Too Busy To Blog!

So..... it's been a while since I have blogged and this is due to the fact that I have been super busy! Too busy to blog in fact! 

Not only am I the External Producer for the Third Year collaborative but I am now the Project Manager for the entire game cinematic project! My work load has been huge but I am enjoying it every step of the way! It has not been without its hurdles though - the weather for film shoots, making an ambitious project on a zero budget and working with so many different personalities under one umbrella!

All Third Year Bachelor of Digital Media film and animation students have combined to form our very own production company. The idea is for us to try and operate as an industry production company would operate. We have called our production company, Physical Realm Studio. Our brief is to create a game cinematic (which is essentially a short film) from a game concept that our group has created. 

First of all, I will give a brief description of what our Third Year game cinematic is all about.

We have named it, Bones of Essimer. In a world recovering from a devastating solar radiation burst, Kristana, a reclusive slave trader, is to undertake a dangerous quest to rescue a kidnapped child from an evil, deranged bone cult. The Bone cult has a terrifying leader called Osseous. They pillage villages and towns and they take the bones of the people they kill to integrate them into their clothing and weaponry. The story takes place in the town of Essimer where Kristana is trading her slaves. The Bone Cult kidnap a child and leave the father for dead but Kristana saves him. The pair go on a journey to retrieve the child, along the way they traverse the dangerous environment and battle Cultists, Bounty Hunters and vengeful slaves.

Here are some character designs that were drawn by Physical Realm Studio's Art Director, Jade Patterson (she has given me permission to show these on my blog).

This is Kristana the reclusive slaver.

This is Osseous who is the evil cult leader and Collidus who is his head henchwoman.

This is Collidus with two evil cultist henchmen.

We have a full cast of 28 and all of our character roles have been filled. We started off by having just a general casting call that we could make a database up from for all film and animation students to be able to access. From that we called back actors/actresses from the original casting call and held character auditions specific to our project. The actors and actresses were chosen from these auditions to fill the roles we had available. It was quite a long process. I spent my time organising the auditions and advertising them by putting posters up at shops all over town, approaching schools and even a martial arts dojo to find talent for our auditions. I went into the TOA Fighting Systems dojo and gave them my spiel about our cinematic. This resulted in getting seven fighters to come along to our character auditions. We have cast six of these fighters in our cinematic and the TOA fighters have also given us a hand with choreographing some of the fight scenes. The TOA Sensei, Pete Thompson also gave us access to the TOA dojo, so that we could work on the fight choreography in an environment designed for fighters to practice in safely.

I have also been busy with creating a website for our production company. Alastair Bowes-onions is the name of the web developer we used for this. I pulled in our Art Director, Jade to do the graphics, designs and art work for each page and I designed the layout and liased with Alastair and Jade to complete the website. Go and have a look at our amazing website: www.physicalrealmstudio.com

Here's some of the basic background designs for two of the pages that were drawn and designed by Jade Patterson (again I have permission from her to put these images on my blog):

We need money for this project, so as part of my role as External Producer, I have put a Pledge Me project together to try to raise money to make our game cinematic. We needed to make a video to introduce our team and project and to ask nicely for money to fund our cinematic. The original video that was created came across as an infomercial and was not down to earth and real as we had intended. At this point I took over the making of the video. I made it slightly light hearted and warm so that the audience watching it could connect with us and realise that we are real, normal, everyday people. This would hopefully encourage the audience to pledge money to us. I also worked with a couple of people from the team and we came up with different rewards for people who pledge a certain amount to us. These include concept art, crew photos of thanks and copies of a behind the scenes dvd. Check out the video that I directed for our Pledge Me project on Physical Realm's Vimeo Channel. Link: vimeo.com/channels/physicalrealmstudio/92390968


PledgeMe 2014 from Leeana Boyd on Vimeo.

Our Pledge Me project is due on the 20th of May at 11pm. If you are feeling generous then please go to our Pledge Me project and make a pledge and choose one of the great rewards!  
Link: www.pledgeme.co.nz/projects/2042





After we had the script green lit, we headed into the workshop (fondly named the Tin Shed) and started making props sets and costumes. We worked right through Easter weekend and every day during our study break. Lots of hard work and many hours were put into these two weeks. I spent a lot of time during this time organising people and making sure that every department was on track and to find out where everybody's progress lay. As well as this, I helped with costuming, prop making and set making by just doing little bits and pieces. During this time I also carried out my External Producer duties. I posted on Physical Realm Studio's Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest profiles.

Screen shots from Physical Realm Studio's Facebook page.

Screen shots from Physical Realm Studio's Tumblr page.

Screen shot from Physical Realm Studio's Pinterest page.

Then we started filming on Friday 2nd May. I helped organise and work out logistics to get everything we needed to our location in Bluff. It was a mission and a half because we had so much stuff - props galore, costumes and set pieces and we also have a very big crew. Callum Lewars and I managed to devise a plan to get everyone and everything to our location. I organised catering for the entire cast and crew for Friday 2nd May and Saturday 3rd May. It has been my job to contact all the cast about availability, costume fittings and scheduling. This has been a massive job in itself. I have enjoyed dealing with all the cast though. They are all a lovely bunch of people to work with and they have all been really supportive of our project.

On top of all this craziness, I have still been trying to complete my other assignments and work on what I have been taught in class. I am sure that I have missed a few things so I will be blogging again in the next two days (because I have a little bit of time during the next two days) with the work I have been learning in my advanced animation paper and anything else that I have forgotten to document. Better get back to being busy again!