# Off-topic Rants

One minute it’s Christmas, then zap! Next minute, January is nearly over. How times flies! Hello everyone, and welcome to our very first entry for the new year – even if it is slightly late. I hope you all have a fantastic holiday break, and a terrific New Years Eve! And, if you’re in Australia – I hope you’re enjoying the ridiculously hot weather! Although we personally do love the sun and the beach – when you’ve got a week with temperatures on and above 40 degrees Celsius, things start to get a little bit scary, as the Sakooz headquarters is in the middle of the Dandenong Ranges (i.e. a forest). But as terrifying as it is, it also forces you to think about something very important – backups. What would you do if the worst happens, and your studio burns down? Do you have your camera originals off-site? Do you have backups of all your past and current projects? How quickly can you “recover” from a disaster? There are also scary, but terribly important questions we’ve been asking ourselves over the past couple of weeks. Although it’s probably not the most ideal way of handling things, we currently have a box which we call “the mobile vault”. The vault contains all our original camera tapes (MiniDV, DVCPro50, DVCProHD, etc.), DVD backups of Final Cut Project Files, printed copies of EDLs, Hard Drive’s containing project backups, an equipment inventory, copies of important documents (i.e. CVs), etc. The vault is always kept as the safest possible location – normally the grandparents, as they’re generally always home. In a perfect world, it would be great to have LTO tapes containing all this material instead of cheap hard drives and DVDs, and also to have multiple vaults, just to be extra safe. But unfortunately all these things cost money, and at the end of the day, as long as we don’t loose any “current projects” (i.e. project we’re currently working on), life will go on. Although it’s great to have the original project files of past projects – the chances of going back to them are fairly slim. So anyway… just something to keep in mind. If you are in a bush fire area, make sure you have a good strategy in place in case disaster attacks.

It’s amazing to think that Christmas Day has already been and gone. This year has gone so incredibly fast it’s just not funny! On behalf of everyone at latenite films, I just want to wish you all a very merry holiday period, and an extra special New Years Eve! Thanks to everyone who has helped in any way, shape or form with Sakooz this year – and a big thank you to all of our regular blog readers! I really appreciate all your kind e-mails, comments, and suggestions! It’s so nice to think that at least three or four people are actually reading this thing! Your continued assistance and support will certainly will not be forgotten!

When we first started thinking about the best way to put together the Sakooz trailer, we originally thought that Super 16mm and a film scan route would be the most appropriate option given our budget, and the “Hollywood trailer” look that we were after. However, after various camera tests (we’ll post some further information on these tests another time), and a bit of number crunching, it became clear pretty quickly that shooting on the RED ONE was going to achieve better results, cost less and make the post production just that little bit easier (at least in theory) by keeping everything digital. And so, after getting in touch with Cail & Pete from Inspiration Studios, and doing some tests with their brand new toy camera – we decided to shoot the Sakooz trailer on RED.

Once again time has gotten away from me – so this news is a bit old now! But, hey – better late than never! The Sakooz trailer had it’s first official public screening on Tuesday 2nd of December 2008 at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne, Australia as part of the Swinburne University Graduation Screening Program. And from all reports… everyone seemed to love it! It was a fantastic night, with so many quality films on show (12 student works in total – ranging from short films, to TV pilots, sketch comedies, etc.). Congratulations to all of the students who got to show their films at the screening, and thanks to everyone involved for putting together the event (especially James Verdon)!

You won’t believe it – or at least, I certainly don’t! I think the trailer is actually finished. Actually scrap that – the trailer is finished! For now anyway! After many, many months of hard work, with so many ups, and so many downs, today the Sakooz trailer was officially printed onto the DVCProHD tape destined for the ACMI Screening on the 2nd of December. For those that live in Melbourne, you should definitely come along! Frank Strangio, our incredible and unstoppable composer battled illness and an ever jam-packed schedule to not only fit in the time to put together a three minute score for the trailer, but create a score that is pure gold. Despite the fact that we didn’t have any money to afford “real” instruments, the score sounds so big, so epic and just so heart felt and moving. As you can tell – I’m very happy with the end result! For anyone looking for an absolutely INCREDIBLE composer, who is also just the most lovely guy you’ll ever meet – check out Frank’s site. You can also see his huge list of credits on IMDB.

It’s typical! The day we finish the Sakooz trailer is the day that RED and Apple release a software update that would have made my life so much easier. This update is BIG news for anyone who has to deal with RED footage on a Final Cut Pro system, as it now means you can edit R3D files natively on Final Cut Pro (in much the same way as you would edit DVCPRO HD footage coming from something like a HVX). This software is literally hot off the press, so there is bound to be bugs and issues, but from most (actually scrap that… SOME) reports, everything seems to be working as planned. For our trailer, what we ended up doing was bringing in 1920×1080 DPX Sequences into Color – now you can just “Send To” from Final Cut, and the native REDCODE timeline is re-created in Color. This will save so much time for everyone, and also help ensure you retain the maximum quality. Exciting times certainly lay ahead! Keep an eye out on Reduser! Thanks Apple & RED!

It’s official! All the pictures elements are all done. It certainly wasn’t easy – and there has been a lot of brain numbing rotoscoping the last few weeks, but all the effects are done, the grade is complete and everything is ready and waiting for the final soundtrack to be attached. These are certainly exciting times! It just amazing how much time, effort and energy goes into a tiny little three minute trailer. But from all accounts, it’s certainly been worth it. The footage looks incredible, and the effects (despite being made on a shoe string budget) don’t come up too badly. Now all we have to hope is that when people actually watch the trailer, it makes them want to see the feature length film! Only time will tell…

As always, time has flown, and deadlines are getting closer and closer. In a perfect world, we’d like to have everything completed by next Friday 7th. Whether or not we’ll be able to complete that deadline, well, only time will tell. Everything seems to be going pretty well. Colour grading is currently being tackled, and most of the visual effects are now completed – we’ve only got a few of the more tricky ones to go. The biggest worry we have currently is whether or not we’ll have the score completed by then. But fingers crossed! Another, more subjective problem is working out what we actually do with the soundtrack! To voice over or not to voice over, that is the question.

Zap! One minute it’s September, and the next it’s all of a sudden October. It’s certainly been an incredible year and it’s rapidly disappearing. So what’s been happening since my last post – well, like always, lots! This week we successfully locked down the picture edit. It certainly wasn’t easy, and our Final Cut Pro project file has so many different edits and versions within it, it’s ridiculous, but we made it in the end! But, even though this is a big step in the right direction, there is still a very long way to go, and we don’t have much time to do it all. The musical score is under way, as are the many visual effects – but even after we complete these things, we still need to do the final colour grade, the sound design, edit and mastering, plus get the final product onto all the various media and formats for distribution. Although we’re not in a bad position, we’ve basically got three or so weeks to wrap everything up, so the pressure is definitely on! So with that said, I’ve got to get back to work. Eventually (probably next month in all honestly), we will get around to uploading all the things we’ve been promising for months, like some more production stills, video blogs, camera tests, etc. But in the meantime, here are some happy snaps from a recent green screen shoot for the Sakooz trailer. We had to shoot some character pick-ups for some of the visual effects. To save money, we only build one alien character (Pinky), but for the purposes of the trailer, we’re shooting some material of the Pinky character against a green screen, then grading the costume to a different character (i.e. blue) and then digitally inserting the shots into the scenes, so that there’s more than one creature. Because the additional character only appear very small in frame, we can shoot these elements on a HVX202 (as opposed to a RED, which we used for principle photography). We also used a different cast and crew for these pick-ups. A big thank you to Julia for jumping in the costume! Judging by the photos though – it looks like she had at least a little bit of fun…

As promised, here are some absolutely gorgeous photos taken by the incredible Michelle Leong from Day Two of the Sakooz shoot. There will be lots more of these fantastic images to come in the weeks ahead, but until then, enjoy… Also, just to give you a quick update, we are still madly cutting together the trailer. We’ve gone through a few drafts now, and are still experimenting trying to put together a trailer that explains the story (but doesn’t give everything away), introduces the characters, looks and sounds amazing, and isn’t boring or clichéd. It’s not an easy task, as we’re limited to what we shot on our very hectic five day shooting schedule – but it’s a lot of fun just messing around with the edit and trying new things. One of the big problems I’m finding so far is putting together a sequence that won’t confuse the audience too much – because I know the story so well, it’s easy to forget what the audience do and don’t know. Also, a lot of things that looked good on paper, simply don’t translate through to the screen – so it’s a challenge thinking outside of the box, and messing around with the edit to give certain shots new meaning and context.