episode 9 production stills...

well. sadly, because of the extreme time restraints we underwent to produce this episode--despite having THREE months to use during the channel102 break, we shot and edited the whole thing in 14 days--we only have TWO production stills.

that's right.


two.

so here they are. our TWO production stills.

so. this is captain ultra playing the drums on the streets of Capital City to raise money since he hasn't paid taxes in 4 years. the difficulties of this entire shooting day (which included drums on the street from which a lot was cut for running time, the outdoor scene between stan and captain ultra from three angles, the jib shot on the roof of the building into which shadows were later composited, the exterior of dr. mindbender's lab/capital city copy, and the background plate for Stan Kong jumping off of a building and walking up the road) were only magnified by the fact that shooting with a one person crew (meredith) makes for rough audio-posting. stupid cars that keeping driving by. and let's not forget the sheer number of people who, luckily, feel obligated to stop and shout out of their windows or honk whenever they see a man dressed in a super hero costume playing drums like it's "new" or "weird" or something.

actually, my favorite encounter of the day was the elderly couple walking their dog. as they walk past me on the sidewalk, they split up. one went behind, one in front. i apologized to them, because elderly people tend to like it when you apologize for "inconveniencing" them, and the gentleman said "oh, it's alright. we always make room for super-music."

comic gold. i kinda wanted to get that guy to help us with last minute rewrites.

ok. so this shot, which we didn't even take because we suck (this was snapped by Brian Long...thank you!), is our first glimpse at Stan Kong. A lot of math went into this. fo' real.

we figure this: Stan Kong is roughly 4 times the height of Stan. This way, he's big and scary but not "we-need-a-wide-angle-lens" big and scary.

the wall on the plate (the background) is 14' high. the camera was 6 feet up. multiply by 12, divide by 4, divide by twelve, and factor in that our tripod will only go as low as 2'5" or something, we have to raise the wall up to compensate. it made sense at the time...shame i didn't save our storyboards or shitty calculation drawings. then you'd REALLY think we were losers.

anyway. we end up with this. lots of frame-by-frame rotoscoping went into this; for composite purpose, shading and highlighting purpose, etc. and it sucked bad. the final shot is about 12 layers of things all going on at once to make one 'seamless' shot.

but enough, i'm ranting. maybe one day i'll do an effects breakdown or something.


maybe.