CBT! Indestructible Hulk 5, All New X Men 9, Avengers 8, New Avengers 4, Cable and the X Force.

Indestructible Hulk #4

Another nice issue of indestructible has wrapped up the Attuma storyline and says goodbye to Yu unfortunately. There was less science in this issue and more of Banner being a bloke in general, there was quite a lot of attuma pointlessly pontificating but asside from that it was a pretty sweet issue. I get the feeling that something big will happen with the comic soon, a big villain or something cataclysmic with science, its floated along nicely for a while now we need to see it develop again.
7.5/10

All New X Men #9

I am extremely tempted to drop this title, and become less and less interested in it as it goes on, this week however a little of that changed... The new brotherhood look cool and I like their motives or lack there of, I cant wait for angel to change sides and the last page linking with Uncanny is very cool. Art was same as always, sleek and fun, I really like the sheen that highlights the characters. All of this is still only of limited interest, there are a lot of x characters I want to see more of and I dont care about the "past" x men buuuuut im gonna have to get over it, looks like theyre gonna b here for a while...

7/10

Avengers #8

I really liked this issue! It was all it was built up to be, it reminded me of a what if stanford scenario. i loved the way cap handled things and how villainous the avengers actually came across. I like the loop back to the last arc although all of the universe stuff is a little ott. I always feel as though doing character stories is a better way to go becuase if the whole univrse was going to die it would be a bigger deal... The art was nice, Kubert esque, very sharp and neat, loved it.

8/10

New Avengers #4

That being said the universe hopping earth shattering New Avengers is fantastic! Its believable and within the insanity the character moments are clear and defining. The personal fix's to the problem they face was an awesome way to present the issue and Epting brings the best to the table portraying all of the characters perfectly and emotively. I dont have a clue whats going on or who they are fighting atm but the cosmic battle is awesome! I cant wait for more!

8.5/10

Cable and the X-Force #6

One of the best issues of one of the best marvel now titles to date. Stunning art as always supported by strong emotional content, a little amusing action and stunning storytelling. This title is pretty close to perfect, pick of the week for sure.

9/10

A Short Story In Brutality

A Short Story In Brutality is finally finished check it out below:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XnyYuySYeA


Or over there, click on the pic >>>>
Sorry I cant embed it, youtube is being crappy but.... Im really happy with the project, I produced it so I worked on all stages in some way and I think it all came together pretty nicely. Big thanks to everyone who worked on the project.

Let me know what you guys think!

A Short Story in Brutality Editing day 2

Here is what happened on the second day of editing A Short Story in Brutality

We worked for a good full 6 hours to get the edit finished but after the long tiring stint working we were happy and exhausted. Right from the start we had similar problems to the day before, too many cooks, ling times spent on discussion rather than editing and missing footage. We found a lot of things we didnt think we had, labelling would have solved this, and realised we hadnt shot a lot of things. Another problem was that we had shot things but quickly and on the fly, not adjusting lighting or giving the shots the time they deserved, because we were behind schedule, as a result we couldnt use a lot of conceptual stuff that we really loved but looked horrid.

After a few hours we finally had something close to a fine cut so we reversed the footage. This took a while because of a mess up with sequence settings and rendering but eventually we could see the piece in its intended chronology. As I had hoped, and expected due to practice footage, it pretty much all worked backwards! Everything but the fight scene really...

One of the hardest parts to edit, as expected, was the fight scene, the fast pace and reverse editing was really tricky and confusing. Because of the nature of punches they are faster on the way down than the way back, this took the impact out of the blows and the scene. We were puzzled and debated playing with the speed of clips a lot or cutting it really violently but in the end Amy's simple suggestion of playing some of the footage forward was the best idea. So we carefully played some parts forward and kept others backwards for continuity's sake and because some of them just still worked! In the end to a standard viewer we dont think it will be obvious that some are forward, the action is so frantic and short it is impossible to tell for sure.

Amy then took a well deserved break and Jordan really got eyes on some footage he hadnt seen, after a lot of reviewing he found a few shots he preferred in the piece and discussed them with me and Christi, we all agreed and the changes were made for the better. Amy didn't like them... majority rule rang out and I think for the better. After a little more fine cutting the audio was ready to go on.

As our audio is slightly unusual for the project it didnt take long to sync the sound, most cues had been met in the writing of the audio and already matched. After playing around a little and arguing over a hilariously bad piece of audio that I argued down in the mix (I would have preferred it removed) we exported ready to slap it on a disk and present it the next day, Job Done!

A Short Story in Brutality Editing day 1

Despite our tight schedule we got way behind and our first proper editing session wasn't till yesterday (11th), Amy had done a little work already but only pulled together what she thought looked good, there was still a scene missing and we were already at 4mins on the timeline. On the other hand Joel's sound work was awesome the effects and rough foley for the fight scene was perfect, cringe worthy. The musical score he had put together was creepy and unsettling with just the right amount of melody although we are going to have to tweek his work to make it fit the timeline I am really impressed.

I didn't want to get too involved in the edit and at first was just keeping my eye on what Amy and Jordan were doing however I was aware of Jordan wanting to put all of his shots in whether they were up to scratch or not. I kept my eye on things for 30mins to an hour and not much had been done, partly because of none of the clips being named and partly because every cut had a discussion attached. With only two days left I didnt think we had the luxury of that much discussion so I jumped in to speed things up.  This worked a little but we still had a lot of arguments on what to cut and what not to cut, specifically the conversation between Jenny and Dean. Jordan wanted to show only the reaction shots because he thought seeing a moving mouth backwards would be silly, I disagreed. Its not the difference in opinion I was annoyed with but the fact this was the first time Jordan opposed something in that was planned in preproduction filmed in production and now he was questioning it in post production was frustrating. I told him to do what he wanted and he continued to debate, I just wanted something to be done so I edited a mixture of the two. I roughly edited for the next 30mins with Amy's permission and cut everything to a rough timeline so that Joel could start timing his music and the whole film was almost there, only fine cutting and reversing to go. 

So not a bad day in the edit, I would have liked to export today after tomorrows rough success but I think we are going to have to wait until early on the presenting day, there is still a long way to go. 

Short Story In Brutality Shooting day2

SECOND SHOOTING DAY

Our second shooting day was pretty well scheduled and shot listed, we arranged when to meet actors and left time for travel and it looked as though things would go really well, unfortunately we did not stick to the schedule.

TIME SCENE SHOT DESCRIPTION ACTORS LENGTH
4.30 Meet at uni (Joel Jon Jordan Christi Joe)
5.00 4 1 CU hand wash track up to face. J 4s
5.10 4 2 Blood drip from hand to hand. J. 3s
5.20 4 3 Shot from inside sink. J. 2s
5.30 4 4 Tap Running J. 3s.

Walk to won ting

Meet at won ting ALL CREW AND ACTORS

6.00 2 2 Won Ting meeting from Car park roof N.J.R.
6.30 2 3 Tunnel walking from light to dark N.J.R.
6.45 2 4 Coming out of the Tunnel High angle up steps, they walk towards cam, Dean lurking at bottom N.J.R.

Walk to Christi's

7.15 2 5 Her entering a house, him stopping and looking down at the ring. N.J.R.
7.25 2 7 ECU Ring box J.
7.30 2 9 CU Deans face J.
7.40 2 6 Wine being poured. N.R.
7.50 2 8 Candles lighting N.R.

8.00 3 1 Deans legs foreground framing the bed. N.J.R. 4s
8.15 3 2 Cam behind Couple in bed framing Dean (reverse of shot 1) N.J.R. 3s
8.20 3 3 MedLong Dean walking over and punching Tom to the ground and pushes Jenny to the floor N.J.R. 5s
8.25 3 4 Jenny cutaway crying R. 2.s
8.30 3 5 POV from Tom Dean climbing ontop J.N. 4s
8.40 3 6 Wide shot of the fight J.N. 3s
8.45 3 7 POV Dean J. 3s
8.50 3 8 POV Tom N. 3s
8.55 3 9 POV Jenny J.N. 3s
9.00 3 10 Blood Splatter cutaway N. 3s
9.10 3 11 Profile shot of fight J.N. 6s
9.20 3 12 360 shot J.N.R. 6s

We met 30 minutes late for a start because Jordan was late but we had enough people to carry all the kit and had enough time to walk to the set and start filming, we were hoping to squeeze the bathroom scene in before anything else. I left us about 30mins for first set up and then 10mins for each set up, with the 30mins late and without the set being dressed before we arrived we had no time to shoot so we left Christi behind to with Joel for help with set dressing and moved onto the outside stalking scenes. The other thing that held us up was the discussion about the mirror…. This may be a little confusing as it has never before been mentioned but Christi, Jordan and Joe all wanted a shot of a mirror being smashed, framing Amy, the reverse smash would look really cool but it presented time issues. I really love the idea but there is no time in the film, we scripted and shot listed a 2min film and didn’t have time for it in the film. Secondly we didn’t have any time on the day to shoot it, being over an hour behind already this really pushed us behind. I argued that it wasn’t worth it but was overruled so left it to be set up whilst we were away, as we were on location we didn’t need lights so they could be set up so we could be as quick as possible when shooting the next scene.

We got to the next location just on time and efficiently shot absolutely everything exactly to schedule (minus the 1.5hours behind from the last scene). We shot every shot we wanted exactly to the shot list and with the extra camera picked up alternatives. This was probably the most successful part of the shoot, we used the hand cam light really well and directed the public a little so that nobody was in shot, it all went really well. It was cold and raining a little but was successful.

When we got back not everything had been dressed and the lights weren’t set. We also spent 30mins whilst light setup was going on debating whether or not to add a scene, Joe already had a lot of cutaways and with the additional mirror shot I disagreed again. The shot Jordan and Amy wanted was of “Dean” breaking into the house after Tom and Jenny. To me this wasn’t necessary because you have seen him following and there is no easy way for him to break in, if we don’t show it the audience will most likely connect the dots in a more believable way than we could film it. It was taking too long to argue about it so I backed down so we could film it and move on, which we did, briefly, after looking at the edit we think we will cut it.

Lights, camera and set were still not completely ready and we spent a really long time setting up shots randomly. By this point we were way behind schedule but everyone refused to follow the schedule or shot list. This meant we just grabbed random shots we could, it was much less efficient and much less cinematic. We muddled through and I did everything I could to help, adding blood, helping with lighting and other odd jobs.

We were hours behind schedule but began shooting the final scene in the bathroom (the first scene) Jordan asked for the shot list (for the first time) so I left him to it and started packing up the equipment and saying goodbye to the actor that had finished. I hope that the footage was good but the bathroom was too small for so many people, Joe, Christi and Jordan seemed to have things under control and I felt maybe it would be ebst for me to step out. At this point it was 12 rather than the proposed finishing time of 9.30. I am extremely grateful to the actors for staying as long as they did and working as hard and well as they did I was genuinely impressed. I was actually embarrassed by the amount of wasted time, it felt unprofessional and unorganised and we wasted a lot of the actors time.

I personally found the day really frustrating, too many people were fighting over lighting which we had already discussed, too much arguing over what to shoot despite our extensive shot list and too much wasted time talking and discussing when we had a good plan. I didn’t put the plan together from nowhere, we had had a really productive session in which we discussed it all and planned it together, it felt like those discussions were needlessly repeated on set. 

Short Story in Brutality Shooting day 1

I shot most of my drama last week, heres how the first shoot went.

Unfortunately actor troubles have continued and we have really struggled to keep the work on schedule. We tried to shoot last week but had trouble with our actress getting ill and put in hospital. Then we tried to shoot during this week with our Editor standing in as an actress if we couldn’t find anyone else. I tried really hard to find someone emailing as many actresses as I could find and asking both actors to get friends to help out if they could but to no avail so we eventually decided we would have to substitute our editor for the role of Jenny, fortunately it’s a pretty small role. One of our actors pulled out of this week’s mid week shoot and we needed him for the scene we had planned, we didn’t have time to reschedule the other scene in its place. We attempted to film this weekend but our other actor was unavailable and he is necessary for all scenes so we couldn’t shoot at all. Hopefully we will be able to shoot next week.

We finally had some success with shooting, we couldn’t shoot the scene we wanted to because of actor troubles again but did manage to shoot the living room scene with Johnny and Amy. It went really well, we spent a little bit too long with our first set up and struggled a little to keep to schedule, mainly because we had to wait a while for the set dressing but after that it was pretty smooth running. There were a few small problems, the lights were admittedly a little unsafe but after a little while of shooting we got a lot more efficient and a lot safer. Another problem was everyone else's unfamiliarity with the script shot list and shooting schedule, everyone had been given copies or shown where copies were but nobody was particularly comfortable with them leaving me to re read and reorganise everyone despite the fact they should have known what was going on, that made us much less efficient.

Anyway this was the schedule, we kind of stuck to it, we didnt shoot the bathroom scene and we filmed a little out of order but other than that it was pretty good.

MEET TIME: 16.00 @bus station. 

TIME SCENE SHOT DESCRIPTION ACTORS LENGTH
16.30 4 1 CU of hand track down to face J 4s
16.50 4 2 Blood drip from hand to hand (ring) J 3s
17.10 4 3 Shot from in sink J 2s
17.30 4 4 CU Tap running, being turned on + off J 3s
BREAK
18.00 1 1 Low angle dean holding ring. J. 3s
18.20 1 2 ECU ring. Box snaps shut. J. 3s
18.40 1 3 Sofa profile shot of Dean Jenny comes in Pans across as she comes in and gets her coat and goes back into the kitchen. J.K. 30s
19.10 1 4 Reverse of shot3 OSS Jenny. J.K 30s
19.30 1 5 CU of mouth on hug J.K. 2s
19.40 1 6 ECU of phone steal J.K. 3s
19.50 1 7 ECU of phone message J. 3s
20.30 1 8 Medium long of Jennys reaction. She leaves and he waves goodbye phone behind his back. Dean fumbles ring in pocket and slams door behind him J.K. 40s

Joel, boom operator and sound man all rolled into one efficient man.

 Jordan directing

 Amy being unhappy about acting

 Not sure why at this point everyone was standing around, I'm sure we were busy.

 Amy being really unhappy about acting

Christi doing his art directing.

CBT! Age Of Ultron #2, Uncanny Xmen #3, Secret Avengers #2

Age Of Ultron #2

WHY DOESN'T BENDIS WRITE X MEN THIS WELL!?!?!? Age of Ultron started brilliantly last week and continued its intense story in a post utronic destroyed world. As usual with apocolyptic stuff the best thing is seeing exactly what each character is doing and how they are adapting and it is great to see a few new examples of that this issue. Moon Knight and Black Widows stories look awesome however I am a little annoyed with two things, cap already has a plan and there are barely any xmen considering Bendis is an x men writer now. Anyway I will be buying all of AU its awesome so far, you should too.
8.5/10

Uncanny X Men #3

Uncanny X Men fails to pick up in its third issue and falls back about a year into pointless bickering between Cap and Cyke, I really like a lot of the points made in the comic but feel like they are the subtleties that made the end of AvX bearable and they never needed telling explicitly. The art was Bachalo what can I say, generally messy and out of proportion as usual, I'm glad its changing soon. Magneto's ploy is pretty cool but it annoys me that it was played up in previews as though he was a traitor, feels more like a lie than good writing. I'm sticking with the title but expecting it to pick up for sure (last page is good btw).
7/10

Secret Avengers #2

Nick Spencer's insane Secret Avengers continues with a second issue as action packed as the first, AIM pop up as theey do in everything at the moment and Taskmaster is broken free, just not in any of the ways you may think. Its tricky to review this without spoiling it but the last few pages and the smart direction the series is taking makes the comic. Througout the dialogue is good and the art along with it but nothing spectacular, its the plot that stands out, and stands out enough to make it a regular title, for now at least.
8/10

CBT! Age Of Ultron 1, Iron Man 7, All New XMen 8, Cable and the Xforce 5, Avengers 7.

Posting this a week late so Im gonna make it mega short and sweet


Age Of Ultron #1

What a wicked start, whats with TRON? Looking forward to more!
8.5/10
Iron Man #7

Not as good as it has been but nicely paced action and intelligence, I want to see this really develop into something more, at the moment it doesn't seem to have much of a theme behind it in comparison to the first 5issues apart from what woulf tony do without a suit.
8/10

All New X Men #8

It was the same as always, not a lot happened but it was ok...
7/10

Cable and the X Force #5

Truely awesome as always! Good to see the team on a little down time and get together properly, well most of them. Time to see them face another premonition, I just wonder how long its going to be until the Stryfe shadow actually appears.

8.5/10

Avengers #7

I really cant remember what happened.... Oh yeah basically nothing, we were misled for 6pages which was a cool idea but I dont want to read pages and pages full of it, then we got everything explained and in the end we got to just before something interesting. So next issue should be good... Really this issue was nothing which is a shame but I guess that happens sometime, you have to have hype and a little bit of pseudo science before something potentially cool, fingers crossed its worth the price of two issues.... art was nice...
6.5/10