A teaser trailer i thought would be a simple thing, about a minute would do, not too much to get right. I was right as i finished it in an hour or so, added the backing track and sound fx, ready to export it and WHAM! Why is there always issues, frames pixelated, sound missing, frames changing resolution size, damn is this a sign of what's to come? Maybe my laptop's 512MB of RAM isn't good enough, i don't know. Hopefully the next trailer, and especially the final film, will have no flaws!

Time for another update. Finished the editing of the first bust scene and added some sound effects to see how it would sound. It's not great but the whole film is a bit of a laugh so the effects match the quality of the acting. Still got a long way to go in terms of editing but i've done at least 30 minutes of it so far. Will post the result of the test scene on here if i can, don't want to give too much away though in case it crashes and burns before getting finished!

Well i've starting editing and doing some test fx. I'm animating the proton stream a frame at a time and although it's a bit old fashioned and time consuming but i prefer it to the newer after effects proton streams. I am using after effects with adobe premier as well. Getting to grips with it but i'm having a lot of trouble with the format of the shots. It keeps changing from 4:3 to 16:9 and i'll tell you what the effect is... it's pissing me off!

Anyway the story continues, still got a lot of filming to get done but the release date in December is still on track at the moment.

Well, i thought it was about time to post something about the project i have been working on recently, it's a lot of writing i know but it has to be done.

As the title suggests it's about Ghostbusters and some pirates that are haunting a school. I wrote the script (about 4,000 words) in June 2007 whilst i was invigilating our schools internal exams (hope my boss doesn't read this!). That helped pass the time as it took around 5 hours to write.

I then set about building 3 neutrona wands before we broke up for summer. I had one proton pack already from a fancy dress party from the previous October so i hoped making the new three scratch build packs would be easier (It was). I wanted to do the guns first this time as i rushed it at the end last time. I built the 3 new packs over the summer holidays and then set about building the trap, pke meter, pirates chest during october and november. Four new costumes in Khaki and 4 in black were made and we were ready to go by December (see my profile for pics).

After asking people and getting asked by people to be be in the film (Including loads of kids) i worked out a rough cast of teachers and began filming just before the Christmas break. My initial plan was to film the 14 scenes by Easter giving us 13 weeks to film scenes after school. This plan was soon abolished as it took an hour to film 3 minutes one the first scene, i began to realise what an enormous task i had set myself . The other problem was getting everybody together at the same time, one person would have a meeting and another would have to go home straight away, these things started to get in the way so i filmed what i could when got a chance. My original plan to film everything in order to help the editing soon proved impossible so everything is all over the place on the tape and a half i have so far.

The current status of the project is that i'm just over half way through the filming. I hope to start editing soon as i plan to do a lot of filming in the upcoming holidays to get it wrapped. I'll be editing the effects using the old fashioned painting over each frame method. Three hours for 8 seconds when i did a test run. Hopefully i'll get faster and better at it as i also have to sort out the sound fx as well.

My plan is to have it ready for the 16th December 08, just before christmas. The whole point of this apart from allowing me to play being a Ghostbuster is to raise money for Comic Relief (I'm not sure if it's a worldwide thing but its a national bi-annual event to raise money for charity in the uk). It'll be kind of a donate money to watch your teachers make dicks of themselves kind of thing. I'm hoping that doesn't cause a problem in terms of the whole "you're not allowed to make money from fan films as it's a breach of copyright" as i'm theoretically not selling the film as such. All money donated goes to charity so we'll see how that goes down.

I keep thinking i would never do something like this again, as it's too time consuming and stressful. But it's a good laugh and gves me something else to think about when the little B's are getting to me.

I'm going to update on the blog section of my profile as i go from now on and my props can also be seen on there, here's the link if anybody's interested. You can also see the dire attempt at us performing ghostbusters at the schools talent show ( It's total cringe worthy). I'll also add any footage i get done, particularly the trailer.