The lack of updates regarding "The Penny" has nothing to do with a lack of things to talk about, but quite the opposite actually.  Pre-production has been continuing at a feverish pace as we prepare to start shooting in ONE WEEK from today!

All 25 roles have now been cast from our selection of over 250 actor submissions.  It was a difficult process making all the casting decisions as we had a number of good options to choose from.  Thank you to all those who auditioned!

The shooting locations for the film are all set as well with one exception.  We are still in the process of trying to secure a convenience store/gas station to film in.  Our preference would be to find a vacant store that we could use whenever we needed it, but we're also open to shooting in an operational store if schedules could be worked out.  There are a few possibilities we're still waiting to hear back on, but if any of you knows of a convenience store/gas station in the area that we might be able to use, we would love to hear from you!  Please keep this location search in your prayers as well, that God would provide a suitable place for us to use.

On Monday the crew begins to come in from their various homes across the country and the final push of pre-production will begin.  Our first day of shooting is scheduled for November 15 and production will continue through December 20.  Stay tuned for more information during the coming weeks as various crew members blog about their experiences on the shoot.

Lastly, to follow up on something I mentioned in a previous post, the "new toy" we received in the mail was a Brevis 35mm adapter for our camera. 

This device will allow us to attach professional 35mm lenses to the DVCPRO HD camera we're shooting on, producing a much more "filmic" image from the video camera.  Over the coming weeks we'll be giving our thoughts on working with the Brevis, and why we ended up choosing this model.

It's an exciting time for Filmweavers, and we look forward to seeing what God has in store for us as we start production on "The Penny"!

Color correction and visual effects for Pendragon: Sword of his father are completed! The effects team which was predominantly Nick and I with the addition of Gabriel Everson who joined us for the last two weeks, with the Lord's help we're able to complete a total of 263 visual effects for the project in 53 days! Nearly 5 shots a day. The schedule was grueling but the team worked really hard!!! I do consider it to be a miracle that we made it just in time, so thank you for all of your prayers. There was NO way it would have been possible the Lord clearly facilitated it's finish! Also John-Clay did a fantastic job on color correction during the same period! The film is getting some final audio tweaks this week, and then it's off to the duplicators. The audio story has come together very nicely! When (not if ;) you decide to pick up your own copy of pendragon. Be sure to hook it up to your home stereo system or something to do the sound justice... you WON'T be disappointed! I don't wish to over hype the film... we've done our best with what we had. I will say I can hardly wait to see how people will react as it's released into the wild.

A little update was placed on the pendragon website you might want to check out. There are only 5 days left till completion and we are working feverishly on visual effects.

 

 

 

We are pleased to announce that Filmweavers LLC is now holding  auditions for the roles in their upcoming feature film "The Penny".  There are two methods available for those wishing to audition.  Our preference is that anyone who is able to come to the live auditions in Southeast Wisconsin do so.  They are being held in Beaver Dam, WI at the Moraine Park Technical College on October 16 and 18. LIVE AUDITIONS Location:  Moraine Park Technical College of...

Read More "Auditions Scheduled for "The Penny""

I thought it was about time for an overdue update on what's happening with Filmweaver's upcoming feature film project "The Penny".

The sixth draft of the script is now complete with a seventh on the way.  The story has matured a lot since it's first draft and we look forward to seeing where God takes it from here.

We are in the midst of putting together our crew for the shoot and a cast call will hopefully be going out sometime in the next few days so stay tuned for that.  All the other fun elements of pre-production will also be kicking into gear with location scouting, budgeting, storyboarding, etc..

Production  is slated to start in the middle of November Lord willing and wrap up just before Christmas.  Check back often as we update the blog with some of the ways you can get involved and be a part of the production!

As a side note, a crucial piece of equipment has also been ordered and is scheduled to arrive next week.  We'll post our thoughts and maybe even a review as soon as we've had a chance to play around with this new toy (any ideas on what it might be?).

Well gang, after much pain, sorrow, and suffering, editing on pendragon has wrapped. The film now sits in it's entirety, time coded and ready to go into the last stage of it's production. Music, Sound Design, and Visual effects.

For those of you who don't know I've been in Illinois working on editing for the last 6 weeks with the lead editor. We praise God that He has gotten the project this far but at the same time we are in trepidation at the amount of work there is still to complete in order to have the film ready by the November 1st SAICFF deadline. We've been amazed to watch how He has guided and provided for the project thus far so we are looking forward to see how He facilitates these last 2 months of production. There are 53 days left (1259 hours, 51 Minutes, 41 seconds) but who's counting. I've sat and watched the movie through now so many times I'm a bit fried to it. I have no idea how it's going to be received, fact I literally cannot fathom it. But I can say one thing. It's unlike anything we've ever seen in the Christian film genre. Basically we've done as much as humanly possible with pop sickle sticks and scotch tape, lighting kits consisting of fluorescent curly Q clipons, and baking paper diffusion. It's up to the Lord what happens to it next :)

I'm the visual effects supervisor for Pendragon so part of the reason for this post is two fold. If among you Blog readers out there there is any desire help out on the digital effects team please contact me immediately with your software experience and area's of skill. We would love to have you involved. I'll be leading the effects team to the bitter end and the more the merrier. You can Email me. We begin our work TODAY!

 I've recently upgraded my editing system. and I'd like to put down a few of my thoughts since the upgrade. My previous system was:
Motherboard: ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
CPU: Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 (2.4 GHz) @ 3.06GHz
RAM: 4GB OCZ Platinum DDR2 800MHz @ 667MHz
GPU: NVIDIA 7600GS

I upgraded my CPU to the Q9450 (2.66GHz). It is a drop in replacement to the E6600(2.4GHz) and the price is right: got mine for $279 at microcenter.com. Subjectively, my working experience is faster. CS3 is snappier and due to the extra cores does a better job of encoding footage while I edit without killing my editing. This is overclocking the Q9450 to 2.88GHz and the E6600 overclocked to 3.06Ghz. Do to my motherboards age it does not support a proper voltage for me to take the Q9450 to a higher clock.

Why not the Q6600?
Originally, I planned to upgrade to the Q6600 which is cheaper by about $100. But my brother beet me to it and so we had a face off: E6600 vs Q6600 in Premiere Pro CS3. For the test we each rendered out a section of SD footage and rendered a scene in a 3D graphics package. We also did some work in After Effects CS3 , but didn't use identical operations. We found that the Premiere and 3D times were nearly identical, the quad core actually lagged just a tad. However, for some heavy lifting in AE the Quad did do better, not nearly twice as fast however. This isn't surprising, based on what I read from Adobe. It seems that though some operations use multiple cores, basically Premiere doesn't use more than two at a time. The other two could be used by another application however. We tested the E6600 overclocked at 3.06 Ghz against the Q6600 running at stock (2.4GHz) and the 2 cores were faster, by a significant amount.

Ethan's in IL right now, but when we can I'll try to get together a set of actual benchmarks and times with the three chips.

Upgrade path
If you're like me and don't have money coming out your ears or would rather spend it on video cameras, 35mm adapters, and lights with wattage output that would cause Al Gore to loose his negative carbon rating. Then you want a system with a steady upgrade path so you can buy it a little at a time.

My upgrade path from here will be to a Motherboard that supports both nethalim and DDR3 and then move to 64-bit Vista and 8GB RAM sometime after CS4 comes out (Nov. 08?).

Conclusion
I recommend the chip as a good intermediary upgrade if: you have a motherboard that already supports it. The benefits of this chip are its 45nm architecture and 12MB L2 cache. The cons are 8x clock multiplier. Basically, 45nm means it runs faster at a lower clock speed. I didn't think it would be noticeable but it is. The L2 cache is good for applications like Photoshop and Premiere Pro. The 8x only matters if you're going to overclock it. (For reference the E and Q6600 have a 9x multiplier and are a little easier to OC).

I don't believe it's a good time to upgrade the motherboard at this time because: Nehalem, a new chip archatecture incompatable with current sockets, is coming soon (4Q '08, that's why the Q9450 is has dropped in price.) and DDR3 is still maturing (and expensive). A note on Nehalem, Intel is planning to release the Extreme series of chips first, which cost a premium for the speed.

If you're about to do a project and would like to give it a little boost. I am impressed with what the Q9450 did for the price.

This week I'm helping the Leclerc brothers out with a short they're shooting entitled "The Other Son".  My job responsibilities include AD/AC/Data Management/anything else they need help with. :)

We're five days into a 6 day shoot.  I thought I'd share a BTS video they put together from day 1.

I'll have more eye candy from the film as well as my thoughts on working with the Sony EX1 and Letus Extreme in the coming days.

A writer is given a large task.  In fact a very large task.  The task of creating an entire world.  A fictional realm where he must decide who does what, when and where they do it, and how and why the deed is done.  In this vast world anything within the writer's mind is possible, and yet the writer still must only let what is actually possible happen.

As I've been working on writing yet another draft of The Penny, many of these thoughts have been running through my head.  Writing a script always gives me a new appreciation for the mighty power and wisdom that God displays as he creates and orchestrates every single event that happens every single day to every single person on earth.  I struggle with the load of creating one small world where I only have to worry about a few characters for a couple hours on screen.  God effortlessly watches over all things for all eternity.  It's hard to fathom...

Enough rambling for now.  Let me update you on our progress this past month!  A few weeks ago we sent the latest draft of The Penny to some trusted friends for feedback.  The response was overwhelmingly positive, but as always with these trusted friends, they were kind enough to point out some things that could use improvement (honestly, a script is never really "finished" is it?).  I'm currently working on some revisions based on that feedback as well as some other fixes I wanted to do myself.

Production is scheduled to begin the middle of November and we are also busy putting some feelers out for potential crew members and shooting locations.  A cast call should also be forthcoming in the next few weeks.  We'll let you know as new things develop!

After much prayer and thought we are pleased and excited to announce a SECOND feature film in the works here at Filmweavers!  In addition to our pre-production work on Aeolus' Treasure we have also been working on a screenplay for a second feature: The Penny (working title).

This drama/thriller from the award winning co-writer and director of Clocks will delve into the realm of luck, coincidence, destiny, and fate...or is it really something else?  We don't want to give away too much of the project just yet, but stay tuned for more info as the project progresses.

Tentative schedules point to a fall shoot for The Penny.  Pre-production on Aeolus' Treasure continues as well, with the shoot schedule now set for an undisclosed future date.  The adventure film project has grown even bigger and better than any of us expected which has led to the necessity of more pre-production planning time as well.  As always you can continue to stay up to date on both of these exciting feature projects, as well as our other work, right here on the blog.

We had another succesful showing of "The Heartwood Dagger" around the world on Trinity Broadcasting Network's TV stations last night.  It's great to see the responses we get from people across the globe who view the film each time it's aired.  If you were one of those people we're always glad to hear from you! For those of you that missed this showing, and if you enjoy staying up late at night, there's another showing scheduled for Wednesday, June 4 at 11:00pm Pacific Time.  ...

Read More "TBN Showings"