I've been really missing in action. We are getting really busy on Toy Story 3, and on my weekends we've been doing camera tests/casting on the Shortfilm. I can't talk about ToyStory 3 and I can't put anything Shortfilm content related. But I can talk in terms of the technicalities or the process in case anyone out there is interested in this process. I figured I'd post my findings here and there, since it's quickly becoming a fast educational experience for me. Here are some behind the scenes pictures of a few of the Shooting test days with my Director of Photography Tiffany as well as my Lighting Supervisor Luigi, where we were testing lenses (I have dreams with the Arri Ultraprimes, they are amazing lenses), some tracking systems and some location scouting.

Behind the scenes pics

To put it simply, the experience so far is damn hard. It's difficult enough to visualize a particular shot or scene in your head. But once you do, you get excited about it, you do a 3D animatic of it, you get even more excited about it, and sometimes later you find out all the hard work you have been putting in it, and all the planning may not be able to get realized in the same way you wanted due to the limitations of the equipment and/or budget. So we've had to add that and be conscious of it to our planning process in order to realize the point of the shot or the scene. So we are going to do two planning passes, my dream "hell yeah" animatic pass is what I'd love to see on screen....and then I'm doing a "oh, ok, damn it...let's try this then" backup animatic pass after discovering what our limitations might be. This way we still get what we need somehow. Hopefully. If we get the first choice, then great, I'll have plenty of Sangrias that day...otherwise, we go the backup route. Therefore, I've been currently working on doing these 3D animatics of the Short with my DP Tiffany, and getting help/feedback from people at my work that do this as their day to day. It's nice to be back with Maya on the computer. It's been quite a while. Also been working with each of the departments on getting stuff done on their end. This part has been more than fun, especially when the people you work with are really professional, no egos involved and definitely fun to be around and have a good time in the process. I'll post more things like these, and will share what I'm learning with this film after we are done with the film, since now I have little to no time to post much on my blog.

It's nice to spend time on the opposite side of what I currently do on my day to day, which is to animate. But something it's been great to learn for me is to step outside of my animation bubble, where I'm in control of every single detail in my shot, and instead have people add their input/involvement in the main areas of the process.

Carlos.