2012 Calgary Comic Expo

Really excited about the 2012 Calgary Comic Expo this year. So much so, we decided to create a fan-made commercial for it. I Tweeted it to them, but I still haven't heard anything back from them yet. We're just hoping they'll like it. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Really happy with the lighting on this one. We shot in the somewhat later part of the evening so the light through the windows wasn't overly bright and we could expose properly inside without overexposing the windows. My soft boxes are at about 5500K which is a daylight temperature. I set my white balance on my Canon 60D to about 8800K. It really gave a nice warm yellow tone.

Interesting tidbit: By the time we got to filming the nosebleed scene, the sun had gone down... a lot, which is why we shifted angles to the over the shoulder. We needed to hide the window. 

Something really exciting to me is my order of Video Copilot's Action Essentials. It hasn't arrived yet, but you get a free downloadable starter pack. You see it in action at the 47 second mark. Okay, so it's not that epic, but that's the point. I have a lot of intimate evenings ahead when Action Essentials shows up.

Carol Patterson

A friend of mine named Carol Patterson is a fellow filmmaker. She has a really strong passion for documentaries and focuses on nature. While traveling the world, Carol always brings her camera, and she seems to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time. 

Last Fall she signed up for an Adult Documentary Workshop at the Gulf Islands Film and Television School.

Below is her final project along with co-creator Tara Nichelle.

I'm really excited to announce her nomination for an award in cinematography for a short piece called
Nature Scapes.

It deals with how people are losing their connection with nature. How we spend so much time in front of the TV these days... or the computer... typing. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  

Please enjoy. For more of Carol's work, please click here.

Or visit her website: www.kalahari-online.com

TubeTape Commercial

I decided to enter a contest being held by TubeTape.com. TubeTape is a company that sells lights, green screens, effects bundles and a bunch of other video production equipment. You can see some of the equipment if you check my behind-the-scenes video posted here.

The contest is for creating a 15 second commercial for them. It was a challenge coming up with something that couldn't exceed 15 seconds that included a before and after concept of how their products help. Lighting is always crucial to setting a good scene, and a green screen can place you in a new world.

The following screenshots are a breakdown of some of the layers in the ship scene. I purchased the Thunderbike model from Daz3D. I did the 3D animation in Blender, attached some lights, and exported the camera and object data out to After Effects. While Blender was rendering, I went over to After Effects to set up my scene, ie background stars, parented lights to object data from Blender. 

Render from Blender with alpha channel

Background Star layer added

Fractal noise red smoke and blast ring added

Optical Flares added

For voice work, I want to give credit to Aaron, a friend from work. I asked him if he would record a couple of lines for me. The, "That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it's done!" is him. He gave me all sorts of takes with varying levels of intensity. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Thanks Aaron!

Also, my wife Elisa. She is the other radio voice. For version 2, I also had her do a narration with an English accent. I think it worked out very well and gave it a more commercial feel. Thanks wife!

In the end, I think having 3 voices (mine included) really adds production value. It really makes you feel like there are a lot more characters in the scene.

As for the contest, they'll announce the winner tomorrow. Wish me luck. 

Behind-The-Scenes

This time 'round we decided to film the behind-the-scenes while we shot "How's Your Chicken". I wasn't quite sure what quality the behind-the-scenes should be, but found it quite handy just filming it with an iPhone. One interesting thing about doing this was it gave me a comparison (with lights setup) of the iPhone video vs the Canon 60D. The iPhone is amazing quality for something always in your pocket, but the control you have with a DSLR clearly shows an advantage. I also used the front camera which isn't as high quality as the back camera. I'll have to try that next time, to give it a more fair trial.

I wanted to keep the lighting as minimal as possible, just to demonstrate that you don't need a ton of gear. I was going for a dramatic look with heavy shadows. Potentially I could have bounced an additional light off the ceiling to add some ambient light.

How's Your Chicken?

New video up on YouTube. This one was a lot of fun. The shoot was less intensive than Zombie Bunnies, but again I really wanted to get a good look and feel so we took our time. Got the filming done in a few hours, and spent the next couple nights doing editing, visual FX and sound. Didn't record audio at all on this one, so we had to do dialog replacement. Luckily there were only two lines and an ehhhh!?

The effects were inspired by a great tutorial by Film Riot. I don't want to say too much more, since I don't want to give any spoilers. Hope you enjoy!

Note: No husbands were harmed in the making of this video.

Music For TELL

My music entries for TELL, a short film by Ryan Connolly.

Massage for Ryan... I mean... message ;)

Hi Ryan,
I'm not really sure what you're going for, but have a listen to the following. If you need any of them in high quality, please let me know.

Shameless plug: If you check out the Zombie Bunnies fake trailer here, you'll notice I used your "Cut Your Friends In Half" technique for a scene. 

Aharon Rabinowitz

Okay. Not trying to sound like a newbie here in regards to technology and social media, but Twitter gave me an opportunity tonight to do something I've always wanted to do. I got to thank Aharon Rabinowitz for his teaching and inspiration throughout the years.

If you don't know who Aharon is, he is a graphics artist whose teachings I've been following for the past 7-8 years.

He tweeted tonight asking if anyone could name a tv series that got better after moving to another network. I replied with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", and he replied back. That pretty much made my evening! I took the opportunity to reply again thanking him, letting him know that I now make a living using After Effects everyday. 

I've found my own way in my graphics work for some time now, but without even thinking about it I probably use a lot of methods Aharon has taught me as if they were my own.

His teaching method is usually not about making something flashy you put in your demo reel, but about techniques you could use every time you launched After Effects.

As a guitar player, I've had people ask me to how to play a song. They don't want to learn anything else, just a song. Aharon is about the "chords and theory" of motion graphics first, which I think is what makes him invaluable, especially for someone starting out. It's only when you have this foundation, you can tackle anything.

Thanks Aharon!

You can find Aharon at the following:

http://allbetsareoff.com/

http://leaders.creativecow.net/leaders/rabinowitz_aharon/

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/videos/

Executive Producer and co-writer on Plot Device