And now a bit of news for WAM's Finnish users regarding how to take part in an event organised by the Finnish Film Foundation for amateur filmmakers:

KUTSU

Suomen elokuvasäätiössä järjestetään listen&learn -tyyppinen keskustelutilaisuus tuotantoyhtiöiden ulkopuolella tehtävästä elokuvasta. Elokuvasäätiölle määrätty tehtävä on tukea kotimaista ammattimaista elokuvatuotantoa. Kuitenkin viime aikoina on myös ammattilaisrakenteen ulkopuolelta noussut kiinnostavia tekijöitä ja elokuvia (esim. Mitä meistä tuli). On myös elokuvia, jotka on aloitettu harrastelijapohjalta ja jotka ovat löytäneet vasta myöhemmin ammattimaisen tuotantoyhtiön (kuten Reindeer Spotting). Haluamme oppia tuntemaan paremmin suomalaista harrastajaelokuvakenttää.

Tervetuloa vaihtamaan näkymyksiä ja jakamaan kokemuksia Suomen elokuvasäätiön auditorioon, Kanavakatu 12

perjantaina 24.9.2010 klo 13-16

Tilaisuuden moderaattorina toimii elokuvatuottaja Petri Rossi. Mukana on myös väitöskirjaa aiheesta valmisteleva Jetta Huttunen ja monia muita mielenkiintoisia harrastajia tai harrastajasta aloittaneita elokuvantekijöitä. Tilaisuuden avajaispuheenvuoron pitää Elokuvasäätiön toimitusjohtaja Irina Krohn.

HUOM! Pakolliset ilmoittautumiset osoitteeseen ses@ses.fi viimeistään 17.9. Ilmoittautumisesi yhteydessä voit myös lähettää ideoitasi sellaisista asioista, joita pitäisit tärkeänä käsitellä tapahtumassa.

...and why this matters so much to low-budget film-making:

As many of you know, Wreckamovie was founded by the creators of Star Wreck, a sci-fi parody which had no real budget and was shot almost entirely in the producer's house using bluescreen. There were no sets at all.

After the film was released, a journalist came to interview Wreck's producer at home, and immediately asked where their studio was. The computer generated imagery had fooled her, and she was not the only one surprised by the truth. The film's CGI had done its job excellently.

But when Energia attempted to create the first Iron Sky teaser, their initial version rendered at a rate of one frame a day: far too slow. They tweaked things to speed up the rendering process, but it showed how even experienced users of CGI can run into the limits of their computers very quickly.

So, while CGI can look great when done correctly, it needs a lot of computing power to actually create the finished product. Until recently this kind of power has been difficult to come by, because you had to either own or borrow enough computers to do the job. But now, thanks to the internet, things are different. And that's what this announcement is all about.

Very much in the same spirit as Wreckamovie, Renderfarm.fi is a site where anyone can take part in rendering for others, or submit their own material to be rendered. And as so many productions on Wreckamovie are using CGI, it makes a lot of sense for us to work together, and that's what we're going to do.

How will this work for WAM members? Well, there are two ways of participating:

- If you want to help render other people's videos, go to http://www.renderfarm.fi/ , sign up for an account, and download the BOINC screensaver. BOINC is the same application used by SETI@home, Folding@home and many other scientific research projects. It allows users to automatically run computing tasks on their PCs when they are not being used for anything else. BOINC automatically uploads work when it's finished, and downloads new work, it's easy to set up and doesn't require any technical knowledge to use.

- If you want to submit an animation to be rendered, create it in Blender and then upload it to Renderfarm.fi within Blender itself or through the Renderfarm.fi website. Once it's uploaded, you can add the animation to a shot on Wreckamovie by selecting the "Attach media to your shot" option. While it's still being rendered an indicator will show its progress, and the finished animation will be viewable in the shot as an embedded video. You can see an example here: http://www.wreckamovie.com/shots/show/7381

Two of the first productions to take advantage of this new alliance are Vampyre Princess 3D and Materia: The Awakening, but anyone can submit animations to be rendered on Renderfarm.fi, and they can be added as shots on any WAM production.

As usual, if you have questions, comments and suggestions, please post them in the thread below and we'll try to answer them.

Happy Wrecking!