3: 130 Frames Filmed!

Production was much more...productive this time around! In total, I was able to get around 130 frames filmed!

Took a bit over 3 hours, but I finished a small scene where Maggie does a round house kick to Red Kicker and then the first fist battle between Green Puncher and Maggie.


Thoughts on last Shots

My sense of timing with Maggie's hair is becoming more proficient. The swing is off in the first scene (points the wrong way) and it's moves too fast. Now I'm slowing down the hair a bit more, so it's more like hair as opposed to some metal door knocker.

One thing I did forget to do in the first scene is Maggie beginning the kick before getting to the round house kick. So it looks disjointed. Maggie dodges Red's kick, elbows Green, and then it cuts immediately to Maggie kicking Red. It would have looked a lot smoother if I had Magge start the round house kick and then cut to Maggie kicking Red, especially since everything moves rather fast.


Current Shots


I'm happy with the roundhouse kick. It went a lot smoother than I expected. Trying to find out how to place the arms when they're doing high kicks is difficult when slowing it down to 1 frame at a time. But surprisingly, it only took me one take to get it looking ok, so I decided to go to the next scene.


The first fist fight between Green Puncher and Maggie was supposed to be a fight between an experienced martial artist and Maggie. However, it looks like Green is some clutzy street thug and flails like a drunk.

I had a clip from Jackie Chan's Young Master, and I tried to do a similar fight scene there. It didn't turn out looking like it at all. Maggie, being the better fighter, is able to hold off the attacks with one arm, like in CTHD or the end of the first Matrix. Although, it doesn't look that impressive.

Most of my time was taken up doing this last scene. I spent about a half an hour on the roundhouse kick (or maybe 15 minutes) but it took me the remaining to do this fist fight.

I was tired, I was wanting to go to bed, but I didn't want to cut the shot.

One thing I need to get a sense of is the "snap". When a punch, kick, or any attack is executed, it will extend an inch or so past the initial point of contact and then snap back a bit. I normally do it in all my fight moves, unless the attack follows through. However, I couldn't get the timing, nor the distance correct. I tried to do it with the final double punch that Maggie does, but I didn't do it enough frames, so you don't notice it. I still have to get out of the 15fps mentality.

I think I'm settling on how long the contact time is though. To have the hit register with the viewer, the attack must hold its position for a bit so that the audience can see what the attack is doing. The movie Gladiator did this a lot, made noticeable pauses between each attack so that we could see everything.

So far, I'm settling with about 6 frames for the pause, that's a 1/4 of a second.

The swing and attack itself is anywhere between 4 and 5 frames.


Preparation

Next scene I'm going to have Maggie go up against Red Kicker. They'll be kicking, obviously, so that means their feet are going to be shown.


So far, I've removed the Stikfas feet to make them stand better on the lego baseplate. But now that the feet will probably be shown planted on the ground, I had to find a way for the feet to stay on the baseplate, without the use of blue tack.

I took some 1x1 with that hooky thing on it, and I mangled it. I snipped off the bottom part, and bent the top part so that it can wedge into the square on the bottom of the foot.

Will it work? I'll find out when I try my shot.