My Little "Behind the Scenes" Blog

I'm very sorry for the lack of posts here in the last month and a half. My last month at Framestore was very busy. I just checked and the last post was from March 17. How time flies!

Since returning to the U.S., we have had quite a time moving back into our house. We've had the hardwood floors sanded and refinished, the interior painted, and the exterior painted. We still haven't completely moved in. We're trying to learn from our time in London and have less "stuff" around. We loved our minimal lifestyle in our little house over there, that we want to keep some of that here in America. So we're trying to move in slowly, and not move any extra stuff into the house.

But enough about that. Now that I don't work for Framestore anymore, I'm free to tell more production related stories about Prince Caspian.

In all, Aslan was in over 400 shots, Trufflehunter was in almost as many. Whenever you see either of these characters on the screen, they are 100% digital, meaning there was no lion or badger on the set. On the set they had what were called "stuffies" that were the right size of the character, and were basically big stuffed animal props for the actors to be able to know where they were supposed to look. At Framestore, we also used them for lighting reference. If the character had to move during the shot, a person in a green suit would crawl around right next to the stuffy and move it. The woman that was moving Trufflehunter around also did his voice for a temporary track.

For my part, there are two things to look for in the movie. 

The first thing to see is the river. When they went to film the river shots, there wasn't enough water in the river. There were sandbars and it wasn't rushing wildly enough. But they really liked the location and everything else was perfect, so they shot it anyway. My job was to add more water into the river. Whenever there is an aerial shot of the river, all the water you see was added by me (and some great compositors, of course). We didn't get to do the river god, but I got to do some nice looking water!

The last thing to see in the movie is the big oak tree at the end of the show that untwists itself to form a doorway. I built all the canopy: branches, twigs and leaves; and did the animation of the canopy. I also integrated all of the canopy into the trunk. There were about 270,000 leaves on the tree. Final render times for the tree, not including the simulation, were around 5 hours per frame, including 23 aovs (arbitrary output variables). Simulating the branches for the big untwisting scene took about 2.5 hours. It was less than that for the shots where there is just wind in the branches.

The wide establishing shot of the Beruna village, where you see the courtyard and the village with the castle in the background was shot as a miniature at WETA in New Zealand. But the tree is mine. We got the background plates for this shot very late in the schedule, but it was one of the more fun shots of the tree to do, because you can see the whole tree at once in this shot. And it was really cool to see the miniature with all the lights and blue screens around it before it went into the film. The bridge, the castle, the mountains and the gorge were all matte paintings, but the houses and the courtyard and the cliff were all miniatures. I haven't seen the final composite of this shot yet, but Framestore provided the tree, Aslan, and Trufflehunter for it. I think Trufflehunter is roughly 4 or 5 pixels tall in this shot. All the other people on the dais and in the crowd were added digitally.

The tree shots were the very last ones to be delivered, moments before reel 9 closed. All the shots were basically done by the time I left for home, but my friend Alex finished up some rendering issues and color things after I left. And I heard that there was one more change to make as Alex left for his vacation, so he talked Mark through how to do the changes while he was in the airport!

All in all this was an amazing experience, one that I will treasure for a long, long time. My friend John said from that reading my blog he got the impression that everything was a big pain while I was there. If that is the impression I gave, I must apologize. Even though there were trying times and challenges (the hardest being the month I was there in the beginning without my family), I loved it. I loved the work. I loved figuring out how to get around. I loved the people I worked with. I loved Calvary Chapel Westminster and all the friends I made there. Most of the time, the hardest things in life are the best things in life. If we don't have things to struggle through, how will we ever learn anything? I think that's what sanctification is all about.

I'll write again in a couple of weeks, after I've seen the movie at the El Capitan Theater. And check out the website for Prince Caspian. There are loads of stuff to see and do there. I've even seen activity books and coloring books and young reader novelizations at the supermarket.

Thanks for reading,

Dave

Patience and Endurance

On Saturday, I was working at Framestore. We had two new shots come in that I was involved with and Robin has asked me to extend my contract until April 11. One of my tasks for Saturday was to estimate how long it will take me to finish all my shots.

I took one of the ones that I hadn't started yet, estimated how long it would take to finish it and then started in to see if I was right. The first step took me about three times as long to finish as I thought it would and I started to panic. Trying to control my panic, I just kept working, trying my best to get back to my estimate. But the harder I tried, the more problems with the scene I found. I realized that if all the scenes had this kind of problem, I was in very serious trouble. I finally went and talked to Sam about it. He is the artist that did the modeling for the lower half of the tree. He had some solutions for the scenes and I went back and tried them for the one I had started. It still didn't work. Now I was really starting to panic. 

Then I decided to give up on that one shot and try a different one. The next one I tried, Sam's idea worked perfectly. So working quickly, I was able to get three scenes into the render queue before packing up to go home.

As I was submitting the last of the three to the farm, suddenly a great wave of peace came over me and I realized that I actually had had quite a bit of success that day, even though one of the scenes had problems. My next thought was that someone must be praying for me.

I went home and told this story to M and K. They said that they were happy I got so much done, but they hadn't prayed for me. Then I told Kelly, and she said that she had prayed for me. I was so happy. And I was also relieved to remember that God is in control of everything, and that I don't need to stress out over schedules. After all that God has done in this adventure, I should already have known this one.

And as a side note on patience, I just got word that Logos Bible Software for the Macintosh has entered into it's alpha program! I've been patiently waiting for this powerful Bible Study software to get ported to the Mac, and now it is a significant step closer to reality.

Dave

Turned Ankle

Yesterday, I was coming down the stairs at Queens Road Peckham train station on my way home. But I wasn't just coming down the stairs. I was kind of running down the stairs, taking two at a time. I was very eager to get home and see my family. 

But about 3/4 of the way down, I misjudged a step by a fraction of an inch and turned my left ankle over. I caught the rail with my hand, and didn't fall, but I hurt my ankle pretty badly.

I got to the bottom and was in a lot of pain. But I realized that there was nothing for it but to walk home. So I grit my teeth and started walking. I think the adrenaline was pumping through me pretty well because each step felt better and better. By the time I got home, I was walking fairly normally.

Then I sat down on the couch with some frozen peas on my ankle. It started hurting again, which I expected, but the pain was pretty bad. Then I found that we were all out of ibuprofen. So I put my shoes on and laced them up tight. M went with me down to the corner market. Each step this time was worse and worse and by the time I got there, I knew I had made a bad decision. I bought the medicine and hobbled home.

By this time, it was dawning on me that my feet were my main form of transportation and that not being able to walk was going to make getting to work much harder. So I sent an email to a couple of friends and family who I knew would pray for me, took my medicine and went to bed with frozen peas on my foot.

When I woke up this morning, my ankle felt much better, though it was a bit sore. I got ready to go to work, figuring that if it started hurting, I could call in sick and go the doctor, and if it didn't, I could go to work. It didn't hurt, in fact it started feeling better and I went to work.

I took it easy on the way, standing on the escalators rather than walking up them, but by the time I got up to Soho my ankle felt about normal. Throughout the day, I kept wondering whether it would get worse, but it never did.

I'm going to take it easy on it for a few more days, until the soreness is completely gone, but I'm praising God for His mercy in healing my ankle so quickly.

Dave 

Some Things Can't Be Rushed

I don't usually post many details about my day to day stuff from work, but this story must be told.

Last week, some top executives from Disney and Walden Media came to Framestore to see how things were going. They went into the screening room with our production team and were watching some of the latest images that we had made. They had been in there for about 30-40 minutes, when Robin (our producer) came to my office and asked where Joe was. (His desk is next to mine.) I said that he had been there just a moment earlier, but that he must have stepped out for a minute. She asked if I knew where a particular thing that he had been working on was, and I looked and he still had it up on his monitor, but it was hidden behind a few other windows. I brought it forward and left it alone.

A few minutes later, Robin came back and asked if he had come back. Then all the executives and their entourage, our production team, Robin, Jon, our VFX Supervisor, and Mike, our CGI Supervisor, were crowded around the door to my office, waiting for Joe. Mike went to find Joe, and found him in the bathroom. Joe told me later that he actually knocked on the door to his stall and said,"Wipe faster." Joe replied from inside the W.C.,"Some things can't be rushed."

Joe eventually came back to his desk and showed the work to the people and was quite brilliant about the whole thing. They all apologized for lying in wait by his office, thanked him for his hard work and went away.

It was one of the funniest episodes in our office the whole time I've been here.

Dave

Leap Year Tomorrow

Tomorrow is leap year day. I'm not sure if that's what it is officially called, but it's the day we add to the year to make up for the fact that a solar year is actually a little less than 365.25. So we have to adjust it a bit every so often. And tomorrow's the day we do it.

I hope you weren't born on a leap year, but it might be kind of cool in a way.

Dave

Larry Norman Dies at 60

One of my all time favorite artists passed away last Sunday, Larry Norman. I started listening to his music in the 70's, and have been listening and collecting his music for many years now.

I'm not sure how this is hitting me yet. I'll have to mull this over quite a while before I have something interesting and insightful to say, so for now, I'll just defer to the news. There's a pretty good article that Kelly's got on her blog. Just click on Kel's Blog up there to the right.

Dave

I don' know. Where do you wanna eat?

I went to lunch with my friend Brian. He's from Cape Town, South Africa. We had the usual "I don' know, where do you wanna' eat?" back and forth conversation for a while until he said,"I know a place. But I don't know how to describe it. Let's just go and you tell me how to describe it."

So we went down by Framestore on Noel Street, to a place called "Bodean's". They had tin signs on the wall with pigs and cows on them and long tall tables with tall stools at them. There was a long queue to order and we stood talking for a while. Then I realized that I would need to order soon and grabbed a menu off the counter.

It was a BBQ place! They had pulled pork sandwiches, ribs and barbeque chicken, cole slaw and the works. I told Brian what kind of place it was and he said they only call the thing you cook on a barbeque, not the whole place. So I explained that it's not just what's on the menu, but it's practically a whole culture down in the southern U.S.

My "Soho Special" was pretty good, but it needed a bunch of BBQ sauce to make it so. But the main effect of the whole place was to make me homesick for Lucille's in Torrance. It was quite fun to get to tell Brian all about the place that he took me to.

Oh, and as we were sitting there eating, I looked up and saw Jacob and Dan with a couple of other guys from Framestore at another table eating. I was quite surprised at this and decided that though they said they were my friends, they couldn't really be, since they had not told me about this fun American style BBQ place before. (Just kidding.)

I'll probably be back there again before I head back to the states.

Dave

Indiana Jones

This looks like it could be fun...

Plus I wanted to see if I could embed this on my blog. How cool is that?

Dave

Noisy Americans

Last Saturday we took a trip to Greenwich to see what was there. It's not far from Peckham/Nunhead, so we took the 177 bus. It's one of those fun double decker buses.

On the way, Kelly was sitting near the front with the two little ones. The older two were standing with me towards the middle of the bus where there is some open space for push-chairs (strollers) and shopping trolleys. We had both of our push-chairs with us.

Our little darlings (as my mum calls them) have some little dolls that they like to play with. Usually that involves them talking baby-talk for them. And they were doing that this day on the bus. As they were getting more and more into it, and having more and more fun, they were getting louder and louder.

I looked over at my oldest and said, in a joking way,"Noisy Americans". I didn't use an accent, but with only two words, one might not be certain if there is an accent to be heard. One nice old lady sitting right by me looked up and said,"I was just saying that to my friend here." And then she realized that I was probably their father, guarding the push-chair, joking with my daughter, and she got quite embarrassed, and said,"Oh, sorry." 

I forgave her and just smiled.

Dave

The Last Leg

I have about 7 weeks left in this adventure and I'm feeling a bit conflicted.

On one hand, I have lots of work to do and I'm very busy all the time. I'm really enjoying the work and being in London. I feel pretty comfortable getting around, which is a big shift from when I started this.

Today, I got to the train station and the computer that runs the electronic sign was down, so the sign only showed the time, not which trains were coming next. But I knew that any train that stopped and was going north would take me to London Bridge, so I just waited for a couple of minutes and hoped on. Sure enough, I made it to London Bridge with no trouble.

When I got downstairs to the Underground, though, the train that was standing at the platform was packed and clearly not going anywhere soon. Then an announcement came that there was a power supply failure and that the Jubilee line was suspended. The cool thing was that I knew how to hop over to the Northern Line, switch to the Central Line, and get myself to work. Amazingly, I was still arrived early! I don't think I could have done that 5 months ago without a lot of head-scratching and asking for a lot of help.

At work, I'm down to the "let's get this done and make a movie" part of the project. This is the part where all the research should be done, all the ideas tried and sifted through, and now it's just down to execution. I still have some researching and methods to try, so I hope to get that out of the way quickly, but in all, I'm pretty close. And we're getting lots of pretty pictures out, which is fun. 

BTW, there's a new trailer out that played during the Super Bowl. My shot didn't make it into this cut, but there's about 8 frames of the werewolf and hag from Aslan's How, which is kind of cool.

But on the other hand, I'm starting to really look forward to going home and getting back to my "real" life. I really feel as if I'm in another world like Narnia, and it's almost time for me to go through the magic door back to my world. And I also feel like Peter, knowing that it's ok. It's not really homesickness, because I don't feel that disconnected from California. But there's a longing for the familiar and comfortable.

Anyway, that's how I'm feeling at this point. I guess I'm mostly sharing this with myself; so that in a year or so, I can look back at this and remember what I was feeling at the time.

Dave

Snow Watch 2008

The BBC and The Weather Channel are both predicting snow this weekend, but they don't agree on when or how much. The BBC says it will start Saturday night, and be heavy snow on Sunday, but the Weather Channel says light snow on Monday.

We'll see. 

The salt is still in piles on the sidewalk (pavement) in front of our house, but I don't know if it's still any use. They might reuse it, I think it'll still work.

Hmm... Can you tell I have my doubts?

Dave

Jan 31 Update - Heavy rain today, but no snow.

Feb 2 Update - No snow. No forecast for any either. Oh well.

Whirlwind Tour

My parents came over from California to visit us for five days. We had the most glorious, exhausting vacation that I've had in a long time.

They arrived last Thursday around lunchtime. I had hired a driver to take us and their luggage back to our house. I used the same company that we used when Kelly and the kids came. When he didn't show up, I called the company to ask what was going on. After searching through their records, they found that I had booked the car for Friday. Oops! They found another driver, who came and picked us up and brought us home.

They spent Thursday night with us in the kids' room, while the kids moved to the extra bedroom.

Friday morning, we got up early and walked up to Queens Road Peckham train station and took four trains to Canterbury. What an amazing trip that was. We had two suitcases for the six of us, and all of my parent's luggage and two strollers. Each time we changed trains, we had to go up a flight of stairs, across the tracks, and down another flight of stairs.

But when we got to Canterbury, I realized that I wasn't sure how to get to the hotel from the train station. I asked the gal who worked at the little coffee bar in the station if she knew where the Castle House Hotel was. She wasn't sure, but guessed that it must be one of the ones right across the bridge. After asking which bridge and where it was, I went on a quick scouting run across the footbridge that is right across from the station. It turns out that the bridge takes you across the four lane road that circles the city and over to the ancient wall of the city! I followed along the wall to the main opening (which would have been the city gates in the old days) and there was our hotel. It is where the guard house of the city would have been, and right across the gate from a 1,000 year old Norman keep. It was awesome.

The hotel was a nice little bed and breakfast. The rooms were big, but in normal English fashion, the floors were neither flat nor level. But other than that, it was fun to stay there.

That afternoon (Thursday) we walked around the city of Canterbury. The streets are exactly what you would expect of an British town, cobblestones, narrow winding streets, buildings making canyons. I was kind of excited to see the Cathedral, even though it is a big time Catholic place, but no one else was interested in paying money to see a church. I understood. And after they weren't into it, neither was I. We took plenty of pictures from outside the grounds. It is the tallest thing in the town, so you can see it pretty much where ever you go, which is the point I think. I was actually very surprised at myself for wanting to see this Catholic Cathedral. I think that just the architecture and antiquity of it drew me there.

The next day we took a quick train down to Dover to see Dover Castle. THAT was a great experience. We started with a tour of the secret wartime tunnels that were used in WWII to first extract over 330,000 soldiers from Normandy and then plan and launch D-Day from. We couldn't take any pictures on that tour, but it was a great tour.

After that, we walked up to the keep (which is the center of the castle) and walked around. Then I realized we could go in and explore all through the castle. It was so awesome! It was like walking into the book that I had read to my family just after Christmas about castles. And we could even get up on the roof and look down. What a great place.

That night we got back to Canterbury, and had fish and chips at a nice restaurant, called "The Deep Blue".

Sunday we got up and dragged all our luggage through the town because the station we wanted to use was at the other end of town. But that meant that we didn't have to change trains to get back to Waterloo station.

My parents stayed at the Marriott at County Hall, which is the most fabulous hotel I've ever been in. The view from their window was of Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, and some Star Wars Stormtroopers left over from the Star Wars exhibit that we had just missed. We ate take out from shop across the street right in their room, partly because we were all too tired to go anywhere, and partly because the view was so spectacular.

Monday we went on the London Eye. That was great. I loved seeing the city from that high. Then we went on the "Big Bus Tour" around London and had a fun tour guide.

Tuesday, we went on the "Big Bus Tour" again, but got off at Oxford Street and Regent Street. From there we walked over to Framestore and I gave them the quick tour. Then we went down to a great place called,"Hummous Bros." for dinner.

Wednesday morning, I went up and met them at their hotel before they left for the airport and sent them off. It was a whirlwind trip, but it was VERY fun.

I'll post some pictures later, but I wanted to get this outline posted since I haven't written in a while.

Dave

International Keyboards - The Undo

I got moved today into a real office. My desk is right by the window. I'm in a room with two other Houdini artists and a Maya FX TD.

But when the systems guys hooked up my computer, my newly acquired SGI keyboard didn't work. I had to revert to a British keyboard.

It was short lived, but it was good while it lasted. I may spend some time tomorrow trying to troubleshoot this problem.

Dave

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

Kelly took this one of me, just after I bought a little bag of chestnuts from a guy who was roasting them right there on the sidewalk. You can see him just behind me to the right wearing a white hat. The sign above him says,"ROASTED CHESTNUTS". 

I had never had chestnuts before. They seem a bit like small baked potatoes or very large soft peanuts. I liked them, but in the end it was more nostalgia than anything else.

Kelly and I both really like this picture. I love how everyone is swirling and blurry behind me and that I'm all lit up by the flash. This is how I feel walking around a lot of the time, just a big blur all around me.

Dave

International Keyboards

When I first arrived at Framestore, my computer had a British keyboard on it. It's very similar to an American keyboard with a few "key" exceptions (pun intended).

The @ and " are switched.

The # is £.

The ~ is on an extra key next to the return key.

And the | is on an extra key between z and the left shift.

I decided that rather than be a sore thumb and try to get a replacement, that I would try to be all international about it, and use the British one at Framestore.

But of course, my MacBook Pro has an American keyboard on it at home. So in the evenings I would spend the first half hour of working reminding myself that I was on an American keyboard and then the next morning I'd have to remember where all those fancy keys were.

I thought I'd get used to it, partly because Alex says that he's used to it and doesn't even have to think about it anymore. But he's been doing it for years. And I don't have to. I finally broke down and asked for an American keyboard at work. They brought me an old grey SGI keyboard. It has a nice nostalgic feel to it, and all the keys are in the right place.

It's amazing how the little things can make such a big difference. It's so comfortable to use an American keyboard again.

Oh well. I haven't picked up a British accent either.

Dave

The Beauty of Adversity

Those who know me pretty well know that I mull over ideas in my head for a while, but as I'm doing that, I usually talk out loud. But I don't like to talk to myself (much), so I share half-baked ideas.

The last couple of days I've had this topic running around in my head--"The Beauty of Adversity". I didn't actually have a name for it until tonight, but here it is.

I don't like adversity. I avoid confrontation. I don't like to deliver bad news. But I've also found that in those times, I'm much more likely to rely on Jesus and pray and read my Bible and study. When I have to do something that I don't want to do, or if I need to do something difficult, or something that I'm unprepared for, I seek help, eventually. The stubborn part of me starts by trying to ignore a tough situation, but when I finally have to face it, I seek help.

And I believe that is exactly where God wants us. He wants us to remember that we're dependent. Our nature wants to believe that we're independent and self-sufficient. But that's not true. It's easy to believe that lie when everything is going well. We start to think that we caused our string of good luck, or think,"Wasn't that clever of me to be in the right place at the right time for this to happen?" But the truth is that God is the cause of all blessing.

Isn't our purpose in life to bring glory to God? And if so, in times of plenty, we should be thankful for his bounty towards us, and in times of adversity and trials, we should look to God to be our strength and our hope. That way, when He works His purpose out in us, He gets the glory. 

I haven't really finished this thought, so if anyone else has any input on it, I'd love to hear it.

Dave

Around the World in Two Weeks

My friend Jacob just got back to work from his holiday adventure.

First, he went from London to L.A. for a couple of days to see friends.

Then to New Zealand to see his mom. While he was there, he went kayaking and unexpectedly found himself on the beach that is shown at the beginning of the trailer for Prince Caspian! Later they went to the mountains and saw Mount Doom. They actually went to one of the mountains near there and you could see the mountain that was used in the Lord of the Rings trilogy for Mount Doom.

Then he went to Paris for two days. After that he went to Switzerland and went snowboarding in the Alps. He said one of the best parts of snowboarding in the Alps was that by the time he was done in the evening, he was so tired that even though his body had no idea what timezone he should be jet-lagged from, he went right to sleep.

He got back to London last night and was back at work today.

Sounds like an amazing trip! Around the world in two weeks, with stops in Narnia and Middle Earth!

Dave

Halftime

Pastor Chris at King's Harbor Church in Redondo Beach, always give a sermon at the end of June or beginning of July that he calls, "Halftime". It's kind of a "State of the Church" address, where he reminds us of the great things that God has done in the first part of the year, and all the things we're looking forward to for the rest of the year.

I'm a little past halfway in my time here in London, but coming back from my Christmas break has put in the mind that I'm in the second half. For the first part of my adventure, I always felt like I was coming "into" the project--learning the Framestore pipeline, making friends, figuring out the transportation and housing issues, etc.

But now that I've been back at work for a couple of days since the break, I now feel like I'm "coming out" of the project. I had been saying,"I've been here for three weeks." Or "I've been here for two and half months." But now I find myself thinking,"I've only got three months left."

It's interesting how adventures can never be planned. There are plans to be made and preparations to be made when starting an adventure, but the actual course of the adventure cannot be planned. I feel a little like Sam and Frodo talking about being "in a story" and wondering how it will be told when they're done. Except that I don't have a magical ring hanging around my neck, walking into Mordor. (And by making this reference, everyone back in my office in California will say,"It all comes back to The Lord of the Rings.")

I'm looking forward to seeing how everything comes together in the end on our movie. I'm starting to think about how to get rid of the little bits of furniture that we've collected. I'm starting to think more about getting back to life in California and the changes we'll make as a result of living here.

But I'm also trying to savor the time I have left and not miss anything by getting ahead of myself and looking too far ahead.

Dave

snow watch 2008.

Well, of course it didn't snow today. Nor is it likely to snow in the near future. I knew that if I put SNOW WATCH 2008!!! on my blog I would jinx the whole weather system and it wouldn't snow. But I had to try the experiment anyway.

I'm not sure why they thought it would snow, since the temperature was only supposed to get down to 3ºC last night. That's way too warm for snow.

Oh well, it was fun looking for it all day.

Dave

SNOW WATCH 2008!!

They've come around and put sand on the sidewalks. The forecast is for snow tonight or tomorrow morning. I asked the guy who was putting out the sand if he thought it would be a little or a lot and he said,"A lot."

Let's hope so!

Dave