MPEG Videos Created + Subtitles!

It's been a while since I've made an entry here but work continues! Andy's been hard at work on the score to FvTWM. I've heard a couple of demos of cues so far and I'm told it will sound even better once it's given the full orchestral treatment through East West.

In the meantime, I've made the DVD-ready MPEG 2 video files for the three versions of the movie: a 2D version, 23.976 frames per second, progressive 480p 16x9; an anaglyph 3-D version, 23.976 fps, progressive 480p 16x9; and a field sequential 3-D version, 29.97 fps, interlaced 480i 16x9. I haven't been able to test the field sequential version yet but the other two are working quite well.

Recently a new 3-D DVD hit the market, a remake called Night of the Living Dead 3D. The 3-D effects are better than some videos I've seen, but the producers solution to ghosting images (where you see double images even with the glasses on) is to keep the depth in the frame pretty shallow. Frankenstein vs the Wolfman sometimes uses "super-depth" in it's images so I had to work to find another solution.

I've outlined this process in a prior blog entry but I use the Night of the Living Dead 3D disc as an example: in each sequence of that movie, when you close your blue eye and look through the red lens, everything appears extremely dark. My solution was to boost the gamma of the red eye view so that the picture through the red lens appears as bright as that seen through the blue eye. This has served to lessen the effect of ghosting and produce a more satisfying anaglyphic 3-D experience.

I'm happy to report that the MPEG compression's color matrix did not have an adverse affect on how the red and blue colors are reproduced (unlike the YouTube video compression - which I believe is Shockwave Flash.)

Also, I've been working on subtitling the movie, using Adobe Encore. It's a pretty nice setup, allowing you to type your subtitles directly onto the monitor window. These subtitles will only be available on the 2D version of the movie (they ruin the 3-D effect on the 3-D versions) and can be chosen by selecting the subtitle track once the movie has started.

The Trailer Has Landed

The moment we've all been waiting for has finally arrived - the brand spankin' new trailer for Frankenstein vs the Wolfman is live! You can download high quality Windows Media versions by visiting the Trailer page of the site; watch lower quality (either 2-D or 3-D) versions via YouTube below; or you can visit Veoh.com and download versions for your iPod.

Frankenstein vs the Wolfman trailer 2-D

Frankenstein vs the Wolfman trailer 3-D

New Composer + Vacation

I've had to make a hard decision recently to replace Ryan Wummel, my longtime composer, on Frankenstein vs the Wolfman. Ryan started with me on my filmmaking hobby back in 1998 by doing songs for my vampire(?) opus Gothik, and then providing the scores for both Raven movies. As we were working on Frankenstein vs the Wolfman, it became apparent that the score would have to be a more "classical" orchestral score, which ended up being at odds with Ryan's background in Trance, Techno and loop-based music. Currently, Ryan is working on ads for Nike, if you can believe it, with a production outfit based out of Chicago.

I've tapped Andrew Kalbfus for FvTWM. Andy was recommended to me by my producer & brother-in-law, Andy Carlson - and thus, will hereto be known as Other Andy. We had a pretty good initial meeting in which we discussed what the music should do, influences and generally determined where the music was going to be present in the movie. Other Andy tells me he's always wanted to do a movie score... so now he gets his chance. He promises me that the music for the trailer will be done by the end of August.

Now that everything, sans the score, is virtually in place (a few sound fx remain to be recorded), I've been spending time watching movies and playing videogames. It's almost like a vacation from the rigors of animating. I've been playing Bioshock for the Xbox 360 this week, and it's very cool - taking place in an elaborate, Art Deco underwater city (circa 1960) with some of the most realistic water effects I've ever seen.

The Science of Screaming

Leeta and Milo's ADR has been recorded... Grace and Amanda came over and spent some time whimpering, breathing heavily and shrieking into a microphone. Grace had some trouble screaming for us, so it sounds like we'll be using a scream double for Leeta.

In other news, the DVD cover is pretty much finalized. We'll be printing out a stack of them soon.

Audio Commentary Recorded

I sat down in front of my little PC mic yesterday and recorded an audio commentary for the Frankenstein vs the Wolfman DVD. Hopefully it'll prove insightful to those of you who actually want a copy and choose to listen to it. I've been doing a bunch DVD programming, creating DVD menus and working on the DVD cover. I've had a couple of proofs done of the cover art and am making corrections to it (mostly in terms of highlighting certain items and brightening the image overall.)

Over the weekend I was also able to lay in Chuck's Wolfman vocals to the movie and they sound pretty good. I had to do a substantial amount of EQ-ing and applying some filters to make his natural tones sound more bestial and ragged, but now the Wolfman has a personality!

We're set to record some more ADR tomorrow - Grace Carreno is coming in to do some Leeta gasps and whimpers, while Amanda Pearson is coming in to do Milo, one of the other orphan heroes.

Special Features Intros Shot

This week, a colleague from work came over and shot a couple of intros for the various DVD special features. We shot the video in my basement using a Panasonic DV cam and a pro light kit. Thanks to Brent for the assist!

I took another crack at the opening title, this time using 3D Invigorator. When checking my last attempt, the parallax gap between the left and right images was too far apart so everyone that I showed it to complained of seeing double images. We'll have to see if this new version works any better.

I am set to get the audio recordings of Chuck Reeder's wolfman performance this week and will cut them into the movie over the weekend.

Making the 3-D Composite Part II

So, I made an anaglyph 3-D version of the movie, described in the process here and played the thing back on my TV. Although it works quite well on a computer monitor, it doesn't work so well on the television... what I end up seeing is a substantial lack of color and double images. Looking through the blue filter of the glasses yielded a clear, single image but looking through the red lens revealed the problem: not only is the picture significantly darker through the red lens, but the double images originate there.

Thinking that this is likely due to the fact that the red channel is so dark, and therefore not reproducing at the same color as the red lens of the glasses, I went back to After Effects and raised the red gamma of the left eye from 1.0 to 1.5 and re-rendered the movie.

This version worked significantly better. The biggest draw back is that now we're pretty much dealing with a black and white movie. If I would have planned better, I would have incorporated more purples, greens and yellows as they seem to retain their color even through the 3-D glasses. All other colors are drained down to a kind of purplish netherworld. However, the 3-D works! Ah, the tradeoff. Looking at the image on the TV without the glasses, the whole thing looks reddish and the red/left color appears really bright.

Some of the effects work well (a shovel handle during the opening credits protruded well into my viewing room,) whereas I could percieve more off-the-screen action when characters were reaching towards the audience when looked at on the computer monitor.

In other news, I completed the end credit sequence last night. The movie's final run time clocks in at 19:56.