Lesson learnt from this video: You can cover a lot of sins with sound. I think every one who offers film making advice online says it, but you never really appreciate it until you record something horribly crackly.
There are some out there that might say “well if you’re not 100% happy with it, why publish it?” and to them I say good point, but also I want to share my mistakes to maybe help someone else not make them, or to feel better also making mistakes.
For a while now, as you might be able to tell from some of the comments I made about online broadcast technology a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been dying to make a video series of some sort, because I can’t quite work out why I haven’t already.
Today, I have taken a short break from clattering away at my keyboard to try and learn a few video editing skills, using the first few things that I could find near to my desk. Two of those such things happened to be some LEGO figures, so that goes to explain this stupid little stop motion clip that I’ve created to try and teach myself the basics of video editing.
I found the music on a creative commons royalty free site called incompetech. Creative commons licenses seem to be a wondrous thing that I’m going to have to learn more about, because it strikes me as the most incredible thing the internet is able to provide right now.
Things I have learnt today: Stop motion is hard and time consuming and a real art form that I would love to dive a bit further in to and Creative Commons is the future.
by Ding·Comments Off on Portal 2 Music Video – Exile Vilify By The National
I have another film from the Tortoise Butler crew to share today. This one was made for Valve’s recent Portal 2 music video competition.
I actually didn’t have such a massive involvement in this one. I worked on some of the special effects and just sat at my computer churning out Half Life / Portal themed posters and citadel images that they placed in the film in post production to give the deserted streets of London a more in-universe feel.
The production was really done on a shoe string (with a steady-cam repair being carried out using a wooden spoon at one point) and in a very short space of time, approaching 48 hour film challenge conditions.
The way in which this one came out surprised me. Some of the effects I worked on were much more effective than I expected they would be and it just went to show just how much you can do with the machines you have in your home and how even in a short space of time you can produce some decent quality content.
I also can’t believe they found someone who looked so much like Chell.
by Ding·Comments Off on If you could have your own TV show…
It is common knowledge that we as a whole take technology for granted. At this very minute you are reading my words projected onto your screen through an immensely complicated mathematical processes involving 1s and 0s that have been transmitted from some undisclosed location to your machine after being sent to the undisclosed location by myself from a similar machine via a mix of telephone wires and other cables. I’m hazy on the specifics and am fairly certain that the internet runs on magic.
We take the internet for granted and we take many of the things we have come to rely on for granted too. I still remember a time when mobile phones were small if you could squeeze one inside a briefcase and when “wireless” meant “not plugged in which is why it’s not working” (I’m not quite old enough to associate wireless with a radio). Now we not only take mind blowing technology for granted, if it stops working for a second we become Bruce Banner on a bad day.
The one that always trips me up that I take for granted is online video on demand and broadcast technology. In other words, sites like YouTube, Blip TV, Justin TV, Vimeo and several others sat across the internet are an absolute wonder when you stop and think about it.
If you had come up to me when I was 11 and told me that within about ten years, anyone could make their own TV show and put it somewhere where the world can see it, I would have laughed. After all, not even the BBC has that sort of potential audience.
Sometimes I’ll work on something and completely forget to mention it at all to anyone because it’s actually completed and completed work is something I’m so unused to that it somehow drops out of my brain and scurries away from my conscious mind.
This short film is something I wrote and starred in to help a friend over at BBC Research & Development in testing a new piece of broadcast technology (which I think ultimately broke, but in a way that was useful to the development process). It was recently shown in a “BBC Shorts” short film festival and presenter Francine Stock thought I might be an actor.
I can’t watch this without cringing because I wrote it and had a very firm idea of what Tim was supposed to act and sound like and this wasn’t it. It’s a bit like if you’ve ever tried to draw something that looked so good in your head but came out oddly deformed on paper; a mocking and twisted facsimile that taunts your inability to produce art (cf. every comic I have ever drawn).
Despite this I am oddly proud of it because it is something I have worked on that is complete and Not Completely Awful.
By some odd coincidence, my friend operates under the banner of Tortoise Butler Films and other things that she has done with various other artists can be found by clicking that link.
I’ve worked on several of them in various capacities, including some photoshop work for an amazing Portal 2 video.
I also did a little logo for her which I think is still being used.
