What not to do with a Lightsaber Redux

What not to do with a Lightsaber is a redo of a video I did a couple of years ago. I used Ulead Media Studio Pro for the Lightsaber effect and it was very low res. I recreated the video from scratch and used After Effects this time to do the lightsaber. I also incorporated my R2D@ and actually bothered to replace the green screen this time. I also added some flying ships in the background.

Dawn of the Evil Dead Zombies from Hell at Dusk

Dawn of the Evil Dead Zombies from Hell at Dusk

No makeup effects were used in this video. It was all done with After Effects. All shots were done in front of a green screen, no location shots were used. If you want to know how it was done, visit VideoCopilot(dot)net. And see Andrew Kramer's amazing tutorials. Wilhelm scream added for your pleasure.

The Time Machine

New York City, December 2006

New York City, December 2006

Tori Amos - Big Wheel Video

Tori Amos - Big Wheel, from her latest release "American Doll Posse". The green screen video footage was supplied by Epic records for a contest. I edited the four takes and added some of my own. The background plate is actually a panoramic photo that after effects treated as a 3D background. Tori rotates inside the images for some shots. There was a lot of green spill on the piano and the stool, roto-scoping is not fun, but that's why they say..."we'll fix it in the post" and boy did I ever. I am not going to mention the "white x's", but they are gone and good riddance. The background plate and the other images are all from the same place. Details on those coming soon.

The theme is the theater represents the decay of a relationship and left unattended will wither and fall apart. Everything (except Tori) is old, worn and decrepit. Everything breaks down over time if not taken care of...or I just thought it looked really cool.

Winery Wars

Winery Wars from jwestern and Vimeo.


Winery Wars, just a little farce about wondering just exactly how winery owners feel about each other. Is it really convivial feelings towards each other or something a little more sinister?
Filmed at Tomorrows World studios with the new larger green screen. All of the background plates were constructed form photos and adding the winery store signs and logos. All of the wine barrels were added digitally. The photos were of plain warehouses. Even the warehouse loading dock. You'll notice that several of the wine barrels are hit and start to pour out wine. So you could surmise the intentions of the shooters may not have been each other, but rather aiming for the wine barrels. This was a test to see how far I could push the virtual set. I think the actors did a great job in their performances.

Modest Mouse - Fire It Up

Modest Mouse - Fire It Up - Video I edited for the Stereogum.com contest: http://www.stereogum.com/modestmouse/
They provided green screen footage of the band. I added the special FX and edited the video. I had to manually sync the tracks and add back in a high quality version of the song from their new CD "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank".

Robot Wars

Robot Wars was made with a Fujifilm digital still camera and Media Studio Pro editor. I cheated on the numbers of frames per second, I used 3 frames per still image. It makes it a little more choppy, but the images would have gone by way to fast at 1 frame a scond.

Broose: So Lost Without You

Broose: So Lost Without You was filmed in early 2006. Broose drove up from Splendora, tx and spent several days at Tomorrows World Studios. The song "So Lost Without You" is from Broose's CD London Static. It was our first attempt at using green screen for a music video. It was edited with Ulead's Media Studio Pro. Which does green screen, but not very well. Since moving to Adobe After Effects with Keylight our green screen effects have much improved. The set was not lit very well and there was a lot of green spill on Broose. But over all we were pleased with the outcome. Broose did much of the editing himself. The process was tedious on a n older P4 system, rendering took forever. IT was hard to get a good preview on the results, so you just had to wait. The guitar in the center of video was used to cover up a hot spot in the lighting. We show the actual green screen several times, poking fun at all of the videos that use green/blue screen effects. We plan on re-editing all of the raw footage to create a whole new video (now that we have after effects and a faster computer).

Broose

Al Kinoman - A Director's Vision

This is one of my first videos on Youtube. We shot this a few years ago and I re-edited it for a contest. It was for Gary Cogill's three minute movie contest (ABC's Channel 8 Movie Critic). I took out all the footage from our films we had made. The original video was about 10 minutes long. It was one of the first things I put on the Web as well. For years it was on Broadcast.com's site. Mark Cuban's billion dollar making website. I think it was hosted there on behalf of the Dallas Video Festival.The video is spoofing all of the talking head videos that go behind the scenes of movie sets, talking to the director, cast and crew. The funny thing is we shot this before DVD's. The inspiration came from the HBO "making of" videos. But now all DVD's have this same sort of thing in the extras section.

Fun with Movie Marquees: