new Cincere video
 

For those who remember, I posted a video compilation for an uprising R&B singer by the name of Cincere few months ago. A lot has changed since than. His songs are now being played on four radio station and he has been a KISS FM Combat winner for two consecutive nights this week (KISS FM is a Clear Channel Communications affiliate station )

Anyways. Here's the newest video compilation made up of some recording studio footage I shot and some footage provided to me by the artist. Hope you enjoy it.
Cincere "I DO"

nice job, are you going to work with him again in future projects. What are you planning to do with this video?

Thanks Alan. The video is being used by Cincere as his promo piece. You might notice that it shows him in various situations as opposed to following a script. This is so that potential record companies can see that he's not just a rookie. Whether I stay with him once he hits the "big time" will be up to him, hopefully he will remember those who helped him on the way to the top, if not, I will still have a satisfaction from a simple fact that I was able to help another human being make a better life for himself.
In a meantime, I have been working on a script for his next title song. This time I will insist on me shooting all the footage because it brings tyears to my eyes when I have to bring in 320x240 15 fps .afs files and use them in his promo.

I can see the challenge in working with other people's formats. I have issues working with my own format sometimes!!. I hope he does remembers who helped him out as well. That is everybody's responsability

Bonita (bmx footage)
 

The town of Bonita Springs Florida just built a new skatepark. I shot all this footage last week on a trv950. Tell me what you think of the shots...

http://home.comcast.net/~dvdustin/on...age/bonita.wmv

http://home.comcast.net/~dvdustin/on...age/bonita.mov


Oh and I'm the one on the Reece's color scheme bike (orange, yellow, and brown).

Oh and some of the shots might seem dark because I forgot to boost up the gain before compressing for the web. Sorry about that.

ARENAHOJ PART 2: 23 sec. experimental short
 

Do you like ghosts and mysteries in deserted places?

The second part of the short experimental fun-filmproject ARENAHOJ has been finished and is online from now. Go to www.orphic.nl/odm/html/arenahoj-2.html to watch this 23 seconds flick (2.4 MB, Quicktime).

Despite it's simplicity, Part 2 required a lot of editing to keep light reflections and other moving cars from the screen. Shot with the DVX100.

Peter Sieben

Hey peter, I like it. Nice composition and the light is nice too, i image it was all available light? how did u get the thing to go up an down? Was there compositing work involved to do that? The only thing that i didnt think worked was the skreetch noise the car made when it came to a stop. Didnt seem to match what the car was doing.

Thanks for your quick reply.
Yes, it was filmed with the available light. I used the new film look tools in Vegas 5 to make it look like this. I filmed the object going up and down. But a car was going under it, so I used the Cookie Cutter in Vegas to black out parts of the screen and fill those gaps with material shot a couple of seconds later or earlier. On some point the screen shows 3 different kind of videos, as the car you see was driving parallel with another one in the track behind it. A similar thing was caused by lightreflections of different cars.
The car break sound isn't really fitting, I know. I searched for a good sound also on internet, but used this one as the best I could find before I got bored with it ;-)

Peter Sieben

Looked pretty neat and original. Nice job!

It looked good, but I do have some remarks:

- I disliked the transitions halfway through (1:25) with the fox
footage. The last transition just popped away as well. That didn't
look professional to my eye

- I would've tried to remove as much of the logo's as possible.
Especially the information lines on the bottom. A letterbox would've
at least removed that.

- I would not have included the piece at around 2:20 with the
girl on stage. He is not paying any attention to her.

- At the end you have the exact same shot (album cover?) that
you just did moments earlier (the one where you "zoom" in).
That looks a bit "cheap" when done so soon again.

Good luck on your new project! And definitely try to shoot your
own footage.

Thanks for your comment Rob. Some of the things you mention make absolut sense to me however the manager wanted these parts in there to show his interaction with the audience and the fact that he's been on all these TV shows, hence the station logo.
Go figure :-(

I loved the opening sequence with the shadows.
Would you have been able to get closer to the bikers? Some of their trick would have looked mighty great if the camera was right there underneath. Of course you might have been tied down by the safety rules of the park.
The music was unusually fitting to the video itself although for some reason I thought I will be listening to punk rock.
Keep 'em comming

After Effects animation for festival commercial
 

This isn't the most mind-blowing After Effects work you'l ever see, but I'm fairly proud of it, particularly considering how quickly it had to be done:

AthFest 2004 -- requires Quicktime 6. Will automatically play in new browser window

www.karatemedia.com/video/athfestweb.rm -- RealPlayer version. Right-click and save to your computer.

The visuals were done in three evenings this past week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The audio was done on Thursday. I'm not real happy with the audio quality, but to be honest it's acceptable for they paid.

The ad is not as "complete" as I had envisioned it; I was thinking more of an actualy trip through downtown, with a lot more going on, but I didn't have the time. They didn't ask for this style -- as usual, I was just handed a disc with some pictures and music on it and told to make an ad. Techically, they would have gotten their money's worth if I'd just thrown some still pictures up on the screen, but I wanted to challenge myself (and as with some of the graphic spots I do, I knew that I had a little artistic freedom over the spot, for the most part).

I'm still waiting for their final approval of the spot, but I wanted to throw it out here for you to see. Like I said, it's far from perfect, but it is probably the most interesting TV ad they've ever had for this festival.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rafal Krolik : I loved the opening sequence with the shadows.
Would you have been able to get closer to the bikers? Some of their trick would have looked mighty great if the camera was right there underneath. Of course you might have been tied down by the safety rules of the park.
The music was unusually fitting to the video itself although for some reason I thought I will be listening to punk rock.
Keep 'em comming -->>>


Its actually pretty hard to get right up under the riders without using a really wide fisheye lens, which I don't have. I have a couple shots from up close but they just didn't look right to me so I didn't use them. Thanks for all the compliments!

New Webisodes for my Documentary
 

Hi all:

I just finished shooting a documentary on a Black College Bus Tour and produced several 6 to 10minute webisodes while we were on the road for two weeks.

Please view and submit coments on them while I'm in post production on the doc

http://www.blackcollegebustour.com/media/index.html

Thanks and have a great week

The Unusuals
 

This is a little project we wanted to keep ourselves busy with. A challenging enough size to keep our brains on tap, yet spread out over several months to keep the workload down on our already tapped out lives.

Ever want to be a superhero? So do these guys, and they have 'special' powers. So special our story starts in a support group for heroes with crappy super powers. Poor lads...

Check out Episode One at www.american-ocean.com and navigating to the films section.

Hope you like it, be gentle on the sound!
Shane

It might be a bit much to ask people to watch all 8 episodes
when time for most people is limited. Is there an episode you
feel we should definitely watch to comment you on?

Stephen,

Good job on the video. I only had to time to watch one, so I chose the Atlanta one. I think captured the feel well, and you did a good job on many of the shots, but I do have a few opinions to offer:

1. The main issue for me is that I wanted to hear people talking earlier. People and their impressions are always the most interesting thing to me, and I think to most people. I feel like it should have much more of that, or if there is only so much video of people talking then you should have it earlier in the video, or divide of the interview and intersperse it with other images.

2. The pacing dragged a little bit for me. For example, in the beginning, when we are seeing people set up for the group photo it is interesting, but I don't think we need that much. Fundamentally the final pose is what we are looking for, but what makes video fun is that we show how they got there. I agree with that, I just think a couple of seconds does just fine and keeps it more interesting.

3. The scrolling text in the intro is a little tough to read because it is competing with the background. You may want to dull the background even further.

Keep it up and have fun.

Thanks for the comments they help a lot.

Please just any one that looks interesting.

My favorites are webisode 5, 7&8

Now I'm working on the task of taking the content from several of the webisodes and make a two minute trailor.

Dudes at the Bar
 

DUDES AT THE BAR
http://www.caleodis.com/movies/movies.htm

Like "Who's on First", but modernized ...with ethnicity

available in QUICKTIME, REAL PLAYER, and WINDOWS MEDIA
written & directed by George Caleodis

Those links do not work for me.... can you check them?

hit refresh, I think they are fixed now. They had a problem with the old page.

Batman's not real?
 

Not bad. The sound wasn't so great, but it was tolerable. some of the acting was actually pretty good. Especailly the doctor and the Floater. One critisizm I would have is that it is difficult to tell who is sitting where in "the cirlce of trust" the vcr programmer always seemed to be looking the wrong way when he was talking to someone.
All in all it was pretty funny.
I'm thinking, though, if you can levitate a bic pen and make it shoot through the air with any kind of speed at all, you might not be so lame after all. Not to mention, if you drop the speed sequencer off at an old folk's home, he WOULD be a superhero.


I think the idea of doing serial shorts is a good one- in fact I'm involved in the same sort of project right now. Part one is lacking about three shots and a voice over narration. One of the things my parteners and I stipulated was that each segament would be better in every way than the one before it- I'd guess you're working under a similar system.

How long until we see part two?

Michael

Bottle Of Secrets Preview
 

hey guy's it's been about six months we've been working on this bottle of secrets project. we Finially got the dv tapes back from our first editor and the director and new editor cut a preview lastnight.

http://www.spotlightunlimited.com/bos/preview.htm

like so many works in progress no color corection or advanced special effects have been done yet.


side note: we've only got 1, 3-5 minute shot left to complete. something to do with a police station, but we havent got the ok to shoot it as of this time...that's been the bigest hold up in finishing the project.

Yeah, as we'll find out some of The Unusuals aren't so unsuper... and you will indeed find out about Supreme's job (which has to do with Murder She Wrote) at a later time.

With real life getting in the way, we can only hope to get one out per month, so episode 2 is going to be out July 1st. And that's a hope hehe.. we'll see as time flies by.

As for the continuity of the circle, you'll have to take my word on it that they're all looking the right way... I tightened up the editing to take out too much of an establishing shot not really caring for such things, just wanting to nail it down.

Thanks for the reply,
Shane

New version of hamlet I made for my literature class
 

I had to redo Hamlet for my literature class and this is what came out. It's a little rough I only had a month to shoot it but anyway tell me what you guys think of it.

it's 43 megs runs 11 minutes long (then there's a minute of credits then outakes so watch teh whole thing)

Right click and hit save target as
www.zealsolutions.com/12gauge/Telmah.wmv

Good job
 

Good job on your project. It is a job by itself getting that many different people to cooperate on a project. I just about fell out of my chair when the father was kicked with such grace in the last fight scene.

Some technical notes:

Dialogue audio distorts or clips in some dialogue and action scenes - check levels? Could be in the encoding/compression

Room tone or nat sound would have fixed evident sound changes from cutting different takes together in the same scene(s)

Yeah the audio for some reason is really bad in parts. It sounds fine on the DVD and the full uncompressed AVI files but the WMV codec screwed it up I guess really not cool anyway thanks for watching.

Bodyboarding Video - Newport Beach, CA
 

Hello everybody. This is my first time showcasing work to the public so be nice to me! :)

This is a video I shot recently at the Wedge in Newport Beach, Ca. I made it for two reasons. One, because there aren't enough bodyboarding videos out there! Two, because the Wedge is an extreme spot with waves that can break your neck if you fall over the top of a wave too late!

Enjoy and feel free to comment.

P.S. The music you hear is from a band called Amber Sky, who's mp3's are available on my page and their own website should be up in a couple days (www.amberskymusic.com)

To get the video head to my blog: www.jeffpatch.com

Thanks!

Hey

Not bad at all! I really liked your footage.

good pace also, and they are actually really good bodyboarders...
I like to bodyboard myself, especially in Spain.

If you are thinking about making a longer video you need to have some different elements in your film.

A little color-grading, maybe a voice over interview, a timelapse of a beautiful sky ,some characteristics from the beach etc.

Just advice, do with it what you want;)

good job

Chr

* * Greetings Again * *
 

Good Morning, DVINFO!

Its been a while since I've signed on and wrote anything.

I hope all is well.

All of the below was shot exclusively with the Canon XL1S(s).

Since then...

"ALL THE WOMEN I LOVED" (FRAME/4:3 MATTED 16:9/Final product show on multiple Plasma Screens) short trailer that, I was hired as cinematographer, based on 5 time Emmy Award Producer and author Byron Harmon. This humorous, comedic, work of Byron Harmon (Published by Simon and Schuster, May 25, 2004) about modern dating, expectations, and relationships. Premiered last night at Eugene's Night Club at the book signing soiree.

"BEFORE TWELVE" (FRAME/4:3 MATTED 16:9/Final Product for Projection/Predominantly Television viewing) a short which I was hired as director of photography, is now on the Festival Circuit. It is a short dramatic/thriller piece about the supernatural world and two sisters. Will she make it home before twelve? I hope all of you will be able to see it soon...

"BREATHING SHADOW" (4:3 MATTED 16:9/Final Product Projection/DVD) A thriller that follows Clemente into the doldrums of his thieving existence. Do unto others as .... The project failed to be lifted as funding dried up and fell off the tree.

"AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SUICIDE" (FRAME/16:9 INCAMERA/Final Product Projection) is now a composition of 3 shorts, "Ring Toss," "Leaving Walk," and "Season of No Sun" which is still being edited.

Some others are on the burner... Everything was done completely with:

Canon XL1S
Sennheiser ME66/K6 Microphone
Cavision Matte Box w/ Black Promist and various other filters.
NRG Pro Batteries
Bogen Tripods
Sony ECM44B Lavs
Wireless UHF Lavs
RENTED: Arri/Mole Light Kits
RENTED: Scrims
RENTED: C-Stands
RENTED: Mathew's Dolly
RENTED: Steadicam

I hope to have some samplings for everybody to puruse, enjoy, and constructively criticize.

Best to you.

Cheers!

Derrick

Thanks! I was really amazed with the talent of the boarders there that day. You don't always get good ones. Then again, the ones that are just getting slammed are entertaining to watch as well!

I do plan on getting a lot more footage together and making a full length video. Thanks for the tips. I desperately need to color correct it I think. On my TV, it looks great, but it looks pretty bad on the computer IMHO.

I have a thread in the legal section that I could use some help with:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=27137

Thanks

I have not seen it yet, downloading.

I am not sure. Usually, most just want the credit and exposure. Some of the pros may want a copy or otherwise, but usually exposure is what justifies their sponsorship. Jay Reale may have some ideas for you and he and Vicki, his wife, probably can id some of them if you need to. Also check with Jay for an outlet for any video.

Jay and Vicki's site is at http://www.ebodyboarding.com/

George Ellis, the ex-pro bodyboarder from the East Coast in the late 80's :)

Thanks for the tips George, I'll check out their site. The thing about this video I plan on doing is that none of these guys are pro's. They're just locals. I'm sure none of them would ever realize they're in the video, but still, if I'm not allowed to use their images without consent I won't.

Thanks,
Jeffery

Watched the video. Some of that stuff is better than footage I have seen in videos on the shelf. You have potential.

If you want a critic, on your next shoot, get one of the bodyboarders to talk about the takeoff zone and where to watch. That will help you setup your zoom before the action starts as you can be primed on who will have priority and where to be at so you do not have to pickup the action and zoom in.

I am going to send a quick note to Jay, but tell him to keep it on the QT so that your site does not get swamped!

Thanks George! Those are kind words, I appreciate it. I'm still learning the Wedge, I just started riding it and understand that the takeoff zone is important. Like you said, I need to figure out where the takeoff zone is so I can be ready for it. I'm sure you noticed that my technique was to start wide and zoom in when I saw action. Feels like cheating kinda! It was very difficult to see in the viewfinder because of how bright it was outside, and the sad part is it was an overcast day.

I have a lot more work to do, but I appreciate the comments and look forward to making an even better, full length video before summer's over.

Thanks!

They approved the spot last week, so they at least thought they got their money's worth...

Not to beg for attention, but does anyone have any opinions on this spot? I know some of what I would have liked to do differently, but I'd like to hear some outside input.

By the way, you can also access the "AthFest 2004" video from http://www.karatemedia.com/video -- along with the QT and RealPlayer versions, I've added a Windows Media version as well.

I like the funny animations and graphics. I think the effect is better (when I see it in other similar spots) when it is faster and a bit more Pythonish. The font is awful, IMO and the narration (is that the final narration) needs to be a bit more up. Not ridiculously cheesy but increased excitement and humour.

I may have got your intent all wrong.

Keith

Thanks for the input. Which font do you mean (or do you mean all of them)?

The VO is one of my biggest complaints; mostly there was a problem with the quality of the recording (which was all my fault).