The Ocean Maker - The Insider Story - Part 4

Continued from Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

The first screening went very well and over the coarse of our production we had a lot of similar screenings. My memory of all the screenings on the island blend into each other. But ultimately there was a lot of cheering, respectful compliments and constructive feedback. Note giving is an art into itself, and so is taking notes. The results can be very different in different settings and mediums. We sent out versions of the film through Dropbox links to key filmmaking friends of ours to get feedback. You get very different responses that way. The remote feedback ranged from solid filmmaking notes to complete mis-understandings of certain concepts, and this was the best feedback of all as we could make sure to address big oversights. If something important was missed by even one of our friends you can bet that a much larger number of people with no knowledge of the animation process will fail to understand the same things, so it was crucial to find those oversights and make sure they were clear.

The team feedback was really good as we could see exactly what they did and didn't understand. Standing in the same room as someone viewing your work reveals so many different things that you can't get through written feedback alone. You see all the reactions, the unspoken truths (which you have to skillfully inquire about without putting words in their mouths). Since they were all part of the team they also had a big stake in the project and it was important to address any major concerns. But I was surprised at how laid back the team was allowing Lucas and I to really decide what we needed to do to make it work. It takes a great deal of faith, patience and commitment to give a director who isn't paying you the freedom to do that. For that I'm very impressed and grateful to the rest of the team. These were real professionals!

We plotted out a bit of a strategy of who to show it to over the coming weeks as we progressed. It was important not to blow all our best people too soon as we were going to need to have a fresh set of eyes for each major update. We're still to this day holding back on showing many people as when we have another round of story notes to implement, there's lots more animation to put in and of course when it's all rendered with the final score it's going to be a whole different experience. Although we'll be needing the support and a pat on the back at that point, that's when it'll still be vitally important that we have a few objective people with good notes to make sure we've not overlooked anything.

As we proceed to improve the story, leaving behind early solutions and evolving the film to try new ones it's easy to see how simple familiarity can breed contempt for perfectly good story beats. As we've shown it to new people old issues have begun to come up again. What's happening is that in a couple of spots in the film there are opportunities to setup and pay off any number of larger story beats, but you can't do them all, you can only pick one or two. So we've been upgrading each story beat as we've found better ones, but over time you realize that you can easily lose sight of other core issues solved by older solutions from previous versions. It's a tricky balance picking what stays and what goes, and one that's still going on now. There's little doubt that what we have already is very strong, but the battle to make it the best it can be will continue... usually until someone takes it out of your hands, but in this case probably when time and money runs out!

Issues like this you can only learn about when you've done a lot of this kind of film-making and no first timer is going to learn how to deal with it in one project, but our team has quite a few projects under our belts now and after a while it's like looking at the code in the Matrix... you can see multi-layered hidden issues coming down the pipeline in the future... before anyone else can anticipate them and you can start to plan for them.

I'm going to take this opportunity to plug the class that Lucas is planning to run that teaches these advance techniques. Check out the perks on the IndieGoGo page for our film and you'll find two ways to get your seat in the class. Here's a video in which Lucas explains more about it.

Of course when the work was getting intense, it was nice to be able to take a break away from our laptops. Remember this wasn't a job, in an office, with fixed hours. We could start and stop work when we wanted and set our own hours. We all have strong work ethics so Lucas and Christina weren't worried about us pulling our weight (or if they were they did a great job of hiding it).

I got into a routine of starting early, usually before most of the team were up, when it was nice and quiet, and actually we had to be quiet in order to avoid waking Henning/George in the exposed loft area (no wall or door). Often I'd find Lucas was already up working on his laptop, we'd exchange silent greetings, put on headphones and do in an hour or two of work as the rest of the team gradually filled up the main house. I'd often take a break around lunch to swim a few lengths and sit in the sun for a bit. If I waited too late in the day the sun went behind the trees and I couldn't get my vitamin D for the day!

The pool was a good release and brought me back to my laptop relaxed and filled with solutions to problems I'd been facing in the morning. I'd do a few more hours work before we'd start talking about food and figure out what the plan would be for the evening. Sometimes it was a group cooking session, sometimes someone would offer to cook for the team, and we'd clean up, sometimes we all went out. But ultimately we were all bonding and getting to know each other.

Through out all of this Christina took charge of planning excursions for us. Everything from snorkeling with Sharks, Manta Rays and Turtles to Cave Tubing, climbing Mayan Temples, Crocodile Hunting and Canoeing around the island (I'm getting Nam-like twitches just remembering that one... it was epic!). All very memorable stuff and we're all extremely grateful to her for planning the 'regime of fun'. Generally speaking we  worked five and a half days a week. Half a day would be put aside for an event and one whole day was dedicated to something special. We didn't have to do everything though. We were given a per-diem each week that covered the expenses, events and any special things we wanted to buy on top of the main shopping trips. That way we could choose to skip an event if we just wanted to chill out or work, without feeling like we were missing out. Everyone needs a chill day at some point or another!

I'll be bringing Part 5 to you in the near future to tell you how it all played out. The film is still in production at the time of writing, but I'm back in the US and working in Los Angeles. So progress is a lot slower for the time being while we all recoup our costs and pay our bills. In the mean time check out the campaign which includes other videos about the project. Please feel free to share the story.

The Ocean Maker - The Insider Story - Part 3

Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.

So the team set to work on the film. As the point man put in charge of documenting the production I was encouraging everyone else to take pictures and videos... to get coverage while I sunned myself in the corner and watched them work their socks off! ... Ok, not quite... I actually set myself the task of interviewing each team member so that we got everyone's initial impressions. Not an easy thing for everyone to do as we're not all comfortable with the camera and it was something that we all had to get used to. But we got through it and captured a few great conversations as we got to know the team.

While I was doing that, everyone else was setting up. Tray went to task setting up a way for us all to share files. Essentially his laptop acted as the server, and we each pressed a sync button on our laptops that sent all our changes to the server then downloaded any chances to our machines. It was a lot more data than we all really needed but on a local network it worked fine. A dirty but perfectly functional system. There was also something distinctly satisfying about watching the graph of the data uploading and downloading, it acted as a nice little break from the work.

This syncing process also allowed Lucas and I to play tag with the edit. Essentially we had what we started with from our sessions in New York and we told each other who had the latest edit every few hours. Each of us making changes then syncing when we were done. It was an experiment and it could have gone very wrong, having two animation directors putting their mark on the edit. Since it was his project I had to accept that he had the final say but it was important for me to showcase my ideas too and make sure they got a chance shine. Some ideas I put in there didn't fit in with what he wanted, and other things I did were better than what he'd planned for. So it was a give and take. I could also bring workflow techniques to the edit that I'd picked up from years of studio work. Ultimately we got a lot out of it and I feel like the film was a lot better for both of us having had a chance to bat it around and try things out. Some ideas that I put in that got shot down early even came back later on after other approaches had failed, so every little thing you try has a chance to shine eventually.

Getting back into Softimage XSI (the 3D Software) was a challenge for me, and there were a lot of questions flying around between the animators about how to do things. For a while it acts like a creative block, stopping you from greeting your ideas to the screen quickly, but time passes, you stick with it and the barrier lowers and the creative flow speeds up. Eventually we were working at quite a fair pace churning out shots. Now that I'm back from the island and using Maya again for most projects it can be difficult getting back into XSI mode again. It makes you realize how valuable that solid block of time was to focus on one workflow. Switching workflows regularly just slows you down and requires a ramp up time for each, so you tend to get less work done overall when you have to do things that way.

Our Asset/Shot Tracker

Anyway, back to the island and Lucas was having to focus on rigging polish for the main character so that the Animators could get started. So I had a bit of free reign to work on some big sequences on my own, creating the shots in 3D. This is essentially the Previs and Layout stage. I put very little time into finessing the details of the animation and focused instead on the shot setup, the way the shots cut together, the camera movement and what was needed in each shot to tell the story. I'd move on as quickly as I could to get enough footage in the timeline so that we could review the film. Our goal was to get the entire film roughed in over the first couple of weeks and we came in pretty close.

Once the Animators were up to speed and the kinks were out of the character rig, Lucas was able to join in the shot creation process again and we sat on the sofa working side by side. The efficiency in this can not be stressed enough. We bounced ideas back and forth really quickly, saw what each were doing and quickly got on the same page making shots that complimented each other in a similar style. It was a big bonding moment for each of us, I think. We'd circled each other as filmmakers for years and swapped stories but it was really incredible to be working side by side like that for the first time. A very memorable moment for me in my career and it made it all worth while.

I have a pretty large collection of film soundtracks so we had plenty to choose from to flesh out the temporary score. With that and a few key sound effects in place we soon had our first watchable animatic. There were still a few storyboard panels representing the character shots, which could be a bit jarring to people not used to seeing the jump in styles but we converted them over to 3D in due time. We had a TV mounted on the wall and a long HDMI cable so we gathered the team and put it up on the big screen. This was a great chance to record the event and capture everyone's reactions so I would recorded video discreetly while everyone watched the film for the first time. The lights went down and we hit play. Hearts were pounding as we waited to see where all this was going. Was it worth the trip? Were we stuck on an island with a mad man for another month with no way to escape? When were we going to get to see Netflix again? Was it worth missing the latest season of [insert favorite TV show] for? Was my hamster starving for nothing? [kidding].... Patience... all will be revealed.

Part 4 is coming tomorrow and will detail some of the greatest challenges film-making  In the mean time check out the campaign which includes other videos about the project. Please feel free to share the story.

The Ocean Maker - The Insider Story - Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

So the The Ocean Maker was effectively underway in a virtual way, with some team members in Austin. One up in Canada who was just starting to figure it all out. Lucas bouncing around between cities, and me in New York starting to deal with story issues. There was much more to it than that but I'll let the other team members tell you their story. We did get the chance to hangout a little bit and meet up with each other over Google Hangout at one point, which if nothing else, just made it all a little bit more real.

One key thing we had to deal with before we set off to the Caribbean was hardware. One or two of us had laptops powerful enough to work on but many didn't and Lucas opted to buy a laptop for each of us to use. They were very respectable machines, nothing special but very capable for what they cost and had a large screen. Henning and I both got one and began setting them up ready for use. It wouldn't have been possible for Lucas to bring over all the hardware himself as that would have complicated things a lot, so we each took one in our hand luggage.

The next step was to get to Belize... or it would have been if my rent wasn't so much in New York! Yes Lucas was able to pay for all our expenses going to the island, and living there, but since we weren't going to get paid for our time the rent still had to be paid. So the two people coming from New York, Henning and I, both made an effort to find friends and sub-letters for our apartments. Unfortunately it was a lot of stress and I only managed to get half the costs of the place covered. So essentially I still had to pay quite a lot in rent and bills while I was away while earning nothing and potentially passing on paid jobs. Not ideal, but it shows just how dedicated we all were to the cause that we each had at least part of that to contend with in order to take part.

Finally I headed over to Henning's place with a suitcase and we caught a taxi to the airport super early in the morning. Two flights later we were arriving in Belize. We were met by Lucas in the airport where we met George Renner coming from Canada, the youngest of our team. I didn't know what he looked like at all, but as soon as I saw the him wandering out of the airport looking clueless I nudged Lucas convinced it was him. Lucas ran to give the usual manly Austin bear hug, and I totally failed to capture the moment on film. Documentary fail number one... actually we were so tired I didn't catch much of the flight there either. Oh well.

We rode in a car and a boat to meet Christina Martell on the island of Caye Caulker. Christina and I know each other well, but the other two were meeting her in person for the first time (if you don't count the video chat). She was in top form as she guided us via a trip on a golf cart (the transport of choice on this tiny island) to our new home and office for the duration of our stay, and so began the battle for who got what room!

As the oldest of the household I was graciously given the other downstairs bedroom (mostly because I stayed quiet and let the other two battle it out). Lucas and Christina had a similar room, while Henning and George figured out who was going to get the double room with the bathroom and who was going to get the not so private (wall-less) room in the loft. In the end they both did a stint in each room to make things a little fairer. There were sacrifices to be made for our little pleasure trip!

In time we all met with the other team members, Tad Catalano (who I had met before very briefly watching Lucas play Saxophone), Tray Duncan (who I'd heard a lot about but never met) and his wife Kathryn Nowlin. The three of them had another house to themselves around the corner from the main one the rest of us where in. It didn't come with a pool but it did give them the luxury of a place to retreat to, escaping the main work space in our house. We all went out for a meal together, and enjoyed the local fish dishes.

The main house had a large open area with a dinning table, two sofas and a number of extra chairs. We setup one small desk for Tad and the rest of us spread out across the sofas and dinning table. There was some speeches from Lucas and Christina to get everyone on the same level and sort out how the expenses were going to be handled but we quickly got to work setting up equipment. Having lived out of a suitcase before in Australia I knew I was going to be comfortable on the sofa with my Wacom to one side, freeing up the dining table for most of the rest of the team for a more traditional desk working space. Lucas actually set himself up in several spots over the course of our stay. Sometimes he was next to me so that we could bounce story, layout and animation ideas around. Other times he setup on the dinning table or even on a shelf standing up.

Beginning the following day we started our routine, and really got to work. These are all dedicated and passionate artists and we were all excited to get started. If anything Christina and Lucas were surprised at just how quick we got to work and started pulling some long days. They actually had to re-iterate several times that we were free to relax, acclimatize and take advantage of the island before starting... but it was too late, the creative bug had hit and we were off!

Part 3 coming soon. In the mean time check out the campaign which includes other videos about the project. Please feel free to share the story.

The Ocean Maker - Short Film

As many of you know Lucas Martell started a new short film and I got reluctantly roped into it [rolls eyes]... just kidding, it's been pretty awesome working with one of my very best friends. He just posted his new website and along with it some images and video (included in his reel).

I've been a bit busy lately getting setup in LA, but hopefully I'll find some time to get back to helping out on this thing. This is Lucas's baby but really want to follow through on it and make it the best it can be. We've put a lot of time into it already... well I say that but actually I've only worked a couple of months on it solidly... it's just that this things has come together so quickly that a couple of months is a big slice of the overall production schedule. This is a far cry from our previous films, Pigeon Impossible and Devils, Angels and Dating, both eating up over five years of our lives.