We just finished filming "Nick of Time", and it was such an incredible experience to work on a professional set. Actors seriously memorized their lines, only one fib in 3 days of shooting and these were long continuous lines! There were a minimum of 7 people behind the scenes checking lighting, sound, grips and gaffers, recording details about each take (script supervisor, which was me), the Director was glued to a monitor while the cinematographer set up frames and operated the camera.
It was great working with a really professional group of people, everyone knew their jobs and did them very well. Even though it was a professional atmosphere, we still had a lot of fun.
Editing process will begin tonight, and I still have the wedding video that is just about complete. And The Missing Bank Card 3 found it's way back onto my plate, so we will be polishing that tomorrow.
Busy busy!!!
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
A little breather
Last weekend we burned through about 36 hours straight to get The Missing Bank Card 3 finished and submitted. This movie turned out to be quite a beast, with 60% green screen and %70 other visual effects it was difficult to keep things in order. It turned out really well, and is a nice ending to the trilogy. But I got to work on my green screen, it was really difficult to get satisfied results. It also might have something to do that our green screen was terrible (cloth thumb-tacked to the wall) and had a lot of shadows and uncovered areas.
This week has been a nice little breather before another pair of productions get started; I have a wedding I am filming on Saturday, just the ceremony and small parts of the reception. And day 1 of filming the short film "Nick of Time" begins Sunday evening. Luckily this new film doesn't have any big special effects, but I will be doing the editing and on-set supervision. It's a big production with lots of people involved, and we are filming on a Canon 7D so that will be fun to work with as well.
It's going to be weird working on a film where my involvement will not be comprehensive, so it will be a nice relaxing production and a taste of what a "normal" production is like. When I say relaxing, it's relative to what I am used to! :)
The director wants the film done in two weeks after filming, shouldn't be a problem so long as I have all the assets I need to put it together. And with no big special effects, it's a one-stop shop in Adobe Premiere with my awesome new CUDA compatible video card to edit in real time!
This week has been a nice little breather before another pair of productions get started; I have a wedding I am filming on Saturday, just the ceremony and small parts of the reception. And day 1 of filming the short film "Nick of Time" begins Sunday evening. Luckily this new film doesn't have any big special effects, but I will be doing the editing and on-set supervision. It's a big production with lots of people involved, and we are filming on a Canon 7D so that will be fun to work with as well.
It's going to be weird working on a film where my involvement will not be comprehensive, so it will be a nice relaxing production and a taste of what a "normal" production is like. When I say relaxing, it's relative to what I am used to! :)
The director wants the film done in two weeks after filming, shouldn't be a problem so long as I have all the assets I need to put it together. And with no big special effects, it's a one-stop shop in Adobe Premiere with my awesome new CUDA compatible video card to edit in real time!
Friday, July 9, 2010
The busy time of year
In the past few years, July has signified the production of our most famous short film series, The Missing Bank Card. These films are specifically shot for the Land of Lincoln Credit Untion's 21 Film Project. This contest is specifically catered to showcase and award short films produced with the Land of Lincoln tagline "bank on learning more".
The best 20 films that meet the specific criteria are shown at an extravigant awards show in August. In 2008 and 2009 we have shown and achieved awards for The Missing Bank Card 1 and 2: (The revenge of Steven Douglas), but we did not get "Best in Show" which also awards money. This year, we hope to change that.
The Missing Bank Card 3: The Demise of Abraham Lincoln has been in production for a couple days now, and so far it's even more ambitious than the last two films combined. Probably 75% of the film will be shot on a green screen with multiple cameras, lots more special effects, and more characters introduced. Of course, when you finish a trilogy, you have to outdo your other films by a given margin.
I also have a feeling that this will be our last year at this contest, whether we win or not. It's tiresome to continue producing short films that can only be used at for the LLCU film project, and the fatigue that shows during these productions is very evident.
The one thing that keeps us going, to finish the trilogy, is the fact that our films have historically been the crowd favorite. If you go to the 21 Film Project web site, you see our film featured on that page even though ours did not win Best in Show. The film that won 1st place last year is all the way at the bottom of the list of last years winners. That's telling you something.
Both films, especially last years film, garnered a lot of crowd appreciation and applause. This year, the producers of the film contest were excited when they learned that we were going to finish up the trilogy, and they even gave us a little lee-way on the timing of the film so that we could use some time to put in an epilogue explaining the previous film without counting against our overall time. So, this is it. Sink or swim. Win or go home. Boxers or briefs. It's now or never.
Here's a few teaser screenshots of the production so far:
The best 20 films that meet the specific criteria are shown at an extravigant awards show in August. In 2008 and 2009 we have shown and achieved awards for The Missing Bank Card 1 and 2: (The revenge of Steven Douglas), but we did not get "Best in Show" which also awards money. This year, we hope to change that.
The Missing Bank Card 3: The Demise of Abraham Lincoln has been in production for a couple days now, and so far it's even more ambitious than the last two films combined. Probably 75% of the film will be shot on a green screen with multiple cameras, lots more special effects, and more characters introduced. Of course, when you finish a trilogy, you have to outdo your other films by a given margin.
I also have a feeling that this will be our last year at this contest, whether we win or not. It's tiresome to continue producing short films that can only be used at for the LLCU film project, and the fatigue that shows during these productions is very evident.
The one thing that keeps us going, to finish the trilogy, is the fact that our films have historically been the crowd favorite. If you go to the 21 Film Project web site, you see our film featured on that page even though ours did not win Best in Show. The film that won 1st place last year is all the way at the bottom of the list of last years winners. That's telling you something.
Both films, especially last years film, garnered a lot of crowd appreciation and applause. This year, the producers of the film contest were excited when they learned that we were going to finish up the trilogy, and they even gave us a little lee-way on the timing of the film so that we could use some time to put in an epilogue explaining the previous film without counting against our overall time. So, this is it. Sink or swim. Win or go home. Boxers or briefs. It's now or never.
Here's a few teaser screenshots of the production so far:
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Departmentalized
The crew that makes up the Fusion Dance TV production met together last night for a long meeting. We discussed primarily appointing responsibilities and assigning everyone's respective "department" and making sure everyone know what they are responsible for.
A new guy, an intern, was given the responsibility of putting together the stand-alone music videos. He will use the graphic templates that I have given him to put everything together.
I was assigned the News and Events department, which will involve taking video that was shot and editing them together along with any graphics of which I have creative freedom. This will also involve putting together the Top-10 countdown video utilizing my Cube concept in the near future.
Now that we finally have a system, reliability is still in question. Still, to this date, there have been VERY few things that the Fusion producers have actually given to me that I have requested. After the meeting last night they have finally put a lot of the items that I requested onto their FTP for me to get, which is great. Hopefully this will continue and I won't be left to hang, and someone else is rushing to put together a mediocre product at the last second.
I recorded about 2 hours worth of video at the Fusion Pride Parade, and I did get video of Brent Sopel and the Stanley Cup, as well as the Fusion float. It was my first time at the Chicago Pride Parade, and I had more fun than I thought I would considering I am partially homophobic.
A new guy, an intern, was given the responsibility of putting together the stand-alone music videos. He will use the graphic templates that I have given him to put everything together.
I was assigned the News and Events department, which will involve taking video that was shot and editing them together along with any graphics of which I have creative freedom. This will also involve putting together the Top-10 countdown video utilizing my Cube concept in the near future.
Now that we finally have a system, reliability is still in question. Still, to this date, there have been VERY few things that the Fusion producers have actually given to me that I have requested. After the meeting last night they have finally put a lot of the items that I requested onto their FTP for me to get, which is great. Hopefully this will continue and I won't be left to hang, and someone else is rushing to put together a mediocre product at the last second.
I recorded about 2 hours worth of video at the Fusion Pride Parade, and I did get video of Brent Sopel and the Stanley Cup, as well as the Fusion float. It was my first time at the Chicago Pride Parade, and I had more fun than I thought I would considering I am partially homophobic.
Friday, June 18, 2010
No more idle plskthxbi!
Things are back on full swing with Fusion right now. I just completed a total overhaul of my video cube grid animation, it now renders about 85% faster and I've set the stage to upgrade it from only 8 videos to 10 videos. They want to use this cube grid animation to do a bi-weekly top-10 countdown.
I addition to this very long cube grid animation, I also have a specialty animation using only one cube of the 5x2 grid which details a special event like a live show or an interview. They also want a nifty side-bar animation that pops in the corner of a live-show or interview detailing the interviewer/interviewee.
In addition to all this, they want templates to make the production go faster. Understandibly so, this is a lot for me to do constantly. The specialty cube video and the pop-in animation shouldn't be a problem creating templates so that they can re-use the same animation with different text. But the cube grid top-10 countdown has proven to be extremely difficult to create a template out of. Way too many layers overlayed on pre-rendered frames, it's going to take way longer to create the template than it will to actually render out all the seperate video animation and composite them together. I don't even know if it will be posible and easy-to-use if I can even create a template, so we'll see how this one goes.
The cube grid is a 5x2 grid of cubes. On one side is the Fusion logo animation, and the other side is a video. All the cubes rotate around to display the video and then one at a time, the cubes pop out of their place and zoom towards the camera. They zoom in towards the camera at the beginning of the video, and then I use After Effects to bring the music video the rest of the way into the screen from the cube. When the video is over, the last few seconds appear on the cube as it animates back down to it's resting spot where it was before and the next cube comes up to introduce the next video. This repeats for all 10 videos. This one long animation is cut up into 10 pieces, each piece showing the final seconds of the last video and introducing the first few seconds of the next video, and in between each animation I use After Effects to show the bulk of the music video. It's a long process, and it takes about 3 hours to get all the cube animations rendered out, plus work in After Effects and that's about 5-6 hours total. The producer at Fusion is really excited about this animation, but is understandibly worried about production times. But if they get the things I need in a timely fashion, then this will go smoothly.
I'm just happy to be doing more now, things were getting a little too idle for a while, and I like to stay busy.
I addition to this very long cube grid animation, I also have a specialty animation using only one cube of the 5x2 grid which details a special event like a live show or an interview. They also want a nifty side-bar animation that pops in the corner of a live-show or interview detailing the interviewer/interviewee.
In addition to all this, they want templates to make the production go faster. Understandibly so, this is a lot for me to do constantly. The specialty cube video and the pop-in animation shouldn't be a problem creating templates so that they can re-use the same animation with different text. But the cube grid top-10 countdown has proven to be extremely difficult to create a template out of. Way too many layers overlayed on pre-rendered frames, it's going to take way longer to create the template than it will to actually render out all the seperate video animation and composite them together. I don't even know if it will be posible and easy-to-use if I can even create a template, so we'll see how this one goes.
The cube grid is a 5x2 grid of cubes. On one side is the Fusion logo animation, and the other side is a video. All the cubes rotate around to display the video and then one at a time, the cubes pop out of their place and zoom towards the camera. They zoom in towards the camera at the beginning of the video, and then I use After Effects to bring the music video the rest of the way into the screen from the cube. When the video is over, the last few seconds appear on the cube as it animates back down to it's resting spot where it was before and the next cube comes up to introduce the next video. This repeats for all 10 videos. This one long animation is cut up into 10 pieces, each piece showing the final seconds of the last video and introducing the first few seconds of the next video, and in between each animation I use After Effects to show the bulk of the music video. It's a long process, and it takes about 3 hours to get all the cube animations rendered out, plus work in After Effects and that's about 5-6 hours total. The producer at Fusion is really excited about this animation, but is understandibly worried about production times. But if they get the things I need in a timely fashion, then this will go smoothly.
I'm just happy to be doing more now, things were getting a little too idle for a while, and I like to stay busy.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Phases
Almost like clockwork, I go through several different phases of computer interests in my life. Some can go on for a few weeks, others for several months, and none of them are the same each time they occur. Upon reflecting on my different phases, I've noted the most consuming ones below:
The Diablo-Imitation phase: This phase I'm currently neck deep into now, and it involves looking for games that imitate the Diablo addictiveness that I first experienced in the late 90's. I can't stand the original Diablo games, because it's just so old looking, so I try to look for new ones and I usually end up resurfacing games that I already own like Titan Quest and Silverfall, to name a few.
The Learning phase: This phase I just recently exited after about 7 months of really taking it to the streets. I learned so much it's hard to put into words, but basically the last 7 months have seen myself emerging from clueless amateur, to confident amateur. I'v gone through teaching sessions that range from After Effects compositions and video editing, to 3D animation and sound reproduction. Even though I am still practicing with Fusion Radio, I'm not actively looking for tutorials unless I get stuck.
The Machinima phase: Machinima is taking a highly modifiable game engine and creating cinematic pieces with them. Level design, animation, effects, all created with the purpose of telling a story instead of playing a game. I just got done with this phase, it lasted about 3 days and quickly led into the Diablo-Imitation phase, although I am still thinking about it, I need motivation. Long before, I was animating with the Warcraft 3 engine in 2003 and the Unreal engine in 1999.
The Music phase: I haven't seen any motivation in a while, and I've finally come to the realization that I am not a good music creator. I am musically inclined, but not in creativity. So, I've just put this aside probably permanently. It was in 2009 that I last tried to create any kind of music.
The Reflection phase: This is where I learn the most about myself, and what I'm currently experiencing now... starting today... the reason for this post. Usually I don't look at big events, but at the way I handle the emotions behind the events. Then I ask myself, why? Why do I think that way? Why do I (or don't I) connect with that? Why do I (or don't I) care? Things that are a big deal to me don't make sense compared to the things that don't. It's tough to learn about oneself when I'm inconsistent, I just finished college and all I can think about is playing video games, very strange.
I have several other smaller phases, like the Game-Creation phase. Programming to me is like my music inclination, I can do it but I get bogged down by lack of motivation. And my Classic Gaming phase where I break out old Nintendo and Sega games to relive nostalgia for a while. I even have an MMO phase where I try out many different Free to play MMO games to try and relinquish my thirst before Guild Wars 2 or SWTOR are finally released.
If you've actually read all of this, cudos to you. If after reading this, you come to the conclusion that my life can get consumed by video games, more cudos to you. And if you also come to the conclusion, after all this, that I really ENJOY this, you're wrong. I don't want it to be like this, but it still happens. I wish that my time was taken more by family, or friends, or even more video production stuff, things that actually MAKE SENSE to care about!
I wrote this more to declare that I am upset with myself in how I spend my time and my rare motivation, on the other hand though, I feel content with my life.
WTF...
The Diablo-Imitation phase: This phase I'm currently neck deep into now, and it involves looking for games that imitate the Diablo addictiveness that I first experienced in the late 90's. I can't stand the original Diablo games, because it's just so old looking, so I try to look for new ones and I usually end up resurfacing games that I already own like Titan Quest and Silverfall, to name a few.
The Learning phase: This phase I just recently exited after about 7 months of really taking it to the streets. I learned so much it's hard to put into words, but basically the last 7 months have seen myself emerging from clueless amateur, to confident amateur. I'v gone through teaching sessions that range from After Effects compositions and video editing, to 3D animation and sound reproduction. Even though I am still practicing with Fusion Radio, I'm not actively looking for tutorials unless I get stuck.
The Machinima phase: Machinima is taking a highly modifiable game engine and creating cinematic pieces with them. Level design, animation, effects, all created with the purpose of telling a story instead of playing a game. I just got done with this phase, it lasted about 3 days and quickly led into the Diablo-Imitation phase, although I am still thinking about it, I need motivation. Long before, I was animating with the Warcraft 3 engine in 2003 and the Unreal engine in 1999.
The Music phase: I haven't seen any motivation in a while, and I've finally come to the realization that I am not a good music creator. I am musically inclined, but not in creativity. So, I've just put this aside probably permanently. It was in 2009 that I last tried to create any kind of music.
The Reflection phase: This is where I learn the most about myself, and what I'm currently experiencing now... starting today... the reason for this post. Usually I don't look at big events, but at the way I handle the emotions behind the events. Then I ask myself, why? Why do I think that way? Why do I (or don't I) connect with that? Why do I (or don't I) care? Things that are a big deal to me don't make sense compared to the things that don't. It's tough to learn about oneself when I'm inconsistent, I just finished college and all I can think about is playing video games, very strange.
I have several other smaller phases, like the Game-Creation phase. Programming to me is like my music inclination, I can do it but I get bogged down by lack of motivation. And my Classic Gaming phase where I break out old Nintendo and Sega games to relive nostalgia for a while. I even have an MMO phase where I try out many different Free to play MMO games to try and relinquish my thirst before Guild Wars 2 or SWTOR are finally released.
If you've actually read all of this, cudos to you. If after reading this, you come to the conclusion that my life can get consumed by video games, more cudos to you. And if you also come to the conclusion, after all this, that I really ENJOY this, you're wrong. I don't want it to be like this, but it still happens. I wish that my time was taken more by family, or friends, or even more video production stuff, things that actually MAKE SENSE to care about!
I wrote this more to declare that I am upset with myself in how I spend my time and my rare motivation, on the other hand though, I feel content with my life.
WTF...
Friday, June 4, 2010
Stagnation
Since school ended, I've ended up with a lot of free time... but it's turned into more stagnant time than anything else. More relaxing, spending time with the wife, and even playing video games. The last time I pushed myself was using Cinema 4D for some opening animations for my only client Fusion Radio.
Fusion Radio is turning more and more into an at-the-last-second kind of client. For the last Comcast content, they decided to have a meeting on Saturday with the due date being the following Monday. At that meeting there were several changes that required me to re-render everything and I got it done late Sunday night just in time for them.
And they had 2+ weeks to get it finalized.
And then just recently they wanted a simple promo for their Pump Pavilion booth, for the NEXT day. But all they wanted was to change the color scheme and text on a previous animation I did for them on Valentines Day.
They even planned to do a commercial and asked for my help more than a week before they wanted to finish it. I of course said yes, but then after that... nothing, only to scrap the project a week later because they didn't have time.
In my opinion, they aren't using me enough.
They bought an HD camcorder a few weeks ago. It's a nice camera, but it's 1080i and DV tape based. I have NOTHING against DV, I think it's a great standard format, but it just doesn't fit their business style. For one thing, they lack someone with the knowledge of video editing and capturing from DV based cameras, plus a video camera that was hard drive based AVCHD would have been better suited for them because it would have been easier and faster to go from Shot-to-Post.
But they didn't consult me.
After they bought the camera they had several issues and had dozens of questions for me. And when they learned of AVCHD cameras and the benefits, they were a little disappointed because they couldn't return the camera... they eBay'd it!
I wish they would use me more. Sometimes it's a whole week before I get an email from them, and it's usually about 1am in the morning when I get it.
Don't get me wrong, I like the guys I work with at Fusion. They are a smart, collective bunch. But I just want soooo much more from our relationship, but it might take a while to get there.
In the mean time, I've got The Missing Bank Card 3 coming around the corner and I am super excited, plus some films with DuPage Film Group hopefully coming up afterwards. I have done lots of motion graphcs in the past 8 months but no films, hopefully the 2nd half of 2010 will be more productive.
Fusion Radio is turning more and more into an at-the-last-second kind of client. For the last Comcast content, they decided to have a meeting on Saturday with the due date being the following Monday. At that meeting there were several changes that required me to re-render everything and I got it done late Sunday night just in time for them.
And they had 2+ weeks to get it finalized.
And then just recently they wanted a simple promo for their Pump Pavilion booth, for the NEXT day. But all they wanted was to change the color scheme and text on a previous animation I did for them on Valentines Day.
They even planned to do a commercial and asked for my help more than a week before they wanted to finish it. I of course said yes, but then after that... nothing, only to scrap the project a week later because they didn't have time.
In my opinion, they aren't using me enough.
They bought an HD camcorder a few weeks ago. It's a nice camera, but it's 1080i and DV tape based. I have NOTHING against DV, I think it's a great standard format, but it just doesn't fit their business style. For one thing, they lack someone with the knowledge of video editing and capturing from DV based cameras, plus a video camera that was hard drive based AVCHD would have been better suited for them because it would have been easier and faster to go from Shot-to-Post.
But they didn't consult me.
After they bought the camera they had several issues and had dozens of questions for me. And when they learned of AVCHD cameras and the benefits, they were a little disappointed because they couldn't return the camera... they eBay'd it!
I wish they would use me more. Sometimes it's a whole week before I get an email from them, and it's usually about 1am in the morning when I get it.
Don't get me wrong, I like the guys I work with at Fusion. They are a smart, collective bunch. But I just want soooo much more from our relationship, but it might take a while to get there.
In the mean time, I've got The Missing Bank Card 3 coming around the corner and I am super excited, plus some films with DuPage Film Group hopefully coming up afterwards. I have done lots of motion graphcs in the past 8 months but no films, hopefully the 2nd half of 2010 will be more productive.
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