Panzer Corps RSS Feed

adam@valuckas.com — 2009-01-03T11:40:23-05:00

Double Oh my Gods (DOMG) ((i made that up))

1st OMG
Adding a film to IMDB is painful. So painful. I'm 100% sure that I screwed up something, I just hope that it passes their inspection in the first pass.

2nd OMG
I exported the new version of Panzer Corps from Final Cut, that took around eight hours. (Here is the OMG part) Now I am exporting the film from After Effects adding the film grain and the conversion to "24p" with Red Giant's Frames, the estimated time is 48 hours! After this finishes then comes encoding the first DVD takes about eight hours (from what i recall). I remember the whole thing taking around 40 hours last time... This time we are looking around 56 hours total to get the first DVD.

PREVAIL DAMNIT!

All that said, once this is finished I'm going to hit the festivals hard again.

I am waiting on:
Cinequest Film Festival (San Jose) - 10-Jan-2009
Boulder International Film Festival - 15-Jan-2009
South by Southwest - 16-Feb-2009
Florida Film Festival - 20-Feb-2009
Ann Arbor Film Festival - 25-Feb-2009

adam@valuckas.com — 2009-01-02T20:17:36-05:00

Hello 2009! This is the year Panzer Corps dominates, or at least gets into a festival or two or 50. We will see!

Okay where to begin? Soooo I've needed to tweak the film for quite sometime but I was just plain burned out. After Slamdance and Sundance didn't work out I felt like I needed to get back on the ball. Then I received a comment that the film dragged in the center (Thank you Aidan) so I got to thinking. The pretty b-roll is boring and added NOTHING to the film. So I was able to trim almost two minutes from the film!!! I also did a ton of sound tweaking and added even more folley. Annnnd cleaned up this one 20 second section that I always hated. Here is a timeline of the film.

Old timeline:
open / battle / important talking / boring stuff / fight / break / FIGHT / credits

New timeline:
open / battle / important talking / MEGA FIGHT / credits / adopted by Spielberg / call my dad and give him the bad news

oh sometimes I make myself laugh. Anyways it is a better film. Also Nick Pasqualichio, I finally changed your name in the film, sorry about that!!

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I just received an email from IMDB/Withoutabox about being accepted to have an IMDB page. Cool! I post that when it is up and live.

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Stats from June 08 to Jan 1st for panzercorps.com

Top three pages:
1. main page (i think that had to win)
2. tutorials landing page
3. blog

The tutorials combine have way more views than the landing page.

Average time on site: Three minutes, 16 seconds

Top 10 Countries
1. USA
2. United Kingdom
3. Germany
4. Canada
5. Australia
6. Belgium
7. France
8. Finland
9. Netherlands
10. Spain

Top to states:
1. California
2. Texas
3. Maryland
4. Virginia
5. Illinois
6. New York
7. Florida
8. Iowa
9. Pennsylvania
10. Georgia

We have a NEW state in last place (every time I do this that state moves up in the ranking)
Wyoming..try harder. *hug*

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Youtube
92% male
8% female

Pretty even on age stats until age 55.

30 thousand video views for all the Panzer video together.

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No more pictures Search Monkey? Wheres the love?!!

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Alright now I need to export the film, add the film grain, convert to "24p", and encode the first dvd. Last time that was 40 something hours of rendering.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-12-15T22:25:21-05:00

Panzer Corps is entered into the running for South by Southwest (sxsw).

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-12-10T20:09:19-05:00

AHHHH! okay, youtube changed the high quality embed code and for what ever reason the new code was giving me hell. Hell I say! So it looks much better now = WIN!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-12-07T22:13:52-05:00

This is perhaps one of the funniest emails I have received in a long time.

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"Search Monkey is very interested in your movie! Sundance and slamdance wouldn't know talent if it bit them in the banana (if you catch my drift). Keep applying!"

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Thanks Search Monkey!!
*tears of laughter*

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-12-06T12:52:07-05:00

Panzer Corps got a NO from Sundance and Slamdance, but with a 1.4% chance it was expected. It is hard not to have that fool's hope :D But there are 1000s of other festivals! Keep your eyes forward and keep moving!!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-11-29T11:10:53-05:00

New side by side effects shot comparison video!

HA! This is the blog from exactly one year ago!

"Still not online Buuuuut making massive updates to the site and film. I "should" have DSL by the 5th. I'm trashing the whole gray look for a simple black and white theme for the website; much more direct and easy on the eyes.... or I'm bored of the gray?. Anyways i live like a monk and drink like a pirate; i need to get out more. Damn the holidays, i guess the movie will be my gal.... pathetic. HA! "

I do have DSL (it sucks *coughVerizon*), I forgot the site was gray with blue highlights (eww), I drank a lot (yeah...), and not having a gal was really the best thing for me at the time. I remember the point where I started the effects, it felt like I had to swim across the Pacific wearing lead shoes. Word to the wise, get someone else to edit and do effects for your film.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-11-28T19:01:23-05:00

Holy shenanigans, I've been off the ball! (Aidan, thank you for calling me out on this!!!) It has been two months since I've posted?! Really.. Simple answer, new gal.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING from Film Threat! I am so damn slappin' happy Its hard to relate my first feeling's seeing the review. Panzer Corps received 4 our of 5 stars and an awesome review from Gerard Quinn. Film Threat will review films for free and they can be really brutal, so when I saw 4 stars I almost crapped some turkey. I jest. But it took me several attempts to actually read the words on the screen- 4 out of 5 is really really good! Full story is under the Press Kit section or click the logo.

On a similar note I was feeling amazed that I haven't done anything publicly for Panzer Corps in quite some time so I sent the film toMicroFilm Maker to be review (fingers crossed) and Tool Farm (they sell plugins for After Effects, Shake, Nuke, ect) asked for background on the Film so they can write up a story. Got those DVDs out.

Site Updates:
-Added the Film Threat review under Press Kit
-Deleted the Podcast Page until I get that running
-Deleted the FAQ section, it didn't get very many hits and it was ugly.
-Switched out the Behind the Scenes Teasers to YouTube videos
-Moved the Sneak Peek stills to behind the Scenes

Web Stats:
-Still on the first page if you search google for War Film (awesome!)
-Alaska I am proud of you, keep up the great work!
-Wyoming you are dead last in page views, I'm just saying China is doing better...
-Thank you Saint Kitts and Nevis, I hadn't heard of you before!
-We need an ambassador to Greenland. perhaps Vikings...or did they go to Iceland?

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-09-21T12:51:00-04:00

New tutorial- Aging Uniforms added.
annnnd I AM working on some new requested tutorials.

Delaware is now beating Hawaii in page views. Are you going take that Hawaii? Alaska you make me sad... Give me a hug Alaska. There you go. :D
And finally got some views from China!

Adam

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-09-20T11:29:21-04:00

Putting the new tracking code up really makes a difference in stats. You guys are very interested in the tutorials, in fact the guns and blood pages are the top tutorials. You guys are sick.. just kidding.

New tutorial pages:
Video Sharing- tons of sites to post your trailers ect.

New EPK (electronic press kit) page under the Press section. More will be added to that soon.

New podcast page, I'm still figuring this out.

Todd (the actor who played Kurz) received our posters and post cards which look awesome! Sadly these are not for sale because I need them for festivals. Speaking of that we got rejected from our first festival WOOOHOOO! St. Louis is an Oscar booster festival (very hard to get into) and they got a preliminary version of Panzer Corps, so I was expecting that. Next up on the rejection list is AFI.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-09-02T01:58:25-04:00

Could not sleep so the trailer is up! (front page) and YouTube has a much better player now. First off it knows that you uploaded a widescreen video and it doesn't squish it and the embed code scales the video inside their player (adding black bars IF necessary). And you can force HD in the embedded player by tacking this in two spots. Thier encode looks pretty good for flash, not perfect but really good. Try to sleep time.

&ap=%2526fmt%3D18

Nifty!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-09-01T19:24:08-04:00

Updates WOOT!

-New festivals page in the tutorial section.
-Added more stills to the Muzzle Flash Study under tutorials.
-Got rid of the statics page.
-Got rid of the bookmark feature. (more like ugly annoyance)
-Added tracking codes to the sub-pages to I can see what you guys like and don't like.

I took a whole weekend off and I feel behind so I spent Labor Day weekend cutting the trailer together. The trailer is finishing AS WE SPEAK! (and perhaps before I publish this- current time 7:59pm). I really need to start marketing the hell out of this F-er. In short the trailer is like this: Logo,quick line, shooting, quick line, shoooooooting things blowing up, someone talks, more stuff blows up, end logo. Guy movie. If only I had girls running around in their underoos this would be a blockbuster!

Missing my old stats page already, here you go! Top 10 countries that visit panzercorps.com
1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Germany
4. Netherlands
5. Australia
6. Canada
7. Belgium
8. Finland
9. France
10. Sweden
and not much love from Africa as a whole or China... I'm going to air drop computers with google on them, or panzer corps t-shirts... or food. Anyways.

Top 10 states.
1. California
2. Virginia
3. Maryland (YAY!)
4. Texas
5. Illinois
6. Florida
7. New York
8. Indiana
9. Iowa
10. North Carolina
and Hawaii beat Delaware. Don't get mad at me Delaware, you need to do your part as well. :)

What you are interested in.
1. Main page
2. Tutorials
3. Behind the Scenes
4. Sneak Peeks
5. Cast and Crew

9:22 still rendering with another hour and a half to go. Seems the trailer will come out tomorrow (if everything is good to run)...

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-08-24T23:15:17-04:00

I got Super excited to see an email from Slamdance, but it seems I didn't do the online payment. hahahahaahhhhh. Crap.

My grandma is too funny, she had no idea what the movie was about BUT it was great because I did it. That would really suck if it was the other away around!!

New sidebar image on the homepage.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-08-21T21:55:34-04:00

Alright what is going on....

-We entered Florida Film Fest, Cinequest FF and Boulder IFF.
-I sent out something like ohhhh 25 DVDs to all the crew people, and I found out I spelled two names wrong in the credits. I'm sorry guys, in the Super Deluxe version this will be corrected.
-Sent the film to be reviewed by Film Threat
-Received great feedback from Bob at Detonation Films (I love that place!)
-Ordered posters and postcards
-ha, finished the poster design.

Guess what?! No work for the Corps this weekend, wait I lied. I'm going to show my film to grandma this weekend. I'm trying to persuade her to bake cookies for the Festival Directors (and lace them with dollar bills! = nice) So I won't be playing DVD factory this weekend.

Ah and posted a ton NEW stills in the Sneak Peek section.
Adam OUT

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-08-12T19:52:39-04:00

I've been neglecting you blog, I am sorry. Alright what has happened??

I got my printer working so I can print on the DVDs, thank you Epson.
I got a DVD copy now that doesn't strobe at random, thank you Compressor.

Sent off more entries to Slamdance, Sundance and Ann Arbor. Getting into any of these would be an epic success but I'm really hoping for Slamdance. It is long shot but I feel we would do well there. Dreams, lets keep them alive!

Still working on the poster. Trying to keep up with email inquires. Talking in fragments. Thinking of several projects large and small... And we got bumped off the #3 spot for War Film on google but we haven't left the top of the front page. Success. :)

Total side note: I finally got an iPhone and I have Panzer Corps encoded all pretty so I can show strangers at random. "Get back here and watch This!!!".
Alright, back to work.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-08-04T23:12:15-04:00

What a great/annoying weekend. Lets kick off with the great part.

Great:
Hung out with two of the actors (Lt. and Kurz) which was awesome fun!! Plus they treated me out, what more can you ask for? Thank you guys!! They are both in the Army and a few other Army dudes came over to watch the film. Here is the super great part, they understood it and liked it!!!

Annoying:
I have tried to burn the festival DVD at least oh 10 times now. In different scenes I'm getting a strobing pixilation. FAIL! I tired high and low bitrate VBR and CBR with no luck. AND Compressor is dead on my machine double Awesome!!! So i'm going to take the project work and try Compressor there and if everything is cool I'll start sending out DVD for cast, crew and festivals first. Annoying part II- I bought a DVD printer and after installing, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers for half of Sunday I have no luck. FAIL! WHY can't things that i pay for just work?... Annoying, but like all problems you bash them into submission until they go your way. Or return said problems and give someone else your money EPSON! *shaking fist*

Well that prompted me to accomplish Something this weekend so I started working on the poster. I have to finish this pretty quick since my printing connection is going away at the end of the month. Here is a glimpse, any feedback is Welcome! Yes there will be more info. :)

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-07-24T20:21:47-04:00

We're almost there. Run down of what is happening:

- New teaser has 800 views in a week! Feels great getting positive feedback, feels real good.
- Still hanging out in #3 in google for War Film!!
- The site is getting more hits (soon as this Mother-F'er is done there will be more tutorials!)
- Jeff, Dave and I picked the film grain out of 20 choices. After Effects won over Shake.
- The editor of baltimoresun.com helped re-write to opening to the film (Much better!)
- Sound mixing is done
- I just snatched a great press lead, thank you old friend.

In all honestly I'm finding it very difficult to keep pushing this last little bit. At this point it is what it is (I hate that statement), but without tearing the whole thing apart it can't get much better. I have learned a lot, this film has really showed me where to go with my next project and what NOT to do. Once things calm down I'm going to write an inspiration page because film making is tough, and it is real tough when it is no longer fun and no one is pushing you but you! Just keep pushing and make it happen.

Adam

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-07-15T20:35:43-04:00

New teaser is doing well!

After two days it already has 200 views. The youtube and fxhome community is already giving great feedback! Getting there, time is running short and lots has to get done. On a super good note I watched the film on Jeff's BIG screen, it needs tweaks but it looks like film! This weekend is more sound mixing and ~hopefully~ next week i'll being doing the "final" output.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-07-13T21:33:56-04:00

So much stuff has been going on. Okay I sent the film to St Louis Internal Film Festival and AFI (scheduled rejections). After that... made more edits so the end moves right along (there was a funky pause). More and more sound mixing. Teaser III uploaded to youtube and a quicktime in the Behind The Scenes. What else?... Been hanging at number 3 in google for war film. Awesome.

Well less than a month and it finally has to be done. Finally, the deadline. :D

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-07-08T20:40:08-04:00

Output Test

I'm going to send the film off prematurly to a few festivals plus i wanted to test the whole final output. So the film is about 20 minutes, it took 8-10 hours to output from Final Cut (uncompressed), 25 hours to add grain and convert to 24p and not sure how much time to encode the first DVD. Overall a looooong process. But it was well worth the knowledge.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-06-22T23:56:24-04:00

Got some sound into the opening credits. I spent almost the whole day categorizing thousands of sound effects into folders. I am going to dream about many many things tonight such as cows, telephones and ice cream trucks. (and none of those sounds will be in the film)

Five new sections are in the tutorials section. A preprouction, production, post-production and marketing and preproduction teasers. I have been neglecting that area for a while.

I heard on Friday we made it to three on google for War Film, one of the gals at work got a screen grab for me!!

Adam Valuckas

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-06-19T22:52:18-04:00

1. Well 99% of the effects are done, there is still one shot that bothers the hell out of me because it isn't as cool as I pictured. Uhhhh and its being a bastard, I LOVE Shake but sometimes the normal logic doesn't apply for some reason. Whatevers.

2. I did my first full test of the total finishing/grading process and it looks AMAZING! The film will be converted into 24P, a nice luma curve will be slapped on, a nice thick layer of grain and it looks like film. Here is the flip side, a fifteen second clip took a half hour to render.... Its going to take a week to render this. Killer. But it looks really really good.

3. This weekend i'm going to take a deep stab into the sound effects and cleaning up the sound. We'll see how that goes, I might have to take another week off to finish this. I have had Sound Track Pro for years and I really never used it, tell you what, editing sound in 5.1 is easy!!! Its flipping awesome! I have to make a tutorial about that after i learn more.

4. WE MADE IT NUMBER 4 ON GOOGLE for WAR FILM. FOUR!

5. Two new sneak peek stills are up of the grading test.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-06-16T23:05:26-04:00

I'm trying to find out how to add metadata to sound effects so I can search within soundtrack pro. Sorry, that was a very bland comment.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-06-14T23:01:39-04:00

Worked on the ending of the film all weekend. The last shots are epic and they can kiss my ass. Serious, they were brutal..... Image you HAVE to do something but it fights you to the bitter end. I spent 48 hours minus sleep fighting a handful of shots. But it looks 100% better then the first rendition and about 10,000% better than the temp Fighter Bomber that was there. I feel like a large ape beat the crap out of me all weekend.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-05-28T23:00:43-04:00

Part 2 (actual movie update)

Last weekend (three day memorial day weekend) i got to the end of the film for special effects. I'm actually "happy" with 8/10 of the film at this point. I still need to get the epic ending done and edit the open credits. Damn i wish i could take another week off to hammer the visuals out.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-05-28T22:50:01-04:00

Well I didn't get back to everyone... damnit. In other news panzercorps got to number 9 today for war film in a google search!!! I took a screen cap in commemoration (at 10, should have grabbed one while it was at 9)!

The number of pages seem to vary from 24 million to much higher. Wow, just wow. :D

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-05-20T21:19:31-04:00

I'm falling behind on getting back to people. I need a secretary HAHAHAHA! This memorial day weekend i WILL get back to everyone and I WILL keep hammering on the effects. Last weekend I got a lot done, i'm finally "happy" with the first third of the film (minus the opening credits). This weekend i'm going to try to knock out the main battle. Motion tracking is your friend and enemy.

To the dudes who are watching this stuff, Thank You!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-05-13T23:11:50-04:00

Popped up to 17 which is page TWO for "war film", man that is awesome. Right now we're hanging around 26, i can't wait to cut a trailer and see where that takes us.

Other news- still hammering on effects. Right now there are 111 "heavy" effects shots and the number just keeps growing and growing. Once you start adding "roll over effects" such as someone shoots in this shot so Now the next two shots need smoke, they add up. I think I'll make the August date but there is still a ton to do. Will it ever end?

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-05-06T23:22:04-04:00

The second teaser is producing good feedback and great reviews. It has also eclipsed the test clips in views on youtube in one month (test clips have been up for a year, wow a year).

Reorganized "behind the scenes", now the most current are up top. Still in the 30's in google, life is great.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-05-02T08:26:00-04:00

We're still hanging in the upper 30s for war film! Most awesome!! But honestly I haven't gotten much done this week, GTA4 came out and I have been glued to the set. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's only the best video game EVER! Okay okay, i know. This weekend i work like mule, okay?!

On a side note: The new teaser has just as many views on youtube as some of my other videos that have been there for a year!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-04-28T07:17:55-04:00

Amazing, the site popped up to 27 (now at 31).... Awesome :D

I have been re-working effects on sequence at a time. It is very long long work, last weekend i spend 12-14 hours on one shot that looks okay. Brutal. But everything is starting to look pretty darn good!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-04-16T21:24:30-04:00

70 On google for "war film", AHHHHH Love that! I'm sure the recent spike must be from posting the new Teaser. On that note the community at FXhome has been reviewing the Teaser providing great feedback. I can't wait to get this movie done!!!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-04-12T21:29:28-04:00

Jeff and I went to the National Archives, whew talk about really cool and boring all at the same time. Really cool that there is hundreds of tapes ready for you to copy, boring- the copying. It was a very weird experience being checked in 10 ways to sunday but we each got a researcher pass funny picture included. If you can make a government worker laugh your doing something right! :D

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-04-09T22:45:17-04:00

Briefly Panzer Corps was upto 81 under War Film for google, awesome! Today Teaser I and Teaser II were added under "Behind the Scenes" as high res quicktimes.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-04-08T19:27:09-04:00

Google - War Film - Rank 97!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAHHHHHHHHH Broke 100 , yes it will go back down but soak it in. Whoa, the air is so clean up here. :D

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-04-06T00:54:48-04:00

Holy crap, i jacked up the movie something fierce today. I was working on the opening title sequence and i wasn't paying attention to how i was shifting and deleting clips. Well I got most of the film out of sync to the point that I reverted back to an earlier save in the day. No real harm done, just a few minutes of terror! :o

Thankfully my own motto saved me "Save and Save Often".

Anyways, new Muzzle Flash Study added under War Film Tutorials.

Adam

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-04-04T23:33:06-04:00

Post Production "Equipment Tutorial" added to the War Film Tutorials section. Panzer Corps postproduction workflow is incorporated in there, what a monster!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-03-31T20:47:46-04:00

Once again a lot has happened since the last blog. I was able to take a week off from work and do solely effect! Twelve hours a day for nine days and there are over 100 effects so far. With the vast majority at least roughed in i can now spend time make each shot look as best as possible. Right now the new teaser (teaser II) is posted on the main page.

Enjoy
Adam Valuckas

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-03-13T21:38:03-04:00

Lots of stuff has happened, tons of test screeners went out and lots of feedback came back.

One need "sneak peak" image has been added- The EFFECTS HAVE COMMENCED! Sadly i won't have a vacation soon so this is going to be even slower than i anticipated. This sucks. I really need a month off, but i can't even have a week. Really sucks. Anyways, go look at the muzzle flash.

You want a war film, i give you a war film!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-02-28T20:18:05-05:00

I saw panzercorps had been translated enough that it popped up in my site reports so new google translation tool has been added to the site!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-02-24T20:59:43-05:00

New film tutorials content uploaded (sound effects). This week i also sent out More rough cut DVDs for people to rip into!!! I need to call the actors and the people who put us up for the shoot (Joanne and Rich).... I am so bad getting back to people, too damn focused.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-02-19T22:39:54-05:00

Rough Cut V2 DVDs sent out and updated myspace with cast and crew pics. Myspace... What has the world come to?

I have no heart to add a million friends that just want to add to their numbers on myspace ("myspace whores"). But what i find uplifting/amazing are our true fans!!!! It keeps me going honestly.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-02-17T15:19:01-05:00

New "Historical Stock Footage" section in the war film tutorials. I also added some video/film publications under Film Tutorials. You know what i need to add? A sound tutorial because people keep asking for it!!!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-02-11T20:42:26-05:00

Panzer Corps is a sponsor for Emily Jeffries in the The National Multiple Sclerosis Society's "Tour de Shore" bike ride... race? Either way GO GO GO before we shell you with 88s! :)

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-02-10T20:17:20-05:00

Rough Cut version two is done, DVDs printed and all we need is some feedback to make our final edits before jumping into the fun stuff. Things that go Bang. Hey, we are Google's NUMBER ONE Independent War Film!!!

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-02-09T20:13:06-05:00

Jeff and I went to the ordance museum on a Panzer hunt. Not only did we find one, but FIVE! Plus we got some great shots of Russian tanks that will be sadly, burning in the background.

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-01-28T23:16:54-05:00

Yo, new Post Production photos added from our trip to the ordnance museum to create matte paintings. Third-Row.com will be working on these for us, awesome!

Trax went to Sundance partied it us with Paris Hilton, double awesome!!

Juston Bolton is helping spread the word of Panzer Corps at Sundance, Thank you very much!!!!!

And I added some last names that were left out on the cast and crew, sorry Lora and Hunter. Plus a new FAQ and Site map were added to the site. Also massive edits to clean up the final battle have been made. This movie, is gong to be gun-tacular. I love explosions.

Adam Valuckas

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-01-25T23:43:12-05:00

New Uniform tutorial has been posted, completely new site map added and updated Film FAQ page. The next tutorial will be sound effects, i keep getting questions about that and i want to answer fully.

Last night Jeff, one of my producers came over and we reworked the (temporary) opening, lots of voice over work to get done. If you know any Russians of Germans in the Baltimore area let me know!

Adam V

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-01-16T00:19:35-05:00

New SUPER teaser up on the front page, if you can not see the video you need quicktime 7! There is so much work to get get done but we wanted to show the basic look of the film (before contrast correcting, effects, frame conversion, sound, music, ect ect ect)

Adam Valuckas

adam@valuckas.com — 2008-01-03T22:45:18-05:00

New particleillusion tutorial is online. This programs is amazing for producing 2d particles such as bullet hits, tree bark, sparks, fire, explosions... Little motion blur and we have shear goodness.

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-12-09T18:33:17-05:00

The saga continues, I'm "online" but my service is very very bad. Long time to explain. But i have really bad upload speeds, so the site is JACK right now. By the time you can read this that means i got someone to do a full upload for me. Well the good thing is we're getting decent traffic for no advertising. Sweet!

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-12-04T20:58:39-05:00

Oh hell i should be online today but "my server" at Verzion is broken.... Really? The server i happen to be on is broken the day i should be starting?? I have a personal server??? Really??? I don't believe that. Big "Service" oriented companies tend to lack service these days. Thank you.

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-12-03T21:06:44-05:00

There are still some pages that have not been updated on the website, mainly because i need information from the internet. But the site has changed drastically. The war film tutorials section should also help a lot more since it is categorized.

Adam Valuckas

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-12-01T00:49:43-05:00

AH Damnit! I've been putting a ton of work into the site and i just realized i have to re-do a lot of it..... uhhhhhh. I've been putting these nice black boarders on the images in Rapid Weaver, thats nice other than it more than doubles the file size of the images. Lame lame lame. (means, takes longer for people to view pages) So back to photoshop. I love Rapid Weaver (what i build the site with) but times like this make me want to bang my head.... against something hard.

Anyways i've been reworking all the art work on the site, I had too many different types of fonts and wacky page layouts. Simple baby- Black and White. Must be late, i didn't know 00:49 was a time of day.

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-11-29T21:58:10-05:00

Still not online Buuuuut making massive updates to the site and film. I "should" have DSL by the 5th. I'm trashing the whole gray look for a simple black and white theme for the website; much more direct and easy on the eyes.... or I'm bored of the gray?. Anyways i live like a monk and drink like a pirate; i need to get out more. Damn the holidays, i guess the movie will be my gal.... pathetic. HA!

Adam

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-10-31T22:09:34-04:00

I have been mulling over this footage for months now and i just really realized that one of my producers and my 1st AD played dead bodies for the main battle. I knew this don't get me wrong, but it just dawned on me why there never seemed to be enough hands on set HAHAHAHA. Ohhh good stuff. Well, they look good laying there.

This week i've been adding in cool shots now that the story is pretty much in place. My future self is going to hate me, but i want to get as many effects shots as possible in this short film. Yeah, he's gonna wanna kick me ass. (btw- I'm sure i've never typed "gonna wanna" before)

Adam Valuckas

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-10-28T18:20:48-04:00

There is a good reason for this, I moved into a new apartment AND by choice I have no internet, no cable, and not by choice a broken XBOX360. Needless to say this has helped my productivity immensely. Go to work, come home and work on the movie. Real fun..... Not really. The good part is a full rough cut is done! Now all the cool little shots are being added in and all the fat is being trimmed. Here is a timeline of the movie: Open, action, plot, action/ plot, credits. Beautiful!

If you have emailed me or commented on You Tube i apologize for not getting back to you. I hope you understand why. Okay if your seeing this that means i figured out how to update the site from work...

Adam :)

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-10-01T22:17:57-04:00

Love the word "Frick", if you watch the Battle Star you will too.

The edit is coming along very nice, some of the scenes seem to cut themselves while some are painful. Sometimes you have to kill your darlings, a teacher said that to me once. Its brutal but he was right.

*Side Note* You want to know something funny? You do?! Great!! There was a lot of butterflies that Love flying by the lens. Annoying, but pretty... Yeah, the actor delivers this great line and a nice present flutters by. Splendid but distracting.

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-09-10T22:28:19-04:00

Going good, big heap of footage. I have been watching the behind of the scenes of Lord of the Ring- Return of the King, there is a segment about this 16 year old kid with cancer making films in his last months. Holy crap, if that doesn't light a fire under your ass and in your heart nothing will. Keep on cracking!

Adam *out*

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-09-01T14:02:38-04:00

A few more sneak peek stills uploaded. Enjoy :)

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-08-31T19:15:55-04:00

I was just looking at PanzerCorps.com website report today on August 14th was it's one year anniversary and there has been some serious growth! In 2006 the website had 4,728 requests, in 2007 we have had 268,530 requests!!!!! (second half of 2006 compared to first half of 2007) Heck yeah, hopefully in 2008 we can blow that number out the water.

In other news i have several scenes edited, hopefully on this three day weekend i can cut a few more together. I'm finding it takes much longer to do this than commercials or even long format spot. I see that as a good thing. ;)

FAQ-added today. More FAQs to come.

Adam Valuckas

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-08-19T12:51:50-04:00

This day, this time is when the editing starts. I have digitized the nine hours of footage and within one minute of NOW i'm going to make my first cut into the film. Here we go!!!

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-08-18T17:06:57-04:00

Mr Lee Dingman snagged us half a dozen rolls of concertina wire from our buddies the US Army. Concertina wire is large evil rolls of metal, teeth, jagged edges and pain just waiting to happen; well today it left our life forever to be returned. Least my cuts and scraps will remind me why you should never store anything like that in your apartment.

Poor bastard Matt Conlon laid in the stuff for two days while we filmed the last scene, and Lee did "body breeches" (running on Matt's chest while laying on the wire) over and over again. Big thank you to Lee and Matt.

Farewell Concertina Wire. I will not miss you.

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-08-16T19:51:09-04:00

Photos and videos added, more to come semi-soon. For the video portion we used a Flip Video camera; its a simple USB camera that stores up to one hour of video on an internal hard drive. Everyone seemed to ask "what is that..... I want one!". Plus its cheap! Okay, go look at the media.

Adam

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-08-15T09:08:56-04:00

After the best night's sleep i woke up and shaved which felt like a privilege not a chore. My body is still covered in metallic silver spray paint after a spray can exploded in a trash fire (apparently perfectly legal when your in the middle of no where) after we wrapped. Yeah, molten paint does char your skin. But I feel rejuvenated.

I can't wait to start digitizing the footage and trashing/selling the props i've been collecting for the last year. My life has been wrapped around getting this or that and now it is all on little tapes ready to be edited. I'm very excited!

Adam

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-08-14T21:30:01-04:00

Never have i been so dirty, so stinky, so tired and yet so happy. The cast and crew did their best to make Panzer Corps as best as it could be, from constantly reconstructing tank traps to keeping bodies on fire... really. Our shoot was cut down to four days due to rain so we had to double time it to catch up. Honestly I hope this all makes sense, I'm very very tired. I thank you guys once again for all your hard work.

Sincerely
Adam Valuckas (the Director)

"annnnnnnnnnnnd........." ................"Cut" :)

adam@valuckas.com — 2007-08-01T21:29:00-04:00

So Adam has conned me into a blog in which I can update you the viewers on the behind the scenes of his soon-to-be epic film Panzer Corps. For the better part of a year Adam has kicked around the idea for making a war film that would make Saving Private Ryan look like a Power Ranger sequel. Only after a short time of research did he find direction with other historic and fictional films paving the way. That's where I came into the picture; I worked on a few films with Adam and told him I was crazy enough to go down this road in hopes to blow you the viewers away. We began slowly building stunt guns for explosions and then getting our hands on some replica war weaponry. It only pushed Adams creative process further; he basically became a machine- finding the right gear, look and appeal of the characters. I slowly had to shut down the factory- only to point out that a script was needed first and fore most. Soon to join the small army of Panzer were Jeff Leman and Matt Tull. With the three of them working hard and ideas flying back and forth, I felt it was safe to leave them be. I did my best to stay out of their way until its time for me to step in and give my two cents. Jeff, Matt and Adam slowly chipped away at many drafts and after a few months the final Panzer Corps script seems to be just over the horizon. It overwhelms Adam with joy knowing the script will be out of the way and he can go back to playing with his guns and armor once again. I think he's a bit too excited about all his new editing software, but as a producer I'd rather have him happy.
 
Matt Conlon