FInal Cut being evil

Sooooo next class if anyone has had this happen to them can you please please help me!!! I am editing a waiting scene and all i need is to fade from one scene to another and final cut keeps saying i have insufficient media. Which is crazzzzyyyy ahhh so frustrating if anyone knows whats going on please help

it's friday

SOOO... im sure most of you have seen the horrid Rebecca Black music video for "Friday". If you have not, I discourage you from ever watching it if you want to save what you have left of your sanity. Anyway, the recent dubbing project we were just given reminded me of a video I happened to stumble upon while resisting my school work. It's a dubbed version of the song and it had me laughing pretty hard for a while. so i suggest clicking the link in the title.. and remember, tomorrow is friday. its the day before saturday. and after saturday comes sunday. in case you all forgot. thank you Rebecca Black for your incredible lyrical talents. they will surely be criticized for months to come. that is all.

iDVD problems

Heyy fellow Fiction Field-ers! So I'm having a problem with my iDVD. After I export my file as a quicktime off Final Cut Express and drag it into iDVD it goes through all the steps but when it gets to one of the last steps it ejects the dvd. The problem is there are still steps to go when it ejects the dvd so it never fully finalizes. So frustrating! Has anyone ever had the same problem?

Final Cut's Being a Bitch

Okay, so, for the GDK project we recorded our good audio (from the boom mic) on the right channel. I am now trying to use only that channel to make the audio duel-mono. I've de-linked the stereo pair and re-positioned a copy of the good track to run in parallel with the original, but when I go to change the pan to -1 (so that it will come out of the left channel), it won't let me. It will let me move the slider or type in a number into the pan value, but it wont do anything and when I de-select it and then re-select it, the audio says that pan is at 1, even though I just changed it. This and the fact that Final Cut has been slow and jumpy with the amount of footage in it is making me very short-tempered.

What am I doing wrong?

LA Noire: First Video Game At Tribeca Film Festival

dubs

So this new project that we're doing made me remember these videos. They're wicked funny. The guy takes bad "as seen on tv" products and dubs them over and makes them wicked funny, in my opinion. I love em. Not really too appropriate but hey.
I recommend the oxiclean dub, mighty mend it, the gopher, and mighty putty.

rest in peace billy mays.

Some Inspiration

While looking around for clips for the ADR project we are setting up I thought maybe I should try to find some examples of dubbed footage that has been reworked. Then I thought back to some childhood favorites, MXC (Most Extreme Elimination Challenge) and Kung Pow. MXC is a show that aired on Spike TV a few years back that takes an asian game show and completely dubs it to create even more humor. The end result is a surreal spectacle that is hard to believe actually exists.

The second thing I mentioned was Kung Pow. It splices new characters, scenes, effects, and audio into a 1970s martial arts film. The result is equally as ridiculous as the show posted above.

Ichi The Killer

Last night a friend and I watched (or tried to watch) a Japanese film called Ichi the Killer directed by Takashi Miike. It was based on a manga series also called Ichi the Killer. We didn't finish the movie mainly due to the fact that it has no plot. The film starts off with a man named Kakihara looking for his "boss" (they are members of a crime syndicate) and a mysterious figure named Ichi lurking around the city (presumably Tokyo). When you finally get acquainted with all the characters and their roles in the story (more than thirty minutes into the film) you find out the boss is dead. From their is no apparent impetus for the rest of the action. You have this vague notion that Kakihara is looking for Ichi (who killed "the boss"), but that is not really clear. The bulk of what we watched is made up of torture or sexual fantasy scenes (frequently a combination of the two) that contribute nothing to story other than to show you how messed up these people are. I'm not against violence in movies, but like every other aspect of film, it has to be relevant to the whole story. Not just some exposé of how many gory things something can think of and fit into a ninety minute movie.

It's not a forgettable movie, it just has no point. If you must watch it, let it be for no other reason than to say that you have seen it.

Slightly Repetitive Post

Just seconding Jamie's post about our shoot this past weekend. The house was actually incredibly disgusting- the guy living in it knew as much about the basement as we did. There were cobwebs literally everywhere (I even had a dream about cobwebs last night, it was gross), scary doors, and just grossness. But it was definitely grungy enough to work, and if anyone needs a dark/scary/grungy/gross corner or something for their shoot, I suggest asking your friends who live off-campus if they have a basement they never use or have never even entered before.

But overall, the shoot went well, and I'm looking forward to finishing shooting on Thursday and getting into post.

Its Monday Already...whoa

Lots of shooting over the weekend for GDK. Business school pt. I on Friday evening; green screen studio and parking garage on Saturday (plus relay for life); business school pt. II Sunday morning. Plenty of footage to look through, already started editing some.

Limitless

So I saw limitless this weekend. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of the movie, the main character takes a drug called NZT that allows him to access 100% of his brain, enabling him to basically be a complete bad ass and do whatever he wants. The story was pretty cool but the best part of the film for me was the color correction. It was awesome. They used color correction to set the mood in every scene. The color told you whether or not he was on NZT, what his state of mind was, etc. It was so effective. I loved it. That is all.

Paris Je T'aime

Hey guys,
So for one of my classes, I had to watch the movie Paris Je T'aime (Paris, I love you). What I found to be really interesting about this movie was that it was made up of 18 short films. All of the movies dealt with some sort of relationship, but they were all SO different. Each "vignette" was directed by a different director so they all had a different feel to them as well. What was really cool was that even though all of these short films were so different, when they were put together they formed a whole story - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts kinda thing. I think its cool how you can have one comprehensive unit that's made up of things that are so different than each other.

In other news, we'll be filming our gdk tomorrow and wednesday. We unfortunately had to change the date from this saturday. Tomorrow will be a long day.

question, do we have class on thursday?

Monday monday gotta get down on monday

I see my frehhhhhnzzzz.

Getting to important things: From what I heard, we had some good shoots this weekend for our group. Good job team, Team Good Job. I couldn't be there because the show I DP for was doing some heavy filming this weekend. Let me tell you about it.

There were some long shots that are going to be a pain to edit. It's an argument scene between three people, so we pulled it off by doing handheld everything and getting a long master take, then three close-ups. It's a bit sloppy in the camera movement -- kind of Office style if you want to think of it that way -- but we didn't get any of the equipment in the shot so far as I'm concerned. The crew who weren't helping on set acted as extras. It went pretty well, aside from Stacey Lawrence's flubbed takes. That's right, I call people out by name. (It was funny, though.)

We filmed in the dining hall. Did I mention that? We filmed in the dining hall. Our location manager is a baller.

As far as professionally made stuff goes, I think I told you about Battle LA already. What about Sucker Punch? Clearly the post production work is excellent, and we're not going to see the movie for the storyline. But that doesn't justify the fact that the acting is just plain awful. Even from the trailer I knew that we were going to see some pretty wonky line delivery. Had the cast been a little more dramatic instead of running around killing things the entire time, it might have been a more decent film. But on first watch, it's just okay for now.

Finally, I've got to complain. Our second project isn't Field Production at all. We're taking pre-made footage and remixing it. I know editing, you know editing. It's first grade, Spongebob. I don't get it.

Wocka flocka flame, I'm out.

Second shoot went great!

Hope everyone who shot this weekend had a good shoot. I know Becca and I did!
We shot Saturday at a house on South Aurora, and sure, the house was a disgusting mess. BUT it was the perfect location. Our audio came out good and the lighting is amazing thanks to my awesome roommate (Rachel Rothenberg) who is practically a lighting goddess.

So basically all we have left to shoot is the outside stuff, its about 3 very short scenes. So please keep your fingers crossed that we have some decent weather soon.

Shutter Island

So obviously this a good movie no matter how you look at it, but what do you thin happens? I've heard some crazy ideas, but I can't disprove them. What do you think?

Green Screen

Thanks to Wed. class, we were able to get a jump start on our green screen scene of our lock smith shop. A green screen really wasn't necessary for our movie but we weren't able to find any local or will stores to let us shoot in their shop. We have to touch up some things in post, but overall the store looks really good. Wed was a great success and we were really happy that our GDN was made better do to you Prof. Sinclair. Can't wait to tell you what we have done tomorrow in class. Until then, God bless.

Steve Kinslow

Almost there....

Two days of shooting down one more to go. Here's a quick composite of our shoot today. It's rough and needs some tweaking (shadows) but I just wanted to post something to show there's progress being made haha.

Cloudy Day

Me, Alex, and Travis just finished one of our scenes for our film. It went really well, but the only complication was the cloudy day where the lighting was constantly changing! I know it's something that can be improved with FCP, but we ended up waiting for clouds to pass by, just in case. Overall our progress is going really well and we should be done shooting soon

-Marlee

Day for Night

Here a quick and dirty (and ugly:-) composite I just did against your background. I shot myself against a green fabric, with light coming from my window (too cold outside, hehe) , flipped it contrasted, desaturated and tinted the image to match the "light" on the parking lot. As a detail I added a "reflection" of the background in my glasses like we mentioned in class.

Light for parking lot

Hey arturo, this is kinda the lights that we need for that scene I was telling you.

Greenscreen Workshop

Hey guys,

So this past class we did the workshop for the greenscreen, and I thought I'd share some of the pictures I took:

For as long as I can remember, I've been curious as to how the greenscreen works, so it was amazing to finally find out. The scene showing in the pictures is supposed to resemble a locksmith's office, with the background being a wall of keys (I would upload the picture, but it's not on my computer, sorry!) Seeing as this is an incredibly short scene, I thought it would be relatively easy to light. Long story short: I was wrong. Even with the entire class helping, it took us easily about 30 minutes to get everything just right, but after seeing the final product, it was definitely worth it.

- Molly

Lichtfaktor

Since Leah posted her light writing piece I think she (and all of you) will be interested in the work of Lichtfaktor which are a couple of very active German artists. But in this video (no need to speak German to understand it!) you can also see the work of my favorite light graffiti collective. The fabulous and radical (and OPEN SOURCE!!! yeah!) Graffiti Research Lab. There is also a piece on the AR (augmented reality) group DAIM using tracking fiducials to create 3 dimensional light graffiti. This is the 21st century after all...

More Green Screen

word

hey guyss, life is pretty good. ya know. oh so I wanted to share with you all the fact that I can do cool things with lights... aka light gloves, glow sticks, LED hula hoops, you name it. and if anyone ever needs to shoot a "rave" scene or something like that I can hook you up with myself and friends of mine that share "light talent" abilities. ahah. but seriously, my friend Deanna just did a music video and it was craazy. all bright lights. ridiculous. So even in the next few weeks, months, years, whatever. if you are looking for something like that let me know. the led hoop is pretty sweet. take a looook (:

Team Member Down

Hey everyone, turns out Ellis withdrew from the course so Becca and I are a group member down.
If anyone is free Saturday the 26th from 330 until 10 at the very very latest and wouldn't mind lending a hand we'd really appreciate it. We just need a couple (or at least 1) extra person on set to be audio, or be a PA. anything really. Just text me or becca if you'd like to help out. Seriously though, I'd love you forever.

In-Class Test

Here's a screenshot of what the final composite would look something like from our test in class today. I just did some minor color correction and desaturation to make the characters blend with the background better.

Dominick Tavella

So I went to the Dominick Tavella presentation in Park last night. It was awesome. Mr. Tavella is a professional re-recording mixer. He is the last person the audio gets sent to and he completes the final mix. He has worked on huge films including the Black Swan and he won an academy award for his mixing in Chicago. Basically he was really awesome and he shared with us some insight into the world of mixing and the professional business. It was super interesting.

There's a video contest for everything

I just saw a contest on the site I just linked in the last post. In response to Face's post, which is....the one before that, there is a video contest for Blizzard's Anniversary.

Great Website

For anyone who doesn't know about this website it's pretty awesome. On this website there are a ton of online video contests. I know I get bored a lot and always want to be making movies or doing something with video and this site is a great incentive. The contests on this site are organized by due date. It tells you how many days are left until the deadline for that competition as well as all the rules and guidelines. All the contests also have prizes, most are money, some are trips, others are items. There was a really cool one on there I saw that was a 48 hour film competition. I know we talked about a 24 hour film fest last week in class. For this contest participants are entered into a raffle at the beginning of the 48 hours and are randomly assigned a genre, some characters, and plot points. From there on you must write, shoot, and edit the movie and get it uploaded to the website by the 48 hour deadline. That's pretty awesome.

green screens are pretty sick

today in class we shot a short scene from our GDK and after we got everything in place i was really impressed with exactly what was possible with the green screen. i mean it had reflections from our background on things like the desk. after effects looks like it does a lot of the work, or maybe arturo just made it look easy, probably the latter. we did have some scares as far as styrofoam ceilings go but im really glad we did that in class today i think i learned a lot

Speaking of Anniversaries...

I remember seeing that March 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the Blizzard gaming company (back then, it was called Silicon & Synapse). I didn't watch the entire video, but I thought it was interesting if your in the gaming culture and like computers. I think Arturo mentioned working in games at one point. Funny how in twenty years, the company went from some young college kids making computer games to one of the biggest gaming companies in the world responsible for such titles as World of Warcraft and Diablo.

After-Effects and its amazingness

The end of class kind of blew my mind. After taking nearly the entire class to set up the lights and scene I figured we wouldn't be able to actually make a finished product. Once Arturo put the footage in, it took him 5 minutes to make a realistic scene. I thought it was amazing. That after-effects automatically made the reflection on the desk fit with the scene, that was awesome. Just how fast the process was and how many options you have to tweak things and make it look exactly how you want, I thought it was incredible.

"Les Miserables 25th Anniversary Concert" PBS coverage

Over spring break I watched the "Les Miserables 25th Anniversary Concert" on PBS. Although I've watched many of the shows that this station has covered on Great Performances and other programs, I was completely blown away by this special. Since theatre is most powerful when it is seen live in the audience, I did not expect to be as moved as I was by this televised event. Though the actors were of course phenomenal and the music itself is timeless, I believe it was the coverage and camera work that added to the overall feel of this piece. The cameras were cut with such precision that the viewer never got bored of seeing a singular shot for too long. I know this has a lot to do with studio production since it was directed from a remote truck, many of the features such as interviews and backstage tours can be viewed as field production.

finally getting started

So after a few weeks of finalizing our script, props, cast, and locations of scenes, we (Molly, Gabe, Steve) are going to start shooting tomorrow in the commons. As of now, we have three days to shoot all our our scenes with a fourth day to go back and redo shoots we didn't like in post. Once again, I hope the snow doesn't get in our way and stop us from getting started. We have a lot to work to do and we really need all the days prior to April 11th to make this movie look great. If anyone has any advice or words of encouragement before we start, please do so. Other than that, I will be seeing most of you in a few hours.

Steve Kinslow

Enter the Void

If you want to watch one of the craziest movies ever, please take some time and watch Enter The Void.


Its a French movie, about a drug dealer named Oscar, who gets shot in Japan after being chased by security guards. He then has an out of body experience that leads him to follow his life after death.

This movie is shot in first person for nearly the entire movie, and is just visual masterpiece. Some of the scenes in the movie literally blow my mind, and i hope your mind can feel the same effect after watching this movie..


enjoy

thanks for the warm welcome back ithaca..

..you never cease to amaze me with your bright sunny days and warmth. (to then be followed by snow and freezing rain, but she doesnt mean it right ithaca?) anyway i digress. our actors are more complicated to organize than. well something really hard to organize. but other than that were ready to go. were doing our green screen scene (say that 3 times fast) tomorrow in class so thatll be good. thats it for me see you bright and early..well maybe not bright

btw anyone have a half decent bracket left? and go miami bball!

3 point editing

Sooo idk about you guys but our lesson in class today where we learned the 3 point editing was amazing! ive been looking at some of my footage and i really think it will be able to help. Also if anyone wants an extra hand on their upcoming shoots let me know id love to help out :)

Indeed.com

Hey guys! I don't know if anyone's looking for internships for the summer or for next year, but if you are, there's this really great website you can check out called indeed.com. It's basically like google, but for internships and jobs. I thought it was really helpful. If you wanna check it out, the title is the link :)

Mondays. Silly.

Hope we weren't supposed to post over break. Oopsie daisy.

Well, obligatory update on the GDK: we've reserved our equipment and have everything ready for our shoot this upcoming Saturday. What will be most difficult is the shoot after that- our cast is really only available on Saturdays, and only during the afternoon, so that makes our last shoot (outdoors, off-campus) pretty time-restricted, especially since we're running out of Saturdays. But I think with some good in-class prep and some editing of what we already have, we should be okay.

I didn't watch too much TV or movies over break- I know, I'm really regretting it- but I did manage to watch a movie my dad Tivo'd for me. It was called "Always" (I think), and it was about a firefighter pilot who dies and gets sent back from Heaven to act as an unseen guide for an up-and-coming firefighter pilot. It was directed by Steven Spielberg (I'm pretty sure- my memory is really failing me right now), and the script was great. It had some really nice moments. There was a part just before the end that I wasn't sure fit very well, but overall I really liked the characters (Richard Dreyfuss plays the main guy) and the dialogue. So overall, pretty good. :)

My hard drive is currently precariously placed on a chair in the lab

And that's okay. Nothing like a bit of a challenge to everyone else while you're editing. Hey guys! If you're reading this during class, don't trip!

Anyhow, I saw Battle LA the other day. Great visual effects. It was a shame that the story didn't let us see much of them, though. Most of what I got to witness was the gritty landscape of the destroyed city, which is rubble and rubble and rubble and rubble and rubble. I would have loved to see more robot aliens. From the six frames I saw of them, they looked very cool. Okay, and there was that scene where they cut through one of the aliens to find the weak spot. But other than that, it was a good use of special effects for some pretty mediocre reasons.

The story and everything else was eh and meh, though. Aliens are colonizing the Earth. Great! Let's kill them! But why? Well, they're killing us. But why? Because they may want our water. Hmmm, okay, but why? For fuel. Ohhh. Well, you could have made that a little clearer earlier on in the movie; unless you were afraid that the explosions and the helicopters were going to be compromised. Less story, more helicopters! Isn't that how it works? No. Also, the actors weren't subpar, but what they were acting wasn't hard by any means. Children could have done it. It was mostly screaming and grunting. Children can scream and grunt. That's all babies do, I know that. Just ask my two year old nephew. Awwww. I'm sidetracked. Spring break.

I gave it a 4/10. I'd watch it again only if my roommate and his drunk frat brothers were watching it on Netflix. They're suckers for this kind of stuff. Again, meh and eh.

STATUS REPORT ON EDITING! Pretty much one-third of the movie is rough edited in Final Cut. I've got to work on the SFX for the opening shot, and it was a pain to get the audio to flow well. We might have to ADR. But that's not so much a problem right now. We've got a few weeks. I'm sure we can get this done.

Then it's on to the next project. Who's betting on music video?

~Will

Siblings and Such.

I know, who blogs over spring break, right?

Actually, other people did too, so that's nice.

Anyway, I thought it would be nice to keep consistent and blog after a vlog.

This week, I recorded a song with my younger sister. She's 18 and graduating soon. I like talking to her these days, because I forgot what that felt like. She has no idea where she's going or what she's doing, and even though that's super terrifying for her, it's also kind of exciting. To avoid getting super cheesy I'll just say that I'm wishing her the best, and until then, I'm glad she's not too cool to sit down and vlog with her lame older sister.

I hope everyone enjoyed their spring breaks. We'll be back to Golden Doorknob stuff soon enough. We have a really long shoot lined up soon, which is super exciting!!!

Safe travels, and best wishes :)

Detonation Films

I forgot to mention this when we had that presentation on FX with the exploding head. For those who don't have Adobe After Effects or some other program with a blood-gush generator, there's a site where you can download blood, explosions, bullets, and a bunch of other SF stock footage put against solid backgrounds, making it easy to key into you videos. Most of the good stuff costs money, but you can get some pretty good free samples that work well. It's worked well for me in the past.

Prey 2 Trailer

I was watching Attack of The Show today and they had the premiere trailer for the video game Prey 2 on it. I am a huge fan of live action commercials for video games like the ones they used to make for halo and such. This trailer is really cool and kind of has you on edge for two minutes. Making these live action trailers for video games adds a sense of realism to the whole "game world" which I feel makes a great connection with the consumer. Check it out.

Swamp People

A small part of going home that I really enjoy is flipping through channels, as I don't have cable at school. It never ceases to amaze me how many reality shows The History Channel and Discovery Channel can squeeze out of obscure jobs but the trailer I'm posting really caught my eye. It is a trailer for Swamp People season 2 and I really liked what they did with the slow motion while moving the camera to capture the man pulling the crocodile out of the water. On land with a group of people I can see how this would be easy to do, you would just move around the subjects with a steadicam rig or a dolly and do the slow motion in post. But these shots were in the middle of a swamp on boats while crazy swamp people pull crocodiles out of the water with nets and shotguns. Are there some special effects going on here or have they just brought equipment out into the wilderness and set up some impressive shots?

Casting needs

A colleague from the Cinema Department asked me to relay these casting needs in case you know someone who might fit the bill based on casting you have already done:

George (20’s, M): A college student could fill this role. He is an intelligence operative in the company. In his discussion with Veronica, he is trying to deceive her into dropping her pursuit of the truth.

Jensen (20’s, M): I am looking for someone who is built like a track runner for this part. He initially toys with Veronica in the interrogation scene. As soon as a weapon is introduced to the scene, he becomes terrified. It doesn’t take long for Veronica to break him.

Vlad (30’s M): His role in setting the trap is to entice Veronica into falling into the trap. He slyly gives up bits of information until he has her hooked. Once he has Veronica in his bag, he sends Veronica on her way.

If you can help post a comment mentioning for what character you are suggesting someone and I will relay the information to the director.

Shooting schedule is form March24-31

Mix-Pre....

So we shot for our GDK last night. It went pretty well but we had a debacle with the mix-pre. It made our audio sound terrible, full of static and it kept clipping. After a half hour of messing with it we decided to scrap it and just shoot. It was a real hassle. Other than that the shoot went pretty well. Jen did a great job with the makeup for my head wound. Also, the GY 700s are awesome. Anyway, all we need is one shot after break so I'm pretty happy with where we are.

That scary post-graduation question...

In class today we talked about what we ultimately see ourselves doing post-graduation. As a Junior, this isn't very far away and that post-graduation question always sounds somewhat scary. I don't really think about it too much but when I do this is what I come up with. When I first graduate I'm expecting an entry-level position as a PA but down the road I see myself producing. My ultimate goal would be to somehow combine my love of broadway with video production by video packages for broadway.com. Although this is the dream as of now, it may change as I continue to explore what it is I like about television and hopefully intern in LA.

Location Scouting and 90s Nickelodeon

So yesterday we took a little trip to meet with the realtor. He showed us the houses. They're so cute and perfect for our location. Here's a picture of one of the ones we're gonna use. They're still in the construction phase, so no one lives in them yet. But the room is exactly what we need (thank god)






Also! I received AMAZING news from my friend today. Apparently, next fall nickelodeon will be bringing back all of our favorite 90s nickelodeon shows from midnight to 2am. I am seriously so incredibly excited for this. They said they're doing it because of all the interest for the programs on social networking sites, mostly facebook. So get ready cause next fall, the time wasting window of midnight to 2am just got much more exciting. All That, Clarissa Explains it All, Rugrats, Kenan and Kel and more! YAAAY!

Movies on Education

I'm planning on visiting my old high school over the break to help out with some stuff and when I went to their front page, they were advertising two movie screenings at the school for students (which I've never heard of at my high school before). Although they screen on days I won't be there I was wondering if anyone has heard of these titles: Race to Nowhere / 2 Million Minutes. The first is a documentary about the pressures of the school system on students, teachers, and parents, while the latter is about how students spend their time in school. At least, that is what their descriptions say.

What is creepy is that it seems we just had a discussion along these lines in class today. You don't have any connections in Vermont, do you Arturo?

A Wild Post Appeared!

So I was Skyping with my friend last night, and he told me to go look at Steven Spielberg's filmography on Wikipedia and see all of the titles that he's been involved in. I saw a lot of titles that I had no idea he had a hand in: he was a producer for Balto and The Goonies, director for Minority Report, and a producer for The Land Before Time. So I suggest you go look at the filmographies of your favorite director/producer/film-y person and see what crazy stuff they've been involved in. Because I never knew that Steven Spielberg had a hand in The Land Before Time, the movie with the cutest dinosaurs ever.

Adjustment bureau

hey guys, so last week I went to the movie theater and saw a special screening of the Adjustment Bureau for a select number of ithaca college students. it was really interesting being able to actually meet with one of the producers of the movie, who happens to be the father of a friend who goes here. we got to ask him questions and it was really intriguing learning about what it takes to produce a movie and how much goes into it. I have never experienced anything like that and would love to have the opportunity to do it again. If anything like this ever arises for you, take advantage of it. and oh yeah, the movie was pretty good too haha. I actually enjoyed it a lot and would suggest it to any of you. a lot of matt damon, so be prepared.

Greenscreen

I'm looking forward to shooting some of the green screen stuff for our doorknob. I've never done green screen before besides a few tests so it's going to be a new experience and i'm excited to see how all the different elements come together and hopefully look realistic.

Random 3D Question that has Nothing to do with Field Prod.

So, I recently saw a review for the movie "Rango" and when watching clips from it, I randomly had the thought "how do animators make feathers on birds." I know some preliminary stuff about 3D and know, generally, how modelers make hair, but do they use as similar concept to make feathers or not? I mean, hair, though organized, can be made random within certain areas and parameters, but because feathers have a precise function, placement, and position on birds (not to mention that they don't bend easily), would using a generator similar to that of hair work? Not to mention that feathers have "hair" on them (I don't know the technical name). I don't know, only that it must have taken a bit of time to make.

Just something interesting I saw over a few days ago

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

GDK tomorrow

So we are shooting for our GDK tomorrow. We are getting everything set as far as props and what not. Hopefully everything goes well! We will update tomorrow after the shoot.

I'm gonna post a Wednesday blog post yeahhh wooo

I realized after re-reading my last post that it sounded whiny and 12-year-old-girl-like, so I apologize. Or I don't. Maybe I'm a twelve year old girl. Justin Bieber. Perms. Whipping hair back and forth. You get the picture.

A lot changes in a week: We're done shooting most of our film and are now in (drumroll) the editing stage! Ten gigabytes of footage currently sit on my desktop ready to be sliced and color corrected and what not. I'm not sure that we'll need to do much with the video -- it's the audio I worry about. I'm thinking we'll need some serious ADR for one of the scenes; but then again, I haven't looked at the footage yet. I'll either be pleasantly surprised or not surprisingly disappointed. We'll see.

Life's good otherwise. Break is coming. Get excited. See you after next week.

~Will

All I Do Is Dream Of You

I'm just going to start by saying that a week goes by wayyyy too fast. I feel like two days ago I wrote here. Mehhh.

Anyway, for consistency's sake, here's my most recent vlog. As I mentioned in the beginning of this video, I learned some film history while I was working on this song. I originally knew it from the 1952 hit MGM musical Singin' in the Rain. However, upon google-ing this song, I discovered that it was actually written much earlier for another film called Sadie Mckee in 1934. Since then, it has been performed by many artists.

So yeah. I just thought that was cool. It was nice to learn a little more about the song before I recorded it. Funnnnnn.

That's all for now, kiddos. Have a great day, and I'll see you bright and early (especially since I got this malfunctioning alarm clock issue fixed!!!)

Motion Graphics and credits

I have a few questions about the proper way to do credits with our Golden Doorknob. Should we roll credits twice the way movies normally do it? Once in the beginning with the important names and then again at the end to included everyone. I know we have a time restriction of 5 minutes and maybe running them twice would take away from our storyline, but I just want to do it the right way. Also, tomorrow I will be coming to class with questions on how to do a motion graphic with our title. I'm not the best artist in the world but I'm pretty sure I can describe to you what we want out title to look like to your motion graphic students. Hopefully tomorrow will be a productive day with the editing portion of our project.

GDK Update

So we've completed our casting for our GDK, and everyone seems to fit their roles perfectly. We've scouted multiple locations, and have emailed them asking if we can shoot their. As Face posted earlier, the parking garage is nearly perfect for our DK, and we've also found a nice creepy tunnel.
Other than that, we still need to see if we can find any good office buildings, but if it ends up not happening, we've agreed to change the script around to fit our locations. That will be our backup plan, so hopefully it doesnt come to that.

Hope everyone else's GDK is going swimmingly......

Pretty much done shooting

We are almost done shooting! We shot all weekend in the horrible weather and got amazing results! Now all we have to do is shoot our final news scene, which we will do today, and then we are done. We are now starting to organize everything putting all our shots in folders and blah blah

PPECS XLR's are unreliable. seriously.

Alright so Becca, Ellis and I shot 2 scenes this weekend. Luckily they aren't dialogue intensive scenes because guess who has terrible audio? We do! That's right. The XLR that went from the mic into the mix pre was good, which means Ellis heard good sound. However the XLR that went from the mix pre into the camera, was bad. So we got terrible audio that we didn't know about until we looked at the footage. So beware, even if youre racing the sun for sunlight, make sure you test your audio. It was a silly mistake we made, but it cost us. Now we'll ADR the scenes.

Forms, Legal, and Shenanigans

Everyone planning to film on city property, you may want to pay attention. So, we all know that to film on city property, we need to submit a form to the Department of Public Works at least two weeks in advance (see the form on the Field Production research guide on the IC Library site, or go here. But, what about the insurance form (item number 2 on the form)? Well, as IC students filming in the city, we are covered by the college through the Office of Risk Management, but the office need to get a form at least 10 days before the shoot (and I would recommend getting this paperwork in before submitting the form for the Department of Public Works). Click here to get to the page you need for the Risk Management forms.

Also, I realized that I haven't been doing these entries for the past month or so, so I'll try to get one down every day for the next week or two (personal goal).

10-=14 inches of snow cancels shoot

So because of the weather today, we weren't able to begin shooting our Golden Doorknob. All of our shots are located down in the commons and in apartments downtown, and with the snow constantly falling, I didn't feel comfortable or safe driving my car (doesn't have four wheel drive). With this said, it going to be tough to shoot this week with all the midterms teachers are giving. However, we will try to meet up to shoot our intro on campus somewhere to get things rolling. Last, I really hope the school cancels class until noon tomorrow. This weekend was a killer with studying that sleeping in tomorrow would just be awesome. If not, see you bright and early.

Steve

Space Effects

A few nights ago I watched Apollo 13 and I was wondering how they did the anti gravity effects. I realize that there was definitely some green screen and computer effects involved but with the astronauts pulling themselves throughout their space craft was that with harnesses?

Doorknob Weekend Recap and Important Realization

Hey All,
So this weekend seems to have been a big weekend for everyone, shooting their doorknobs. Our group, (Alyssa, Matt, and I) did really well overall with our shoots. Saturday we really lucked out with the weather in the afternoon and got one out of our two outdoor scenes completed. Today we shot the opening and ending scenes, which was actually really good because of the weather.

We did run into a small glitch though concerning audio for one scene. For some reason our mic wasn't working in the beginning, we caught it right away thankfully, and were able to fix it. This does bring up a really important point. A lot of the xlrs from ppecks don't seem to work or are bad. There is a way to check this though BEFORE leaving ppecks. They have an xlr tester on the desk by the center computer, and its actually a really good idea to check the cables this way so that when your on set and ready to start shooting you don't realize that the cable is bad and you won't have any audio.

Weekend Summary

Not a bad weekend overall for our shooting. We did have some setbacks though. We couldn't get approval for a location for our final scene so we need to work around that. And this snowstorm threw a wrench in our gears for shooting today. Although we are behind schedule with the footage we need to get, I'm sure we'll be able to recover in the next couple of days.

The Social Network

So I just watched the Social Network. First time I had seen it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Kept me engaged, really engaged. Great acting I thought as well. Just a good movie all around. I wonder what Mark Zuckerberg thought about the film. I thought the actor who portrayed him played a great role but I would be interested to know if that's what he was actually like. Anyways, seeing as it is 2am I'm gonna go to bed now.

GDK Shoot Report

Hello lovely people. Jamie, Ellis and I (that's right, no Oxford comma for THIS phrase) shot two scenes of our Golden Doorknob today, getting us a quarter of the way through shooting. We shot a scene inside of a trunk and one outside on the side of a road. Both scenes went pretty well- we ended up cutting a lot of our angles because they were unnecessary, so shooting went pretty quickly. (Not having a lot of dialogue helped, too). The biggest problem we ran into was the fact that the Roscoe light, which we were going to use to imitate a cell phone light but make it brighter, didn't work. It has a plug that will work in a car cigarette lighter thing (is that what those are called? I can't remember), but for some reason it just wasn't working. We ended up using an actual phone that emitted enough light to light his face when he was talking into it, and I think it worked out pretty well. Of course, we'll see when we look over the footage, but we think we got enough light to light the scene and make it have a convincing locked-in-a-trunk look.

We also had fun with fake blood. Maybe a little too much fun. But that's okay. :)

Gabo saint bad

so weve got our script finalized and sent out. got our lead actor and a short list for actresses and almost done with the rest of the cast (minus the badguy locksmith if anyones interested). Steves working on the permission slips so we can shoot downtown.

Has anyone shot in a parking garage? help me out! few/no outlets so im low on ideas and any would be appreciated.

Thanks

Golden Doorknob!

Hey!!

We're shooting our golden doorknob today and I'm excited and nervous at the same time. I have never felt this prepared for any shoot I've been apart of because most people are so unorganized. I think we'll have a lot of fun though shooting around ithaca. I'm crossing my fingers in hopes that everything goes smoothly!

-Marlee

Makeup Artist

So the makeup artists I mentioned. Her name is Jen Tracy, you should be able to get in contact with her if you just send her a message on facebook.  This is some work she did for my other doorknob i shot last week.

doo dee daaaa

hey guys. sooo doorknob update.. wooo. shooting this weekend! excitinggg. haha. our cast is small and they are all our friends/boyfriend(s) which is convenient. we fixed up all the little details that were a bit sketchy and all i think we have to worry about now is getting it shot successfully and working with the title. "locked in" seems a bit..mmm cliche and it gives away the whole plot/ending basically. im looking for some advice on a title. we moved a lot of things around, played with them, changed the dialogue. everything is working out. being ahead of the game feels sooo gooood. hehe. 

shooting mishap

SO,
We had a little bit of a problem today when we went to shoot part of our GDK... our SD card was the wrong type. If you're planning on buying one from Karen Armstrong, then don't worry about it, BUT if you're buying it from somewhere else, make sure it's a class 6 card. Ours was a class 4 card and it didn't work. So we couldn't shoot today, which kinda sucked but we'll make it up on Saturday.
Can't wait to get shooting so we have some footage to work with!

Fighting tutorials

For our GDK we have a fighting scene, and this video was really helpful to kinda figure out how are we going to shoot this scene. they also have other videos with different tricks and effects, so they are definitely worth checking out.

This is another good one, WHACK!

Rude Neighbors and Other Such Ramblings

Good morning!!!

I hope everyone's projects are coming along. A little update, we're shooting some scenes today and Saturday, then we're scoping out a location next week. Hooray for progress.

Speaking of progress, guess who has another video blog?! This one was disappointing, I would have liked to do another take, but my neighbors starting pounding on the wall. I guess they aren't as supportive of my new hobby as you guys are (heh heh).

Anyway, for my next one, I'm working on doing harmonies and trying some split screen action. I'd like to start putting a little more effort into how these look, because usually I just film on my computer, without any sort of regard to picture quality or light (for example, there's a HUGE orb of light past my head where the sun is hitting my wardrobe. I really should have just put a little more thought into the lighting). Point is, this should be more than just me sitting down, playing a song, and uploading it. This is my written promise to make the videos themselves a little more impressive.

Hopefully I'll follow through. Otherwise I'm a huge liar. And that's just bad taste.

Best Wishes,

Rhiannon

Yonkers Brrrah

So theres this whole rap movement coming out of the West Coast called "Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All" otherwise known as Odd Future. They've been blowing up because rappers like Kanye West, Mos Def, and Lupe Fiasco have hopped on board. With their vulgar lines, and there "i dont give a fffff" attitude, Odd Future is really the Future.

But the reason i made a post about them, is because of the music video they made for one of their songs. Tyler the Creator who is the leader of the group, let this music video out, which was completely his idea, and completely crazy. Really like the black and white aspect of the video, and the editing is just outstanding.. Please Watch, and beware, the lyrics arent church friendly.

WATCH HERE

oh and for all the ladies in the class, Bieber has hopped on board.

OFWGKTA!!!!!!

?

I am applying for an internship in Syracuse over the summer and I need to find a professor who is not an adjunct to be my sponsor. I was wondering what that means exactly.

Quick&Dirty

So this is a really quick and dirty compositing. Shot with an iPhone in class against a small blue board, composited, tracked and keyed in After Effects. Total time about 15 min. I added some subtle "light movement" to the still background which we downloaded from the internet.

And, oh, yes I added a street ambient downloaded from freesound.org

A simple example of what effects are all about and how they liberate you from impossible locations etc.

Here are the elements of the composite:

Wednesday post out of obligation

First off I would like to say: DAMMIT REBECCA YOU AND THE REST OF YOUR SPARK CLASS ARE SO LUCKY I WOULD GIVE ANYTHING TO SKYPE WITH DIANE SAWYER AND/OR DAVID MUIR. WHY AM I SO UNLUCKY. WHYYYY. *runs into corner, cries, moans, groans*

Anyway.

I didn't watch the Oscars. To be honest, good for all of the films that were nominated or that won; but I can't stand the glorification of the ceremony. At least the Grammys has music throughout the show -- and come on, when Arcade Fire has bicycles riding around during a light show and when Em and Dre and Rihanna are singing together in front of a fire, it's going to be more exciting than anything you could imagine at an awards show. Besides, James Franco was supposedly high the entire time -- awesome and hilarious, nonetheless -- and Anne Hathaway just reminds me of that ditzy girl that I dated in high school that I broke up with after seven months because she was going to college and her ex-boyfriend was closer to FSU and it was just going to work out better that way. But I digress. I digress.

Moving on to Doorknob news: Buhhh.

We have no cast. Maybe one person. But maybe not. I don't know. We have a script and a few locations. Great. However, we need more time than "finish shooting before Spring Break." I know of Doorknob producers who aren't shooting until April. We need to make this great. We need time for reshoots. We need time for editing. We need time to work around when our locations will let us shoot. This isn't something we can rush; and to be honest, I'd think it best if we forgot that this project was for a class and if we really focused our energy toward the competition. $2000 isn't something to sniff at.

That's all. Now going to work on storyboarding. Also the lights are off in the classroom and I'm going to fall asleep. Why did that guy's entire head disappear? The nose of that gun is not that big. Fo fo real.

~Will

Spark Mini-Course

I'm typing this while sitting in a Park mini-course called Spark (it's okay, they encourage us to go on Facebook/Twitter/everything and post about the class during class). We're about to Skype with David Muir and Diane Sawyer, among other people. While I know it doesn't have much to do with film, I just thought it might interest you to know that we're about to talk with some pretty cool household names in a few minutes. If they say anything ground-breaking, I'll set up another post and give you a rundown of what's going on.

Right now they're ordering me to set up a Twitter account. When Twitter first came out, I thought it was the dumbest thing and I swore that I would never get one. And now it seems like I must break my promise to myself. Sadface.

Breaking a Door Handle

I've been trying to figure out how we are going to accomplish one of our shots. The scene starts off with a close-up of a door handle being dropped on a table and breaking. In order to do this we need to wear down the handle until a simple fall will break it or break it then loosely glue it back together so it will fall apart again and still look convincing. Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this. Gluing the handle back together might look strange on camera so if anybody can think of a way to pull this off, please let me know.

The Social Network

On saturday night I watched the Social Network for the...ah I've lost count of how many times at this point. Still after seeing this film on more than one occasion it hasn't gotten old. Even though it sounds cliche and I think it was used in the advertisements, it truly defines the digital age and the world we are living in today. However it does not stop there. Thanks to the meticulous directing of David Fincher The Social Network is more than just a movie about facebook. It delves deep into interpersonal relationships and is not afraid of producing unlikeable characters. I think one of my favorite scenes throughout the entire film is when (SPOILER ALERT) Eduardo finds out that his share in the company has been reduced to next to nothing. The way in which the camera captures his anger and follows him throughout the entire scene makes the feeling so realistic. The dark and moody lighting used throughout The Social Network, characteristic of Fincher, gives the movie an edge and intensity that never disappears even in the deposition scenes where the rooms are lighter. This all being said it would be an understatement to say I am a little upset with the results of the Academy Awards last night. Having seen the Kings Speech I understand why it won, I just don't completely agree. Still, judging the two against one another is nearly impossible since they are such polar opposites. For example, one is quintessentially American while the other is British, one is about friendships forming while the other is about them falling apart and the eras they represent though both important are different in many ways.