Wec Blog

May has been a frantic month, so Wec 2 hasn’t made any progress.  The first half of June is also going to be crazy.  Once mid-June rolls around, however, things will settle down and I’ll be able to get back to work on it.  Hang in there!

As of now, almost all footage has been processed and cleaned up. There are a few bits left to do. Once they’re done, I’ll be able to put together a rough cut and get a better assessment of how the movie’s going to look. I’ll give this rough cut to Dennis so he can start scoring ASAP.

Progress has been slower of late due in no small part to a busy work schedule, a busy gaming schedule (role-playing, that is), and deciding to play Neverwinter Nights again.

Footage processing continues apace. I’ve gone back and slightly revised the methodology to speed it up a bit. Turns out that the processing-intensive timewarping is fairly admirably replaced by simple frame blending coupled with time remapping. I’ve also managed to clean up some of the grain in the footage a bit better. I’ll chronicle the process later on.

That aside, a number of fun things have been going on this past week on the Wec front. Firstly, I finished the design for Light Brigade-A. Way back when we were originally working on Wec 2, LB-A was to be based on a design I scrounged up from ShipSchematics.Net. However, the designer took exception to our using it, which handily de-railed CG production for a while. Ultimately, this would be for the best, but at the time it was a big blow. I ultimately went back and designed something that looked vaguely like a submarine with warp engines attached. Having now revisited it all again, I decided that it was silly to do all this redesigning. Light Brigade had been based on one of the WEC Trafalgar designs. Why should its successor be any different?

What this ultimately means is that Light Brigade-A will look like a Mon Calamari cruiser from Star Wars that had Star Trek’s engineers get their hands on it. I’m quite pleased with how the design turned out, and I’ll post it as soon as I vectorize it. And yes, the smiley face is still there.

The other big news of the week is that Wec 2 has undergone a script re-write. Yes, despite the fact that it was filmed seven years ago. A good writer-friend of mine and I went over the script and raw footage shot-for-shot and tried to evaluate where the movie was at its weakest. A surprisingly large chunk of the script ultimately added nothing at all to the plot of the movie. Say what you will about Wec: The Movie, it had a plot and stuck to it. Wec 2 was very aimless, particularly around the mid-section where it needed to be tightest. The result is that the 40-page script has been truncated to 28 pages. The 301 shots outlined in the master shot list have been reduced to 201. For reference, we define a ’shot’ as any cut between two filmed pieces of footage, or between any filmed material and any CG sequence, regardless of the length of that sequence.

The ultimate goal is that Wec 2 rises from being just an aimless attempt at making a sequel to a movie that stands fairly well on its own accolades. It’s still a parody, and fairly ridiculous on top of that; I wouldn’t have it any other way. But now, I think it’s also got a good shot at being entertaining, too.

Well, after another bout of no movement, we’re finally underway!

One of the things I promised myself about Wec: The Sequel was that it would absolutely, no matter what, look better than its predecessor. Some of that was a foregone conclusion: better software, more knowledge of video capture techniques and requirements, better hardware. But some of it also involves post-processing the footage in a way that was never even considered for the first film.

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Been a while since there’s been any activity here, and I wanted to provide an explanation for anyone following.

Firstly, holidays. Holidays caused a very large disruption in continuity/productivity for me this year; moreso than they have in the past. I’m not 100% sure why, but it seems to have affected a lot of people. Choosing to re-launch Wec 2 just before the holidays probably wasn’t the wisest choice in terms of making immediate, visible progress.

Secondly, work. Work’s been extremely busy. While this doesn’t affect my “off hours” as such, it does tend to drain me intellectually (I have a fairly technical job, for an artist) and leaves me not wanting to do anything but play video games/watch movies/be with my girlfriend at the end of the day. This is not particularly conducive to making progress on a large project like Wec 2. Hopefully, this will clear up a bit in the next couple of weeks.

Thirdly, Xbox 360. My girlfriend and I got one for the holidays, and it’s been a significant time-dominator as a result (also, see point two). Not that this is really a good excuse, but it is what it is. Those of you who have played Rock Band probably understand.

Fourth, more celebrations. Specifically, my girlfriend’s birthday (1/31), our two year anniversary (2/1; yes, we celebrate our dating anniversary; no, we’re not weird, go away). This is kind of a subset of the whole holidays thing, but since they’re not part of the globally (or at least nationally) recognized collection of ‘holidays,’ they’re separate.

That said, I’ve had a post languishing for a while that deals with how I process DV footage — the methods of which I’ve been slowly refining since returning to the project to attempt to make the relatively low-grade DV footage look as good as it can. I’ve also been looking into the best techniques for compositing, and so forth.

As an aside, I’ve also suffered a hard drive failure during this time. The main drive on my PC had a corrupt MBR that showed no indication that it wanted to be repaired. Fortunately, this was only a small bump that required a new main drive and a reinstall of Windows — unlike some of the catastrophic failures that have affected Wec in the past. However, I kind of view this as a good omen — Wec projects always have some kind of disastrous hardware failure event happen to them. If this was it, then the rest of the project should be in great shape!

Rest assured, Wec 2 is coming.

It is now confirmed that yes, the sequel will have original music.

A short time ago in a small town not so far away, I got introduced to Wec at one of the gatherings that had grown from those surrounding the filming. While I was too late on the scene to be involved in any of the filming, I’ve been honored with the task of creating a fully original score for the sequel.

So where do we stand with the score three years later? All of the original work on the score is still intact, including preview versions of some of the pieces written. There’ll be some improvements and changes to come to all of these, mostly in the area of improving the quality of the music.

The good news about the lapse is that the technology behind the music is much better. Wec: The Sequel will benefit from a more stable operating system, improved recording technology, newer composing platform, higher quality soundfonts, and some increase in experience on my part.

As production continues, check back here for updates on the score, including previews of selected tracks and a behind-the-scenes look at how Wec: The Sequel gets its musical magic.

As of December 4, 2007, I have decided to re-launch the Wec: The Sequel movie project.

A lot of things factored into this decision and it probably wouldn’t be terribly interesting to chronicle them here. Suffice it to say, I’ve returned to this project with vim and vigor.

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