A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO MY OWN VIDEO

Thursday, pretty much on a whim, I decided to do a video for the One Minute Film Festival. No, it was not the video that will feature various version of me, that's still waiting on logistics.

I was mulling over a concept and realized I could do it using stock footage from my Moby video and some shots I could do right here at the house.

I wanted to do a video addressing the idea that you can capture and preserve memories or images or ideas ... like a video maker may do. We can record something and preserve it but that very act aren't we already altering? It's an old concept, about the very fact of observing something already removes it from that moment.

So I decided to use some of my footage of Moniquea, record a little voice over of an obsessed video maker and lead up to a shot or two expressing the futility of making something unique.

That was the idea but when I was done, I think I came up with something different. Now, I could have considered this a failure and gone back to the drawing board, so to speak, but I kind of liked what I had. The one minute time constraint is very interesting. I imagined that it would require a great deal of discipline but at least in this instance, it became something organic.

This particular video festival allows you to enter five different films so I thought What the Hell, let's go with it. I would appreciate feed back on this one; after all, it surprised me as much as it may you.

"Forever"

60 SECOND FILM FESTIVAL: 2 CONCEPTS

So I have ideas for a couple of ideas for the Sixty Second Film Festival which closes around the middle of next month. Don't get excited, we all know what can happen to my original ideas.

The first idea is just a little humorous idea where I get play around with a few video concepts in which I've dabbled before, but I want to take it a bit further. The idea is perfectly me ... I mean, really me. As in there will be five characters in the video and I will be all of them. At the same time. You've all seen this, it's a very old idea in both film and TV. The basic idea is to have me on the left side of the screen and me on the right side of the screen at the same time.

It's not a very complex technique to pull off. Basically what you need to do is set your shot of whatever set you intend to use, take a long shot of the set as its empty, then film the two shots; me on the right side then me on the left. In Final Cut I will lay the shot of the empty set on my bottom, or base layer. Then stack the two shots of me, so that I have three shots on top of each other. With just a two shot I can use the Crop tool, wiping away half the empty shot, to reveal both aspects of me. With five me's, it becomes a bit trickier, I will have to use the Crop in accordance with a garbage matte. basically drawing an invisible frame around each character so that all the backgrounds blend in seamlessly.

The post aspect is rather simple. But for this to work, it's the shooting that is the key. If you don't shoot it properly, you can't "fix it in post"

There are a few keys to properly shooting this:

1) Tripod. You have to shoot this on a tripod. Your camera cannot move at all, in any of the shots or the illusion will be shattered. That background is like your canvas, it cannot move or change a bit.

2) Framing. This goes very much with the first point. You have to frame the shot working out where all the instances of you are going to be then lock that shot down. Once it's framed you can't changed it so you really need to be sure you have it right.

3) Blocking. This follows the point number two. You have to think what your characters ... all of the "you's" are going to be doing. You need to be careful that one shot of you doesn't overlap the other. I am no matting wizard and I am no After Affects pro and that's the kind of digital firepower you would need to get as complex as having me shake hands with me .. that ain't happening for this project. But I do want to be able to have conversations with me so I have to know where each instance of me will be in the shot so I can turn as if I'm talking to Victor ..... damn, I could never do this drunk

4) Location. This is important as well. Firstly I need a set large enough to be able to accomadate 4 or 5 of me moving around without overlapping too much. I also need something that I can evenly light, you want to avoid flickering shadows etc. I won't be doing this outside. Besides moving light situations there is too much that can move in the frame, interior is easier.

So I'm seeing if I can shoot in one of Collette's schools, like a corridor , that will give me space and allow me to enter and exit the shot off screen. Stay tuned.

The second concept is still very much nascent. It hinges on Pirandello, a theatrical conceipt of which I am extremely fond. It's a kind of illusion; I am about to fool you, what you are about to see is dramatic, it's not real, but by the time I'm finished, you'll forget that.

The concept involves memory, images, and our attempt to capture the former in the latter. It's becoming what, for me, is a pretty typical production; I will need an actress but she won't really have a character and she really won't be doing anything. Gosh, they line up at my door for these parts.

Anyway, those are the plans. Let's see if any of it pans out

SIREN

So, one has a plan but we all know about plans ... especially with me.

Time and personal circumstances curtailed me from making the video for the song Siren, for the Kmag Video Competition, that I had originally conceived.

So it became a challenge to get the video done in just a few days, without onscreen talent, and of course with no budget. My interpretation of the song remained the same: A woman pushed to the breaking point by indifference and making a sudden break and would she be missed at all.

In this version of the video, my camera became the actress, as did dozens of unknowing women in the streets of Toronto. Once again, my city was essentially a character in one of my videos.

This competition had no restrictions on with what format the video had to be in. My original idea was to use the Canon XL1 and shoot it in standard def, mostly because with that camera I have a lot more control over exposure, focus, contrast etc. But when this became another run and gun production, the Sony Handycam became my weapon of choice. As did Collette's Nikon D-80 SLR.

I'm happy with the final product; it's shot at 30 fps (frames per second) instead of 25 fps so it looks like video, not film. Some of the interior shots could have used some colour grading but I was not going for the "film effect". To the contrary, I played with some of the shots to make them more "video like" with almost the colour saturation of old VHS.

Many of the shots in the video have been affected and I'm hoping that these affects/filters add to the language of the video. With the exterior shots, the crowd shots specifically I wanted to create a sort of unsure, unreal, confused impression ... the camerawork should add to this inpression as well.

For the interior shots I built filter effects that (hopefully) give a sense of nostalgia, or things left behind, perhaps even a dream like effect.

Watching the video myself I began to wonder if I have some kind of fetish for ladies shoes ... but the intent with these shots was to give the story a more universally female skew.

I'm not completely happy with this finished product but the deadline is fast approaching and I could have fiddled with it forever. But I am also happy with it, I think it conveys the emotion of the song.

You tell me







HD version here

SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION PART TWO

A few months ago I decided to create a video for the Are We Connected film competition sponsored by Amplify Me in the US

It was one of my typical on the fly productions and I had fun making it

I was just informed that the video won third place in the festival. That finishes just outside the money but very exciting nonetheless. At this point I have no idea how many videos were entered in the competition, there could have been three for all I know.

I don't care. Don't mess with my bliss

My little video, or a segment from it, will be included as part of the film festival Amplify Me is hosting in Florida on Sept 22. So that's good news

Bad news is, this only encourages me to keep cranking out these videos. Speaking of which, I better get back to it

If you haven't seen Are You There, here is the low rez version, for the hi rez version, please click on this link

Are You There

OK SIREN, SHUDDUP, I HEARD YA ALREADY

OK, I've never claimed to be bright ... all right, I have claimed to be bright. But not sensible.

I kept thinking of the song Siren from the Bungle Music Video challenge and I can't get it out of my head. I pretty much talked myself out of my original concept for the video and with only a week to go, it really be impossible now to execute.

But perhaps there was a reason why I backed away from that idea. (Yes I'm trying to justify my own procastination, it's pretty much what I do here) That original concept took the literal interpretation of the song, of a woman breaking away, discarding her past and needing to be alone, and expanding on it slightly by using several actresses portraying the same roll ... but still keeping things pretty literal.

As I began to consider actually cranking out a video I thought: How can I do this without actresses, without locales and keep true to the essence of the song. And it struck me: I didn't want to do this literally, it was what I was rebelling against. I want the same feel of the song, make the singer's plight more universal and what better way to do that than without any characters at all ...

Stop. Put the phone down. Don't call the looney bin. I'm alright. Well, as alright as I've ever been.

I was thinking too big before. I was thinking in terms of a real production, one that would be produced by a real production company. I ain't none of that. I'm just me, the Idiot with A Camera. I want to do things gonzo, I want the challenge of being shoestring, that's what I like about these challenges.

So here I go. Four days to go. My Sony HD cam, Collette's Nikon, some props at the house, shooting in the city ...

Buckle up.

SIREN SANG BUT I COULDN'T HEAR

Siren is the title of the song in the Bungle Music Video Contest. I had developed a strong concept for the video; I heard it a song of female enpowerment, of a woman "letting go" of all the baggage from a bad relationship, a woman who had given her all and gotten nothing in return. They lyrics and Ayah's powerful vocals could not let me interpret it any other way.

So I thought of taking an illustrative, rather than an interpretive approach to the song, basically telling the story through images. So following the woman on her journey of not only leaving her man, but leaving behind all those things that were holding her back. So I would need an actress and several locations to track her journey. OK, so that was doable, I cold contact Moniquea, the actress I used for After and get things going; but I had only a week for shooting.

But as I thought more and more about it a new concept came to mind. I wanted to make the song more universal. Not just about one woman but about all women. So what if I storyboarded the shots for that one actress ... and had several actresses play them out. So if Girl One got out of bed, looked at the empty spot where he should be and then exit the room, other girls would do the exact same shot. The women would be going on a journey, "letting go" as the song saids and at the end, they would all meet up.

Yes, I liked this concept very much. I even began to block out the shots. But of course this created a new set of issues: Now I needed to find more actresses, and to do it properly, have them all together on one day so I could correctly match the shots. I would have to coordinate these actresses to get together on one or two days.

And I had less than two weeks to get the whole thing done, production and post production. I have to leave a good solid 10 hours or so at the end to upload the HD video. The logistics began to eat me up. I was already conceding defeat.

Then Hayley passed. And I just find myself now, about a week away from the deadline, out of time and perhaps too emotionally beat up to properly attack this project. It's too bad, I liked the song and I liked my concept but I don't think I can make this deadline.

I still intend to contribute to the 60 Second Film Festival. I have a few concepts for that so stay tuned.

TWO NEW CHALLENGES

That's right, two new film making challenges .. shut up, sleep is over rated anyway.

The first one is an international film challenge, out of France, The One Minute Film Challenge. That's pretty much it, create a film that is exactly 60 seconds long, including credits. The deadline is Oct 13, they except any high quality video format and you can enter up to 5 videos.

It's an interesting challenge in a few ways; on one hand you have the time restriction but on the other hand the challenge is wide open, as long as you keep the video to a minute, you can make any kind of video you desire. I have a few ideas at this stage and I could see doing more than one video

The second challenge is another music video. The Bungle Music Video Challenge is to create a music video to a track created by drum/bass musician Bungle and featuring the voice of Ayah. That is the only brief, just make a video to the track. It's a very fast paced song, the kind that normally to which I would do a lot of edits; it would require an actress I think, locations, maybe costume changes .. yes, I already have ideas.

The deadline for this challenge is Sept 18 ... did I mention not really wanting to sleep for a while? The One Minute Challenge is certainly doable, the music challenge is going to be tight, it's going to take organization, pre production and some very methodical shooting.

Hang on