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...

"Terminator: Future War"

I would imagine that every film fan and sci-fi fan is familiar with the character above!

I was on set one day, having spent over a year pouring over my own Star Wars fanfilm script (most of the basic plot was written while filming on "Golden Compass"!), refining it til I was satisfied, and experimenting with VFX techniques til I was happy, when it suddenly struck me: there are THOUSANDS - literally thousands - of Star Wars fanfilms already online. Although mine was to be a new approach (to date, no one has yet attempted the approach I had in mind - fingers crossed it stays that way!), it was, none-the-less, yet another Star Wars fanfilm.

Don't get me wrong - I LOVE fanfilms! Especially Star Wars ones that are done well, ie, good story, good acting and top notch VFX (of course!). But I had NEVER seen a Terminator fanfilm that I could recall, and so I went on an extensive internet hunt to see what had been attempted.

And I found - virtually nothing. Not counting re-edits of the original movies, and not counting numerous shorts of teenagers (and younger) running around their back gardens and hometown suburban streets (with very basic VFX), I only found one spoof for a comedy show.

I did discover that someone else had the idea of doing a film set in the future world of James Cameron's amazing vision- but it was to be a full CG offering. No-one seemed to have attempted a live action version of those future war flashbacks that made the Terminator films stick in my mind! I was soon to find out why...

My initial thought was to do a quick 5 to 10 minute short, tops - that would involve 3 or 4 of my friends running around against a greenscreen in as close an approximation of the original action sequences, with the sets, machines and all explosions, etc, to be created using photos, reference footage and CG animation on the PC, and composited in afterwards.

I ran a "quick test" (the initial animation took over 33 hours to render...!) and showed it to my friends on set one day, whilst performing in my supporting artist capacity. The guys were bowled over, and immediately asked to be involved! I didn't even have to beg! :-D

Early Aerial Hunter Killer (AHK) shots

This shot of an AHK is taken from my first render test - the 18 second take-off sequence took around 33 hours to render!

Anyway, we came up with a quick, original script, based on the future war scenario - but with our own ending, and a neat little twist. Things were looking good!

Until I went online to look for reference shots and 3D models that other people had created and would be willing to let us use. I hadn't really had that much 3D graphic work experience at that stage, but was keen to learn - but we didn't have the time (so I thought), as we wanted to get this done in the next few weeks.

Early Test render of a T800 endoskeleton

I found some 3D models and animations that just knocked me out (the first was used in that first test) - and I also stumbled on a copy of James Cameron's ORIGINAL script for T2: Judgment Day - which included an extended opening sequence, showing the defeat of Skynet and Kyle Reese being sent back in time...

My mind started racing - I'd always wanted to see these scenes filmed and was disappointed to discover they had never been made, only scripted and storyboarded. But boy, what storyboards!!! Absolutely exquisite renderings of familiar characters and machines - and some new, as yet unseen creations.

The technology may not have been in place back then to pull all of these off convincingly, but it was now...and I very quickly saw how it would be possible to create a lot of it using greenscreen techniques and digital sets.

Well that was it. I couldn't not do it now! I started writing, and came up with a shortish script, showing a lot of the final battle elements originally scripted with a lot of my own ideas and visions thrown in to spice it up and flesh it out!

That was just the start...

I showed it to the guys originally interested, and they were even more enthusiastic about it! Well, what red-blooded heterosexual male WOULDN'T relish the chance to brandish a plasma rifle around, run amok on a film set pretending to take out multiple terminators??? It's the ultimate "playing soldiers" scenario!!! Getting people to play various parts in this film was NOT a problem! :-)

Early Lighting test of a T800

My problem was that this thing had now grown beyond what I'd first anticipated - a one to two day shoot, with an estimated completion date of two months for post-production. It was now a twenty minute short, showing everything that every Terminator fan would like to see - and more.

I found a chap online, based in Poland - Marek - and his animations were astounding to say the least! Have a look at this short vid to see what I mean...


The Dock - by Marek Paterczyk

Most people had only created 3D models, and even provided them with basic animations - but he had tried to take it one step further and create animated short films or clips: I was convinced he would be the perfect person to help us on this - but would he be willing to put aside enough time to give us what we required?

As it turned out, he was a HUGE Terminator fan, and was more than willing to help out - once he had seen a copy of what passed as a script back then. (This was way back in May 2008.)

I struck lucky! Not only was Marek onboard to help us with the 3D aspect of the production, but it turned out he was quite talented when it came to the ideas section of the script and developing what we had into something far more special...

We are still writing, and every version of the script is dramatically better than the last! Which is not bad when you consider that I had heard on the grapevine, that an old friend of mine had managed to see the 3 rd draft of the script (even though he wasn't involved in the project at the time) and had proclaimed my script to be "visonary" and ambitious"...! I had heard this from a mutual friend who had worked with him on set and I was, needless to say, quite chuffed!

This other friend is a writer and doesn't beat about the bush if something sucks. He has now offered to give the completed script a once over when the time comes!

My view? Well, if it WASN'T ambitious, what would be the point of making it??

More to come, on the ever expanding script, cast and crew...