What WE do with our freetime! Rich Lee's Monster Energy Spec.

[Christopher Probst]

Rich and I have been working together for years and we share a common geeky inner film-engine set of influences and references. We threw this idea together with NO MONEY and some volunteer help from a handful of my students from GCI.

Shot on Epic in 5K ANA on my set of Kowa anamorphics, this was full-on Guerrilla-style shooting mode, with only a day-and-a-half shoot in the desert in central Cali, and then a half a year later with a 3-hour night shoot in Rich's garage (where we pieced together a spaceship interior out of lumber, plumbing accoutrements from Home Depot and some parts from a local computer supply store!).

Rich did all of the computer graphics himself on his home computer in SoftImage and AfterEffects... Even though we do this sort of shit for or "day jobs" it's STILL pretty fun to make something from just a whim.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Jeez guys! Off the rails awesome!!!! Love the art direction. I would have thought those spaceships would have toilets by then!

 

[Christopher Probst]

They do... she says the line, "Commode's busted..." which is why she landed to take a piss....

 

[Rich lee]

Chris, this one will keep going on forever! I think we need to ADR her first line.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Serves me right for not having the audio loud enough. Love those Kowa's.

They do... she says the line, "Commode's busted..." which is why she landed to take a piss....

 

[Bob Gundu]

Chris, this one will keep going on forever! I think we need to ADR her first line.

Hey Rich, been a long time since those DVX days! Awesome work as usual.

 

[Dr. Sassi]

Well done, great quality. )

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

Love it.

 

[David Battistella]

Can you paste a link in the original post so it shows up on an ipad?

thanks,
david

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

https://vimeo.com/71160645

Need to see a BTS of this!

 

[David Battistella]

Thanks Matt,

very cool stuff!

david

 

[Sinh Tran]

Monster should just pay you guys and use it haha

 

[Ryan Sauve]

Awesome!

 

[Jim Hoffman]

Great! Did you composite in after effects too? I'd love to read more about your overall process. Very cool.

 

[Scott Crawley]

Cool

 

[Christopher Probst]

Thanks all for the feedback... Yes all the compositing was done in After Effects. Here's some more info about how we did this...

We shot a day-and-a-half in Trona Ca, which has all of these bizzare rock formations... I enlisted a half dozen of my former students to help out and we shot with mostly a minimal 1-ton grip package... I DID have a 4K HMI and an 1.8K HMI, but only used them when the light was falling and I needed to match the daylight work I did, but the majority of the "lighting" on the desert was achieved with bounces, reflectors and negative fill... along with copious use of smoke.

Here's a few images from the Trona shoot...

A matching frame grab from the spot...

And a shameless self promo shot!

For her exiting the back of the ship, we built a hinged door that we mounted to the back of a production cube truck... The sides were added CG enhancements...

From this still from the completed spot, you can actually see we utilized the roof of the interior of the cube truck as production design of the ship... along with some home depot ladders!

Several months later the Spaceship cockpit was constructed in Rich's small garage in the most primitive fashion.

The displays were made with using iPads, iPad minis, and a few old iPhones...

And here's a few pics from shooting the cockpit interior...

 

[Tom Van]

Wow, this is inspiring. Thanks for sharing Chris.

 

[Patrick Grossien]

Hehehe. Great stuff and wicked cool! I like it a lot!
For a spare time clip this is extraordinary!

For a "no" budget clip you still did bring quite a lot of gear but I get the point - just teasing!

 

[Phil Holland]

Very cool Chris. Nice BTS stills and info too.

 

[Patrick Grossien]

And thank you for sharing the BTS pictures and info!