AOTCO main shooting is done!

Dear backers, followers and cyber fans.
I’m proud to announce that last Thursday night we ended the first, biggest part of the shooting!! And so far we got amazing shots, as you can notice from the still frames I’ll post along this update (please note: those are 90% raw footage, just a minimal test grading were applied and the compositing is yet to be done).
Now left to shoot are just the outdoor scenes in Tokyo and few miniatures.

It has been a long and exhausting week: we truly did our best and even more to achieve a professional stunning looking film, to please our fans all around the world!
I’m not trying to show off when I say that we basically we made a 200k short film with 1/10th of the budget! Thanks to our amazing crew (many people worked for free!) our wonderful cast, and all the companies that helped us with the equipment (like CineUnit for the camera, HighVoltage for lights, BBrental for lens and Nordic Vision for the atmospheric effects) and also thanks to everybody’s willing and patience to work for very long shooting shifts: an average of 16 hours a day! We barely slept during the week of shooting... It was really exhausting! But at the end of each day, everybody was happy and satisfied for the great results.
Maybe I aimed too high, but I’m really proud of what we achieved together.

Overall, the long lasting shooting days meant also more food, more transport expenses and, unfortunately, some unlucky accidents: our sound recordist broke a couple of lavalier microphones, some small parts of the equipment got lost and a couple of scratches were made on the rented van, which we had to pay a big fine for! All of these things made our already super tight budget raise even more! 

  
So please, if you still believe in this project, it would mean the world for us if you decide to help us a little by considering a donation on PayPal following this link: https://www.paypal.me/NicolaPiovesan. Some of you already did it and we can’t thank you enough, but we are still quite far from covering all the extra expenses we had.  

Anyway, what matters the most, is that the biggest part of the shooting is done and we can’t wait to show what an incredible footage we have! I’m sure you won’t be disappointed with the final result. I’ll keep you posted with the next stages of the production and meanwhile remember that you can still follow us on facebook, instagram or twitter!

More things to come! And a big surprise for all of our fans is planned for early May!
So stay tuned!

Your cybernetically,
Nicola 

The Cyber Octopuses are ready to shoot!

Hello dear cyber followers and octo-backers!

Sorry if I haven’t updated you yet, but they have been a very very though and busy month, after an amazing Kickstarter campaign that got 133% of the goal and a month preparing everything for the movie! Lot of crafting, lot of organizing, lot of things to do! Now we are only 5 days ahead the shooting and it’s a very exciting moment!

First of all, let me thank the again the Kickstarter backers for making this dream a reality! The biggest challenge now is making a great movie with a relatively low budget. Consider also that about €500 of the Kickstarter funds didn’t make it (some expired or empty cards...). This mean our third goal is, in fact, not achieved, but I made the impossible to have some great props and easter eggs anyway! I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. If anyway you are geneorus and want to help the project a bit more, you can consider a PayPal donation, HERE:   

Then, here some updates, photos and more! 

Well, the crafting haven’t started the best way, since I chopped away some millimiters of my finger! Nothing serious, but it was damn painful and for more than a week I couldn’t craft properly... This slowed down the process a lot!

Meanwhile I ordered from all over the world some amazing props and costumes, also thanks to some companies that loved the project and made a special deal.

Like Dieselpunk.ro who provides some amazing masks.

Or Timmy Hog for the gauntlet and armor and Illumi-Nation for the futuristic visor:

VRtifacts shipped me from US those vintage helmets:

And Gustav Ljungdal and me made this Tsukamoto style headset

This is a tribute to Blade Runner (they used the same Panasonic TV in that movie!)

And I guess you’ll also recognize this kind of umbrella...

A guy from Canada, Les Malcom, made a couple of stunning flying cars

And I’ve been crafting hard to make a bigger cooler city, also thanks to some MDF futuristic building provided by DarkOPS.

While a company from Spain, guided by Alex Tutusaus, printed a legion of Cyber Octopuses!

Supported also by my new 3D printers provided by Wanhao!

So yeah, many people from all over the world are helping this film a lot and now everthing is almost ready for the shooting!!! I will publish one more update in a couple of weeks, showing you some behind the scenes photos. The machine is moving forward, it’s unstoppable now!!!

If you want to be updated on an almost daily base, you can follow us on Facebook.

And please consider some extra donation on PayPal:  

I’m kind of broke now... ehehe! :) 

Thanks again and speak you soon!!!

Nicola

Join the Kickstarter campaign! Give us a kick! Let's make this awesome film!

CLICK HERE to support the campaign!!!

If you prefer you can donate on PayPal with the button below:
 

Stay tuned on the facebook page, instagram or twitter... and please remember to share it around!
Thanks a lot!

"Attack of the Cyber Octopuses" - teaser/trailer

After 3 months of hard working, the teaser is finally online!

If you like it, please consider to contribute the KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN!

Lot of rewards for the backers, even the cyber octopus itself! But don't wait! The sooner the better! Some rewards are in limited numbers ;)

If you prefer you can donate on PayPal with the button below:

 

Stay tuned on the facebook page, instagram or twitter... and please remember to share it around!
Thanks a lot!

Teaser Backstage! Logbook so far... "Attack of the Cyber Octopuses" film project

The one minute teaser is almost done and I'm gonna publish it very soon and very soon we'll launch a kickstarter campaign!

Besides the "making of" of the weapons/vehicles/cyberoctopus/city miniature that you can find in this blog, I'm writing this post to make a summary of the project so far...

Basically I came up with this idea in July. I wanted to make a short film with viral potential, a tribute to the 80s scifi masterpieces, like Blade Runner or Escape from New York, using the same methods they were using back in time... practical effects, model miniatures and lot of handcrafted things. All without using CGI (except for compositing and for creating vintage graphics, like the one for the cyberspace). This is me with the handmade city miniature, trying to look like an art director of the Eighties...

It was something completely new for me, so I started googling around on how to make such things (kit bashing, diy, model making, etc) and at the same time I started to write the script. I then designed the cyber octopus and bought a cheap 3D Printer.

The first things I built for the project were the weapons, painted Nerf toy guns.

I then started to print the Cyber Octopus.

And to built flying cars...

After some days of printing and finishing, the Cyber Octopus was ready!

It was time for creating the city, partially 3D printed, partially crafted using cheap materials and junk.

Everything was ready for the shooting!

We shot in 3 days: 1 day for the city miniature and flying vehicles, 1 day with the main character only (that has more scenes than the others), 1 day with all the 9 characters (mainly for photoshooting) and especially with the 3 main ones (in a wonderful Soviet futuristic location called Linnahall in Tallinn). All together there were 16/17 people, from all over the world (USA, Estonia, Italy, Canada, Belarus, China and even Nigeria!). Here some backstage photos.

After the shooting it took some weeks to finalize the 1 minute teaser. I was also busy doing some other jobs, so I worked time to time... And other people were involved: Andrea Ragusa who made the amazing 80s music, Dmitry Natalevich who did the incredible sound design and Wesley Griffin who recorded the voice over.

The teaser is almost ready and on Saturday 7th of January we'll launch it. Then on Monday 9th we'll launch the kickstarter!

Please consider this whole project is an indie zero budget film, so any donation, even few bucks, is very welcome.

 

Stay tuned on the facebook page, instagram or twitter... and please remember to share it around!

3D Printed Futuristic City Miniature. "Attack of the Cyber Octopuses" film project.

Here another part of the city. Actually is one of the 9 miniature blocks (30cm X 30cm each, aprox 40cm tall) that will compose the whole Neo-Berlin, the city where "Attack of the Cyber Octopuses" is set. So it's something different than the tallest building I posted some time ago and that will be used for more detailed shots.

The model is 90% 3D printed, plus some spare parts from other plastic models, LEDs and some minor add-ons. The first step was designing everything with a 3D software, in this case I used 3D Studio Max.

I then printed everything. It took about 10 days to print every buildings and the platforms, but it was worth it!

Look the details of the base. I've four of them, 15cm x 15cm each.

The four 15x15 bases were then glued to a thick cardboard.

Everything was painted in dark gray, then dry brushed with some silver acrylic color.

Here some of the main buildings.

And the city mounted all together.

To add more details to the whole scene I kit-bashed some of my old plastic models and glued small details here and there to the main buildings.

I then applied some semi-transparent yellow tape in the back of some apertures and glued everything together.

In one the main building I designed a hole to fit an old mp3/mp4 creative zen player, which display a vintage advertising from the 80s. This is the photo during the shooting of the film and an actual frame that will end up in the teaser. Pretty pro, uh?

And the final fancy picture!

That's it for now! All the main miniatures and models for the teaser/trailer are ready now. Soon I'll release some backstage photos of the shooting and of course the teaser itself! Be updated! And remember this is an indie project, any support is more than welcome!

 

Stay tuned on the facebook page, instagram or twitter... and please remember to share it around!