I shot another set of ads for the wonderful guys of Rails Envy recently, and the first four are now available as your nerdy entertainment for the week.
We shot the ads against a white wall in tiny apartment with surprisingly solid results. I was able to blow out the rear wall enough to cover up the textured paint, and later I dropped a green screen behind our Burt Reynolds look-a-like. Trying to do any kind of chroma keying with MiniDV footage is always going to be problematic, but since this was produced to be viewed (mostly) on the web, the lower quality of the key wasn’t a huge issue.
The software I used to pull the key is a handy little plugin called dvMatte Pro 3, which specializes in keying DV footage. I wrote more about this little gem here. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s become an indispensable tool for a lot of the work I’ve done recently. Really great stuff.
These ads are always a lot of fun to work on, and I thank the Envy guys for the opportunity to work on a project like this.
The most publicized feature in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard can also be one of the most useful for your Final Cut Studio workfow. This, of course, is Time Machine.
My setup right now consists of two external hard drives. Both are 500GB FireWire 800 drives. One is for capture and all of the extra goodies that come with Final Cut Studio, and the other is for backup via Time Machine. Read the rest of this entry »
You probably already know this, but I also work on a podcast called SOLMI. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a (mostly) weekly comedy podcast made up of scripted episodes, a-la sketch comedy. Although I don’t really think we’ve every really called ourselves sketch comedy people.
We don’t know what we are.
We also haven’t had a new show out in a while, but that’s another story altogether. Anyway, I went ahead and took one of our recent episodes over to the Enzian, a film house that screens local filmmaker’s work at monthly film slams. From what I understand the barrier to entry into these slams is pretty low. That being said, we were probably lucky to sneak into the running with our (probably highly offensive) episode, Superhero.
Superhero was actually originally shot as part of Apple’s Insomnia Film Festival, a 24-hour film competition open to students. It’s also a response to NBC’s Heroes, which includes a character (Isaac) that requires the use of heroin to activate his super powers. An interesting premise to be sure, but we wondered what it might be like if other people had similar… limitations. And what those limitations might be. And what that might mean for those close to that person.
So there it is. Enjoy the show, and if you’re in the Orlando area this Sunday at 1pm, we’d appreciate the support.
A few months back I decided it would be neat to have a tape logging system that I could take with me while I was out shooting something. I took some time to get into Ruby on Rails, and eventually Tapes was born.
Tapes is free, iPhone compatible, and works pretty well on EDGE (so far anyway). I hope you like it, but more than that, I hope you find it useful.
I’m open to comments and suggestions about how to improve Tapes, if you feel like giving some feedback. You can always email me at jason [at] makefilmwork [dot] com.
Who knows… it might be your suggestion that ends up in a future update! And that’s exciting right? RIGHT?
I shot and edited this video for Grandma Party here in Orlando.
From shooting until completion it took about a week.
Twice a year the residents of Orlando, FL convene in the parking lot of a coffee shop to buy, sell, and trade their homemade wares. Local bands perform while visitors browse colorful tents, or relax in the giant balloon pool. Basically it’s amazing. No video can do it justice. You should just go.
