"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

Animatic

      We shall uncover our secrets a little bit and say what Animatic is. Just imagine: you have the storyboard for your film. But it's hard to foresee with great accuracy what every scene will look like, it's length and size. Animatic will help you with it: it is a draft of you movie. Why do we need it? Firstly, to estimate the scale of the future shooting process and to see what models will be necessary, what landscapes and scenes you will shoot on location. Secondly, guys responsible for post-production can see beforehand what visual effects they will produce. We pay much attention to this stage of the project as it'll help us to avoid many mistakes and also save much time on set.

Such detalization will be enough for animatic

A gun sample

Detalized models like this later can be developped into a full-fledged model. It's easier than create everything from the very start.

Model of a real city. It can be enriched with trees, cars, people, etc.

Test of Blender visualization technologies

    Here are TEST examples of how Blender technologies will be used in creation of movie animatic. Of course, it is not final, just a draft.

    Alien model created with use of sculpting mode and GPU Cycles.

Technology of compositing.

Explosion with Blender particle effects.

A little bit of animatic for the "Favourite: Prologue"

What BLENDER is about.

To work on special effects and complex scenes with large amount of 3D graphics Levitation Studio uses Blender.

What is so special about this free open source program? If now there are splendid creation suites from such software giant as Autodesk – 3ds Max, Maya, or for example quite amicable Cinema4D. Let me explain why we’ve chosen this very 3D content creation software. Firstly, it is the fact that you don’t have to spend a penny to use Blender in your work. You can hardly find a freeware product so considered and multifunctional which is developed not by a single man or a small group of people but by a large international team (consisting mostly of enthusiasts). But of course absolute accessibility would not be enough.

In our project we will work a lot on constructing 3-dimension scenes, various interior and exterior objects and on modeling numerous highly detailed characters. This will require much time. I can safely say that with no other suite I managed to create a 3D-model as quickly as it is possible with Blender. After you look into, you can completely reorganize its interface to your own convenience. No additional menus necessary. Also, Blender offers an amazing default set of shortcuts. For example, I didn’t change the initial keyboard layout as it is extremely convenient.

As far as we don’t just make fine pictures but make a movie, we need powerful animation technologies. In this aspect Blender is on the same level as the above mentioned software. It offers excellent character rig (btw, linking objects to bones is easier in Blender than in other software) and also possibility of Motion Capture import and various modifiers which allow to change the shape of objects dynamically. I mean that you can animate anything you like and can do it quite easily. Blender also offers technology of combining 3D-graphics with video fragments. Recently object tracking has been added and it significantly simplifies the whole compositing process.

Also I want to mention the technology of rendering used in Blender. Until recently the main means of visualization was Internal Blender, and professionals from 3ds Max could just shrug their shoulders seeing the results got in Blender. But a few months ago GPU Cycles was added to the official suite. I will not describe the results, just advise you to see them in the internet. Very impressive. On the whole there are many functions in Blender which simplify the creation of high-quality CG. For example, sculpting mode and extras that can be added with Python scripting, and a wide range of add-ons , even a built-in game engine! I can’t  describe everything in just one article – if you are interested, visit the official website and check the Doc page. There is no doubt that Blender has all possibilities to carry out 3D-visualization and animation of scenes, objects and characters which will compete in beauty with Hollywood blockbusters.

At the moment we’ve got several people working with Blender, all at different levels: some of them have just started the program while other already make money with its help. But all of them are united by vivid interest to this program and desire that Levitation Studio will develop with their help.

As for the use of Blender in Russia, well it’s not so widely used as 3ds Max, for example. But I guess it is mostly about lack of publicity. Everyone knows Autodesk because it’s a brand and they’ve got fine PR. Blender hasn’t acquired deserved popularity yet but for sure it will, and people who use it will help. Such software cannot remain in the shadow for a long time. Online communities, social networks and blogs of CG professionals – aren’t these the best advertisement?

Evgeniy Rodygin,

Levitation Studio.

Stages of the Project

     Dan Reut: "When starting a new project one should have a plan. I've always seen the plan of this project but kept it in my mind. Now, thanks to mindmeister.com, I've managed to visualize it and make it clear for my colleagues..."

Project layout.

"Favourite: Prologue, The"

     I guess it’s high time to say a few words about our first project, the “Favourite: Prologue”
As our first project we’ve chosen the idea taken from the prologue of a popular Russian fantastic novel. We’ve set a goal not just to extend this prologue but to develop it into an independent project. The basic idea of the plot remains: just like in the book, tragedy of the mankind is in the first place.

     A few words on the plot:
    “This day has put under question further survival of Man on Earth. The world changes. We all have been warned by fantasts of a possible invasion. But when it actually happened, none of us was ready…
     We can see common people desperately trying to save themselves and their families and lovers while the humanity itself, under pressure of a hostile civilization, falls apart into two unequal parties: those who’ve put up with the fact that Man is no longer master of his planet, who’ve agreed to bow before the invaders or to hide in the deep woods. And of those who don’t give up and for whom the war is not over…”

     Now, talking about practical realization of the project, we should say that this is a fantastic movie, so no doubt it’s going to be exciting, beautiful and breathtaking. Our crew is already working on the characters concept and on their detalization.

    Movie: “Favourite: Prologue, The”
    Slogan: “Hundred years we believed in them and waited for the meeting. But we were not ready for war.”
    Movie format: Teaser
    Release date: this fall
    Duration: 00:03:29
    Genre: fantastic thriller, action, drama.

SAYING HELLO!

      Greetings to the first readers of our blog! From now on we, Levitation Production Studio, are going to tell you about work on an unprecedented project – the “Favourite” movie. Lots of frequent and interesting information is upcoming so you can consider this blog kind of a diary for the project. Interesting observations, interviews with the creators of the project, reportages from behind the scenes, from our headquarters, notes from the members of our crew will be posted here. In other words, anything that can be interesting, useful and worthy of attention.

Our brand-new logo.

       Realization of the project is carried out nip&tuck so have time to follow the news.
       And yes! The most interesting comes for the dessert…