Here's a behind-the-scenes picture in our "Hair and Makeup Department" (aka "my downstairs bathroom"):
We were trying to figure out her hair, costume, etc. I was planning to put her in Brad's "Episode 7" Jedi costume, but somehow she ended up in Kali's "Knotty Girlfriend #3" top, my Obi-Wan Kenobi Jedi belt, and one of my knives strapped to her thigh:
1st picture = Jen (female arcade game character)
2nd picture = Reference picture of Kali (Bibble's "Knotty" Girlfriend #3) showing her top
Even though we re-used Kali's top, I don't think people will notice because:
1) Kali wore it looser, showing more skin, which gives it a different "line," and
2) Jen's an arcade game character, which means her footage is purple and semi-transparent, so her top looks different from the brown vest that Kali's wearing.
It never ceases to amaze me how we always come up with some last-minute change to everyone's costumes, but things end up looking better than we'd planned. In this case, it wasn't just Jen's costume, but also that tattoo on her left eye.
The tattoo started as a diamond, but she looked like a court jester (1st picture, below). So we switched it to a squared-off bottom, but it still didn't look quite right. Then Jen used a Q-tip to wipe away 2 lines at the bottom and suddenly it looked perfect (2nd picture, below).
NOW she looks like a badass arcade game character! :D
Also, don't tell Jen, but I'm going to use that 2nd picture for "Miss September" when we release our "Hot Chicks of 'Remnants of the Force'" calendar to help defray production expenses. ;)
It was my distinct pleasure to delete Sarah's animatic footage and replace it with Jen's final footage. ;) Here are before-and-after pictures:
Not only did we switch sides (we wanted to show Jen's tattoo on her left eye), but I also made us bigger. Looking at "Star Wars" reference footage, I realized that their arcade game characters are fairly large:
Also, you may notice that I improved the texture maps on the "chess board" a little. It's kind of hard to tell in this compressed image, but the surface is more reflective, which matches the "Star Wars" game table more accurately.
Here's raw footage and a screen shot of the corresponding animatic:
I don't think I'm alone here when I say there's something very manly and satisfying about kicking a petite, defenseless young woman in the butt. It makes me feel almost as manly as hunting ferocious, man-eating... chipmunks. :D
In this shot, I'm supposed to be holding Jen by the forehead, staying out of reach of her punches:
However, since we shot my footage about a year ago (with my hand against Sarah's forehead), my hand didn't match-up with Jen's forehead. That's O.K. because my footage is only temporary. We'll eventually replace my footage with final footage of our "bad guy" arcade game character and everything should (hopefully) match-up perfectly.
Since she can't land a punch, Jen spits a huge ball of phlegm on me (not pictured), then back flips away as I recover from her attack:
Damn, Jen's flexible! That's good, because it helped sell the shot when I digitally rotated her (2nd picture, above).
Here's Jen spinning in mid-air:
Using the technique Sarah and I perfected a year ago, Jen's doing her hardest stunt of the night. ;D
In the 2nd picture, you can see how it looks fairly realistic once I digitally rotate her and move her through the air. Gotta love special effects!
And finally, here's Jen landing out of her back flip:
No, I'm NOT flashing leg to pickup chicks in that 1st pic. (It doesn't work... I've tried.)
I'm holding the black Pelican case steady so that it doesn't tip while Jen's standing on it. If you guys have seen the bloopers, there's a clip when I was doing this same "stunt" and I almost fell off the Pelican case because my weight caused it to tip forward.
Although Jen was eager to be part of our fan film, we still wanted to thank her for participating. So we took some lightsaber pictures against the greenscreen and composited her into a couple Darth Vader shots:
That 2nd picture was inspired by the Darth Vader vs. Obi-Wan Kenobi shot from "Star Wars" (but on our hangar set instead of the Death Star):
Anyway, Jen got a kick out of the pictures, and we're grateful for her participation.
We're shooting more footage on Monday. We were planning to shoot Darth Vader footage, but I found someone for our "holographic dancing girl" in Bibble's Bar, so we'll shoot that instead. We may also shoot one of the arcade game players, but it depends if we can throw together a costume in time.
Later,
Bob
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