Archive for the ‘Digital Production’ Category

The Shot Card

Posted: 24th July 2009 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development, Digital Production, On Location, Photography
1

On the invention of the “shot card” production system, which revolutionized the efficiency and quality of Night Zero’s work

The broad range of film, theater, and production experience that the Night Zero team brings to the table is invaluable to the photocomic’s success, but nothing else like Night Zero exists and therefore we’re still constantly challenged with developing the procedures and techniques to best produce a quality product.

The center of a Night Zero photo shoot is the production schedule, carefully and brilliantly executed by Kelly Ota. Like most films, we do not shoot based on chronology, but based on lights. The schedule is broken down into “SEQUENCES”, which are the various unique lighting setups that encompass the day’s work. The number of sequences depends on the complexity and length of the scene– for a full-day shoot like Sisters, we tend to have between ten and fifteen setups (with the occasional sub-setup for minor changes). Within each sequence is a “SHOT LIST”, which covers all of the shots using that light setup, sorted by which actors appear in them. In this manner we progress through the day, moving the lights as few times as possible and getting the best use of everybody’s time.
Read the rest of this entry »

Lights, Camera, ACTION

Posted: 14th November 2008 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Digital Production, Episode 1 - "Ashes"
0

On the workflow for handling HDR images in Photoshop CS4

As promised, a little action and a little blood. These sorts of sequences are by far the hardest to coordinate and the hardest to produce, but they sure are a blast. Over the past year of creating Night Zero, we’ve shot four large-scale scratcher fight sequences, and those have been some of the most fun times we’ve had. From a freezing night in January to a scorching cloudless day in July, our scratchers have been real troopers, and I cannot emphasize enough how much they rock.

This week we upgraded to Photoshop CS4, primarily for its 64-bit compatibility. Previous versions of Photoshop (and most software) are only capable of understanding up to 4 gigs of memory, which is way more than most people would ever need, but is a difficult limitation for Night Zero. I’m a huge advocate of data redundancy and non-destructive editing, so every iteration of our photos is self-contained. The major advantage here is that nothing is permanent, and any change or alteration we make can be reversed at any time, without undoing everything that happened after the change. The disadvantage is that every progressive file contains all the data of all the previous files.
Read the rest of this entry »

Multi-tasking

Posted: 17th October 2008 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Digital Production, Episode 1 - "Ashes"
1

On developing a workflow for a unique production project, with an understaffed all-volunteer team

The biggest disadvantage we face in the production of Night Zero is having a core crew of producers responsible for an army’s worth of tasks. At the moment, we are simultaneously finishing post-production on Episode One, in the middle of principal production of Episode Two, beginning pre-production of Episode Three, optimizing the Night Zero website, and of course, publishing Volume One.

The production process we’ve developed over the past eleven months is something of a blur between sketching a comic concept and storyboarding a film. We begin with the script, breaking it down into shot sequences that are tackled at a particular location or series. As director, I first block out all the actions and emotions I see in the sequence, and create a “Shot List” of each moment in time I want to capture. This rough sequence of events I then lay out into pages, approximating the size, shape, and location of each shot on the comic book pages.
Read the rest of this entry »

Moving into post-production

Posted: 1st August 2008 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Digital Production, Episode 1 - "Ashes"
0

The first post of this blog, on the basic process of creating a photographic novel

Hello, and welcome to Night Zero. My name is Anthony van Winkle, I’m the creator/director of the project, and one of the production team members that will be keeping this blog updated with news from the world of the post-apocalypse.
Read the rest of this entry »

Newer Entries