June 17th, 2010
ToyStory 3 opens tonight.
The experience of working on his film meant a lot for me. I sure hope you go see the film, and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it. The reviews are amazing so far. The film opens tonight at midnight. I’ll be in line with friends watching it.
Update: Here is a video from Director Lee Unkrich on the countdown at the animation department this morning.
Carlos.
June 17th, 2010
ToyStory 3 Roundtable (part 1)
Andrew from SplineDoctors gathered a few of us who worked on ToyStory3 to talk about our experiences. Thanks for putting this together Andrew.
I hope you all enjoy it.
ToyStory 3 Animators Roundtable (part 1)
Carlos.
June 14th, 2010
Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders
I had the geat opportunity of meeting Dean DeBlois through AnimationMentor back in 2006. I only have the upmost respect for him and his sensibility. He’s also about one of the nicest guys I’ve met in this industry. That’s why I was so excited about How to Train your Dragon, which came out beautifully. Very special film.
This is a great podcast the guys at Speaking of Animation put together, and a great listen on the making of the film, as well as storytelling, structure & animation.
Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders Podcast
Carlos.
June 9th, 2010
Reminder: Blog & WordPress
Just a reminder,
I have moved my blog from Blogger platform to WordPress. Please update your RSS feeds:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/carlosbaena00
My blog is still at:
http://www.carlosbaena.com
Please be patient as I’m going to be transitioning the rest of my site over to wordpress in the upcoming months. Thanks.
Carlos.
June 7th, 2010
Golden Gate Fog
Went to Marin Headlands a couple of nights ago. The fog in this city is simply stunning.
C.
June 4th, 2010
Omni-Tracker
So one of the things I’d like to do through my blog is to acknowledge those people/friends that have helped us in the shortfilm unconditionally. My friend Warren from Omni-Tracker went above and beyond in helping me. So even if it’s through my little blog, I’d love to help him back how he helped us. We used two types of dollies. Tracks/rails and this Omnitracker. Warren let us use his Heavy-Duty version of this small but very practical dolly. Our main setup was aproximately 20 pounds…so it needed to be strong. They just released a lighter HD setup which I recommend for DSLRs.
Here below are my good friend and talented DP Tiffany Taira, as well as Luigi Passalacqua (color grader) doing different tests last year. I think at the end of the day, you use whatever it is that you have and explore all the possibilities. We could put the dolly on either classroom tables, floors, etc. Really practical especially when you don’t have the flexibility of setting up a big dolly.
We used the Omni-Tracker in a variety of ways, straight moves and circular dollies. Since we didn’t have a way (or budget) to have orbital type of dolly moves either for reveals or to lower the camera to the ground while hiding tracks, we found this to really help us achieve what we were looking for.
What helped us was to preview whatever we were going to shoot in animatics in Maya. It also saved us a ton of time on the set. We didn’t have that much time for certain scenes, so we had to get what we could. I got the help of my friends Eduardo Martin and Edward Robbins when it was time to get the models for previsualization. You both rock. Then Tiffany and I could start trying different things and braimstorming ideas based on the scenes.
So, we used the setup for three different shots. A low angle shot of the kid entering his bedroom, a reveal rack focus shot from one kid to the next and a long circular dolly around the main kid in a key scene. I want to mention also in the videos are our camera operator Jason Kim and our focus puller Rich McKain who worked totally hard on the shoots.
For those looking into live-action independent shorts, I can’t recomend this little tool enough. There is a lot of stuff out there. This is just one of the tools that worked for us.
Hopefully this helps.
Carlos.
June 4th, 2010
Play by Play
Play by Play is a simple live-action shortfilm financed by Afterworks which is part of Pixar University department, with the goal of providing education to those of us that work in Animated Feature Films during the day and are interested in learning more about live-action. It’s a really great opportunity and can’t thank them enough. While it’s a completely different beast than animation…in a lot of ways, I’ve been loving the project as well as the goal/purpose of it which is to learn.
The story is a simple story from my co-worker Bob Roden about the struggle of a boy who is bullied. Bob wrote a script that I thought had a beautiful message, and it made me want to work on it. I had the tremendous luck to be directing it, with a great hardworking crew especially considering we have been doing this on our free time. Hasn’t been easy that way. We are in our last stretch in the last few months of completing it. Whether the short turns out good or not, it’s been already worth it in many ways…and has truly only made me more excited about working on more and learn more about this craft.
So over the next few months now that ToyStory 3 is completed and I start to work on a future Pixar film (not sure if it’s been announced so just in case I prefer not to mention) I’ll write about what I’ve been finding out and learning from working on this, using the equipment we used, the people that has been helping us and notes I’ve been writting here and there about things to keep in mind in the future. So since we are all essentially doing/telling stories I figured I’d share in case it helps to those of you whether you are doing live-action or animation.
Carlos.
June 3rd, 2010
Ipad/Iphone Slate
For those into independent filmmaking, this looks way too good.
Just when I thought I didn’t need an Ipad for anything. Great. But I’m still fighting it. My first generation Iphone is still a trooper.
Carlos.
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