-soup" fog of London, the long coats by the company called London Fog, all remind us of the fog. So where is it?

It turns out that it wasn't a natural fog. Well, it wasn't unnatual, but it was man-made. Before 1956, residents used to burn a soft coal for heat that produced a yellowish smog that hung thick in the city. This had been going on for centuries, but then they passed the Clean Air Act, and the fog lifted.

So, it turns out that it's better to breathe than to experience romantic smog.

Dave

Interesting Ironies

My producer Robin came around this evening to say she was leaving for the night and that she was going to see "The Sound of Music" (the play). My friend Florian, who is from Germany, asked what it was about. Isn't it strange that a true story about a WWI war hero defying the Nazis isn't common knowledge in Germany?

Another irony is that Framestore is finishing up the special effects for a film called "The Golden Compass" written by an atheist named Phillip Pullman, and we're doing the special effects for "The Chronicles of Narnia". It's been said that Pullman's series "His Dark Materials" is the anti-Narnia, pitting them against each other ideologically. Snopes

Dave

Driving on the Left

Someone told me that the reason that the British drive on the left side of the road is an old Roman tradition.

In the olden days when Rome ruled in Britian, soldiers on horseback would carry their sword on their right sides. As they passed each other they would draw their swords. In order to not have to strike across one's body, they would pass on the left so their swords would be towards their opponent.

Sounds fishy to me, but I haven't heard any other explanation. So that's the one I'm going with for now.

Dave