I didn't post an update Thursday just because filming this week has been pretty weird, due to the nature of the cloud tank I couldn't film at my studio space so I needed to move a bunch of lighting equiptment to my home as well as buy about 80 pounds of salt for the salt water I would need. I went to a grocery store and looked at salt and it was about $1.30 a pound which would add up real fast, after a bit of reserch I found I could get water softener salt pellets at a hardware store for about $5 for 40 pounds.

I've been shooting some interesting stuff all weekend (most other weekends I took off but work on the movie has been very on and off so I'm sort of working every day of the week)

I just did a tank refill and shot the bricks falling from a differnt angle then up top, it's really wierd, LEGO sinks in fresh water but is not dense enough to sink in salt water, so once the bricks hit the salt water layer they are suspended in the fluid.

This suspended effect could make a really cool looking asteroid belt effect if I got enough of the correct colored bricks, at this point I really wish I was shooting a space film so I could justify even more playing with the cloud tank.

I plan to keep film for a while, I'm not sure I am really digging the 720p video footage so I may end up renting that expensive camera after all (either a Nikon D4s or a Canon EOS-1D C)

If you drained the colour this right here would already make a good asteroid effect.

Last week I finished up all the cloud tank I will be shooting for the time being, the last thing I shot was some lightning footage, I made some thick clouds and we took a camera flash and used it to create some flashes of lightning in different parts of the cloud, truth be told I didn't really need that for the film, but some of it might work it's way into the final product, if nothing out I have lots of great stock footage for whatever my next project is.

I went though some weird stuff shooting the cloud tank, I think for a few days I ended up forgetting to eat enough and worked through the whole weekend and got really weak and a little nauseous mid week. I may have been able to forget to eat when I was a teenager, but as an adult who is nearly 30 it's just a bad plan.

However while feeling ill I created a detailed scene by scene outline for something I am considering for my next project. It's a gritty Star Wars smuggler story that would be my longest 'quality film' if I did make it (my early films Attack of the LEGOS I & II which are not available online run around 15 minuets each) It was a fun diversion but I was better then next day and got some set work done and was later able to finish the cloud tank stuff.

Lately I have been thinking about my films opening shot a lot, if you don't remember it, this is what I'm talking about:

It's basically a still, which when I started I had been planning to just use stills for the extreme wide shots, however my other wide shots feature a tiny amount of animation that really makes them MUCH better then just a still version of the same thing.

Another thing about the other two shots is both were shot with my Nikon 300mm f/4.5 ED which gives the shots a much 'larger feel/scale' then the shorter 55mm lens I shot the opening shot with. This film is going to be the last movie I make in my current art space and I may never have the room to animate with a 300mm lens again.

In addition to those problems the building is just plain looking and you can clearly see the burps in the scenery which I don't like, so if I have time I might do a rebuild and a reshoot.

The only thing I really like about this shot is the lighting. If I don't have time for a reshoot I might just add some clouds with movement in them to remove the static look.

Feel like I'm finally starting to get somewhere on this set

No, there are no space folks in this film, much like the VERY early shots featuring Jar Jar Binks and Batman this dude is not in the film.

This weekend I read a really great artical about shooting with ultra-wide lenses, and while setting up this shot I was pretty sad I don't have a full frame camera, I feel like the full frame camera would help this shot feel like it is enveloping the viewer, I might be able to borrow one for an opening shot, we'll see. In this frame the shot is currently at my 18mm lens' minimum focal lenth, the 18mm really shins in interiors like this and that inter-dimentional ship interior shots.

This is all just the light on my work space, I have some fun ideas for lighting on this set, the darker inner areas can be used to shin in more light, so I might shine some stuff in that ins a different color to give everything a more dynamic look.

And what is the right era of minifig anyway, these are from my childhood era of space.

A bit earlier I was stressing because I did not know how the Bionicle Throwbot visor was attached to this MOC, I need to create a creature from the 11th dimension so I picked up my Bionicle bin of shame to find the visor, which had some print on it, but I couldn't figure out how to attach it to anything. I have almost zero experience building with Bionicle and Throwbots as they are some of my least favorite lines ever. After a bit of research it looks like there are quite a few options for attachment

For some reason I was only able to find one western style pistol, I have to have more, but after a bit of messing about I came up with this:

I'm rather proud I was able to find a new way of my own to connect the visor.

I also picked up some maximum strength nail polish remover and it wiped the decal right off, I really thought it would be more work.

Also some people on the chat ask about an audio clip from the creature so you can listen to this if you want

I'm working on some totally spoiler-tastic stuff right now but one thing I needed for my current shot that I can show you is a vertical floating rig I built, I needed something that would allow me to move the object up and down gently while animating so I constructed this rig, I'm really happy with it.

In some post production related news I have got a producer/composer to do the score of the film, my goal is to get a rough cut of the film done in the next 3 weeks so I can start working on visual effects and he can start on the music. I'm looking for a sort of 80's sci-fi exploration ambient synth score, the sort of thing you would hear in a Roger Corman film. which is right up this guys ally, I think things are really coming together however I am still waiting for a few bricklink orders to arrive, mainly this torso.

keep in mind the little bumpers (round white 1x1s) keep the wedges from being removed all the way so your center piece does not fall down and prevent the wedges from pushing the column back up.