I’m excited to announce that Tommy Kraft’s original score for Drone is completed! It was not an easy score to do and I think he did a really great job.  Next up, he will be doing the sound design for the film. More updates on that later.

After I completed the final cut of Drone, my professors at Brown University challenged me to try my hand at making a short experimental companion piece. The result is a 5-minute experimental documentary / machinima narrative hybrid called Drone: Predators & Prey. The film is comprised of footage from CNN and 60 Minutes, as well as footage from the original machinima, Drone. In some ways, it is a remake of my 2010 mashup video, Remote Warriors. I plan to release Drone: Predators & Prey online shortly after Drone.

A 2-minute trailer for Drone has also been completed. You can expect it sometime in the near future.

We’re one step closer to completion! Tommy finished the last few visual effects shots and I’ve edited them into the film. I also made a few small additions to the film based on suggestions from my professors at Brown (the film is my senior honors project).Now only the original score and sound design remain to be completed.  Keep your eyes open for a 2-minute trailer which will be released sometime soon!

An effects shot.

In many ways, this project grew out of my 2010 mashup video, Remote Warriors, which I made for a class called Open Source Culture. In its three and a half minute runtime, the video uses multiple forms of media including videogames, news clips, and documentary footage to address the historical, moral/ethical, and psychological issues surrounding drone combat and the military-entertainment complex. My professor was very interested in the themes of the video and suggested that I make a documentary about drone warfare as my senior honors project. Instead, I ultimately decided to explore these concerns through a machinima narrative. Machinima, an artform intimately tied to the world of videogaming, seemed to be the perfect medium with which to address questions of virtuality vs. reality and the complex relationship between the gaming industry and the military.

Drone has officially wrapped production. Everything has been shot and edited including the small number of shots that I decided to redo.  I’ve also gone through the entire film and color corrected each shot. I decided to go with an approach similar to what I used in Stop, Rewind where different locations are color coded to reflect their environments. For example, the drone control trailers interiors are a stark, cold blue that contrasts to the warm orange/yellow of the desert.

Inside Drone Control Center

Outside Drone Control Center

My role on the project now becomes more directorial and administrative rather than hands-on. The muli-talented Tommy Kraft is essentially responsible for the rest of work. After he’s completed his three effects shots, I will be sending him a locked edit of the entire film so that he can begin work on the original score and sound design. I’m sure he will do a great job. He has previously scored  the ABP live action film The Pattern and machinima Stop Rewind, for which he also did the sound design. After that, we might do some final visual tweaks before release. Tommy is great at compositing, so I’ll probably need his help fine tuning a few scenes.

I can’t wait to see what he’ll come up with!

So, I’ve been neglecting posting on the blog these last few weeks because I was intensely focused on production. I’ve accomplished a lot in that time and have filmed nearly all of the remaining scenes.

The most difficult scene I’ve tackled so far was the final scene of the movie, which took over 24 hours to complete spread over 3 days. It was the first drone mission sequence I had filmed for the movie, so there was a big learning curve as I was figuring out the best way to shoot it and edit it.  There were also a lot of technical glitches to work out with the npcs, but I’ve been able to tame them pretty well through faceposer.

Another difficulty of the scene was a firefight segment in Afghanistan. We had hostile NPCs set up to shoot at each other. This wasn’t the best approach since the combat was often unpredictable and didn’t go according to plan…. NPCs would turn their back on the enemy, get stuck, stop shooting, etc. It was a big pain, but we managed to worked it out in the end.

There is now only one scene remaining to be shot—the first drone mission sequence in the film. It’s going to require a lot of faceposer work, but I don’t think it will be too difficult since it’s only about a minute long. After that, I need to film a few filler shots here and there to stitch the longer sequences together. I also want to refilm a few shots, since I’ve improved a lot with faceposer over the course of production.

As for the rest of the team, Mike designed an excellent HUD overlay for the drones based on the overlays on real drone footage. He will also be helping me with a chalkboard sequence this weekend.Tommy is working on several effects shots for the ending scene this weekend.

My goal is to wrap production this weekend or early next week at the latest. I’d like to get a locked edit ASAP so that Tommy has the maximum amount of time to do the sound and music for the film.

I’ll try to update the blog more regularly these last few weeks on the project. I’m so excited that we’re finally getting close to completion!! Here are some more images from scenes we’ve shot recently. They haven’t been color corrected yet.

Colonel Stevens

Drone control consoles

Haskell at the controls

PRODUCTION

These last two weeks have been extremely productive and we are now about 35% done with the film! I’ve shot several important dialogue scenes, including  a pivotal conversation between Haskell and his commander, Colonel Stevens, that takes place in a drone hangar. My friend and fellow machinimamaker Damien Valentine took a drone model from Google warehouse and imported it into Moviestorm. He then filmed it against a green background so I could composite it into some of the shots in the hangar.

Haskell and Stevens at the drone hangar

I’ve also shot much of a sequence in which Haskell watches TV. This scene is one of several scenes in the film that uses  live-action footage composited onto TVs in the game environment.

Haskell watches TV

CUSTOM CONTENT

Tommy Kraft has completed the map of the drone Ground Control Stations (GCSs)! There’s are the trailers from which the drones are piloted.

Custom Map: Ground Control Centers

I’ve just finished shooting two dialogue scenes that take place there. Next, Tommy will be working on a GCS interior which I will ultimately furnish with the drone control consoles.

CASTING / RECORDING

All of the roles in DRONE have now been cast! In addition, nearly all of the dialogue has been recorded. Last weekend, I personally recorded Dennis Kozee (Haskell) and Arik Beatty (Rollins). It was  a very enjoyable experience and the first time I’ve been able to record two voice actors together. It was  great to be able to direct them at the recording session and I was very pleased with the performances.  We recorded for about two and a half hours. Now, I’m just waiting for recordings from two actresses–one who plays Jane (Haskell’s wife) and one who plays a news anchor.

We have a ton of updates on the production of DRONE for this past week.

CASTING

Dennis Kozee, who played Phil in our live action short, Shelf Life, has been cast as the main character, William Haskell. Arik Beatty has been cast as his friend and fellow drone pilot, Jack Rollins. Kevin Cianek (aka Xanatos) has been cast in a cameo role as a drone pilot named Slavenski. This means that all of the central characters have now been cast and there are only a few small roles remaining!

PRODUCTION

Production is going well so far. We’ve already shot and roughly edited a 2 minute sequence of the film and it looks great.  However, we still have a lot of work ahead of us–the entire movie will probably run about 16-17 minutes long. Here are some images:

Colonel Stevens gives a briefing to the Air Force.

General McCormick at Colonel Steven's briefing.

TECHNICAL

I’ve been learning the Half-Life 2 developer tool FacePoser, which allows you to lip sync dialogue, create facial expressions, and trigger gestures.  After a lot of practice, I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. It’s a very time consuming process, but I’m getting faster and the results are fantastic! For the first time in an ABP machinima, we will be able to shape the “performances” of our virtual actors.  This should bring our work to the next level and significantly improve production values. We’re very excited to show it off and  I may post some short clips on this blog sometime soon.

CUSTOM CONTENT

Mike created an Air Force briefing book for the briefing scene that we shot this week.

Tommy Kraft is currently working on a map for the exteriors of the Ground Control Stations from which the drones are piloted. Its coming along nicely. I will post pictures as soon the map is completed.

Here are some character skins chosen for the major characters in the film.  Most of the skins were found in a Garry’s Mod add-on and are the work of their respective authors. Mike modified the airmen skins into the Haskell and Rawlins predator pilot skins.

Colonel Stevens. Commander of the drone unit. Voiced by Joe Thomas.

Two drone pilots. The main character, Haskell (left) and his friend Rawlins (right).

Vietnam Vet who Haskell meets in a bar. Voiced by Ricky Grove.

Haskell's wife, Jane.

This week, we determined which character models we were going to use for the various characters in the film. Mike Richards has also been experimenting with character skins to figure out the look of the drone pilots. We decided to go with a pre-made skin from a Garry’s Mod addon, but Mike is doing some more changes to the skin. We will be releasing pics of the characters soon.

Meanwhile, I have built a prototype version of the drone control console in Garry’s Mod using a number of props. The final version will be more refined. We aimed to get it as close as possible to the actual drone control consoles without going through the process of modeling new assets. We also decided to reduce the number of screens and simplify the console. Below are some pics:

Actual drone console.

Garry's Mod drone console.

I’m also currently assembling the cast. So far, two roles have been cast. Joe Thomas (Dr. Lambert in Stop, Rewind) will be playing Colonel Stevens, the man in charge of the drone unit. Ricky Grove (Frank in Clockwork and Clockwise) will play a Vietnam veteran the main character encounters in a bar. Both are extremely talented actors and I’m looking forward to working with them again. More casting news soon.

In other news, ABP composer Tommy Kraft will be doing the music and sound design for the film. He previously did the music and sound design for our sci-fi/crime machinima Stop, Rewind.

Welcome to the production blog for Drone, ABP’s newest machinima film and my senior honors project at Brown University where I am majoring in Modern Culture & Media. Over the next few months I will be posting images, clips, and information about the development of the project.

Predator drone model (from Google Warehouse) imported into Moviestorm

A script has been written and we are currently casting actors and performing technical tests to prepare for production. The machinima is a drama exploring some of the ethical/moral and psychological questions raised by the emergence of armed unmanned aerial vehicles (such as the predator drone), which are changing the face of warfare. The movie will be filmed primarily in Half Life 2: Garry’s Mod but will also integrate other forms of media. See a detailed synopsis below:

William Haskell is one of the best at the U.S. Air Force videogame American Drone Warrior. His skills catch the attention of Colonel Jeffrey Stevens who recruits him into an experimental predator drone unit that performs remote strikes in Afghanistan from Nevada. But after a mission goes terribly wrong, Haskell’s unquestioning faith in the system is shaken and he is thrown down a mental spiral where the line between videogame and reality begins to blur.