Casting, Original Script and first VFX tests

OK - I was gonna share the original script idea I had with everyone on here, but decided - just as I was firing this blog up - to hold onto it for another day...sorry guys!

Basically, if this whole venture goes tits up for any reason, I will revert back to that idea!!! If not, I may apply it to another (original) film that I have in mind for when this is complete...

All I will say is that it involved a battle scene with terminators against the Resistance (of course), but that the scenario was not quite what we're expecting: there was a delicious little twist at the end that I think people would've liked! But it restricted what I could do with the story as a whole, which is why it was ditched very early on.

But it would still make a an excellent short story! One for the future, methinks...
Aerial Hunter Killer - or AHK

Anyhow, I was now at the stage where a story was forming - and very quickly, I might add!
I was fortunate enough to have a few truly excellent friends who were willing to help me out on this film by being in it, free of charge! At the level we're at now, we all lack money - certainly not enough to pour into the making of a film - but we all shared one thing in common: a deep rooted love of films, filmmaking, and anything connected with it. Plus we all like spending time with each whilst on a film set! :-)

So - I had my John Connor (a friend, who to me, looked like the 45 year old Connor we see at the start of T2), and I had a particular person in mind to be Kyle Reese, but would he say yes? I'd known this guy since filming on that Greek island all those years ago, and we had played soldiers and coppers together on numerous film and TV productions, so I was fairly confident!

However, little did I know that I was shortly to suffer my first set-back...

I had deliberately selected people that I knew could act, that also had weapons training and military experience, so they would actually look like they know what they're doing on film with the minimum of fuss!! Plus, it turned out that most of these guys either had police "black kit" (the armed response uniform - which of course, we would use WITHOUT any of the police tags on it!) and/ or military fatigues, so that element of the production was safely secured - and no budget spent yet!
Armed Response Police Black Kit Uniform

They all had replica weapons too - for the early stages of the future war before Connor and his men procure plasma rifles and similar technology, so that element was taken care of too! Before you ask any questions about that, they are all registered for use in films and TV, so no worries there.

The plasma rifles would be another challenge - but that's for a future blog...

My first 3D rendered test (that I previously mentioned took 33 hours to render) was basically Marek's AHK take-off animation from "The Dock" - but with a different background and a camera animation by me.

I also tweaked the volumetric lighting - but made the mistake of rendering it in 3D: I'd have saved HOURS if I'd added it at the compositing stage! Because of this, I wasn't able to render the ruined buildings I had originally dotted around the landscape - the render time with them added in was just horrendous! Lesson learned...Hence the barren landscape you see here, in this first test - the test that grabbed everyone's attention enough to want to be in the film - along with test #3...!

AHK Take-Off - Test 1

So I had most of the main actors, plenty of people offering to be extras, I had costumes, I had key weapons - and all before we had even finished the second draft of the script! I also had help from two very important people as far as making this film a reality was concerned. Marek - my fellow writer and CG animator, and Ben from Australia, who is a very talented VFX artist that I had been talking to for over a year through YouTube. Although still at school (about to graduate, I hope!), his work has to be seen to be believed! He has an eye for detail that not a lot of people starting out have - and a knack for comedy that might prove useful at some point....

I stress at this point that Future War is NOT a comedy in ANY way - in fact, it's one of the darkest stories I've attempted.

(It's the second darkest - the top slot for that title goes to a short film that I came close to making when I was very depressed about a year and half ago. I'd just been kicked out by by my ex, moved into a pokey little bedsit, that had no heating during a bitterly cold winter and a terrible internet connection...
I opted NOT to make it when someone pointed out to me after reading my second draft, that you have to give the audience SOME hope for them to stay interested, even if there is none: basically EVERYONE died at the end...!!! People were getting killed from the first scene, getting taken over by an alien entity and either killing themselves or murdering everyone else until they were stopped. Permanently. Oh, and the Earth got completely obliterated into the bargain - that was the last shot of the film...)

Anyway, I digress. (I'll probably do that a lot, so please bear with me...!)

The first stage after managing that lot without really trying, was to run some more tests (mostly stills to get a feel of how it might look) so that I had something to show to people that I might have had to convince to join this crazy venture...!

Here are a few of those tests that are less cringe worthy than some I did (which may never see the light of day)...!

I started looking at which techniques to use to pull off these future city shots I had in mind - everything from 2.5D (2D images mapped onto planes projected in 3D space), to camera mapping (or camera projection) - where a still is taken and mapped onto basic 3D geometry, thereby enabling camera moves, making the shot look more cinematic.

This first one uses 2.5D - and is my least favourite one to date! But it did give me idea of how 2.5D works, and how to move the camera more effectively to get the best results. For realism, the key is the same thing my acting coach always told me: "Less is more."
Pity I didn't apply that here...!
(Please ignore the crap acting of me as a terminator...! My acting coach would DIE of shame if she saw this...!)

2.5D camera movement experiment - VFX Test 2

However, this next one met with more success - and I didn't dare move the camera this time...!

Future War: VFX Test 3

Then of course, there was full 3D itself - of which I had very little experience.

I have to stress here: I knew very little about 3D modelling or rendering techniques, and was using a 3D model that I had found online that I thought was very good - and a good starting point for ideas.

Initial render tests for destroyed city - pre-visualisation stills.

Obviously, when the time comes, the digital sets will have more detail, more buildings, more wreckage - more everything! But these renders gave me an idea of how it might look - and how long such a render might take. These shots have NO post production effects added (as you can see), so with those in place, it would up the quality quite considerably!

Now all I had to do was ask my friend if he would play Kyle Reese in this madness...