melt

A friend made a model of his chest out of crayons for a class this semester and got the idea to melt the whole thing with candles over a tub of water. He also thought it would be coo to film the whole thing, so he enlisted my help with the coverage of the project. One afternoon we brought all our equipment over to the Cerrache building and set it up. A few other friends stopped by to see how everything was going and to take a few pictures. One thing we didn't realize was just how long it would take to melt the whole sculpture; after about two or three hours the candles had burned all the way down and we had only melted the bottom portion of the model. At one point my friend found a blowtorch in the metal shop and attempted to facilitate the melting process, but even that took a long time. The footage was pretty cool, so I edited it together and put it on YouTube (Vimeo requires you to pay to put anything above 500 MB online). My friend hopes to eventually melt the rest of the sculpture once he figures out a way to melt it quicker.

Originally we decided a section of a song called 'Echoes" by Pink Floyd fit very well with the video we had edited, but once I uploaded it to YouTube EMI blocked the video due to copyright issues. Apparently they don't allow you to use even a section of their artists' work for non-profit purposes and even when you credit the artist for their work. So I had to switch the song for something I was allowed to used, but changing the credits would have taken a very long time to reconvert the Final Cut file and then upload the 1.65 GB QuickTime file; I just left the video the way it was. Anyway let me know what you think.

VIDEO

The lost generation

Sit back and relax:-D

Here is to the future!

Looking at that blank screen in the back I hope you feel compelled to create great work to make this world a better place! It was a pleasure to have you in class and I owe you donuts big time:-)

hey great year you guys

had a lot of fun this year with my class. minus the 8am business. but seriously im really happy with our GDK and really liked the other ones in our class. ADR was a little tricky but my class had some great ideas and projects. see you guys around i guess.

hey if youre watching snl you gotta check out the celebrity jeopardy with will ferrell..hes the man

http://www.hulu.com/watch/12203/saturday-night-live-celebrity-jeopardy-stewart-reynolds-and-connery

tina fey in SNL

I think everyone should see this cause it's hillarious

hole in the wall

Its true. the japanese versions of any gameshow ever are always better. always. give me one example where we do it better. do it. haha

Just Desserts tonight!

Hey guys- Just Desserts is tonight at 7 in Emerson. It's an end of the year awards ceremony/thingamabob for ICTV and WICB/VIC. So if you were involved in ICTV or WICB or if you're just a Parkie who wants free strawberries and chocolate cake, then feel free to come. :)

ADR COMPLETE!!

So the day has finally come where I have finished my ADR project. After about 14 hours of editing, and coming out with a project of only 2 minutes and 30 seconds, I now realize what it takes to put together an animated film. I decided to take my project to the next level and redo all of the audio in my film. Little did I know, that animated films have so many SFX, that half my time was spent in garage band and online finding SFX to use. Overall, i thought my project came out really well. I hope the effort I put in gets the grade that I deserve.

thanks for all who helped and answered my questions on the blog

Steve Kinslow

How Movies Should Have Ended

OK so a few of my friends and I were watching clips on youtube and we ran across this channel that re does the endings of popular movies. They'r actually really funny. If you haven't seen any of the How It Should Have Ended videos before click on the title (thats where the link is) and watch a few of them. They'r really good!

Trailers

So i think most of my blog posts have been trailers of movies i've really wanted to see, but i also wanted this post to be about how important the aspect of trailers could be. Trailers are what catches the attention of movie goers at first, because thats the first look they get. For me, trailers are what get me excited for movies, and the better the trailer, the more willing i will be to watch the actual movie.

So here are the TOP 50 movie trailers in the eyes of IFC.

IFC TRAILERS

I wish I did this

Here is an ADR of a song about Star Wars to different Star Wars movies. I love it and wish I did this for my ADR project. It's called Star Wars Gangster Rap

iDVD

Oh, someone had an earlier post which reminded me of something. I noticed that when putting projects on DVDs, a lot of people use the generic opening menu that first comes up on iDVD. However, there is a way to put a project on a DVD that plays automatically without needing the opening menu where all you are going to do is hit play anyways. What you need to do is when you open iDVD, go to file and there should be an option in the scroll-down menu that says OneStep DVD. Just select that and it will open a finder window where you select what MOV file you want to use. It that simple, no need to waste burning time for the menu selection and other BS. You get only what you need.

Telenovelas

Hope everyone's not going too crazy with finals and papers and such this week. If you are, I recommend chocolate and a Disney movie. But anyway.

So for my Spanish class presentation, my group is doing a presentation on telenovelas (Spanish soap operas). While researching for the presentation, we came across an interesting fact for anyone who watched Ugly Betty: the story of Ugly Betty actually started out as a Colombian telenovela. Even though it was only on for a few years, it become megapopular and was adapted by lots of other countries, like Spain and oh hey, the United States. So the storyline of "Ugly Betty" is definitely not an original U.S. creation. Since I wrote my Spanish paper comparing the Colombian, Spanish, and U.S. versions of the show, I can't tell you how many times I've had to write "ugly economist working for a fashion magazine" in Spanish. Seriously though, it was actually pretty interesting looking at what each country did with each plot and what kind of themes and characters they focused on in order to appeal to their own audiences.

burning dvd

This may be an obvious question but how do I burn my project as a just a data file onto a dvd? Does that require iDVD or is that different?

Breaking In

ABC just recently added a new show to their Wednesday comedy line-up. It's called Breaking In and it's actually pretty funny. Here's the link to the Hulu page if you're interested:

http://www.hulu.com/breaking-in

What to hand in?

So i was just wondering what we need to hand in tomorrow for our ADR project. This project didn't really require any of the typical paperwork and with my project I didn't even need to use a transcript so what do we need? I'll have a dvd but I can't see the need for anything else for the type of project I did.

John C Rielly on a Sunday night

Okay so no judging, but I have a knack for picking stupid movies to watch on lazy nights. You know how sometimes you need the most ridiculous movie ever that's so totally random that even though it makes sense, it doesnt? well that was my night last night, and my friend suggested we watch dewey cox: walk hard. I know I'm a few years late on this one, but omg. ridiculous. that's the only way I can describe this movie. Moral of the story, if you're having a rough week, anything with John C Rielly will do.

Ideas for Fiction Field II

- A gang of teens tries to rob a bank to get cash for Spring Break. They inadvertently set fire to the building and all but one is killed. (This is actually good. Dammit. I was going for spoofable ideas here.)

- Oh, here's one: Sex romp featuring a vampire and a nerdy kid in high school. Have corny name such as "Love At First Bite" or "Blood Lust" or "Twi-Boobs."

- A few hipster kids frolic in the forest, smoke a hookah, and talk about obscure bands. The climax of the film is when one of the girl characters doesn't know who Band of Horses is.

- Mimi, a young stripper, decides to turn her set one night into a song and dance. She is fired, but discovered by a talent agent who is visiting. They fall in love and she becomes successful, but not without opposition from Betty, a veteran actress who sees her as nothing more than "filth."

- A robot spends two hours being sexually frustrated and humping things at a gas station.

- A weird kid creates a robot girl for his pleasure. She ends up killing him and going out with the school jock. Moral of the story: Creepy kids don't win. Ever.

- White privileged people feel bad about destroying an indigenous world. Everyone's also blue. And -- oh yeah -- we rip something straight out of TV Tropes. "Unobtainium?" It's been almost three years and I will still not forgive James Cameron for that.

Fiction I in the bag!

I'm pretty much done with my project, and honestly I don't think it's going to get any better than this. I mean, when I'm taking subpar footage from the Internet and making it into something even more subpar, I can't worry about being HD or having a coherent story or Bananas in Pajamas or what have you. You're getting a trailer for a fake movie festival, and it is what it is. Give us all an A- and have a nice summer.

Look, I get that our stuff is bad. I get that every film has mistakes. There's horrible acting, horrible framing, horrible continuity errors, horrible everything. But film isn't some kind of crystal clean art form any more. It's a business. We're catering toward an audience of viewers, many of whom don't even know what a wide shot is. The framing should be good -- it doesn't have to be perfect -- but it should be good. You want people to have a good time with your movie at the end of the day. You want people to feel like the movie had an impact.

I saw several films at the Doorknobs that had definite problems. However, I enjoyed them nonetheless because there was clear effort into all of them. The stories were good, the acting was... well, I mean, we're not all theatre kids... but they conveyed some kind of message. Communication of a story. That's what happened. Remember, we're in the Park School of Communications, not the Park School of Let's-Nitpick-Every-Single-Thing-In-A-Film.

Anyway, now that my lovely rant is over, I need an idea for my Fiction II film next semester. Who's taking it with me, and who would be up for filming somewhere out of Ithaca? Say, Pennsylvania? No, wait; Montana. Let's go to Montana. Yeahhhh.

See y'all finals week,

Will

One more week

One more week of classes... I know I personally cannot wait for all this stress to be gone. ADR is coming along, not done yet but I'll figure it out. Good luck to everyone with the end of the semester.

bright and early

whats going on fiction field. almost done with the ADR. I exported to quicktime though and it knocked my audio track off by like half a second thats pretty annoying. on the plus side my finals arent looking too bad (bc i know all you were wondering). hope everythings going well for you guys..except sean yoo and luke

TRANSFORMERZ

After a disappointing sequel with Transformers 2, the trailer for the TF3 was released and my oh my does it look good. Its another Michael Bay film (booooo), but Spielberg is the Exec Producer, so i guess itll work out. The trailer features new decepticons like SoundWave, and also features the lead actress Rosie Huntington Whiteley. Im pretty excited for this new movie, and the visuals just look fantastic.

Something that saved me and could save you too

So I went home this weekend for an interview and realized that I forgot my hard drive that had a little demo I had put together on it. Rather than freaking out I calmly searched the internet and came across this, www.dropbox.com. Dropbox is a site that let's you upload up to 2 gigabytes free into a folder that creates a link that other people can download from. I had my friend just drag the 1 gig .mov file into there at Ithaca and then downloaded it super fast at my home. Anyone that's trying to move large files around should check it out.

Thanks from TAP!

Hey guys! Just a quick thanks to everyone who came out for the To a Pulp screening last night. It was great having a solid amount of people there to watch our final season. I was really happy with how it turned out, and I think the rest of the cast and crew are, too. It'll be weird not having to send out costume information to the cast and prop information to the producers anymore- our set isn't even there anymore, we tore it down this past Thursday. But now that it's done, the two producers will be able to sleep and I won't have to worry about them ripping their hair out anymore. So yay!

If anyone wants to watch the last season of TAP (or even the first season of TAP), we should be submitting it for online showing on ICTV.org pretty soon. I know DVDs are also in the works, too. Not sure if it'll actually air, though (they just finished the episodes right on time for the premiere).

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