12 October, 2006

New Developments

Now that we've got the premieres, signings, cuddly toys out of the way it straight onto the next production. No hanging around with this bunch.

Due to the extraordinary good fortune of finding a generous benefactor in the person of Ken fraser (a well known figure in the UK oil industry) Stirton Productions now has a good 6 figure budget and a new HD edit suite/ camera system. Mark Stirton, the director and CEO of Stirton Productions has entered into a partnership with Ken's new enterprise, Cannyfilms Partnership Ltd. and the team (Mark, Kerwin Robertson and me) are full on with the latest movie - a dark comedy/drama set in Aberdeen with Patrick Wight and Scott Ironside from "the Planet", in the lead roles.

Last week we took possession of the editing and camera equipment, locking it all away in the new facility Mark has had created for the venture. It took about 3 hours to unload and catalogue the equipment, and 10 minutes to get Mark out of a steadycam rig that we had put on him the wrong way round (who reads manuals?). I won't dribble on about all the equipment, but the Mac Pro computer is well smart - like a huge 2 terabyte cheese grater. The other main thing of note, the Canon XL-H1 is just as sexy as I don't know what, yes, we went 1080i and not for a progressive system. I'll just sit back and wait for the hate mail from digital film makers now for that.

Mark, who is now getting his head round Final Cut Studio is also mostly finished the script for the film, which is handy as I have to get costings for all the props and costumes soon. Part of the design work for the film, and the main part, involves the creation of large scale Viking longboats; hey, I've built a space pod from a water tank - how difficult can 2 boats be? That along with the hospital and police office set is going to keep me busy for the next few months, no CG fakery for this film - oh bollocks!

Here's a link to the new Canon camera, it's ace.

http://www.usa.canon.com/app/html/XLH1/ultimate_hd_camcorder.shtml

More to continue soon when I have something to show.


2 comments:

Andrew Glazebrook said...

There's always room for fakery be it real world or CG,now where is that secret location I wonder !?

Michael Grant Clark said...

I agree, even the real viking longboats will be non working props so they are still fake. 1 tonne fake props though.

The director now wants to do another film before getting on with "Last Request", and it makes sense, just a little feature to get to grips with all the equipment. Means I do design work and marketing for 2 films instead of 1, keeps me happy. Lots of room for fakery in this one :)