Project on slow defrost

As we march toward 2008 enough time has passed for the people behind the project to ripe think and motivate themself. Marking December where its cold outside and the world is generally slower we are back at work. New to the team is fRED who will do the typographic support of the project through some custom coded plugins for VDMX and general live visual beat support.
The revival of the product will be a slow long process. There is sooooo much still to be done. Yet on a positive note it seems that the hardware end is finally coming around to meet my demands for delivering a unique high quality cinematic live experience - so we are still conducting extensive tests in that regard.
The postproduction of the underlying story is about 8% done with lots of obstacles still to tackle, some are purely technical but there are also theoretical things not quite clear.
As said it will be a long long process but we are sure to preview some beta teaser versions way before a 1.0 version appears. If anything ever goes according to plan we might have 1.0 version mid next year.

Stay tuned for some progress report and great "vj" goodies along the way.

EN: Kalkin Revelation > Thanks to the Production Crew

Thanks again to everyone who helped during the production - since i am going down into postproduction stress disorder in the coming weeks and might forget the one or other name here is the fresh from the brain list of all the people who helped throughout. The absolute thanks go out to:

First of all Willow de la Roche for beeing a superb main actor, 2nd director, costume designer, make-up artist and a wonderful girlfriend :)

Kevin Lockwood for being a great first time actor/ part time parkour runner and absolutely helpfull throughout the production with making props being a part time camera assistant and running around best boy.

Michael Nangle for jumping in to do the Big Fish character on such short notice and playing it wonderfully.

My Mom and Grandma for making the delicious catering.

My Dad for organizing a magnitude of last minute things and letting me borrow some much needed equipment.

Sebastian Klemke for giving out his precious camera.

Björn Jüttner for being the natural fun Scriptgirl and superb aware helpful cameraassistent.

fRED Bordfeld for offering his flat for crazy shooting throughout the night, giving out his power generator, going location scouting with me and most of all being the injured parkour runner even running under pain.

Toas aka Butterfly Soulfire to lend us some kickass futuristic clothes.

Peter Przybyl for coming to the lab shoot as light and camera advisor.

Steffen Piech for fighting with the Bluescreen and beeing an extra.

Roman Pollack for second Bluescreen Fighter and camera assistent.

David Marschalsky for second camera and superb lighting during the race start/end shoot.

Sebastian Sadler for beeing a parkour runner under final semester test timestress.

Hilmi for also beeing a superb badass parkour runner.

Wonny for giving us lovely support in using the "Archiv" in Potsdam and the whole Archive crew.

Barbara Nowack for putting herself in the frontline to offer us access to a state owned laboratory

The poor guy from the greenhouse who spend a saturday night looking at 4 strangers moving a camera around and shouting "bitte".

Frau Kossack for convincing his boss that its ok for us to shoot at the "Speicherstadt" in Potsdam and her Boss for allowing us to go forward.

Oliver Keresztes for being the Registrar superstar that he is :)

Annett, Brina, Sünje, Shu and the other extras for making the film a little less "lonely".

The grumpy leftist at the house for letting us use their entrance in the Brunnenstraße in Berlin (after shouting at us).

The HFF Potsdam staff for giving out the cool CineFlow Light and the emergency HDV camera upfront.

THE WEATHER GOD. You are our hero clearing up the sky whenever we needed it.

EN: Kalkin Revelation > Shooting til the End

It has been quite some experience and I can say I won´t do it again without a budget and under tight schedule and with an camera where its virtually impossible to tell if a picture is in focus. We had our last official day of shooting today -> keeping absolutely in schedule (which is amazing considering the weather was playing games all along, about every important person/location/equipment got rescheduled canceled or shortened just a day before it was needed. But it seems we have about 98% of all 360 shots done -> 10 hours of raw footage that needs sorting and checking and then get into postproduction - for which I only have have roughly one month left! From this point thanks goes out to ALL who helped out with small and big things over long periods and small periods of time - without you I couldn´t have done anything - you know who you all are. (I am a bit in a rush and don´t want to miss out anyone - a list of all names to follow soon ;)

Now some photos collected during the days - I wish I had more time to shoot more photos some cool locations are entirely missing (like the wonderful greenhouse) some photos are blurry as I was more concentrated on the filming side. I hope to post some actual moving footage soon as well. One thing for sure - the camera - a JVC made HDV camcorder (don´t even know the exact model) is absolute rubbish. Colors are missing (all looks a bit greyish except when under full sunlight), stuff is out of focus because a) the viewfinder AND the foldout screen are rubbish in resolution b) the focus assistent is the biggest joke since Jaz drives. The connection to the tripod was always unscrewing itself, especially when under time constrains -> like throughout the whole project. Generally the camera did not feel right -> but the footage seems to be of MUCH better quality in the end then anything I could have achieved with straight DV so I guess the trade offs aren´t too bad in the end. I am very thankful that I got the camera at all - Sebastian K. aka. viso.thek thats you. BTW I choosed to use this camera enthusiastically in the first place because it offers 720p at 25 fps - since this is going out of computers and projectors and will see lots of sfx and compositing and stuff I just don´t want to (ever) deal with fields (again).

If anyone has questions to ask about the production the equipment used, the actors, the makeup or whatever else fire off I try to answer them.

So here are some more photos.

EN: Kalkin Revelation > Shooting Day 1

The first installment of Kalkin a SciFi themed Live Cinema "Film" is now in full production. We had our pretty successful first day of shooting today. More about Kalking:Revelation can be found on the Live Cinema Wiki (Community Portal>Story Development).
Here are some photos from the shooting: