The world keeps spinning!0

Hey everyone, been a bit over a week since I last wrote here, so I figured I’m going to write and keep you up-to-date with what I’ve been doing the last week in terms of my new film “16″, gaming, movies and books (or at least, only one book, but I guess you can figure out which one )

So, what’s up with “16″. The end of July is approaching at increasing speed, and no word about where it is yet. Well, I’ve been working like a complete mental the last couple of weeks and two days ago, I finally completed all of the sound and the grading (this is the process when I change brightness, contrast, shift colours around and much more, all to create a better looking film with more atmosphere) for the movie. This was a very big step in finishing the movie. All the dialouge has been re-recorded and is now mixed in along with the sound effects (one fun fact is that NONE of the original sound is retained in the final version). Me and Johannes re-recorded every single line of dialouge and I’ve been spending lots of time on the countryside recording sound effects. And it’s a LOT of sound, that’s clear. In total, I recorded over 500 different sounds strecthing from running on a sandy road to opening a kitchen cupboard. So, it’s by far been the most intense movie-making experience I have EVER been involved in. I’ve learned a lot of things for my next project, but more details on that as well as the usual sentimental talk will be posted once “16″ is released to the world! So, what remains? Well, there are four or five effects shots remaining in the entire film (adding some film to a television and changing the brightness beyond usual in some scenes). The logos in front of the movie have been put in, and I’ve finished the logo for the movie (it will be revealed in a future news post closer to the release date). Most of the music mixing remains, but this won’t take more than four or five days probably. Then I just have to slap on some subtitles (the movie is still in English, but to make sure you hear everything it’s always great with a small pointer). So, I guess it’s time to reveal how long the movie is. The length of it is probably the main reason why it has taken so long in post-production. It clocks in at almost 29 minutes, making it 3 times as long as “Showoff”, which was my longest movie before I made this one. So save yourself an afternoon or evening when it’s released. I’m also looking into alternate web hosts for the movie at the moment. Currently, I have no problem uploading it here on the website, but since the movie is so much longer the filesizes will be larger as well. I don’t want my website bandwith to fail on me (it probably won’t, though), but as I said, any help is welcome. Since there’s less than a week left of July, I very much doubt the movie will be released so soon, but I can pretty much promise it’s going to come out at least before school begins (which is somewhere around the 20th of August). As I’ve said earlier, there’s not much to do left, but still some things remain, and I don’t want to rush out a movie which I’m not entirely satisfied with.

Game time! So, what have I been playing while “16″ has been rendering in the background (HDV grading and effects takes up a lot of computing power). Well, I got “The Darkness” for Playstation 3 yesterday, and so far I really enjoy it. The story is great (I constantly find myself thinking about how good/cool this could be if it was turned into a movie), the voice acting is really above and beyond what I’ve become used to before. The graphics are amazing! I’m usually not that much of a graphics freak (although I find good graphics extremely cool, I still think gameplay’s way more important) but it’s fun to see what can be done with today’s technology. I also downloaded the Geometry Wars clone “Super Stardust HD” from the Playstation 3 online marketplace, and it’s great! I always found Geometry Wars to be a lot of fun (even if I find it very difficult to keep up with all the action on the screen, it’s fun and mind-blowing). It’s a bit hard to explain in further details, but basically, you steer your spaceship with the left stick and shoot with the right stick. Well, if you have a PS3, I’d recommend you to buy it (it’s only 7$ or something like that). I’ve also played Command & Conquer 3 pretty much with Nils B. We set up a LAN system at home with two computers, and despite the constantly failing Wifi internet, it was really fun to play. The only problem was that I’m not really the greatest strategy god of all time. This pretty much means I focus entirely on building a cool looking base, which after ten minutes of gameplay, gets brutally destroyed. Well, I hadn’t really played a single strategy video game before this one, so I guess I can partly blame it on that. I havn’t really been playing a lot of games this summer, because of various things such as filmmaking, being with friends, relaxing in the beautiful weather (which there unfortunantly has been a lack of lately). When I get around to redesigning the crew page, I’ll be sure to put in various Playstation and Xbox online usernames, so you can play against both me and some of the other crew members. I’ve got to rewrite the equipment page too some day, it’s getting a bit dated, seeing as I wrote it almost a year ago.

What there havn’t been a lack of though, is movies! I’ve watched a TON of movies the last week. I went to my local video store and picked up some older classics in the budget bin and it’s been a real blast watching these. To name a few films I recently watched “The Right Stuff” (which was good, although I felt it could be trimmed down half an hour or so), “Domestic Disturbance” (Vince Vaughn actually works as a serial killer!), “Payback” (Mel Gibson as the ultimate badass) and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (which I thought was probably one of the most funny movies I have ever seen ). I’ve also watched some mediocre films, wohoo! “Firewall” with Harrison Ford wasn’t that good. It all got a bit cheesy when he hacked the most advanced security system using only an iPod and a scanning machine. It still didn’t want to make me see “Indy IV” any less. I seriously can’t wait until it premieres in May next year. I’ve also rewatched some older James Bond films, including “The Man with the Golden Gun” and “From Russia with Love”. Both great movies that still hold up good today, even if some of the gadgets are a bit dated, and some stuff horribly bad and cheesy, such as the scene in “The Man with the Golden Gun” when Britt Ekland (yeah, a swede) activates a ruthless killing laser with her ass, nearly decapitating Roger Moore! On the good side, Christoffer Lee is good as “Scaramanga”, Bond’s main enemy in this movie.

Of course, I also watched “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, but I won’t tell you what I thought about it here. I will write a seperate review later today (or early tomorrow, depending on the way you look at it). But, being on the subject of Harry Potter, I also read the final book (yeah, I read a book!) of the franchise, called “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Now, I know better than writing any spoilers or plot details here, since some people would probably get a bit upset (i.e. they’d go mental). Anyway, I absolutely loved the book, and it’s a great end to one of the franchises I have most remembered (I never finished reading “The Lord of the Rings” books, because frankly, I thought they were boring. The movies rock though ) and even if the book begins kinda slow, believe me, it quickly gets more and more exciting for every page from there.

I believe that’s all I have to say for now, and it turned out to be quite a lot. So, stay tuned tomorrow for my review on “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”! I will see the Simpsons Movie on Friday, and hopefully I’ll be able to post a review of it later that evening. Also, stay tuned for more news from “16″. Work continues!

Take care everybody!