Stressful, Sick Times

I know I wasn't in class today. I'm not handling the whole weather change very well. First it was my throat and now it's spreading. I hope it doesn't get to the point where I die and come back as a zombie. As cool as that sounds, I'd rather not have to eat your brains out.

-Marlee

the end..well almost

what would a video project be without last minute craziness and people ready to punch, kick headbutt or stab the computer? but even with all of that we got all of our stuff in on time and i gotta say that i am really happy with what we put together. only thing left is the paper work for class that shouldnt be too bad i mean we have most of the that already. guess i should start getting on that ADR project

anybody have a good george w bush impression? consider this an invite if you want to help me out for the project ill have the script and all that fun stuff all you gotta do is read

in other news..whered the sun go?

Wednesday

Freeplaymusic's been around for a while. That was where I went first for my music for the GDK just out of obligation. Reminder, though, that if you ever want to release the film to a festival or something you need to then pay them. Fun fun fun fun.

Anyway, now that we're all completely done with this film, we can all take a sigh of relief -- oh wait, crap, never mind, shot lists, final edit log, etc. I need buckets for my tears. Shouldn't take long, whatever.

I don't know, I don't have much to say. Now that the film is over, I'm lost on topics. Maybe I'll just mention how Archer is the best animated non-kids show of all time, hands down, your argument is invalid.

Also, I'm hungry.
~Will

Golden Doorknobs and exporting

Golden doorknobs are done!!! Whooo Hoooo! Pretty pleased with how ours turned out. Very happy it is done haha. On another note, make sure you check your settings when you export to quicktime. I had trouble playing my quicktime and I couldn't figure out why. It was because the settings of my export did not match up with the settings of my original footage. So yeah, check your settings. Now it's time to ADR.

Great Music Website

I know its a little too late for the GDK project, but I just found this site like the last two days I was editing. Freeplaymusic.com is a FANTASTIC website to use for music in a film or any other short video project. You can search for any type of song you want related to tone, tempo, and reasoning. Meaning that you can search for an adventure song, or a horror song, etc. The best part about this site is that it literally takes a click of the mouse to download the music into your i-tunes. No need to worry about copy right issues and you can preview the first 30 seconds of the song before downloading it. Give this site a shoot the next time your working with video or audio projects.

Also, thank god the golden doorknobs are over. Talk about 18 hours in an editing lab. Man that really sucked. However, I am really proud with what our group produced, although I do believe that it could have been better. Then again, I feel like you can always do better with the experience you can from previous project and mistakes. See you guys tomorrow bright and early.

Steve

Finally Finished

Golden doorknob is done! Yes! I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do with all of the spare time I anticipate having now that it's over (probably homework, but whatever). Anyway, here's our final product: PEACH IS A WHORE

Game of Thrones

Also, another thing im really excited about is the new HBO series Game of Thrones. It's based off a popular series of books and should be pretty badass. I'm a big fan of swords and medieval/magic kickass-ness, not to mention that HBO series are awesome in every single way. Can't wait to watch the series when im home.

Talk it Outtttt

Talking during class today as a whole, was very productive, and i really enjoyed it. I liked hearing the problems that everyone else had in their groups, because it really shows that no group is perfect, and if they were perfect they wouldnt be in this school. For our group especially, communication was a problem and i think as a whole we really didnt put in a good effort. If we had taken out time to meet and discuss before shooting, and during the entire post production process, i feel we couldve had a better final product.

But thats all in the past now, and i'm still pretty satisfied with the final product. Hopefully everyone elses problems were resolved and if not, that sucks..




TALK IT OUT TALK IT OUT TALK IT OUT TALK IT OUT

Warrior

I just saw an article over on IGN.com about a new movie coming out called Warrior. It's an MMA movie about two brothers and their different approaches in their career. My guess is it will turn out a lot like the Fighter, so anyone who is a fan of that movie will probably like this one (although it won't be as good). The link is in the title.

In other news the villian for Zach Snyder's upcoming Superman movie (Man of Steel) has been announced!! The link is right -----> HERE nerds click to find out who it is!

Done!

We're done our GDK! Woo! Special thanks to our cast for being awesome and Red for lighting. :) We're pretty satisfied with how it turned out. I think I'm especially happy with how the basement scene and the end scene turned out. We really had a good location for the basement scene, so props to Jamie for that! We even had some ADR for a few lines and it actually worked out, so that was nice too. Not sure what else to say about it, hope everyone else is done and can breathe again. :)

Twisted Metal

Twisted Metal was a game that really had me hooked when i was little, and im pretty excited that its coming back..

I really like the effect they used on the cigar

Golden Doorknob

Hey, does anyone know when the Golden Doorknob Screening is? Thanks!

Finally Back in my Right Mind

Ok, so I know I haven't posted in a while, but with so much stuff piling up the last few weeks I've hardly had a spare moment to think. But now that our doorknobs are done, I can take a minute to breath. So Doorknobs are done and turned in and all that good stuff, I think ours turned out alright, but I guess we'll have to wait and see what everyone thinks of it. Next thing, I ran across a few articles online recently that I thought would be interesting to share. So with the first one I feel like the title says it all, its titled "Writers Gild Chooses 101 Greatest Screenplays", (the article title is the link) and I feel that there are a lot of noteworthy titles on this list. The second article that I came across, isn't as serious and a little more comical, but still something I didn't realize. Its a list of things that originally were made up in different movies and tv shows that have actually come true/been created. The article is titled "8 Absurd Jokes That Predicted Real Life Events" (The link is the article title). Just some things I thought were interesting to share.

Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet died yesterday at the age of 86. He is one of the directors that made an everlasting impression in my life and career. He made over 50 films of which many are masterpieces of American Cinema. The first one I saw in the early 60's was The Pawnbroker which left me stunned with its raw power and its fearless look into ills of society that were not the stuff of Hollywood movies, but then again, he was a New Yorker and his films were as unadorned as the City can be.

After that film I made sure I saw everyone of them. In just two years Fail Safe and The Hill came out. I was in film heaven, a very angry heaven!

Maybe you have seen Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince of the City, The Verdict, or his last one, appropriately called, Before the Devil Knows you are Dead. He worked with some of the best and most important actors that any director could wish to work with, and got extraordinary realistic performances out of them.

He made history, and he lived during our time.

Fight!!

So for our golden doorknob we have a fight scene. I thought that it would be impossibly difficult and look terrible. However, the secret is quick cuts. If you keep cutting you keep the action flowing and it is easy to make up for bad acting.

Take Two

Okay, I forgot the link in the first post. The link is in the title. Enjoy

Your New Desktop Background

I was shown this video yesterday of a Canon camera commercial. Now I know the whole thing is designed to advertise Canon, but the images they come up with are so cool. I'm not going to give anything away, so you have to the video for yourselves.

adr

So I've been catching up on my TV shows and I don't know if it's because we had the adr class this morning or if it's obvious but I've been noticing a lot of dialogue that's been replaced. I'm thinking it's cause we had the class this morning but either way I've been paying attention to it now and sometimes it's a little obvious. But to someone who doesn't really know about it, I figure it wouldn't be. Anyway, that's just something I've been noticing as I've been watching.

Our group's meeting this saturday to finish up the gdk. THANK GOD! It's about time. Feels like we've been doing these things for EVER.

Doorknob

I'm just finishing up the VFX and green screen stuff for our doorknob. I think things are looking good and im surprised at how well the footage looks considering it was my first time doing any work like this. I'm absolutely thrilled the doorknob is finally over. I was never a big fan of doing doorknobs in class and my opinion remains.

update

our GDK is finally complete. we had a major continuity error that was holding us up for a bit BUT we worked around it with our shot variety and sound after effects. turned out pretty good and i'm happy with it. on a side note, I made a rug today.. thought that was pretty cool haha

word

OMG INSTANT STAR

Hello all,

So as always, here is my most recent vlog. I recorded it today. It's a song from Instant Star, which was a freaking awesome TV show a few years back. Unfortunately the editing on these is getting worse... I prefer doing the entire song in one take, but since I'm pressed for time these days, so I haven't been memorizing the songs before I record them. That helps with the editing, because, lets be real here, the less you have to edit, the cleaner it looks. At least in this case. Meh.

Anywho, our GDK is coming along nicely. We have one more scene to edit, then we just need to do the paperwork stuff, and music and credits. So yeah. Home stretch. Go Team.

See you all in the A.M.

--Rhiannon

Pro Tools

So our in class demo with John Hilton today was pretty cool. Pro tools can do so many things, it's pretty crazy. I think all of us used pro tools in media prod but that only gave us a rudimentary knowledge (or I know for me personally it did). I think it would be incredibly useful for us to have a good knowledge of Pro Tools. Some of the stuff John was doing took seconds and was awesome. Moral of the story, I need to learn more pro tools!

getting there

ok so our GBK has really picked up in the last couple shoots. got one or two more scenes and already started editing. not too worried we dont have anything crazy to do special effects etc..maybe some ADR and transitions really. got some good pics thanks to molly and thats about it

Hey Guys,

I've recently been channeling into my inner child and have been watching way too many Disney movies. Not only Disney movies though, but any adaptations they may have. One of the most challenging things for animation films is the dialogue when you're working with a film that wasn't originally in the language you want it.

The one movie that comes to mind with this is Howl's Moving Castle, based off of a novel by Diana Wynn Jones who recently passed away.



Seeing as the original film is in Japanese, you really have to manipulate the script just to fit the movement of their lips when adapting everything into English. There's a short video (With Christian Bale) showing some of the behind the microphone work at Howl's Moving Castle.



I also want to give a shout out to Jason Nagli from UP. Just watch it. He's adorable and will make your heart melt.

Note to everyone

I'm learning the hard way right now that when you plan your shots for after effects to make sure that you don't have both your actors moving around in front of the thing you are changing. Please save yourselves and never do this, key framing sucks a lot.

Brain feedback

In response to Travis post, I posted this 3 years ago here. Nobody paid any attention. Now that Cameron is pushing it perhaps someone will. I've been personally interested in this phenomena since the 80's and did some actual analog experiments to prove the point. Perhaps I will recreate them again.

"Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory", March 22 1895

Since this post deals with the subject of "virtual reality" or VR, I though it would be interesting to note certain antecedents and explain some technical aspects that might give you food for thought. Although one of the modern tenets of VR is the "interactivity" aspect (and that is another discussion topic) earlier attempts were more concerned with "immersion" and this is true still today, as total immersion is a primary focus of VR designers today.

Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most influential film critics and filmmakers of the New Wave, once defined film as "...24 frames per second".

Coming from one of the most intellectual directors in film history this definition seems simplistic. But Godard was in fact referring to the fact that film was an illusion created in our minds by a simple physical phenomena. For many years we were told that the reason film works the way it works is because of the "lag" produced by our vision system, which does not "refresh" the image fast enough, resulting in the images blending with the previous one and so forth, therefore creating the illusion of movement.


Everyone has probably at one point played with the illusion of the "bird in a cage".
The thaumatrope, as this is called was a very popular toy dating to the Victorian era, and is often considered an antecedent of cinematography and particularly of animation. As a curious note some claim that Charles Babbage, who originated the concept of the programmable computer, was its inventor, although no definite proof of this exists.

Many still believe that "persistence of vision" is the phenomena behind the perception of movement in cinema, a "lucky defect of the retina" which permitted this illusion.

Movement, however, is a phenomena perceived directly by the brain, through different sensors with which it interacts. In this respect, the eye acts as a gate which transmits to the brain a frequency. And here we come around Godard's 24 fps or frames per second. Although early cinematographers arrived at this particular frequency empirically, they did not exactly know why the perception of movement was so "realistic" at this frame rate.

The brain produces different types of waves, like Alpha and Beta, associated with different "states of mind". This electromagnetic oscillations convey different sensations based on the information acquired by the senses. These wave frequencies range from 8 to 12 hz to 12 to 15hz respectively of which 24 and 30, the most common film and video rates are multiples.

I believe, based on my own experiments as an special effects (SFX) cinematographer that this results in a "feedback" loop, amplifying the electrical activity of the thalamic cells, responsible for the communication between the senses and the thalamus, which plays a major role in regulating arousal, level of awareness or consciousness and activity.

In 1983, Douglas Trumbull, the special effects supervisor for such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Blade Runner, directed his first major film, "Brainstorm" which predicted the fascination with virtual reality and developed a system for this film named Showscan, which was shot and projected at 60 frames per second. The effect for the viewers was an incredibly enhanced high definition and movement experience, described by some as a "psychedelic drug trip".


I describe the experience of viewing a film (at 24 and particularly at 60 fps) as a mild epileptic seizure since the frequency of projection greatly enhances the synchronous electrical activity of the brain. This is what is mainly responsible for the high degree of "immersion" that both film and TV effect in the viewer, regardless of content. And it is in this respect that Marshall McLuhan's phrase "the medium is the message" makes total sense.

I think I will leave it at that for now as a trigger point (pun intended) for a future conversation about the subject.

It's so crazy, it just might work.

I want to know what everyone thinks about this.

Carlos

I started watching a trilogy this weekend called Carlos. It's about a communist terrorist named Illich Ramírez Sanchéz operating in Europe and the Middle East during the 1970's. What's really interesting about the story is how closely different terrorist cells work together and help each other out, even if they have different goals. The movie itself is very well done, it has the look and feel of the 1970's and acting makes you want to meet these people and live their lives. Which is really strange because they were assassins. The soundtrack is all 70's music and is expertly put together. I strongly recommend watching these films; even if each one is three hours long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3QkM7uyF10

Post productions!

I'm not sure if the others beat me to it, but as we speak Alex is working on some After Effects magic. Once he's done with that we'll throw that into the edit, color correct, tie it altogether and presto! Done!

We're also working on some original music to throw in here, because it would be cool to showcase some other talent as well in this project. Travis and I are working on some stuff; once I have a full edit i'll probably just run it through Soundtrack or something.

But we have one week left, and we're gonna make it great!

(Also, allergies suck.)

Pokeception- Legit?

Okay, so this past Tuesday I started downloading some videos from archives.org for the ADR project, and by videos I mean three Pokemon episodes in what my relatives have determined might possibly be in Czech. I was wondering if a Pokemon/Inception mashup trailer would be legitimate for this ADR project? I would take the video from Pokemon and the audio from the third Inception trailer (it's the audio from the mashup 'Upception' that starts "there's something you should know about me") and turn it into Pokeception.

And by "would have," I mean "I made it in four days and it's done and I'd like to show it to you guys on Tuesday to see what you think and if I can be done with this project."

I made it so early because I was afraid that if this isn't enough ADR-ing for the project, I'll need time to make another video. Also, I was really excited about it. Also, I got to watch the Inception trailer about 50 times. Also, Brock is Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

So if you guys would like to watch it, I can totally bring it in on Tuesday and distract you for 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Please? Anyone? I'm pretty happy with it, but any suggestions for making it even more epic would be fantastic. Really. More epicness plz. Kthxbai.

Rango! gotta love your lizard

I just saw Rango last night. Simply amazing piece of work. Directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) the film pays a homage to a number of films both in terms of storytelling structure, some memorable characters themselves and even music and lighting.

Films referenced are of course "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", "For a Few Dollars More" (Sergio Leone), John Ford westerns, the extraordinary "Chinatown" (Roman Polanski) which shares the core story, "There Will be Blood" (Paul Thomas Anderson) in terms of lighting, and great characters based on such icons as John Huston (in Chinatown), Lee Van Cleef's in For a Few Dollars More, which in Rango is the very bad Rattlesnake Jake. and, yes, Clint Eastwood as "the Spirit of the Desert", poncho and all. (And oh, a wink to Star Wars, why not) I am sure there are other references I missed!

In short it is a film fest, definitely go see it! Needless to say the character modeling, animation, environments, shaders and particularly the acting, etc are simply outstanding. Talking about acting, some of the characters are actually played by their actors, (like Johnny Depp) who are not only doing voice over. But the subtlety of their emotions down to the smallest twitches is a pleasure to watch.

Photographs copyright © 2011 by Paramount Pictures

Happy Friday

So NCUR Weekend is in its second day, and while doorknobs arent really on my mind, they kinda have to be. Our group finally finished shooting, and were in the process of editing everything together. We have a couple of good green screen effects, and feel good with what we've shot so far.

Heres a little clip of some green screen shots.. Let us know what you think


Green Screen Shots

HAPPY OPENING DAYYYY

For all you Phillies fans out there like me (yes Kyle, this one's for you) it's OPENING DAY! So probably not a lot of editing is gonna be done today until the game is over.

But we finished shooting this week. YAYYYY! Feels really good to have all of our footage done, there's a great blooper reel up on facebook if anyone's interested. Our actors were really goofy which is something I love in a cast, it keeps everyone's stress level down. Something I love about having Joe act for me is he's always fun on set, usually makes for an awesome blooper reel.

So basically we shot in the parking garage, the audio isn't too bad, needs a little work, and we need to color correct a little. Since we were outside everything is a little extra blue, but no biggie. We've got a rough cut done, but like i said, nothing else is getting done till after this game.

Hope everyone else had a good shooting week like we did!

Harry Potter Tv Series

More The Aurors Videos

WHATTTT?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!!?!?

Hobo with a shotgun

THIS TRAILER is ridiculous. The movie is called hobo with a shotgun. It looks like such a strange movie but really cool at the same time. Also here is a link to the director's blog. It has some cool fan art on it.