Have Gun, Will Travel.

I bought THIS book last week on recommendation from a friend here at work. I’m keen to learn a bit more about about cinematography and from the brief parts I’ve read so far this is a good start. I thought it was something I should really be a lot more aware of if I’m to improve. Whilst my technical skills are pretty sound and I’m comfortable learning new tools as they come along I’ve done very little in the way of actual film techniques other then the brief introduction we had at university. This will probably be the first non-technical (software based) aspects of my job I’m learning right now. I’m hoping it will be necessary for future projects. Whilst there really are some incredibly talented people in the vfx industry you can always notice the talents of those with more of a grounding in traditional film techniques rather then the solely technical skill.

I’ll keep you informed as I progress through it…

There was a volcano in Chile that erupted a few weeks ago. Someone here at work found some pictures that looked so amazing they wouldn’t have even passed off as believable visual effects shots. They are apparently caused by the amounts of metallic elements thrown up into the clouds. Pretty impressive wouldnt you say!

Note to self: Must update more often.

So Hellboy is soon soon drawing to an end. A shame really, although when you’ve spent a year on the same project looking at the same kind of images it tends to get a tad tedious (gulp, as I move onto the next one which will be even longer!)

This week I’ve been doing the necessary detective work finding out what projects are around and what work is being done on them. I’ve had some really helpful words with a few folks here (Dneg) that always have their fingers right on the pulse explaining what will be good and what to miss.

They’ve always been exceptionally helpful for me when it comes to finding something I want to work on or with whom. I’m very pleased about how that works out. With that in mind and in a state of possible madness I suggested something (a project) to one of the grown-ups here and surprisingly they bought the idea! I got the confirmation of the project a few days ago and I’m very happy. I shan’t say what quite yet but I really feel like its the next step on towards the final goal.

On a side note while rummaging the internets I found this (see below), a fan-boy photoshop job or the hint of another 80’s cartoon adaptation? I really hope the latter!

For the past 11 months of so on HellboyII I’ve been sat in a room with 3, (now 4) others all assigned to a particular sequence of the movie. Since we’ve got a Hi-Fi sat in our room between myself and my lead artist we’ve pretty much had our Ipods on throughout the project. We’ve now since learnt that we all have pretty similar musical tastes and have designated musically themed days (its not quite as lame as it sounds, we have been in here together for quite some time now and the same music does tend to come up). Anyway… random Thursdays pretty much involves an Ipod on random for the best part of the day. This provides some amusement when something ever so slightly embarrassing crops up out of nowhere, I think I carry that shame with me most weeks.

Random Thursday played a particular track that my colleague described as ‘his’ theme music. I clearly understand what this means by both his style, character, the type of music that was playing and how he could quite easily perceive this playing in the background to his entrance to a 60’s style James Bond worthy apartment, or whatever he imagines, but that’s what I’m picturing now.

This moment reminded me of the last time I was with my sister while we were at the table watching her kids playing with monsters and trucks and the like and she said ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have the mind of a kid again and imagine the world as a series of cartoons with monsters and adventure’, as they clearly were doing. I thought for a moment a little confused as isn’t this what people think all the time? It cant just be me… ?