Golden Doorknob Recap!

Ok so you all of you guys that DIDN'T go to the golden doorknob awards yesterday...You all suck!
But to be quite honnest I was really surprised by how well done the finalists and honorable mentions were. A lot of them had really creative shots and the lighting was really well done. You could tell that the producers of the films really took their time in setting everything up and finding the right people to play particular parts. Even though my groups doorknob was in the "looser reel" the audience was laughing and to be quite honest I feel like that was what my group was going for, to make people both remember playing those games and laugh about the "what ifs". But all in all, I'm glad for everyone who received something.

Goodbye Michael Scott

For anyone who didn't watch the Office last night, it was Steve Carell's last episode. The episode featured the likes of Will Ferrell, Will Arnet, and a number of other guest stars. I really enjoyed the final episode because it was really different from what a normal episode of The Office is like. Yes, there was humor but it was also really sad. I think Steve Carell did an amazing job at showing the emotion of leaving your co-workers that you've been with for a long time. I also enjoyed the last episode because you get to see how much everyone loved Michael. They always criticize his antics during the episodes cause he's ridiculous but in this episode you get to see what everyone really thought about him. In the link is a review of the episode. I don't know why I put it up there but it's up there.

oh..hey end of the year

end of the years real close everythings stacking up as usual. Uhh as far as fiction field i have about half (about a minute) of my short i need another person to do a second voice. i was doing the VO on garage band and imovie and its kind of annoying. but all that aside its not as horrible as id initially thought matching up the mouth movement and stuff.

miami vs. boston who ya got?

rick roll trailer

So as I'm supposed to be work on papers and projects... I'm obviously getting incredibly distracted. stumbledupon this trailer for a fake movie but its got all the famous viral video characters. pretty funny, thought i'd share. link is the title

museum of the moving image

hey all, if you guys haven't heard or been to the Museum of the Moving Image I really really suggest it. Its located in Queens NY, a bit of a travel for some, but definitely worth it. If you ever find yourself in NYC take a subway to Queens for the day. I went with some friends a few months ago when it re-opened and it was really interesting and engaging. If you have some love for cinema and want to learn more I suggest it. One of the films they were showing was basically a story told through the music put to it. and each person takes it a different way and turns it into their own story. The sound and images were not put together in any particular way, which makes it interesting. I hope some of you look further into this, its worth it.

Mugglenet!

Okay, I know, dorkiest thing possible, but whatever. There's this site called Mugglenet that is a source for basically everything Harry Potter (the title is a link to it). They have news about the movies, books, video games, and actors, caption contests, Harry Potter dessert recipes, trivia- okay, basically, if it relates to Harry Potter, it's on that site.

But this isn't just a post about the site- the creators of the site have a podcast that comes out pretty frequently and has been going on for years. Because the new trailer for the last Harry Potter movie just came out yesterday (if you haven't watched it yet, stop reading and go do that right now), their podcast for this week is an analysis of the trailer. In the last "trailer talk" of theirs that I listened too, they had images from the trailer to go with it so that you could follow along with what they were analyzing. I mean, it's pretty dorky, but if you're really excited for the last movie and you want to try and make sense of some weird clips/shots that were too fast, it's fun. So if you're a Harry Potter fan and you have a few extra minutes lying around, I suggest you go listen to at least a little of Mugglenet's latest podcast. And maybe watch the trailer several more times.

Trailer mash-up

The projects that Jamie and Jenna did reminded me of this trailer mash-up. It's a combination of 500 days of Summer and Community and I think it's pretty well done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uy8WbRUL_8

End of the Year

So, although I wasn't in class today, I am almost done with my ADR project, I think it looks alright, I really do need someone to look at it and give me feedback though. But its the end of the year we've only got one more week till finals, and than its summer.

Also, does anyone else hate registration??????? (and i know that everyone does) but I hate how they only have one, possibly two sections open for required classes. I really think that they need to revamp the system, not the way in which we choose classes but the number of classes that are available to students.
But anyways, thats my rant about registration. Hope everyone's ADR projects are coming together well.

Almost Done

Well finally the end of the year is here and I can't wait to be done with classes. Im content with my ADR project, for now and I only have a couple of finals. So needless to say I am already slacking off.

Matt Walker

Summertime

So close to the end of the year! I can't wait for classes to be over and to just enjoy the summer. Hope everyones ADR project went well... mine did--the third time around. Final cut crashed and deleted everything. so after 9 straight hours of work I got to start over...that was fun (not really. it was a nightmare). But luckily it was the last project! Yayyy!!!

Mother of all Remixes

After watching the Everything is a Remix in class today I though I would talk about one of my favorite recent films. Rango is simply an amazing piece of work. Directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) the film pays homage to a great number of films both in terms of storytelling structure, some memorable characters and even music and lighting.

Films referenced are of course "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Hitchkikers Guide to the Galaxy", "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", "A Bug's Life" (based itself in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai), "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 and their Tie Fighters!, why not) I am sure there are many other references I missed. Let me know!

John Huston in Roman Polanski's "Chinatown"

In short it is a film fest, definitely go see it in the big screen if you can! 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. And the subtlety of their emotions down to the smallest twitches is a pleasure to watch.

Lee Van Cleef in "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly"

The lighting throughout the film really impressed me the most. The lighting plans were so detailed and intricate and they gave the film a very unique look.

I read an interview with Tim Alexander, the visual effects supervisor on the film. An interesting interview because Tim discussed how Industrial Light & Magic, a company used to working in live action, had to adapt their entire workflow to create an animated feature length film.

Tim said lighting was difficult for them because they are so used to receiving video plates where the lighting in the shot has already been composed by the DOP, in which case they just created their effects based on the existing lighting plot.

Creating an image that was 100% animated was difficult because they had to create the lighting from scratch. To help them with this problem, they hired an experienced DOP, Roger Deakins (Shawshank Redemption, True Grit, O Brother, Where Art Thou, Fargo, Dead Man Walking, etc) to help them figure out lighting designs. I must say the plan definitely worked because the lighting is simply perfect!

Photographs copyright © 2011 by Paramount Pictures

ADR Project

So fro the ADR project I have been working on Disney's famous Aladdin animated motin picture. The scene I will be working with is the the scene where Aladdin meets the Genie. In my script, Aladdin still rubs the lamp to find a ghost instead of a Genie and the story goes from there. There is no three wishes but instead three people Aladdin come rise from the dead (one of the three rules the Genie didn't allow Aladdin to wish for in the real movie) My roommate has Pro tools so most of my work is on his computer. I've been having a lot of fun with the characters voices and sadly I had to the cut the project right before my favorite song "Never Had a Friend Like Me" by Robin Williams because my singing voice would jsut ruin the entire thing. Since I don't have Pro Tools on my computer, tomorrow in class I can just show my script and the video of my project. I can't wait for this all to be done so I can show the class what I have been working on. Hope all is well with everyone Else's project in the class. One last thing, if anyone has any good monkey impressions or can find me a link to where I cn get good SFX, please let me know. thanks

See ya tomorrow

i hate rendering

I have a question. Is there any way to make it so you don't have to render the footage every time you do something to it? Probably a stupid question but it gets really annoying.
thank you!

FCP vs. Avid?

Final Cut Pro VS Avid from Jill DiBiase on Vimeo.

Strikes a cord?

International Museum of Photography and Film

Are you aware that you are just an hour and 45 minutes away from one of the great film museums in this country? The George Eastman House in Rochester NY should be one of your soon-destinations if you have not been there.

This 1925 Jos-Pe camera has one of the largest lenses I have seen (excluding astronomy of course) Its almost half foot diameter lens enabled it to take 3 negatives simultaneously via beam-splitters, each filtered red, green and blue, that when optically composited together resulted in a full color image.

There is also a collection of some "spy cameras" some of them quite ridiculous, like this one called Pocket Photo-Revolver! I don't think anybody would be the least concerned about being surreptitiously photographed when pointed at with it!

I really love the Mutoscopes which are like glorified flip-books. These are in a hands-on area where you can play around with different devices and even print your own silhouettes or draw your own animations and play them back in a Zoetrope

Not only do they have a great collection of many of the most important cameras, projectors and other very strange paraphernalia going back to the humble simple mechanisms of the moving image, but they also present large exhibits, like the current Civil War collection as well as the upcoming 360|365 George Eastman House Film Fest (formerly known as the High Falls Film Festival or HF3) which starts in a couple of days. There will be 21 countries represented by about a 100 films that will be running in four venues around town. Among some of the highlights this year, Julie Taymor (Lion King, The Tempest, Titus, Frida) will be present to receive the Susan B. Anthony Award.

So, don't potato yourself, get of your couch and head on to one of the beautiful regions around us at the shore of one of the great lakes. Just as an extra enticement, the Strong National Museum of Play is just a few blocks away. You will be able to intoxicate yourself with every imaginable game you remember and many you have no idea they existed, from the earliest toys to the current electronic and arcade games and virtual reality research.

ALL RIGHT I GOT THIS.

I got this idea for the project earlier today in the shower. Yeah. In the shower. Shut up, the shower is a magical place. What, you've never been in there and thought, "I'm gonna write a novel about some termite overlords" and then gone and written a novel about termite overlords? What the bloody hell are you doing in there?

Anyway, it's going to be a trailer for Ithaca's first-ever horror/thriller TRIPLE FEATURE. I'm using clips from three old B-movies: Invasion of the Bee Girls, Driller Killer, and A Certain Sacrifice. I'm doing this because -- let's face it -- nobody hates a poorly ADRed B-movie trailer. I think I can get away with this if anything.

I'm still not totally convinced that this project is what I think it is, but whatever. All I know is that the grade doesn't matter as long as it looks good... and as long as the grade's good.

PS: The clips that I'm using have people in no clothes sometimes. No clothes! Oh goodness, oh gracious! Whatever shall we do? Call the authorities! The ambulance! The rescue squad! Ha ha, don't really do that, because it's ART.

I mean Picasso would be like, "Whoa bro, that's art" and I'd say, "Bro" and he'd say "Bro." Then we'd have a bropocalypse of art. Bro.

Feedback

for my project, the clips that im putting over the trailer, dont really match up, but they make sense. Would it look weird even if the voices dont match the way the lips move, even though the rest of the trailer works.

Line Changing

Coming up with changed lines that will tell my story while still trying to make the lip movements believable is really hard... That is all...

51 Birch Street

Last night I went with my friend to Cinemapolis and saw the documentary '51 Birch Street' by Cornell alum' Doug Block. I thought it was really good and so insightful into what we really know and don't know about our parents. The film opens with the director interviewing his mother and asking her questions about both her marriage and his own upbringing. After she dies, Block discovers her diaries and learns of her discontent within her marriage. Not only does Block gain insight about his parents' marriage but also his own. In addition, he grows closer to his father. It was really cool after the documentary Block was at the screening to answer questions and talk about the process that went into creating his work.

This is a trailer of the doc:

Projects are a great way to spend a weekend...

Hey everyone,

So I'm home for the weekend and chugging away with this ADR project. Quick question though-- What's the minimum time limit for this project? Right now I only have a minute of material, I might be able to stretch it to just under 2 minutes, but I'm doing a TV show promo, so I'm not sure if I can really get it to be much longer than that. Help?

I hope you're all enjoying your weekend.

Voice Changing

I never knew there was a pitch-changing tool in Final Cut before, so now I'm having fun trying to figure out what all the various attributes do. Does anyone know how to make a voice more feminine (there is a female character in my edit, but I don't have a female voice actor)? Just changing the pitch doesn't really do the trick, it just gives it a chipmunk-like sound. Also, what are all these variables? Smooth, analysis window, overlap, reset scale...What is all this?

Happy Earth Day!

Cartoon by my good friend and amazing artist Rich Powell. You can also check his blog which shows great current work in progress and his shop where he sells prints and originals of his artwork. He also publishes a hilarious weekly cartoon call Dixie Drive, talk about a productive artist:-)!

30 Minutes or Less

Here is the trailer for 30 Minutes or Less. It's a new comedy coming out with Jesse Eisenburg, Aziz, and (Kenny Powers) forget his real name. The link is in the title.

How to Train Your Dragon

I can't remember if I've already posted about this movie- it's entirely possible, because every time I listen to the score I get re-obsessed with it. I realize it's a kid movie about an adorable dragon and Vikings and fire, but: it's a kid movie about an adorable dragon and Vikings and fire. I mean, you can give me some leeway, right?

But seriously, the score is absolutely fantastic. I think it got nominated for an Academy Award, John Powell's first (I think). Powell worked on Ice Age, The Road to El Dorado (w/ Hans Zimmer- anyone remember this movie? I remember liking it), Shrek, Robots, Horton Hears a Who!, and PS I Love You. So my recommendation is to either listen to a few of the tracks from the score (like Forbidden Friendship, Downed Dragon, and See You Tomorrow) or just go see the movie. It's a legitimately fun movie, really. I promise.

AND THAT DRAGON IS SO CUTE.

I mean, ahem. What was I doing? Right: intelligent conversation about the composer. Ahem.

No really, just please listen to the music or see the movie. It's a fun time all around.

adr

for my adr project I'm using clips from spongebob and the movie Se7en. It's coming together pretty well actually. I am hopefully recording voices tonight. All is going good.

p.s.- what is a transcript.. I know its like an academic record that you send out to other schools and colleges. but I was confused when that word was used in class today. didn't really make any sense to me. can someone clear that up?

Zombies Ate my Neighbors

So for the ADR project I am adding voiceovers and clips of anchorman over a clip from the old nintendo game zombies ate my neighbors. So far it looks ok, but I don't exactly now how its going to sound when I include the voiceovers with the movie clips. Also, I used some Call of Duty Black Ops background noise.

ADRADRADRADRADR

Finally started editing my ADR project, im using a trailer for the dance movie "You Got Served", and then putting in clips from South Park to make the trailer.

I downloaded about 7 episodes of South Park, that i watched first. The episodes all have some aspect of dancing, which will definitely help me out, when i cut my clips.

Project doesnt seem to hard for now, but i think when we start using Pro tools for the actual ADR part of it, it'll definitely get harder.


Hope everyones project is going swimmingly.

More HDR

Thanks to Travis for the link. This is an HDR photo by dacoach89_89 which I find pretty cool. I like the entropy that wrestles everything to dust again!

So, if I wanted to insert a 3D object or character into this background I could use the picture itself as an illuminating source, so that the 3d character would perfectly fit in that environment as if it had been actually there.

I quote from the Maya documentation: With image-based lighting, you use an environment texture (an image file) to illuminate the scene. Typically, the image is a photograph of a real environment, either a panoramic image or a photograph produced by taking pictures of a chrome ball (to capture the surrounding environment).

This is a technology developed by Paul Devebec, a USC researcher who is best known for his work in high dynamic range imaging and image-based modelling and rendering. He was awarded (along with Tim Hawkins, John Monos and Mark Sagar) a 2009 Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture device .

You have seen or can see his work in some of these films: The Matrix (1999), Spider-Man 2 (2004), King Kong (2005), Superman Returns (2006), Spider-Man 3 (2007), and Avatar (2009).

Image from HDR Shop, an HDR image processing and manipulation tool that you can download HERE , unfortunately Windows only:-(

HDRI

I was exploring on flickr when I came across some interesting photos. I did a little research and found out they were done using a technique called HDRI (high dynamic range imaging) or HDR for short. Basically what you do is take multiple shots of the same image; one with a normal exposure, one underexposed, and one overexposed. Then you bring the images into some editing software (something like photomatix) and put the images on top of each other. The result is a single image that supposedly has a higher dynamic range than the human eye. I think the pictures look a lot like video game images only more realistic. You can do this with digital or film and it can be done with video. The video link is in the title. Here is a link for some HDR still images:

PHOTOSTREAM

Non CG Special Effects

So I was reading online and came across this article. The article explains that modern technology has effected the special effects in films and shows, but just because we have the technology to add in effects and such, sometimes adding effects in in post-production doesn't necessarily make things look better. This article shows a few examples of ways in which to create effects, while shooting a production. Its actually really interesting. The link is in the title if you want to take a look at it.

Am I doing the project right?

Seriously. I have no idea what I'm doing with this. It's just awkward for me to take two movies or something and try to put them together, then ADR over it and make something "new." Even if I were to ADR it and change the lines to make it fit, it would still look awful.

I would rather make something original that I know will look good and sound good rather than hack together something from a bunch of different clips from a limited selection. I'd ADR a Disney movie, but oops! Those aren't free domain.

Anyhow, I've got Plan 9 on the docket right now. I'll see what I can do with that..

Confusedly,
Will

2nd project

So for my second project, I decided to do a mash up of Rex Ryan (the NY Jets coach) interviews and make fun of all the things he has said or done in the past. Since they never show the reporters faces, I can make up the questions to make my answers easier to dub over when Rex talks. I think that I can do a great job with this and that it will be fun and entertaining to do. If anyone has any good ideas, please let me know. I have already started the voice overs, and the rest is still yet to come.


Steve

dont look now but it might be nce outside

weathers starting to pick up and its about time. got about 1 min on my ADR transcribed and still looking for a good george w bush character/voice. any ideas for what i can combine his speech with? i was thinking another interview but im still not sure

The Academy

One of the many exhibitions that the Academy holds throughout the year

Sometimes we think of the Academy as something remote that we connect with every year during the Oscars. But of course it is a lot more than that. As students of entertainment media there is much to learn and benefit from the numerous activities that you can have access to if you are in LA for your internship. So make sure to check their calendar of events.

At the very least be informed by the innumerable articles, research in the science and technology of movies, and of the numerous grants, internships and fellowships that the Academy grants every year to educational institutions across the country.

As a student of Ithaca College you are part of a select community of individuals who are expected to make their mark in the industry of communications and storytelling. Variety, which is the premier source of entertainment news in the world of show business, lists IC as one of the top media programs in the nation. It is up to you to use this platform to further your career opportunities. It takes work, and passion. Your call.

cutting trailers to give them a different meaning

I came across these on youtube today! I thought they were pretty cool like they take movies and give them a completely different meaning!

Toy Story 3: The Dark Knight

(500) Days of Summer recut as a thriller