US pickups update

It looks like our window of opportunity was in fact a swing door instead.  We had hoped to be heading across the atlantic during the first two weeks of August to complete our pickups, but as that window closes another one swings open.  It now looks more likely that we’ll be heading out in September.

As before, any further updates and we’ll report as and when they happen.

Final pickups in LA and NYC

So the edit of the film has been pretty much locked for quite some time now.  The soundtrack and VFX continue at the fastest rate that it can, all things considered.  We’re even being disciplined when it comes to over noodling and tweaking the edit while waiting until we’ve shot every last pickup, at which point we can lock the picture 100%.

For quite a while now there has been a sequence (a small action one involving black secret military SUV’s and two harrier fighter jets chasing a UFO through the Nevada desert) which has remained on our ‘to do’ list.  This is partly due to it requiring a location on the west coast of the US, while we’re based in the UK.  That, along with scheduling conflicts with principal filmmakers has meant that we’ve been living with animatics and storyboards for quite some time now.

That is about to change however as a small window of opportunity has presented itself that may allow us to shoot the required shots.  While in the US, we’ll probably also swing by New York to shoot some extra plate photography along with some bonus shots to fill out the NYC sequences of the movie.

If we manage to pull the shoot off, expect to see many more blogs about the whole shoot.

A sample animatic from the sequence that we plan to shoot in California.

Alien fighter CG model

In the film, the alien invasion force has a variety of space ships used in their mission to destroy humans, one of which is a small single seater fighter.  The digital artist responsible for this is Lee Ray and you can see his progress at the following site  Sci-Fi meshes website thread on the LVJ alien fighter

The site requires registration to view images and in case you don’t want to, here’s a sample of what the model looks like.

LVJ co writers blog

Here’s a link to a blog by Phill Barron, one of the writers on LVJ.  He talks about the trials and tribulations of writing for the industry.

Phill Barron’s Blog

rad_010 – Chopper coming into land

If you want to see a VFX shot example from the movie, you can see it here: rad_010 – Chopper coming into land

You can also see a few old blogs in there too.

First post and introduction

Welcome to the blog on the making of the sci-fi film ‘L.V.J’.  It’s a feature length micro-budget Sci-Fi Adventure movie that’s best described as a cross between Starsky and Hutch and Independence Day with a touch of the X-Files.

You can visit our website at lvjmovie.com
You can also visit our imdb listing here: LVJ on IMDB

We will be posting blogs by key members of the production team who are responsible for the making of the movie.