What A Year

So, as you can tell, it has been a while since our last update on the site! The year 2020 has been a surprising twist in the Babs Do Productions story to say the least. A pandemic, state lock downs, riots, economic turmoil, the complete meltdown of movie theaters and film distribution as a whole that has yet to be fully worked out, it has been a trying time to make a debut feature film!

How We’ve Been

Patrick and I have been doing our best despite the circumstances. Adjusting to life under a variably locked down pandemic has been trying at times but we’ve made it through with our family and, thankfully, without any kind of illness to speak of. For the most part, we knew we would be spending a lot of time at home as it was since we are in the post production stage of our film but we didn’t know we would literally “have to be” stuck indoors.

What We’ve Been Doing

We have been working on tweaking the edit of the film as we have gone through setting up visual effects shots and creating photo-realistic 3D models to complete several scenes in the film. Due to the long lengths of time being eaten up by our 3D rendering, we decided the best thing to do was upgrade our main workstation to the latest hardware, going from a Dual Six-Core Intel Xeon system to a 64-core AMD Threadripper solution that has incredibly sped up our workflow. We have also been filming prop inserts and other shots to add flowing action, transitions, and atmosphere to the film.

Aside from 3D and VFX work for the film, we have been developing another animated series in case the pandemic caused us to have to change the timing of our next feature film, it’s a pretty interesting choice and should please a lot of animation fans! It’s still very early yet but we have quickly written the pilot episode and have at least two seasons mapped out.

The Move

During the past few months, with the pandemic getting more heated in California, we decided that it was best to move and go back to Las Vegas. Our next feature film is, ideally, going to be set in the Las Vegas area so it was natural to go back and start getting a feel for the area again and figuring out exactly how and where we’re going to film while we develop the script further than our initial story plans.

The move slowed us down only in that we had to take apart and move a lot of our computer and filmmaking equipment from one state to the other as well as having to reorganize our Las Vegas residence to fit it all into place. We haven’t completed the move yet but we have what we need to work on the film and everything, as of now, is moved into place where it needs to be.

Unexpected Problems

We had an unexpected hard drive failure in our RAID storage array for the film and had to troubleshoot the problem. Turns out we had it all, a dead hard drive, a bad SAS data cable, and a dead RAID card! This took a little while to fix as we had to wait for complex in-demand parts during a time when shipping times aren’t a guaranteed thing. Thankfully, once the parts came in, our RAID was able to rebuild itself successfully and things run a lot faster than they did with the old RAID card!

Knowing that we didn’t need everything moved back with us right away in Las Vegas, we decided to move back in stages, bringing just a set amount of things at a time and giving ourselves a chance to clean and reorganize to best fit everything in before going back to California for the next batch. We’re still checking and adjusting the edit of the film so we haven’t filmed all the insert shots as of yet since things have been changing slightly here and there so costumes, props, and certain filming equipment was left for one of our next batches. Then, California decided to lock down further as the pandemic there got even worse! Since our mother is staying with us in Las Vegas, we decided to hold off until things calmed down as traveling back to a highly infectious area for props and costumes wasn’t worth the inherent risk to our mother’s health or our own.

What’s Next?

While the remaining few live-action insert shots will have to wait, the ones we did film have gone into the edit perfectly and filled out some noticeable gaps in the timeline. Ultimately, most of the insert shots we need are 3D in nature so we have to go through with our soon to be finalized models and render out the shots, matching them with the footage when needed, so that can, thankfully, be done with what we have. Also, I have been listening to the film and adjusting some sound areas before the final sound design stage and I’ve already fixed some definite ADR spots with some careful editing.

Final insert shots or not, once we have picture lock for the majority of the film at least, we will be contacting some of the actors for an ADR session, whether that takes place over video chat or in person is anybody’s guess at this point. Once we have that, we can add in the remaining insert shots once they’re filmed and start adjusting and finalizing our sound design and music which are already sounding great!

Aside from the film, we’re planning on getting not only into developing other film and TV projects but also taking up some new creative outlets such as returning to our Youtube channel with new videos including a possible videogame-related follow up to “The Review – A Fatal Frame Fan Film” and, quite possibly, another first, writing a book!

In Conclusion

While many things have changed and many others still are in flux, Babs Do Productions is staying flexible and very aware of current world and industry events so that we can plan accordingly for the future. We know that the worst thing we could do is do nothing during this time and while we regret not doing more, we have to remind ourselves that we have been living through situations that were, until now, only dreamed up and realized through media and fiction.

At the end of this troubled year, we will be spending the holidays with family and friends, though we will all be spread apart, whether it is a text, a video chat, or a cheerful phone call, we will still be together nonetheless. I can’t guarantee when the next update will be exactly, whether here or on social media, as you can tell from the rest of this update, we are going to be very busy going into the new year and beyond.

Until then, we at Babs Do Productions wish all of you the happiest of holidays and a very happy (and healthy) New Year to follow! As always, stay tuned for more!