Thanks for the compliment, Bradley. It means a lot!

And yes, like matter to antimatter, Amoxycillin would do the biotics in! LOL. What a great idea. Perhaps I'll have a bottle of antibiotics on a table in the machine world just for a laugh.

Lorinda, I'm glad the link worked. I'm not sure what's going on but the direct download does seem to work better for Windows-based viewers.

Thank you for the compliments. I enjoyed the challenge of creating the effects in my short. The visual communicator was a simple, small, glass picture frame. I liked how that scene tuned out as well.

What I did was layer four separate video streams using nested green screen composites. The top most layer was Crick's assistant, then it was the green screen of crick followed by the animation that was behind him. The bottom layer was the background matte of the lab's wall. I took the second and third layers (Crick and the animation) and scaled and distorted them to overlay the glass picture frame. That is it.

I'm glad you understood that Brin was going across a very high room on the "stepping stones." I did that effect in Apple's Motion.

I thought I would try to learn After Effects, but now, I bow down before the Special Effects GODS! I bet it did take you forever to virtually create your set. Was it my imagination, or was there an HDV logo on your camera?
Amazing work!

Finally got it to work. The visuals were a lot better this time around, and you have definately improved your technique on Part II.

Impressive. The compositing was great.

The evolution of a wizard
 

Wow, Jeff, thanks for posting the updated links in thread... I was so looking forward to seeing your short, but I wasn't able to see them from the earlier posted links. I thought your last one was so cool looking I really couldn't wait to see how your technique has improved.. and wow! This really looked beautiful and all the elements really came together quite cleanly...maybe not Lucas, yet...but pretty incredible for what you are doing and time frame you are working with....

Plus, I really felt left out of the mystery, and it only deepens....I have to say you have me hooked on the adventures of Thomas Brin...Can't wait for the next one. You'll definately be able to do something with this when you a filled out the entire series. Great job.
-Jon

Tyler and Richard, I appreciate your comments. I agree that GOT Part II showed improvements from a VFX standpoint.

Thanks, Dick! You did indeed see an HDV logo. I took still pictures of my Sony Z1U and used them in the composites.



I'm not sure my VFX wizardry is worthy of such praise, but I appreciate your compliments. Although we have ideas of where the story is going, we do not have a script, less a treatment for a script. So, I can't say when Part III will be released, but I can tell you that at least there will be a Part III.

My whole goal in these two challenges was to work on one technical element, something I had no previous experience in doing. That element was VFX compositing and for that, I had to learn the basics of green screening. I was not concerned about lighting, blocking, cinematography or even the story. However, I was fortunate to have Randy Kelly, who plays Thomas Brin, as the lead actor. He is very talented and managed to do a lot with the little I gave him.

In future segments I do plan on concentrating on additional aspects of movie making. Lighting and cinematography will be a big focus of our next one. This series will give me a great opportunity to begin learning the many difficult challenges of movie making.

We've joked that each installment of the GOT series will be better then the next. And I believe that will be true. By the end of the series, it may even look semi-professional. The end result is that when a viewer watches the entire series in one sitting, they will see the evolution of a film maker. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

Gardens of Tomorrow: Episode II has a new url
 

I've made significant changes to the website that hosts GOT (mainly in an effort to learn line-by-line HTML and XML coding). It has been a fun learning experience.

If you wish to view the revised and newly encoded version of GOT2, then please visit the url below and click the "Movies" tab:

http://www.sayremedia.com