"2007" Screening: Wanstead and Woodford Cine and Video Club

I've been invited to screen "2007" at Wanstead and Woodford Cine and Video Club on 29th June, at St. Paul's Church Hall, Woodford Bridge, along with a few words about the development of this music video and a few of my other films. Molly Brown will also be presenting her own showcase.

"2007" Official Music Video - Tenderstar

Late Nights And Love Bites [LIFF Preview: A Little Bit Zombie]

Dying was easy. It’s getting married that’s the killer.

Another LIFF highlight for sci-fi fans: A Little Bit Zombie, directed by Casey Walker, will be at the London Independent Film Festival on 18th April. Finally someone has made a romantic comedy with brains.


A Little Bit Zombie - Trailer from A Little Bit Zombie on Vimeo.

A Little Bit Zombie is the second part of a LIFF double bill: it follows the LIFF Music Video selection, including my own video for "2007" by Tenderstar.

"2007" Screening: London Independent Film Festival

"2007" has been selected by the very nice people at the London Independent Film Festival and will be screened at the music video event on 18th April at the Roxy.

Stars In Their Skies

“2007” was shown at Rotoreliefs on 30th January. I really enjoyed the other shorts on the programme, several of which had been made for competitions, and all but one of which had been made for peanuts. Hard to pick a favourite from such different films but I loved the documentary based on the idea of releasing balloons with messages: a simple but totally unique concept, and some amazing shots. I learned a lot from joining in the Q&A panel afterwards – not least that there are people who spend even less than me on their films! As far as “2007” goes, I’d expected questions on how we’d approached the video or where the ideas had come from, but apart from the budget question I was asked about the technical side of how we’d set up the bluescreen: I'm planning to do a tutorial on this shortly. Thanks to the organizers for a great night, particularly for the chance to meet like-minded filmmakers.

Today I didn't have the heart to delete Default Cube...

Meanwhile production continues on the stop motion short “We Can Get You Some Really Cheap Gear” which is due to be screened next week - provided it’s finished on time! Dialogue was recorded this evening by a small crew of extreme voice talent, and while there’s still one more scene to animate and a few changes to make to the edit, everything’s on track for now.

Can't Stop Now

The stop motion experiments continue - I'm enjoying the chance to try out angles, shot types, compositions, depth of field shenanigans and so on, all on a miniature scale. I'm also really impressed with the performance of my 550D on it's close-up settings. However Stop Motion Lesson #2 is: ten minutes spent ensuring your camera is stable saves hours and hours of tedious frame adjustment in post.

I'm also preparing to screen the music video for Tenderstar's song "2007" at the Rotoreliefs film night, tomorrow 30th January at Rich Mix. I'll be joining in a Q&A session after the screening, along with other filmmakers. Full details of the event are here. I'm very much looking forward to this event, and the line-up for the night looks great, including a chance to see Anton Short's comedy "Suicide Tuesday" which I've mentioned before.

"2007" Screening: Rotoreliefs

I'm thrilled about this one: "2007" has been confirmed for a screening at Rotoreliefs on 30th Jan 2012.

[date corrected 14.12.11]

Where's Kino?

"2007" was screened at Kino London on 3rd November, alongside some other truly memorable films: a family psychodrama turned out to be about peanuts, an alien stranded on Earth made contact with a horse, a man contemplated his breakfast egg (possibly best film of the evening) and the hunt for a certain bespectacled, knitware-wearing tourist took a sinister turn.

I'll post links to these films when I can. I've also taken on a new challenge making a film with some other Kino Londoners over the next month - watch this space.

"2007" Screening: Kino London

Exciting news: " 2007" will be screened at the Kino London short film night on 3rd November 2011, at the Vibe Live venue in Brick Lane. Entry £4. Details at the Kino London website or Facebook event page.  

"2007" Update Part VIII: I'm Gonna Wait 'Til The Midnight Hour

Post production on the music video for "2007" is now complete. I'll post news about any screenings or online viewing, and I also plan to write a little more about the experience of making this video - twice - and everything I've learned along the way. Now I think I'm going to sleep...

Tenderstar have a presence on Facebook - look them up for details of gigs. You can also listen to 2007 and other tracks on their website here.

"2007" Update Part VII: Delete Default Cube, Add New Cube

Up late working in Blender on the 2007 video. The challenge is to stop the project getting unmanageably complex - as you can see from my current timeline I'm succeeding beautifully. 

If caffeine was also a free, open-source download then the world would be perfect.

"2007" Update Part VI: First Impressions

A re-shoot took place for the "2007" performance roll a week or two ago and I've started post-production. There are several artistic and technical changes, including upgrading the project to HD, with live footage taken on an HD-DSLR. Here's the shot I'm working on at the moment, with a frame from the earlier version for comparison.

[Produced in Blender 2.57]

Level Up

I just finished the final cut of the "2007" music video so to celebrate, here are my three favourite elevator-based music videos. More news on "2007" soon.

In third place: Neon Bible - Arcade Fire

In second place: Push The Button - Sugababes



And there can only be one winner:

"2007" Update Part V: Pulling Me In Just Like Gravity

Sorting out the weightlessness scenes took some time but it's all coming together nicely.

Also managed to add weightlessness to the lift:

[all scenes produced in Blender 2.54]

"2007" Update Part IV: Push The Button And Let Me Know

Performance video was filmed on bluescreen from two angles - foreground and reflection. Lift interior modelled and composited in Blender. Red lights with a simulated backlight.Neon.

Sunlight.

[All images produced in Blender 2.5]

"2007" Update Part III: The Only Way Is Up

Modelling the exterior of an elevator for the "2007" music videoMore detail, starting to add textures A first attempt at setting up the lights

[All images produced in Blender 2.54]

"2007" Update Part II: Make Room, Make Room

Happy New Year! As an amateur filmmaker, I would say the single biggest difference between amateurs and professionals in this field is: sleep. You can be an amateur filmmaker and go to sleep - of course you can! You just won't finish anything.

A second strand of the "2007" music video includes scenes that were acted out on bluescreen to represent or complement the lyrics - these plus the sound visualizations make up the B-roll or interpretative part of the video. I previously blogged about the bluescreen shoot here. The scenes take place in a virtual set - an office - where some strange things will happen. The environment was initially bare but I spent last night creating some assets to give it more of an office feel, plus to have some things to throw around when the room becomes weightless later on...

These assets appear in the background and in some scenes are defocussed:


Images produced in Blender 2.54. To be continued...

"2007" Update Part I: And The Beat Goes On

The music video for "2007" will have several different strands, dreamed up at meetings with Tenderstar's songwriter and their lead vocalist. I love the paradox of the music video: on the one hand, as they take their structures from the music they're probably one of the most freeform and varied forms of filmmaking out there; on the other hand, however creative and artistic, they are by definition commercials as well and there's a need to hold in mind the target audience and the image the band want to get across.

One strand of the video will be a visual representation of the sounds and rhythms: for example, the bass chords and the beat will look something like this.

To be continued...

Ready To Feel The Sunshine

The b-roll shoot* took place for a music video last night - the song is "2007" by Tenderstar and the video will feature two members of the band. We turned a local community hall into a bluescreen studio for the project, which will combine live footage and CGI, and the treatment includes a number of effect challenges including teleportation, artificial mirror shots and a weightless scene. This is my second music video project - I previously made an animated video for David Novan's composition Soupremacy.

The shoot was successful in that we covered all the material in about three hours (plus an hour to set up.) The dolly performed OK but there's still some wobble over the joints even though the tracks were taped into place: as it should only affect 5-10 frames of action in each shot I'll be able to correct this by hand in the video sequence editor.

James Cameron dreams of a high tech studio set-up like mine.

Oops - accidentally included one of Roland Emmerich's photos from the making of "The Day After Tomorrow" there. My bad.

Tim Burton's version of "The Commitments" will be a re-imagining and not just a re-make.

Learning points:

Lighting: always check your lights - that way you won't set up a new floodlight only to find it has a faulty transformer and blows every bulb you put in.

Direction: This is important although I'm sure it's obvious to anyone more experienced. "Turn away, move your arms like this, step back" doesn't help the actors. "There's an explosion coming from this corner, so cover your eyes and turn away from the blast" is the way to go. Don't treat them as robots, give them a situation or an idea and trust them to create a response.

*Performance roll - the band performing the song. B-roll - interpretative footage or any other footage used in a music video.