WhiteCrow1

Well after a long 5 months at the beginning of the year, We finally wrapped Man of Steel. This was a really fun film to work on and I am happy to see all of the good reviews. Even though this film kicked my ass towards the end when pulling 12 hour days for the last 2 months, all of the good reviews seem to have paid off.

This was a pretty good movie, but I'm not here to write a review. For those who did not know, I actually worked on about 60 seconds of the film itself. Was kind of a corny film in a way, but of course it was meant for the whole family. They did an amazing job on the story telling, but in my personal opinion, James Franco did not seem like the guy for me lol....probably because every day for about 4 weeks at work I was yelling at my computer screen "Screw you James Franco!"

The shot I worked on in particlar, was the really long one when he first leaves the emerald city to find the witch with his little monkey pal. They are walking along the road just talking and it is a REALLY long shot. Nothing but a nightmare of tracking markers, wrinkles and seams in the blue screen, giant mechanical arms in the way of things, and just a mess.....being shot in stereo so I had to make those fixes identical in both eyes so the 3D would not have any issues when you view it.

Hope you people like it too, but like I said, wasn't my favorite of films, but was still fun to work on/watch.

Wow, it's been a while since I've written anything here. I am sorry for this as I hardly even get on the computer now a days due to the time I spend at work. I miss all my watchers, stalkers, friends, and similar. Today seemed like a good day to write a journal entry as I am burnt out from work and so tired that I don't even know what I'm even writing right now.

Anyways, things are tough. If you know me personally, you know I am a tough person and it takes a lot to bring me down, but I have realized that repeated long hours can do just the same. I work so much right now that my days run together and the only light of day I see is a little bit on the drive to work and at lunch time when i'm walking to and from my car. I am currently working 10 hour and 12 hour days, 6 days a week in a dark studio space with high stress deadlines creeping up on me every second of the day. It goes day to day and it's like a home stretch to sunday just so I can sleep in and have a day to relax. Working in the Visual Effects industry for feature film is definitely a lot harder and a lot more demanding than schools make it out to be.

I can't complain about everything though. Working in this industry gives me a feeling of great success, even if my name doesn't make it into the credits of the film that I work on (no they don't credit everybody). I still have an IMDb page which shows my success. I also got the opportunity through my current employer to work on 4 major full length feature films for 2013. I can't say what they are yet, but I will post on here every time they are released. It's also paying my bills, bills that I have been way behind on for quite some time and all the overtime makes playing catchup MUCH easier.

I think the hardest thing of all working in this industry is the toll it takes on my girlfriend, Nicole. She is there for me, but even though she constantly wants me to quit, she still supports my life goal to work on this kind of thing. I love her to bits, and I know that she hates what I do, but I do what I can to be there with her and she does the same for me and I am grateful for that. We have a tough relationship, but the fight to push through these long hours I work only makes us stronger in my opinion.

Anyways, it's late and I'm going to bed. If you have any art requests, please share and I'll see what I can squeeze in. It's been to long since I worked on a fun side project.

So after termination of my employment at Dot & Effects about 5 months ago, things really started to go downhill for me. I felt like shit, my bad sleeping habits started to take over again, and I wasn't as fun of a person to be around. Depression really started to kick in because I didn't know what to do with myself. I am a visual effects artist and that is all I am truly confident with in the professional world. I started losing hope and realized that maybe it was time to give up that dream because my bank account was damn near dried up and it simply was not paying the bills. I found 2 paying gigs in that time, and even those weren't enough to keep me on my feet.

Well, I started searching for work and found a couple of small gigs here and there, but I was really running out of options so my girlfriend, Nicole said it would be okay to do a regular job again. I really didn't want to, but I searched day and night for normal jobs that were somewhat close to my areas of interest. Numerous applications to the Apple stores between San Diego and Orange County, Best Buy, Guitar Center, car dealerships, and even some as low as a Pizza Hut delivery boy. I kept applying for these open positions in hopes that one of them would bite, but none of them got back to me. It was with the help of craigslist, that I found one last thing to apply for.

I normally don't look for work in San Diego, but I thought to myself "why not?" and typed VFX into the San Diego job search. The first and only thing to pop up was a big post titled Legend 3D - Compositor. If you haven't heard of them, they are one of the 2 large industry studios which specializes in the post conversion of new and old films to Stereoscopic 3D. I had heard of them once before, but thought they were LA based. I quickly wrote up a resume and cover letter specific to my visual effects background and sent it in. I did not get my hopes up because I figured it would be the same no call back as usual, but sure enough, only a couple of days later, I got the call.

I got called in to take a 2 day assessment class to see if I could hold up in their work environment. I took the assessment and felt like I did extremely well without cracking under pressure and put out my A-game for those 2 days. I had to wait a week to find out the result, but today the results are in, that I will be working full time on a feature film for Legend 3D starting this october and lasting 6 months. One of the perks about the job...........I qualify for a comic-con pro pass again


A SPECIAL THANKS:
Looking back at all that I went through in this career...all the major opportunities have presented themselves because of my first major special effects gig. And the only reason I got that gig was because of that special someone, my beautiful girlfriend Nicole. Her moving away left me open for the chance to make her a special gift in our first 3 Months together (I will link it below). But it was because of that gift to her, that I was found by other professionals. Nicole, If it was not for you, I would not have found my way into this industry. I love you, Nicole, and I promise you that I will only do my best for you.


The art that changed my life for the girl that changed my life:
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Okay so going into the theater after all these awesome trailers and reviews, you expect to get what everybody was on their toes for......a prequel to Alien. A lot of people will say "it answered a lot of questions." but NOOOO all it did was cause more lol. So here we go:

LV-223:
This is the name of the planet in Prometheus...well actually the moon circling the larger planet in which this film took place. Now the second this location number popped up on screen, a couple of friends and myself just kind of looked at each other in a swift confusion. The name of the planetoid in in Alien (as stated upon return in Aliens) is LV-426. Not only is the planet name different, but the location is different AND the size. When they first arrive at LV-223 they had 6 hours of daylight left. On LV-426 they had daylight in 2 hour intervals and it was not a moon.

The Space Jockey:
Looking back to the original Alien film from 1979, upon entry of the mysterious ship (which is clearly the same style as the "Makers" ship in Prometheus), the angle of the floor in that piloting room was at the same slant, and the chair was in the upright position. Here is where the problem is...when they found the giant dead humanoid in the chair in Alien, it was dead in the chair with a hole in it's chest, clearly indicating that something had burst out of it. How could that have taken place if that dude ran after that one chick back to the ship wreck and then that weird looking creature broke out of it over THERE?!

I DEMAND ANSWERS!!! lol I hope they explain that in the special features when it comes out on bluray. But yes, those 2 major events make it clear that NO questions were answered other than the fact that the Space Jockey is the DNA host to the human race.