"The Message ..." - open movie project

 Hi everyone. Here’s an exclusive "the Message ..."poster. "The Message..." - this is "mini"open movie project which starts our team. All source files (blender and etc...) will be available soon! 

Promo-trailer

Hello, folks! We are glad to present the new promo-trailer for the "Favourite: Prologue"!

The Favourite:Prologue - official promo teaser-trailer #1 from levitationstudio on Vimeo.

ANIMATIC!

       Finally the animatic for "The Favourite: Prologue" is finished. It's been a long and hard work, and we decided to talk to our film director Dan Reut and chief CG specialist Eugene Rodygin. Here you can see the animatic and read the complete interview.

Animatic "The Favorite: Prologue" from levitationstudio on Vimeo.

            -     Well, guys, another important stage – animatic for “The Favourite: Prologue” – is accomplished. It took you much time and power, so I’d like to learn more details. Dan, remind us please, what is the point of this animatic and why Levitation Studio paid such attention to it?
           Dan: Yes, this animatic is very important for us, mostly because it helps to avoid many problems on set. It is especially helpful for beginners in movie industry. When you start shooting, without enough experience, you may get at a loss. You don’t know what to start with. And at this point animatic helps us to understand what we might need during the filming process and to what aspects we should pay special attention.

-       So, what are those aspects?

Dan: As you can see from the animatic, we have many action scenes in the Prologue. Now we can already decide what equipment they will require and how many shooting days it’ll take. We haven’t started filming yet, but our audio men and composers can already work on the sound effects and soundtrack. As a result the final montage and post-production will take less time.

-       Eugene, tell us about the process itself, what technologies did you use?

Eugene: If you have seen animatics to other movies then you know that usually animatics is a set of static pictures replacing one another according to the timing of the future film. We have picked a more difficult but a more efficient method. This animatic must be as realistic and detailed as possible, that’s why it was made with the use of 3D animation graphics. All objects, characters, animation and effects were made in Blender. In many scenes you can see motion-blur effect. It slows down the processing but makes the picture more realistic. As for the leading characters, we used IK-rig to add skeleton to their limbs. Effects of smoke and explosion were added as a compromise between the picture quality and the rendering time.

-       What difficulties did you encounter during this work?

Eugene: I guess that the most difficulty is that Blender displays two key renderers: Cycles and Internal. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, you cannot make realistic explosions with Cycles, but the quality of the final picture is significantly higher. As a result we had to find a compromise for every scene. The second problem was the big amount of animation. As you can see, we had to simplify some movements, because showing them in the animatic would be a waste of time. An actor would perform much better.

-       As I can see from the animatic there will be many special effects in “The Favourite: Prologue”. What are they?

Eugene: Sure. You will witness a whole squadron of alien spaceships floating across the sky, see buildings destroyed to the ground, also many explosions, blasts and other exciting spectacles. And of course you will see alien intruders walking down Moscow streets and bringing along chaos and destruction. Anyway, we have a lot of work to do, but with the experience we have I think we will be able to realize all what is planned and make a high quality video which could rival the best samples of the Western cinema. And maybe even work out something new.

Dan: Putting visual effects aside, I would like to say that our intention was not to pick a popular sci-fi plot, add some computer graphics and make a blockbuster. In our story we put the tragedy of people in the foreground. We want to show what difficulties and obstacles they have to overcome in these darkest times, their internal conflict, the fear, the drama of every single human. I think it’s going to be a great movie, at least we’ve got everything for that.

-       Sounds great! Well, now that one of the most important stages is finished, what are your plans?

Dan: Hah, first of all – to get some sleep. We’ve been working like an Olimpic team recently. Working and studying. Our next move is casting and preparations for the filming process. You see, we have war, and blasts and love in here, so much work to do.

New stuff

We've spent two hard but awesome months working on "The Favourite: Prologue". Our Blender specialists have worked a lot on the animatic, which you will be able to see in a couple of days. And our designers have developped models of alien soldiers and hardware and weapons. We've done a good job and have something to demonstrate:

Alien brutal infantry.

Alien spacecraft.

Amsterdam says "YES!"

     A few days ago we returned from a fascinating and effective trip to Amsterdam - the capital of tulips, bikes, red lights, marijuana and state-of-he-art 3D technologies (!). The aim of our trip was to meet Ton Roosendaal, the creator and developer of Blender Foundation.

     Despite the fact that we had too little time to talk with Ton - coz his team have already started shooting Mango Open Movie and they've got lots of work in the studio - this meeting was a success! Ton welcomed us at Blender Institute and saw us around the studio. There we saw a very detailed storyboard for Mango, consisting of almost 170 frames, the technical equipment of the studio, and had an opportunity to glance over the animators' sholder. One of the amazing and funny things was a huge gun - made out of a usual toy, but with a realistic lazer backsight and a night viewing device. It looked like a real one. Ton also showed us two posters of the previous projects, so we could compare Elepant Dream with resolution 2k and the later Sintel with resolution 7k. And buy the way, we were very surprised to find a compatriot among Blender developers :)

     By-turn, we told Ton about Levitation Studio and about the action "Say YES! to Levitation Studio project", in which he was quite interested and gladly agreed to take a picture with a dutch "JA!" (we gonna print out this legendary picture and put it on the wall, for good luck:)

     Besides current question we've talked about Blender prospects: e.g. soon you will be able to use it on Android platform, and a special social network for Blender users will be created to give us an opportunity to share our views and exchange experience. It is amazing what great future Blender has! Soon it will develop into a full-fledged studio for film-production, where you can do absolutely anything: edit frames, cut and edit scenes, work with chromakey and much more!

The 1st hundred!

      Dear friends! We are very proud and excited to announce that our action of support "Say YES! to Levitation Studio project" has gathered its 1st hundred of people who proved their support and appreciation of our work! Truly, folks, it means so much to us! You all give us strength to carry on doing what we love!
      P.S. Our next stake is 500 supporters, why not? ;)

Say “YES” to Levitation Studio project!

We are Levitation – a young film studio and, as any beginning studio, we need you support, not financial but moral ;) It would be very flattering for us to see that you approve what we do. After you visit us at www.levitationstudio.com be kind to send us a picture of you with a single word “YES” so that we know that you are with us. Together we will change the history of Russian film-making and make Russian movies a well-known brand. We are waiting for your pics at welcome@levitationstudio.com