Or does it make any difference??
DRINKS, INTROS
Not long now till I pack up and shoot off to get things rolling in Aus. Would be great to get some informal get-togethers happening, principally so I can introduce a few more people to each other. This virtual team malarky is definitely working (i.e. things haven't collapsed in a heap over, how many years has it been??) but nothing beats face-to-face...
Any suggestions?
I'm thinking BAFTA in town and 9 Wyndham Street (while we have it!) are the best venues at my disposal for get-togethers and perhaps some regular early evening slots over the next month so that people can drop by on their way to other things.
NANOBAT SHOOT
Tamara is starting to pull this together. Please go through her for stuff on this rather than me, to avoid any nasty Scanners type incidents (you know, the old head exploding thing). I'm kinda overloaded at the moment. Still hoping to just wander onto the prop set and mumble some Lucas-like direction to the nanobats themselves. "That's great. Just like that, only stronger."
http://modfilms.com/twiki/bin/view/Sanctuary/NanobatShoot
VFX
Paul has started giving CD some funky moves. Thumbnails of the latest renders appear on the homepage of the new VFX tracker
http://trac.modfilms.com:7861/trac/shots
MODFILMS.NET
Work on the trackers is progressing well. I've had lots of feedback from the demos and it's been a mad flurry to try and keep pace with suggestions and bugs. Busy adopting the artist upload capability to cope with the naming convention for renders suggested by the Quadratura guys.
I'm aiming to have a hands-off demo site up and running soon with Sanctuary data. It's almost there but juggling madly and dusting off sysadmin 'skills' I'd happily shelved years ago (email configuration is still a pig).
I spent a day at Molinare helping with their pipeline (backups mainly) which has also shed some welcome light on how the majors are doing things. I'm even more convinced our new media approach has huge benefits to offer every production.
Gave a demo to a Swedish film school and have shook hands on the idea of students working on Sanctuary via modfilms.net as part of the curriculum. Post production training facilities have a hard time acquiring good quality footage so Sanctuary material is perfect. The particulars of the deal still need to be worked out but the broad idea is that MOD Films provides content and some services in return for getting timeconsuming VFX shots completed. Thanks to Soren for doing the legwork on this one.
My notes on this as it evolves:
http://modfilms.com/twiki/bin/view/Sanctuary/FilmSchool
Yesterday I gave a demo to Stewart Till, Chair of the UK Film Council. He seemed to get the product. and the challenge. "The good news it that it's brilliant" .. "the problem is you're asking people to work in a new way". Heard that before... "... I guess it's not THAT different" he went on to add (after seeing the dailies as podcasts). He offered to do some introductions to established film producers so we'll see where that goes.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Close observers of MOD Films may have noticed that half our online battle has been over the reluctance of people to use wikis or any non-hierarchical information system. The trackers are really all about compensating for this (and still sneaking wiki use in through the backdoor!). I'm including a link to this interesting essay suggesting why people distrust the wisdom of crowds. I.e. why Wikipedia, evolution, re-mixable films.. It's all about psychology after all.
http://karmatics.com/docs/evolution-and-wisdom-of-crowds.html