Gigh Resurrection - Approach - Visual Effect WIP

I've made a couple of tweaks to make the megalith "sit" better in it's environment. It still looks cartoonish on a computer monitor but I'm afraid changing it too much will make it look unrealistic on TV screen. So those viewing over the Internet will have to tolerate the cartoonishness for the time being.

Gigh Resurrection - Opening Shot - Visual Effect WIP

In the previous version I thought the clouds looked too much like an image floating over the top of a background. I've tried to blend them in a little better but I'm still not happy with the result.

Visual Effect - Work In Progress - Uncle Bulo's Abode - EXT 2 - version 1.2

Just as the shot when Panache approaches Uncle Bulo's Abode has been upgraded so has the shot where she has departed. Same updates as the previous shot but better virtual camera movement.


I think this shot needs something extra... I imagined having an owl sitting on the wind seal which flies away when the shuts. Unfortunately I don't know of any owl trainers who would freely offer their services for what would be a quite experimental shot - it would have to be filmed in front of a blue/green screen then composited into the shot.

The other option is to have a CG owl but I don't have the skills to design one that would look convincing enough. If anybody has such skills and would like to offer them then don't hesitate to contact.

Meanwhile here is the latest update to Exterior 2 of Uncle Bulo's Abode:

Visual Effect - Work In Progress - Uncle Bulo's Abode - EXT - version 1.2

There were quite a few things bugging me about the Exterior shots of Uncle Bulo's Abode. Primarily the moon which looked like a circle rather than a moon and bush in the lower (our) left hand corner.

I've improved the moon significantly by giving it a moon surface texture and correcting the penumbra. The previous bush was merely a 2D image which I created by "stacking" copied and pasted sections of the source image till the bush was the desired height. This new bush is actually a bush which I filmed in my backyard and the part seen is actually 2 metres off the ground.

I also upgraded the fences. Once again the fence was extended by means of a 2D image taken during different lighting conditions thus creating an inconsistency. I've taken a frame from the source footage and overlayed on over the existing fences and now they should be consistent.

These differences probably aren't very noticeable in the YouTube video but on larger displays they stand out much more.


Latest Version - 1.2




Previously Uploaded Version - 1.08
See the entry on 4th October 2007 for more information



Once again the shot still isn't finshed because I want it to begin entered on the moon then zooming out and tilting down to reveal Panache running to the cottage door.

Audio Out of Sync

I've received several reports that the audio is out of sync. I played the video back myself and the audio is fine up until the first exterior of Uncle Bulo's Abode. From that point onwards it goes hideously out of sync and I'm not entirely sure what's caused this.

I presume something has went wrong in the encoding when YouTube converted the video to Flash Video format. This may have had something to do with the format I uploaded which was a WMV file. Usually I upload DivX files which have few problems but for some reason the DivX encoder kept crashing when I attempted to convert the full length film from an uncompressed AVI.


I shall upload the full length film at the end of this week using different codecs and then we shall see if that fixes the problem.

Preview - The first 5 minutes

I needed to submit something for assessment so I've submitted the first five minutes.

It's not easy submitting incomplete work and I'm not even allowed to explain what stage of development the film has reached or what improvements will be made in the future. It must be presented "as is" under the assumption this is the final version.

Here is the first 5 minutes - add an extra minutes for the credits. It's been heavily compressed to fit on YouTube and with the small frame size it's going to lose a lot of quality. Better than nothing though.




Interestingly enough when viewed on different displaying devices (such as a CRT TV or a plasma screen) the quality of the video varies. For example the megalith looks much more realistic on a plasma screen while on a computer monitor it looks very cartoonish (as Phil has noticed).

Artist's Statement

As a mandatory requirement for E-Meda 312 I must also submit an Artist's Statement when I submit my project.

Here's what I came up with:


My aim was to produce a B Movie drawing influences from the low budget fantasy and adventure films of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Though I didn’t intend to recreate such films, I wanted to create a new contemporary form of B Movie retaining the old charm while utilising modern filmmaking technologies.

I devised a story set about 150 years in Australia’s past, yet I avoided representing actual locations. I wanted to create “a world of my own” and steer away from mimicking a “Tolkeinesque” fantasy. I helped this along by allowing the Australian actors to retain their accents and displaying indigenous flora in some of the exterior shots.

Rather than tell a “damsel in distress” tale I wanted the female protagonist to be a saviour and rescue her husband while plotting to intellectually defeat the villain. I the kept the dialogue mildly campy because I didn’t want to portray the characters too outlandishly, however I did accentuate the B Movie atmosphere by borrowing scores from old movies.

The film contains no pertinent messages or has any underlying significances. Its purpose is to simply entertain those with an appreciation for B Movies and to explore the possibilities of what can be achieved using modern video editing software.