Black Raven has come to the end of its international festival circuit with Barcelona being its final screening. Over all Black Raven was screened at 16 international festivals, Winning Best Video at 4 of them, and gaining 5 other accolades. Thanks to State of Mind and our team once again for making this a reality, your hard work was a journey full of stories reflected by its festival success. Its been 2 years since its completion, its now time for our latest project Atheum's Way to take over with its first International screening being at Siggraph LA this august.
Black Raven
Black Raven heads to New York City /
Raven takes flight. /
Black Raven has won it first award for Best Music Video at the Kingston Film Festival NY. It was also selected to screen at the Action on Film Fest. Great work team.
Black Raven's First Festival /
Some good news on Black Raven front. It has been officially selected to screen at the Costa Rica International Film Festival. First of many festival screenings hopefully. Winners announced early June, Stay tuned!
The Shoot /
So 2 weeks ago we completed the "Black Raven" shoot. And have been recovering ever since. Now on to the post-production to polish this baby up. I have no words to describe the shoot. It was something else. Here are a couple shots. we will release more in time.
6 Days /
2 months of preparation for a 2 day operation. Like a battle plan, you only have so much to work with over the 2 days. You prepare for as many scenarios as possible and execute everything to the best of your ability with the resources at hand. That is why pre-production is more important that the shoot. The better prepared you are, the smoother your shoot will go. However you never know what can happen on the day, you can only prepare for it. High concept hand made in camera productions that tell a story don't happen often, especially at our scale of production. I could not have done this without the help of some amazing individuals whose dedication and hard work has kept me going.
Federation Armour /
2nd week of 2013 and Sakowski Studios is manufacturing armour, fitting drones, building laser guns.... you know..... the usual sort of summer fan fair. Recently new import Hendrikus DeVann came all the way from New Plymouth to help us out, check his work out here www.hendrikusdevaan.com
The Cutting Table has definitely seen some millage as the team has been hard at work in between being convinced by Sakowski that hot glue is the answer to all humanities problems, (well some of them anyway). Henry Aitken our art lead recently jet set for asia, we wish him luck on his travels, it's unfortunate he's going to miss out on one bass ass production ;)
In the mean time Mike Morgan (pictured below) is stepping in. It's quite an odd thing to take something completely new and make it look old and used, so I'm trying not to work him to hard...... but what I really mean is by the time we are finished this armour will look like it's seen some battles.
Prototype 2 /
Hope y'all had a great Christmas break. Back to the cutting table for us. Don't want to give to much away, but here a sneak of Henry sporting our prototype 2 Armor. Far from finished.
Edges of the Void /
December is here, and in true Sakowski fashion our productions are getting underway. The edges of the image are beginning to appear that is "The Black Raven". Our workshop is set up and in full gear. First up some prototyping is required led by Art Department maestro Henry Aitken assisted by Mike Morgan.
In our free time we like to practice flying our newly acquired drones. These things are super fun to fly, once you figure out how to fly them.... Few tumbles along the way but they are proving to hold up to their high quality "made in china" tag. We are doing everything in our power to make sure they make it to the shoot ;) We are looking for pilots to learn to fly these as ill be behind the camera.
Finding the right location can be a tricky thing, but in this case we hit the jackpot. Thanks to some tips from Craig Gainsborough from Doog Productions, we found our post apocalyptic overgrown carnage at the old burnt down freezing works Southdown.......Directors wet dream!
I knew we had found our location as soon as we drove into the driveway. Seeing locations for the first time opens up a world of ideas, and they flooded in while walking around southdown. I could of spent the whole day there just taking photos. Now to figure out how to light this baby and complete the story boards.
We are well on our way into the void and its going to start filling up fast. We are still looking for people interested in helping out so drop us a line at our facebook or website if you would like to be part of this production.
The Black Raven /
OK time to get serious and start posting some tastes of what's to come. State of Mind and Sakowski and collaborating on a new project "The Black Raven". It's not really a music video, it's not really a short film, its a manifestation of colliding ideas. As much as I'd like to give everything away in one go, I think im'a drag this one out. Over the next couple months keep your eyes peeled for more drawings, fabrications, photos, triumphs and failures as we embark on creating a world of ideas.
I like to work with concepts throughout longer periods of time rather than in one focused moment, but eventually those ideas manifest and something is pulled out of a blank space. These designs are part of a much larger universe. State of Mind produced an amazing track that resonated with the style and look of this concept so we are working on fusing the concepts together, to practice for the future ;) So to start here is the coffee table sketch of some Federation Armour.... off course written on the back of my list of things to do.
