Fantastic work so far...I'm really excited to see where this goes next! I love how you're cobbling all this together and getting outstanding results. Makes me wish I wasn't way over here on the other side of the country...Since I love to cobble as well, I'd be jumping right in to help ya out!
That makes two of us! I'd appreciate any help I can get! I'd say the set we have right now is the product of 90% my work and 10% the work of the director of the film. Certainly, the more hands and knowhow we have working on it, the faster we can get to shooting it. Thanks for the support! It's a delicate balance to make it look like the bridge -- but not like the bridge. I always describe it as "The TMP Enterprise bridge if Han Solo maintained it for about 20 years."
BTW, I did start reading your script. Just have been buried in some shoots and editing. I will get back to it shortly.
Thanks! I totally understand. I've been out of town for the last few days, so no hurry (though I'm very interested in hearing any comments).
I was able to install the Captain's chair and work on the consoles last weekend. Getting pretty close to painting this thing, believe it or not!! Captain's chair test As you can see, the rest of the bridge is not currently put together. Since I posted last, the puppet studio where the set is housed changed locations, so I had to break the set up into the more portable "pie wedges" for transport. Having built both a stationary set and a "wild" set I can definitely see the importance of being able to take these things apart -- and we haven't even started filming yet!
I was able to install the "hoods" over the science and engineering stations this weekend. Those of you that remember the style of consoles on the TMP/TWOK/TSFS/TVH bridge consoles will know what I'm talking about. The way I did it was surprisingly easy and turned out great. I'll post a quick tutorial for anyone interested in doing something similar. Will post pics later this week -- I forgot to bring my camera when I worked on the set this last weekend.
I finally have some new pictures of the set. We're going to shoot a kickstarter video on it this weekend, so we had to assemble it as much as we could to show our progress. Enjoy! The set from outside the viewscreen: Inside the set: Here's one of the walls, finally primered to hide the fact that all of our greeblies are found objects from the trash: Here's a shot of my wife peeking through one of the cut outs in the science station. As I said earlier, our set is not meant to be an exact copy of the TMP Enterprise Bridge -- just have some of the design elements mixed in with elements from other ships. Notice the "hoods" over the monitors. They were surprisingly easy to fabricate using a flat piece of plexiglass cut to shape and bent using a heat gun.
That's just terrific, and the expression on your wife's face matches mine everytime she goes out on the bridge...er, our carport.
So, we started shooting a short kickstarter video this weekend on the set. When we arrived, we were greeted by a cool little autograph on the side of the set. I thought you guys might enjoy... Pretty cool, huh? For those of you not in the know, Steve Whitmire is the guy that took over puppeteering Kermit the Frog after Jim Henson died.
We shot the last of our principle photography on a short 6-minute Kickstarter video this weekend. It's starting to look really good... we might actually pull this thing off! Will post pics as soon as I have them!
I've been working on the backlit displays for the set this week. It's slow-going, but I think the finished displays are going to look great. Been learning a lot about Adobe Illustrator as well. Enjoy!
So, as I chug along with construction, I'm finally at the point where I'm ready to start making the final DuraTrans for all of the backlit displays. We're unsure whether we should get a matte finish or a gloss finish on the final pieces, so we're doing a test of each before we proceed. It's a fine line between having to deal with a bunch of reflections vs. having it look like a cheap piece of paper. Luckily, I found a place that does them super cheap. Here's a link if anyone needs them: http://www.todaysprinter.com/Duratrans-Backlit I have no idea what the quality os like -- I'll know more when they're shipped to me. The prices quoted on their site are about 1/3 of every other place I've seen, so if they're passable, it's definitely the place I'll be using. Here's the test file, if anyone's interested: