Okay, Angie beat me to it with her post, but I wanted to include this here as well! A few months ago (okay, April of 2005) Angie and I were transformed into works of art in the pages of Mad Magazine!
Below is a photo of us along with the page in Mad. I’m pretty sure you can order back-issues. This was done by the MAD-man himself, Tom Richmond. While I pale in comparison to his work, I’ve been trying to keep up to date with some of my own work, mostly to improve my animation techniques.
Yes, I’m still in the building! It’s been a little crazy around here recently and haven’t had the chance to post during the past week. I’ve got several Comcast commercials in the works right now.
One is almost finished and incorporates several animated characters matchmoved on background plates that I shot a few weeks ago. I’ll post it once it’s approved by the client.
I’m really getting deep into the compositing live action and CG elements. Most of it is done in Shake. Recently I’ve been learning a bit more about the advanced “re-lighting” features in Shake. I can go in and re-light rendered elements in real time. Pretty wild. I’ll post a short demo with pics in the next week.
Speaking of posting the videos, I’m still working on the best way to post videos on Blogger. It’s not as easy as posting a picture. But I want it to be as seamless as possible from your side of the screen.
Well, sometimes when you don’t think and you just “do,” you can “do” amazing things. My wife, Angie, is a professional caricature artist and is really good. She makes it look easy. Last night, though, just for fun, I tried drawing her with as little ‘thought’ as possble. Just a doodle, really.
As you can see, it didn’t turn out too bad! Anyway, I’m no Hirschfeld, but for 2 seconds, even I’m impressed!
Well, several announcements. First is about a film being released next month. Let me give you some background, though. Last year I was invited to work as part of the crew for a film in New York.
My answer? Sure! I can’t say much about the details (due to NDA’s and the like), but it was a great experience and now the film is being released next month.
The film is School for Scoundrels and is being released on September 29th. The trailer has been released on Apple’s site and actually shows the scene I worked on.
About halfway into the trailer is a scene where they are tossing lobster into the river. That’s the shot I helped out with. No, I’m not in frame at all, it was all as part of the crew behind-the-scenes. The shot lasts about 2 minutes (if that) and took close to 12 hours to film. So go see the film and when that scene comes up, think of me, shivering in the sub-artic temperatures (it was COLD that day!). Oh, the trailer is located here.
In other news, we are getting closer releaseing the first in a series of animated shorts. These include a very cool animation project that my wife and I are working on. We’ll post the animations as soon as they are completed. Hopefully they will be finished mid-fall of this year if all goes well. (I’m crossing my fingers!!!)
I thought I’d post a quick example of a production I shot and edited for a client. This is one I already had online, so I am just linking to the file on my own site (http://www.reelsinmotion.com).
The primary colors in his logo were blue and pink, so I tried to stay congruent with those colors. I also tried using them in a more modern way (can one use color in a modern way?) to up the final video’s energy level.
I spent a part of today reflecting on part of my review of last night’s film, The Illusionist. When Neil Burton (the director) was discussing the process he used to create the dark, period “dreamlike” emotion associated with the film, he hit upon what I feel was the most important part of the film’s atmosphere and emotion.
Last year when at the NCN convention (an international convention for caricature artists) in Las Vegas, one of the speakers discussed how he did studies on the master oil painters of the past 400 years. He spoke about how they were masters of light, color and how they affect each other. Well, the same holds true in film today.
So what would you suppose I did? I went back and watched several of my past works. Turns out that most of the work I felt was my most powerful used a strong color theme. These colors evoked certain colors. Blue, pink, green. They all had certain ‘feels.’
In fact, one commercial I just finished had two primary colors: red and white. This commercial was a strong, direct piece due to this. It was one car (red) against a white backdrop. The final shot included the car in front of a building (again, white on the white backdrop). This put most of the focus on the car and the message of the commercial. I can’t do it now, but I’ll post the commercial in the near future, after the client approves it and it airs.
If you’re going to be creating a video in the future, start thinking about the emotion you wish to evoke and what colors you feel best convey those emotions. Just like the browns and subtle colors in The Illusionist evoked a haunting, turn of the century era, we must do the same.
Just finished watching the film. There are many aspects to touch upon. The first thing you notice about the film is Neil Burger (Director) used what can only be described as an old hand crank movie camera look. Burger did a Q&A afterwards and discussed this in detail. He mentioned how, since this was a period piece, he wanted a dream like experience like you were watching an old film.
To accomplish this, they used a combination of filters, chemically treating the film and filters applied in post-production to create a very dreamlike look.
He described it as “the feel that it’s a black and white film that has been hand colored” and it did have that feel. Very muted colors and the camera focus and exposure went soft and dark towards the edges. There was also a strong use of the diffuse filter and even more desaturation in the film for many of the flashback scenes. Very well done.
All and all, it was a very entertaining film. Burger was extremely polite and the audience enjoyed his Q&A. Here is a link to the film’s official site: http://www.theillusionist.com/
Without giving away too much of the plot, Ed Norton plays a magician with seemingly supernatural powers. Norton’s character is thrust into a battle of wits with the police inspector after a crime is committed. I’d highly recommend the film for both it’s content and artistic cinematography. Truely a work of art.
Very exciting news, folks! For the past several months I have been making the transition to a fully high definition studio. Well, just recently, I’ve completed the transition over to the new powerhorse of the studio: the mobile editing system based on Final Cut Studio HD, so we’ll be able to handle just able any format at any location!
The new laptop (a Macbook Pro) has been allowing me to aquire footage and edit with clients on-site. Talk about a time saver! Plus, I can also do basic compositing right on site as well. This is great for some of my clients who are looking to add an animated character or prop into the shot. We can look at the footage, I can do a quick matchmove and drop the animated item into the shot right there to get a rough idea of how it will look. Then I head back to the studio to do the fine tuning.
I’ll try and post some samples once the projects go public.
While on the topic of HD, the newest camera I’ve been using is the Panny HVX-200. It’s a nice camera that allows me to shoot in HD, directly to the hard drive. This is great since it lets me edit faster and turn the projects around faster.
Also, as I mentioed above, I have been working on several animation projects that will be integrated into the live action using specialty post-production software (called a compositor). I’ll explain a bit more about how we do this and what some before and after shots look like. It’s very exciting and probably my favorite aspect of the post-production process.
Finally, you’ve probably noticed the new update/blog format. You can view it here or go to http://reelsinmotion.blogspot.com to read any updates, plus do searches on pretty much anything I’ve blogged about.
Just finished watching the film. There are many aspects to touch upon. The first thing you notice about the film is Neil Burger (Director) used what can only be described as an old hand crank movie camera look. Burger did a Q&A afterwards and discussed this in detail. He mentioned how, since this was a period piece, he wanted a dream like experience like you were watching an old film. 