This weekend was pretty eventful, not only was it Cinco de Mayo, but i also shot all of the footage! I finally didn't get to use the locations i intended originally because i failed to take not of Armstrong Atlantic's graduation day (which was coincidentally ON cinco de mayo which was the day i had scheduled the equipment and actor) So by the time we got there and saw the amount of people we knew immediately it owuld be imporssible to shoot there and we also knew it was too late to back out. So some quick re-planning and we managed to get the patio outside Sunzi's on Drayton and York streets (downtown). This turned out to be spectacular since we ended up having much more room to work the crane and literally no interruptions due to people walking through frame. The second location we decided would be Forsyth Park (right by the triton fountain) which turned out to be just perfect as well.
Now, down to the interesting tech part... We shot it all on an HVX HD digital camera with a very sweet 35mm lens and adaptor. We also used a 10 foot crane and shot all of the reference material and HDR's with a Nikon d70 (6mp) digital still camera. For the HDR's though, i decided i would really be needing a full resolution 360 HDR sphere, instead i just shot a chrome ball which i will 'unwrap' using HDRshop and use as a lightprobe (using the LightGen plugin) as well as an Image Based Lighting (IBL) node in the actual Maya scene. This way i have maximum control over the lights and shadows.
I will be selecting the best clips out of the 7 gigs of material we shot and will be uploading the maya scenes to the render farm any time now. I also managed to get a hold of a sound design student who will help out with the sound effects in post.
