Righteous Kill screening tonight!

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I finally get to see one of our movies on the big screen tonight!  It's only a press screening, nobody below the line was invited to the premiere, but I still am looking forward to this.  We completed 440 vfx shots on this movie.

Will post my thoughts after.

Edit:

OK, saw the movie.  Much better than the earlier rough cut version we were working on.  The 440 shots were all in the movie, btw.  The shots were things like adding buildings in backgrounds, fixing lens flares, removing crew members...etc.

As for the movie, it was great to see these two stars together, and it's not often we get to work on a movie like this, so that was good.  But that said, I couldn't escape the feeling that something was missing.  I could bring myself to care abiout the characters, and then there's the ending... The ending, as has been noted elsewhere was fairly easy to figure well in advance.  I knew the ending already, so I brought our LA vfx superviser with me to the screening to get his opinion, knowing he knew nothing about the movie.  He had the twist guessed early on, so it's not just me.  Nevertheless, the movie is very entertaining and will do huge business I'm sure.  It's scoring a terrible 22% on Rotten Tomatoes right now, and that's not justified in my opinion.  But what do I know?  I'm just the fx dude.

Ninja starts...

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We finally have started work on a movie we shot earlier this summer.  "Ninja" is a martial arts film directed by our old friend Isaac Florentine.  Currently the movie is being edited, but we have now started work on the visual effects.  Expected are 150-200 shots in the movie, and they should be done in November.  I will try to post some images when possible.  It's also nice to see that fan sites have picked up on "Ninja".

To add a little content to this post, here is an interview with the star, Scott Adkins, on Bulgarian television.

Off to LA and then LA

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Gustav Not that LA.  I'm leaving for Louisiana.  I was originally supposed to fly on Tuesday, but a little thing called Gustav got in the way.  I spoke to the office yesterday, and they assured me that Shreveport did not blow away, and everybody was at work.  The movie is called "Leaves of Grass".  I'm heading there to meet the VFX supervisor and get everything rolling.  I'm also sending a Bulgarian supervisor, as she will be  heading up the show in BUlgaria when the actual compositing begins.  After that it's off to the other LA, Los Angeles, to take care of company business.

Flu Bird Horror!

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"Flubirds" finally aired on Sci-Fi Channel last Saturday.  Apparently it did monster ratings.  Plus, we got good reviews for our CGI.  Review here.    Directors Blog Nice to see that Sci-Fi listened to my pleas from more than a year ago.  I have asked them repeatedly to not expend so many shots on films that clearly could not afford them.  Instead, buy fewer shots with higher quality and you would keep the fans happy.  We did 64 shots on this movie, and are happy with them all.  Much better than 250+ shots and being happy with none.

Catch the flick on a reairing if you can.  It's got a rubber bird suit, and that's a good thing...

The Dog Days of August

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Not Black Sea

Here it is, August 28, and the studio is sloooowwwww.   30% of staff are on the black sea, and the rest are... well not much.  Cyclops has wrapped, and until the new films start up, it's housekeeping duty.  We have been able to tackle long overdue and oft-postponed tasks.  Various previously neglected projects underway are:

  • New Logo.  Millennium and NuImage have finally decided that their logos are from the 80's and need updating.
  • Building a virtual backlot.  It was always planned to build 3d versions of standing sets that exist here on the lot.  Now is the time to do it.
  • Updating the Servers/Software/Workstations. Obvious, but never really had the time to update everything at once.
  • R&D for new projects.  Nearly all of our future jobs require crowd simulation.  We have put a team together to master "Massive", the crowd generation software made famous by "Lord of the Rings".

Speaking of new projects, we have some real exciting ones coming up.  "Red Sonja" is probably the most famous one, but that doesn't actually start shooting until the end of the year.  There are others that are fun also.  "Ninja" is currently in the low-res Temp stage, while we wait for full-res scans.  "Command Performance" is shooting with Dolph Lundgren.  Plus there are a few others that I don't want to reveal just yet.

Bulgarian Kings #10 cover

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Another Wednesday is here, and another issue is on the newsstands. As usual, I am posting next week's cover for you to preview. I couldn't post the cover last week, due to vacation.  Next week is also the last issue of "The Bulgarian Kings". This was a 10 issue contract and we have reached the end. Currently we are negotiating the next project with the distributor, but I'm not giving away details yet. Anyway, here is Issue #10:

Trademark ... Not

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Not much of a post... just a rant. Believe it or not, Bulgaria has some interesting rules on intellectual property. Shocking I know.  As you may know, I have a publishing company. Eastern European Concepts and Consulting. Or EECC for short. I was able to get a .bg domain quite easily for this company because according to Bulgarian rules you can only have an Internet domain if it is your name or your company's name. However, I also wanted an Internet domain that was more appropriate for publishing comics. I wanted the domain www.comics.bg. In order to get this domain I either had to publish a magazine entitled www.comics.bg or trademark the name www.comics.bg.  Absolutely stifling rules, but them are the rules. So last year we applied for the trademark. And then we started publishing a magazine entitled... www.comics.bg.

Last week, I received my official rejection letter from the patent and trademark office of Bulgaria. Now I have a month or two to continue using comics.bg.  After which I will now need to show my continued publication of www.comics.bg over the last year.

The .bg domain names are some of the most spam free domains around, now you know why.

Plovdiv Adventures

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The wife and I celebrated 5th year wedding anniversary on Saturday, and to celebrate right we took a trip to Plovdiv. Plovdiv is an ancient city in southern Bulgaria. Colonized by the Romans and occupied by a virtually everybody else over the millennia ... it has a hell of a history. The history is for another time, we were celebrating our marriage and we needed to get our party on. I arranged for hotel reservations in the old city which means ridiculous tiny roads with huge holes and giant rocks that you can't drive a car over. After virtually becoming wedged between thousand-year-old walls, a souvenir seller took pity on us and told us that it was not possible to drive to the hotel we are going towards. Mainly because there's a giant boulder 50 m up the hill and around the bend. She was right. However she said there was another lovely hotel around the corner that we could get the car to. We went, and the facilities lived up to the promise. Bizarrely, it turned out we were in a boutique hotel with avant-garde furnishings. Every room is painted a different color. (We stayed in the green room..not pictured). It was called Hotel Belleville. the facilities include an outdoors garden with a fountain and rooms featured in a fashion hotel magazine, for which the owner is more than eager to give us copies. We had a nice time and not one business related e-mail or phone call. Bliss...

Outside

Wrapping up a few projects and other news.

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Recently we've finished a few projects.  "Terror Train", now called just "Train", directed by Gideon Raff. This is a remake of the Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle from the early 80s. This time starring Thora Birch. Second, we have just finished work on another remake. "It's Alive" is a film made by Larry Cohen in the late 1970s. Our modern take on it is even more psychological than the original. Other recent projects include, "The Code", and the latest film in the "Prince and Me" franchise entitled "The Prince and Me 3: A Royal Honeymoon".

All in all it's been a very busy summer. And we are taking a little bit of a breather (only working on three movies right now). Movies we're working on are:  "Cyclops" for Roger Corman, "Ninja" directed by Isaac Florentine, and  "Command Performance" directed by Dolph Lundgren.

All this down time has let us begin to prepare for "Red Sonja" by starting a team for Massive, the crowd generation software made famous by "Lord of the Rings".

Komiks

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Our little comics company is finally achieving sales.  We have been publishing weekly historical comics in the newspaper called standart.  So far we are selling between 5000 and 7000 copies per week. The comic book company is called eastern European concepts and consulting. Or EECC for short. Our comics have only been published in Bulgaria. However, we now have enough interest to be able to publish in English. And, in our newest venture, motion graphics will be incorporated into a new website. more to come.....