Monday, February 28, 2011

What they said!

"When I asked the younger reviewer what I should write about The Journey Home, he simply said: “It’s great!” and I agree; it’s a great way to brush up on your planetary knowledge and to add to it in a relaxing and entertaining way. A must-see for planet fans and 3D fanatics of all ages."
ANNA SOLDING, InDaily.

From the very beginning we've been overwhelmed with the success of the show, and now we've been overwhelmed again with two very lovely reviews from InDaily and The Advertiser.

We've had a great first week - we had more than 200 school children pass through our doors and make the journey through the solar system, and we've had a ball watching them 'ooohh' and 'ahhhh' and try and catch the planets.

In week two we look forward to polishing the show further, Sarah is looking forward to getting the hang of collecting ticket stubbs and we will be holding our first ever night show!! Indeed, lots of journeys to be had this week!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

On with the show

 The first show is tomorrow morning... in fact, the first four shows are on tomorrow. The demand has been more than we expected when first planning sessions, and we've had to add quite a few shows, which is all very good!
 All that remains to do now is a final check of the software and equipment, shift a couple of desks and some chairs (how better to spend a couple of hours on a quiet Sunday afternoon?) and then have a (one hopes) minimal amount of preparation left for Monday morning before the day's shows kick off.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Son et lumiere

 It's a staple of the movie world, but it is interesting how well sound (well, in this case, music) and images go together.
 Just cutting together the trailer  gave some good practice in doing things in Final Cut Pro, but it also reinforced the idea that fitting images and music together, in some coherent, related fashion, increases the effectiveness of both. Actually, it probably has more impact on one's interpretation of the images- in this case, they're not perhaps the most emotionally charged images to start off with- than it does on the music. But they do work well together.
 Today sees all of the animation sequences stitched together, along with the soundtrack- not unsuprisingly, Holst's "Planets" suite. The interesting thing was that the animations were designed, timed and rendered without direct reference to the soundtrack... so it's been a matter of ordering, shortening, lengthening, and cropping the video to suit selections from the suite.
 I think the process has worked- FC is now happily writing a test output video so I can review how well it's gone. There may well be some minor timing issues to fix, but I don't anticipate anything major.
After that, it'll be adding titles, and some elements to the audio track. Ah, and any filters or other video effects that might be useful...