Creative Association

To me, there's more to just the name of a studio, or media group, or creative collective. There's association. Either good or bad, it's there. What's the first thing you think of when you hear the studio name "Bad Robot"? For me, it's Star Trek 2009, which is a fantastic movie and instantly associates Bad Robot with something great. "Giant Killer Robots" with Fantastic Four; "Industrial Light and Magic" with Star Wars and Indiana Jones; and now "Weta Digital" with Lord of the Rings (and now Avatar).

MindBend Studios has been my cover name for all my creative endeavors since the beginning, since around late 1999. I still like that name and I still plan on using it. However, I have felt the need for a different identity when it comes to motion graphics and visual effects in film, something that raises an eyebrow and causes a question from the viewer. It doesn't need to be epic, or cause the viewer to say "OMG!! That's awesome!", actually I would prefer it not to. It just needs to be able to stir a double-take, to show something to the viewer that is unexpected. That's enough to take interest, to associate everything that follows to that first unexpected moment.

This year is going to be a year full of changes both professional and personal, and I think I'm going to enter this new year under the guise of "Angler Digital", although I'm not 100% on this. I'm already working on a graphic that involves the Angler's lure swinging across the screen to reveal the "Angler Digital" logo. This is definately something that will make people say "W... what?".

Kicking off the new year...

2010 hasn't even started yet and I'm already going through a whirlwind of various projects.

The producer of our last film, Quantum Immortality, is also a popular Chicago radio DJ, and he's called upon me to create some graphics and promo material for a live "top 25" countdown show this New Years Eve. Unfortunately he called me while I was on vacation in Minnesota, so we just got together for the first time today to discuss this project. So, now I'm rushing to get it all done, though I shouldn't have any problems getting it done, rendering it will be the most time consuming and I already have the design laid out.

In other news, before I left for vacation I had a one-on-one with a director that I met in my film group. He's looking for someone to do special effects for several projects he has lined up starting next year, and he was really impressed with my work so far, so there's a very good chance I'll be working with him early next year.

And other things are really starting to shape my Film career, and making me really thrilled to be a resident of the Chicagoland area. The largest studio outside of Hollywood is being built really close to me and should be ready sometime in 2010. A friend of mine from my film group knows the guy responsible for bringing this studio here, and he's worked for Digital Kitchen and on some big movies like Terminator Salvation. I am super excited about this!

They Hunger - Recap

My video for the Home Run Inn Video contest didn't win, but I didn't expect it too. It was a huge "See how many people you can get to constantly vote for your video" contest, not anywhere close to any kind of a quality contest. But that's ok, the winner's video was pretty bad, so his victory will be short-lived. Here is my video in HD, you can see the winner's video >here.

I'm still proud of my video, I think it's my best day-to-night composite yet, and I still love my Harry Potter title intro! :)

They Hunger - Home Run Inn Pizza commercial contest from Dave Spooner on Vimeo.

Windows 7 = wow

Windows 7 marks the first time I have ever installed an OS without having to install ANYTHING else. Win7 loaded everything for me, all the drivers were installed. Not only that, but upon my first bootup, before I did anything, Windows notified me that it had downloaded and installed updated drivers for my video card!

I did have to install an antivirus, but that's to be expected for any OS. But Windows took me to a nice website that listed a couple dozen different Antivirus software to let me choose from. I always choose AVG, so I clicked on that. Unfortunately, the website that it brought me too was not the free version, but I don't think that's Windows fault.

After Antivirus install and UAT disable, it was ready. A mere 20 minutes for complete installation. I like this.

Get Schooled

The past few years, while learning and doing and working on various projects, November and December have traditionally been my slow-down days where I don't work on any projects and just sit back and let motivation take hold. Thanksgiving and the Christmas seasons are pretty much family time.

I have a lot of motivation right now for continued learning, and after my OS rebuild which I hope to do this weekend, there are several things I want to delve into:

1. Houdini 10
2. Fusion 6
3. Advanced After Effects techniques
4. Softimage 2010

The past year I've been pretty much working with sequences from start to finish. But, as much as I want to be familiar with every aspect of post-production, I've learned that I have a love of particles and fluids. That's what I really REALLY want to learn, so I've got my eye on learning node-based programs like Houdini and Fusion, which is where the industry is leaning towards. Plus, if the gods were to do particle effects, they would use Houdini. So that's what I want to learn.

As of now, I just don't get node-based workflows. I'm so used to the time-line and hierarchy style of After Effects compositions (and even older programs like AVS), that dealing with nodes is quite outside of my comfort zone.

But, I really want to discover the industry in every way possible, and that means learning the different ways that other programs do (mostly) the same thing.

Turbo on!

This past weekend was just plain awesome, I did nothing. No work, no school, no traveling, awesome. That means I was able to sit down and get the wedding video done finally. It's sitting pretty at 2 hours and 10 minutes and I believe is a wonderful piece of work that I'm sure will help remind them of their special day (it had better be awesome, this is my entry into the videographer world). I'm just putting the finishing touches on the DVD authoring portion of it, and adding chapters, then it will be ready for review. I'm hoping I can get the DVD mailed by the end of this week.

After this, I don't have any projects on my plate, which is good because it's system rebuild time! Twice a year I rebuild the OS on my system, it makes for a good speed refresh and gets all the updates and security patches onto a fresh install. Plus I've got my very own retail copy of Windows 7 ready to be loved and nourished. I've been using Windows 7 since beta build 6821, and it has been quite a treat for me. I hated Vista and went back to XP after about 6 months with it. So, 7 has been really good to me so far.

Once the rebuild is done, I'm thinking about going back and redoing my show-reel since I've added 3 more projects since I released it a month ago, and I've got a LOT of tutorials that I've been dying to get to, I especially want to learn Cinema 4D very badly! So, I might be entering learning mode for a while, which is always good. At least until the next project.

A short-changed life

I was finally able to start putting Dave and Lisa's wedding video together. After organizing all 7 hours of video (2 cameras) and 4 hours of external audio (external source), I started with the wedding ceremony first.

With constantly having to stop/start recording and reposition my cameras (it was a catholic mass ceremony so there was a lot of movement) I had several gaps during some important parts, and it was a real relief to have an external source always constantly recording audio because I am able to use that audio to fill in the gaps and some other status shots during the wedding as filler. Plus it makes the entire ceremony seem like it was professionally shot continuously with 3 or 4 cameras and a large crew of camera men.

So far, the ceremony is 37 minutes up to their vows, which I was surprised to get recorded. And I still have a LONG way to go.

My wife also has a friend whom just got engaged, and are looking for a videographer on a tight budget. But they want the wedding and reception for around $600. Considering the amount of work so far that has gone into this production, I'm not going to sell myself short this time. If they only have $600, then I'm going to limit the amount of footage that I shoot. I probably need to come up with a pricing scheme, and the current wedding I am working on will be a great indication of what I should charge for each piece, I'm thinking about charging by the video shot/hour because weddings are different for each couple. I don't want to short-change myself, but I also still want to give plenty of options for budget weddings.

Bachelors in Internet Security/Film

The career services department called me the other day, they needed me to fill out a graduation packet in advance for graduating next year. They also wanted to go over my resume and start sending me job leads. I also needed my schedule and a couple other things and yesterday was the only day I could do it (very busy weekend ahead), so I rushed out to school to meet with my Career Services advisor.

My situation is unique in that, while going to school for Computer Security, I've also developed my motion graphics/animation hobby into something nearing entry-level professional quality. So I will hopefully be graduating with two career possibilities which was my goal a few years ago when I started all this.

I was surprised to learn that my Career Services advisor knew this, and was going to start sending me Freelance opportunities in motion graphics/film. While this makes me very nervous, I am still very excited about doing freelance work in the film industry, although I am skeptical because the school has NO film related course!

But, we'll see what comes up.

Quantum Immortality

All I have to say, was that this was definitely the biggest production I have been involved with so far. More than 30 people were involved in the making of it during production, but because of all the problems other people had in post-production I ended up doing all the editing, 3-D animation, and visual effects.

This is not a big deal though, we didn't "fall apart" in post or anything like that. It's just that when I heard of the other two people (who were going to be doing the editing and 3-D animation) were having computer issues n' such, I decided to step in and do all the post production work in preparation of not having their produced videos.

It turned out great, because, for these two guys, it was their first involvement in a quick deadline production and the stress was definitely evident on Saturday when we met. They were pretty frantic about not having anything done, but when they learned that I went ahead and did everything just in case they were relieved. And it also turned out to be a sort of "mentor" type of situation because they thought my work was much better than theirs. They were asking questions about how I did certain things and approaching certain situations, so it was great to pass down some of the knowledge I had attained in the past year to other students who were going to school in the field.

This video is premiering in a Westwood College film festival tomorrow, and I hope that everyone will be surprised and excited as my teacher was when he first saw it today.

We've got many more ideas, and my teacher want's to do more videos with the same premise, so I'm sure this will not be my last video with him. Plus he has a band and wants to do music videos and since he liked my work, I might be working more with him as well.

Doors are opening!!!

Quantum Immortality - Teaser

I finished a Quantum Immortality teaser trailer, we have finished filming and are now in post production. Here it is:

Wedding Bliss(ters)

All-in-all I am very satisfied with my Vixia HG21. I was worried that I would miss a lot of shots during the reception as the sun went down and lights dimmed on the dance floor, but I was able to capture everything without having to use the very bright (and battery sucking) light attachment.

I shot a little over 5 hours of video, and recorded over 4 hours of external audio only running on my laptop battery. I was very impressed that the battery of my new Dell Latitude E6400 lasted as long as it did recording audio from my M-Audio Fast Track, it was fantastic.

Being the on the production side of a wedding for the first time was interesting. I got to know the DJ, Photographer, the Priest, and the Maitre d' and we all worked very closely together to make sure we were all able to do our job well.

But besides the photographer being a jerk even though it looked like he was a good photographer, the only hiccup I had was the entrance of the bride and father of the bride walking down the aisle. I was pretty confident that my camera was up high enough, but the instant that they came down the aisle the attendees all stood up and, of course, the tallest biggest person in the church was in front of my main camera. Quite near panicking, I repositioned the main camera to point up front to where they were going to approach and I grabbed the secondary camera and moved up to the front of the altar to capture them half way down the aisle. After they got close I moved out of the way and the main camera picked them up from there. That was too close and I should of spent more time positioning the main camera correctly. But everything else including the reception went very smoothly, including using the tripod and the weight as a steady cam, that worked beautifully in getting a lot of dramatic shots without a lot of camera shaking.

Add some more battery juggling, blisters and sore feet, and 5 bags of equipment to move around at a time, it was tiring and somewhat hectic at times, but it was an enjoyable experience that I hope to do again and maybe this time on the +net income side.

I still have a lot to do to prepare their video(s), but I'm going to make the best of the footage I got and do a multitiered production with a combination of different kinds of videos, highlights, and raw footage to help them celebrate the memory of their wonderful day.

Home Run Inn Video Contest

I finally finished the Home Run Inn video I was working on, I added another scene of us chowing down on the pizza after it had attacked us in the car, I think it turned out much better than before. After he saw the draft of the video, Paul suggested that there wasn't a conclusion which led to the extra scene of us eating the pizza.

Considering it was directed, filmed, acted, edited and finalized by me (with the help of my wife's acting) I am very satisfied with it. We used a lot of green screen over the windows of the car and I learned something about using green screen; When using green screen up close, it is best to not have a lot of light due to the fact that the green material will wash out the scene with green which will look weird when it's keyed out. The scenes from the side of the car had the right side windows blotted with green screen but that side was in the shade which gave me a dark, unlit green screen, but it was enough green to be keyed out easily and didn't affect the rest of the scene.

So, when using shooting on a green screen, don't always assume that you need a lot of light in order to key out the green screen. Depending on the distances of the object from the green screen and the scene in general, sometimes no external luminance is needed at all. In a scene in which you must use a light where no natural light is available, try indirect luminance by illuminating away at the rest of the room to produce reflective lighting.

Recognition

By the end of October, if everything goes well, I will have 5 projects finished in 3 months. All of a sudden I find myself with almost too much work, whereas 6 months ago I was bored out of my mind.

Here is the current list:

The Missing Bank Card 2: Done
Igor's Lament (Butterfinger Commercial): Done
They Hunger (Home Run Inn Commercial): 90%
Wedding Videographer: 0%
Quantum Immortality: 5%

Quantum Immortality is the most interesting one, not because of the concept but because of the way I've ended up playing a major role in it's production. Let's just say it REALLY pays to have a place online to show videos and my portfolio.

In the beginning of the semester, my Science Fiction class briefly thought it was a good idea to make a Sci-fi movie. I thought it would be cool too, but I was heavily skeptical about everyone's motivation to just START it.

But I was surprised to walk into class Tuesday morning, they were dividing up the work for the film and sketching ideas and plot elements. All of a sudden I was in the middle of a huge (30 people) production with a 10-20 minute Sci-fi film, and I didn't have a job... yet...

I played it coy, and casually asked the Director (student led) who was doing the special effects? He said that they were lucky to have two students from Game Design in here who could pull off all the effects. The two other students were talking with the set designer and script writer, I pulled up a chair to listen in, and waited for the right spot to jump in.

It was pretty quick. People started asking lots of "can we do this/that?", and trying to film alien words in our back yard, and about lasers/explosions/sparks/blood/smoke, even lightsabers. They started to get a little uneasy about the things that were being requested, so I stepped in and said "yes".

They all looked at me, not expecting someone to say yes. They asked if I had film experience and I said yes. They were still looking somewhat skeptical at me, so I opened up my YouTube site and showed them what I can do.

And that's when the door opened.

A few minutes later and the set designers, costume designers, script writers, and the director were asking me what was possible and what was not. They viewed my videos and started to get really excited about the possibilities.

All of a sudden, our cheesy student film was turning into a Sci-fi Epic. The last semester also did a sci-fi film... And while that was funny, I know we can do 100x better.

They Hunger - Draft

Sunday I filmed and finished a draft of my Home Run Inn Pizza halloween video. I liked how it turned out and it has produced several laughs from the few people I have shown it to.

I want to submit it by next Sunday night before the voting starts, but I'm a little wary of this contest. First off, there is only one entry so far on the site and it's a promotional video, obviously disqualified because of the length. But other than that video there are ZERO valid entries so far on the site.

Now, it could just be that it's too early, the contest started on August 31st and runs through October 18th.

Or it could be that there are no entries because of the huge fiasco that occurred at last year's contest. There were 5 finalists, but then a mysterious 6th finalist showed up and won the contest near the end. The 6th finalist was a crappy video made by people related to the Home Run Inn company and it had copyrighted music, should of been double-disqualified according to the contest rules.

But that didn't happen, the 6th video won and there was a massive uproar about it for a while. I guess any publicity is good publicity, and it might be their plan again this year.

I'm going to sit on it for at least a week before I decide.

They Hunger

There's an online video contest for Home Run Inn Pizza, they are looking for Halloween themed short films (commercials) under 2 minutes. I've had an idea for a script, but we've been unable to commit to it (or any other script), personal life keeps getting in the way!! It really would be my dream to do film and special effects all day, every day, but now I have to settle for hobby in addition to work, school, wife, and all other issues that seem to crop up almost monthly.

Anyways, the script stars a couple in a car driving down a dark moonlit road with the forest on each side. Without going into details, basically they are stalked by a killer Home Run Inn Pizza box with murderous intent.

The couple, is going to have to be me and my wife. So how do we film this? It's going to be tricky but I have some ideas. We are going to use green screen and separately shot footage to composite onto the windows to give the effect of the car being driven. I will use previously shot footage of a random car (needs to be somewhat similar to mine, but doesn't need to be me). Since we won't be driving, I will be able to tripod the camera outside the car to film us acting. And then composite separate keyed footage of a Homerun Inn Pizza box in various places, like slamming up against the window in pure psycho killer fasion.

I've got a script and a shot list, all I need now is the time to film it all, probably try to do it this Sunday. This will be my first lone-production, but I don't really enjoy being on this end of pre-production, I just like being in post and helping out during production. But $2,500 grand prize is just too tempting to pass up, and it will be a great test of all this new camera equipment.

AVCHD or HDV?

I've been asked to film a wedding for my Wife's best friend, and lacking the hardware I only asked for enough money in order to get the equipment necessary to get her the best possible quality. In my research the past 2 weeks I've come across a very difficult decision; do I stick with the tried and true HDV tape format? Or do I go with a newer, slightly more compressed non-tape method?

Let's round out the pros and cons (for me) of each:

HDV - Pros:

-Established
-Confident to use
-Better quality
-Can use Firewire to record/evaluate video in Adobe OnLocation in pre-production.
-Permanent backup method, store the tapes.
-Mpeg2 codec captures at 25mbps

HDV - Cons

-Tape method
-Max 63 minutes per tape
-Singular massive files per tape
-Transferring video takes as long as the video was shot
-Tape mechanisms *can* be clumsy
-Changing tapes could mean losing shots
-Deleting video means shooting over scenes
-Max resolution is 1440x1080
-Slow turnaround of shots

AVCHD - Pros:

-Flash or Hard Drive method
-Drag and drop files from camera to computer.
-Deleting videos simple as deleting a file.
-Files are by session not by tape
-AVCHD codec now captures at 25mbps
-Quick turnaround for testing shots
-Records at 1920x1080 60i and beyond

AVCHD - Cons:

-Normally no firewire port, can't use with Adobe OnLocation
-Lossy format, some artifacts
-Generally slightly lower quality than HDV
-Needs hard drive space to store (not really a con for me as I have almost 2 terabytes of space)

For the wedding I'm going to shoot, I would not like to be limited by batteries AND tapes. For practice, I've tested the time to replace batteries and continue filming to about 10 seconds, when it also takes about 30 seconds to replace a tape.

I first bought an AVCHD camera, the Canon VIXIA HG21. I was originally planning on going with the HV40 HDV camera but I decided to try this one because it had a 120gb hard drive, which means 11 hours of continuous shooting at the highest bitrate. That takes a load off my shoulders not having to deal with tapes. Even though I am confident filming this wedding, the less things I have getting in the way the better since I will be using two cameras by myself with the help of my wife.

After this wedding, I am hoping (now that we will have a 2nd unit) that we can work at more local weddings and provide two camera guys for a decent price to couples needing the best quality for their budget.

While Paul would rather not do weddings, we both agree that it would be a great 2nd income to help fund the studio. Paul would much rather be telling stories and creating film magic, I have found a nice niche doing highlight videos and creating stories out of capture moments that I feel I can apply to building some memorable wedding videos.

There's still 2 1/2 weeks until the wedding, so I can always try out the HV40. Although I'm going to try my best to make the HG21 work for me, I just don't want to deal with tapes.

In the newspaper...

Here is Igor's Lament, our video submission for the Butterfinger video contest!

Igor's Lament from Dave Spooner on Vimeo.

Also, my first day with the DuPageFilm group also happened to be the day the Wheaton Sun newpaper sent a photographer to document the group. I'm there, although you can only see the back of my head.

Getting in on the act:

Demo Reel - 09.05.09

Demo reel, 2008 - August 2009.

Knowing - Plane Crash

When I first saw the previews for "Knowing", I was thinking "Jeez, not another Nicholas Cage nice guy hero movie!". I wasn't even planning on seeing it, but the wife brought it home and we wanted to watch a movie and there was nothing else to watch so we popped it in.

Little was I prepared for a very surprising movie, and the Jet Plane crash was an amazing effects sequence. It takes a lot for me to be "wowed" by special effects, but I literally said "holy $h1t!" a couple times as it was happening. I mean, it's not the effects that are really incredible, it's the realism and the fact that it was ONE CUT for the whole crash sequence!

One thing I have discovered while learning motion graphics and special effects the past few years, is that there is a huge difference in difficulty between a 1 second effect and a 10 second effect. It works just like the Richter scale. Most of the big special effects (explosions, fire, heavy action) that you see in the movies is heavily cut into easily manageable 1-2 second scenes. But when you have an entire scene full of explosions, people on fire, an entire CG plane ripping across the landscape and interacting with it, and it's 2 MINUTES LONG... that's a LOT of work!

This scene could of easily have been several 5-10 second cuts fit together, but it wouldn't have been 1/10th as impressive is it is. Kudos to the team that was able to put this together, enjoy:

Afterburn Results

This has to be the best results I have ever gotten with Afterburn. I took a year old project because it had a great particle animation, and then updated the atmospherics, models, and afterburn shading. IMO impressive results, at 1280x720 it's about 5 minutes per frame which is acceptable.

Sometimes when I get good results in a picture, the animation is really off and doesn't look right, but this animated quite nicely, I just need to change the times of the initial plume and then I'll be ready to do a full render test.

Rendering inefficiency or awesomeness?

Over the past 2 years I've been caught in the delusional thinking that must choose between FumeFX and Afterburn for explosions and fire effects, but I've come to the realization that each program has it's specific uses and purpose. FumeFX is best for close shots of fire, and for simulating the liquid properties of fire. Afterburn is best for big, detailed, distance shots of explosions and rely on particles rather than a simulation.

The problem with Afterburn, is when I finally get good looking (and animating) results, my render-times skyrocket. The problem with FumeFX is that it likes to think it's running out of memory and crash, and good looking simulations take up many gigs of space. Plus with FumeFX, the physical space for your simulations are restricted to a pre-made box (and bigger means more processing), while Afterburn is limited to whatever you can do in PFlow, which is a lot.

I am currently rendering a test animation of some Afterburn explosions, and my render times are upwards of 3-4 minutes per frame. And at 400 frames, it's gonna take a while. I don't like waiting to see that I screwed up something and I'm going to have to render again. But I guess that's the biz.

In Progres...

I was reminiscing today, looking over old projects, finished and unfinished. Our most ambitious film, PEARL, still lies unfinished waiting to be revived. A year ago, we tried to finish it in time for a film contest, but ended up not happy with the results and decided to push it aside for the time being. The problem with PEARL is that it features several minutes of total CGI rendered sequences in space. The opening 2 minutes features an attack on a space vessel from a dozen or so fighters and a couple larger attack vessels.



A sequence like that is generally done in a studio with a couple dozen animators, modelers, particle simulators, and compositors all working on separate scenes. At the time, I had only 6 months experience with 3DS Max and was just getting into learning the Afterburn plugin. I had created some test animations and explosions, and they were good, but the modeling needed some serious work.



After 9 revisions of the visual style of the ships and atmosphere between December of 2007 and August of 2008, we finally got something what we thought at the time was good enough to start filming. During filming, I started previsual work on the opening sequence which was 1:45 long. After about 16 revisions, the animation sequence was approved and then I started the final renders. In the end though, after it was completed, I decided that I hated it, and wasn't proud of it, and after a final cut was produced, we all decided that it was not good enough to finalize, so we put the project on the back-burner.

After a much needed hiatus after that, and now, two more projects finished, I feel like trying to conquer this once and for all. During the last year, I redesigned all the ships and the sequence entirely from the ground up and I feel that now something is possible which wasn't before. While the motivation hasn't creeped in yet, I'm still excited about the possibilities.

The Missing Bank Card 2: The Revenge of Stephen Douglas (Video)

As you could probably tell from the film, we had a tremendous amount of fun making it. It was our first film in which we didn't feel too constricted by our lack of experience. In the past, we felt too limited by our lack of knowledge in filmmaking and special effects to really get the look and feel that we wanted.

One thing that was considerably different with this film, was the amount of time we had to work on it. I had about a month before shooting to research and prepare effects, and 3 weeks after filming to put the effects together. We collaborated primary through rendered outputs of videos through email, and the last week we gathered up all our computers and hardware and made Paul's "game" room home for several days while we ironed it out.

My most time-consuming scene, was the car-portal explosion with Douglas. I was lucky enough to acquire Video Copilot's Action Movie Essentials 2 stock footage library for the explosion video, and I created a disintegration mask over a painstakingly hand-rotoscoped, slowmotion video of Douglas (Jeff Benson) in front of the car waving his arms.

99% of the time, I can always count on Paul to change something in an effect shot, whether it's changing the colors, the order of the shots, or just plain changing it entirely. This is most certainly not a bad thing, it helps prepare me for the real world of motion graphics. There's a saying in the industry "Pimp yourself, not your work", never fall in love with your work, and it ALWAYS changes before it reaches the final product, and ALWAYS be willing to change it for whomever wants it changed, because someone else always sees something that you don't.

It was funny, the only scene that Paul didn't ask me to redo, was the M.T. fight scene. Which I was surprised, because to me that scene is the only scene that I am not too happy about, it just wasn't perfect. But since he loved it on the first take, I decided not to mess with it unless I had time (which of course I didn't).

This is (so far) my proudest film and I am very glad to have worked with everyone on it. And I hope to top this.... very soon...

Matte Painting (Video)

We've always had the idea of doing a Fantasy film. Up until now, we didn't have the knowledge on exactly how to do that. This video shows a simple track matte, which is simply motion tracking the whole scene and keying in objects that don't belong. This is the basis of films that don't have the ability of shooting on location. I mean, where else are you going to find a firey mountain side with an exploding volcano for the land of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings? Or showing people walking through an old 1800's town that doesn't have city skyscrapers or cars running in the background?

That's the magic of matte painting, and is extremely common in many movies. Sometimes they may just be replacing a small object in the scene, like a window ad in a store, or grafiti on a brick wall. Other times its more advanced like removing roads from a scene so that it looks more isolated, or adding thousands of warriors fighting on a battlefield when you only have a dozen or so actual actors.

In need of a hiatus...

The past month has been extremely busy. On top of two short-film deadlines, we have all been juggling work, school, vacations, and other family time, and somehow inserting two of our most technically challenging films to date.

We entered the 2nd annual Land of Lincoln Credit Union film contest again this year. Last year we won an award for "Best Direction" for "The Missing Bank Card", and this year was more of the same. We won for "Best use of the logo" for the sequel "The Missing Bank Card 2" but we failed to get the coveted "Best Film" award, again. Even though it was a major letdown for me, I don't feel so bad now that I look back on it; we lost to the same guy who also won last year (Steve Heinzel), and his film was very good (again), and I felt as though our film generated the biggest and best audience reaction throughout the whole film.

So, it wasn't bad. Even a few of the event directors felt very strongly that our film should of won, and that we are "required" to make a sequel again next year to finish the trilogy. Even this year's winner, Steve Heinzel, thought that we were going to take the trophy this year. If there was anyone whom I wouldn't mind losing to, it is Steve Heinzel, while his films aren't technically amazing, he has a cinematic eye that is just awe inspiring.

After that, we all had a series of vacations and work-related business that kept us from focusing on the next project which was submitting an entry for the "Protect Your Butterfinger Bar" commercial film contest. We were able to get it done in time for the deadline, and while I am very proud of it, even though I re-used effects that I had done in my previous films, it is a very funny piece of work. There is another film which I think will beat it, and I feel as though we are missing the mark on the commercial tie-in for the Butterfinger, but it is still a solid entry.

If you want to check it out, head to http://protectyourbutterfingerbar.com and go to the "Best use of a Gadget" section and look for a film titled "Igor's Lament". That's our film, and yes, I played Igor... I just kept repeating "25,000$" in my head, that's how I was willing to do the dress... scene...

Well, I know that this is a very long first post, I have a lot rattling around up there. I don't know if this blog will get any attention, but that's alright, I just need a place to write.

Dave