Packing up a studio and tearing down a set

100,000 hours to being exceptional- gooder than good

Been reading Malcom Gladwell's book Outliers. It takes 100,000 hours of practice to be exceptional at something. So today I asked someone at work how much time do they intend to spend getting good. Her response was 8 hours a week on weekends. So we sat down and calculated that she might become exceptional in 230 years. 

How are you spending your 100,000 hours?

3d toons

Ice cream cone 3d character render
Originally uploaded by motion media works

Here is a 3d character we got working on at work.

One sunny day in Singapore

In Singapore from lionel low on Vimeo.

This clip started as a walk one sunny day with a red one digital cinema camera. Now it has grown to become an edit of a collection of clips that I have accumulated. So do check back regularly on the video as I will be adding new clips to the video as it comes in.

http://vimeo.com/2908330

MultiColr

MultiColr
Originally uploaded by dklimke

For all the other times when you just need to search pictures according to color.

Better footage with the Red One

After having used the red one camera for a couple of months here are some of my thoughts on why some of the footage coming out of the camera looks so amazing apart from the ultra high pixel count for moving images. 

1. Modular camera takes time to setup.

It takes some time to assemble and with a 60 second boot up time. I have found that I don't typically point at something hoping that the footage will turn out well. So no random shots. 

2. The file sizes that it generates are huge. 

Currently there is no way to trim camera Native R3D files. Which means if only 10 seconds is required from a five minute take, there is no way to keep only the needed segment without the extra 4 mins and 50 seconds. So be very careful with the record button.

3. The weight of it.

Its about the weight of a regular cine camera so before it comes out of the pelican case, chances are that you would have gone down to the location numerous times with a dslr to check the best time to setup for the shoot. Again, forcing you to plan plan plan.

Post Production

With the release of camera raw, we are now able to edit with proxys and still access the raw data and I am loving it. It means as soon as you plug the drive in, you get to do a rough offline edit without any transcoding and when done you get to take full advantage o the RAW color information.

What do I do with all the data?

Okay which brings me to this question, how do I backup all this data reliability? Good and well if it's just a spot and one doesn't need to come back to the footage once the commercial is running but what if you need access to it later on? 

DVDs have been a bit unreliable for me

CDR - Doesn't store that much

Hard drives - Not a permanent solution

LTO tapes - Anyone got any feedback on this?

Some test shots with the Red One digital cinema camera

Here are some test shots we did after receiving the Red One digital cinema camera. 

Hot Hands from lionel low on Vimeo.

I am really happy with the frame rate on the Red one compared to the HVX200. Although it does high speed at 2k windowed, it still looks decent.

Zuji television commercial gets hand drawn

This is a 45 second television commercial that I did recently for zuji.com. It was cell animated so every frame had to be hand drawn. Well there were plenty of repeated frames that were flipped which was a time saver. Everything was done in 2 weeks in Toonboom studio.

Sound Sampling
The sounds were recorded in the Subway. Since I didnt have a dedicated audio recorder on this job. I carried the panasonic HVX202 around the subway which was quite clumsy and got stopped by over zealous security many many many times.

Its just like storyboarding
What I do like about cell animation is that its relatively quick to draw and coming from a 3D background where everything had to be modeled and rigged textured, lit and finally rendered. Its surprisingly a smooth workflow to ba able to block out shapes and later go in and refine quite quickly till it looks right.

Easter Egg

To give the illusion that the train is in motion, I had to create random shapes outside the window moving the the opposite direction. Well the shapes are not all that random. They are text and made up of 3 words.

Other behind the scenes clips

Muscle man line tests

Muscle man blocked out

Metal Shutter house

Metal shutter houses check it out. Never thought living in a shuttered house could seem this breezy

http://www.metalshutterhouses.com/

What makes a good viral

Be rude or useful and be simple 

Read more about it here 

Here are some thoughts for those of us who are  sticking the tvc up and wondering why didnt it turn viral. 

Is search engine optimizing going to increase my visitor count?

For those of us designer types who love stuffing our websites full of flash and graphics content, and wondering why are we not getting as much traffic to our site as one of those pages crammed with text with nothing of visual interest, here is an article about search engine optimizing. 

Because your our wonderfully designed sites might come across as being a little empty to the webcrawlers. A bit like showing a painting thats painted with different colors but the same tone to a color blind person. (I was looking for an image like that in google. Thought it might be interesting to do one that would, perhaps appear blank? Although nobody is truly colorblind to all colors)

When was the last time your viewed your website with lynx? Try that sometime because thats how the indexing bots will see your pages. 

Search engine optimizing

Print your own CEO

Can't afford to hire a CEO? Print your own. Check out a series of forms from David Seah that helps you prioritize your tasks and assign weighted values to different tasks. 

Print your own CEO

GMP Group - Making videos within the constraints

Some of the more interesting and fun videos that I get to work on may not necessarily be the larger setups with all the latest equipment and this is one of them. This 30 second clip is supposed to take the style of a flip book where we show tools that kids are exposed to and what career direction they grow up taking. 

Film look without the complexities 

There is so much talk about getting the film look and this video was a chance to shoot as if it was film. With a Nikon DSLR and a bunch of studio strobes, we got shallow depth of field, higher dynamic range, ability to use 35mm lenses and ability to light the location like a film set without the need for the usual 20 person circus.

Other considerations

As the children were not used to acting this allows them to just pose of picture and that got around the whole needing to act issue. Things moved along faster as each shot can be done quite quickly compared to a take in a video or film shoot. 

The End Result

Although in the end the pictures did not flip through as quickly as I wanted, I am sure you can imagine how it would look if it did. Each shot has camera moves such as dolly and pans planned when we were taking the series of photos.

Watch the video here

Links

Here is a good implementation of the flip book idea that is similar to what I had intended it to look like.

Peace corp- What is your calling

Corporate film- Contact Singapore "Conversation"

Here is our take on a corporate film. Unlike a corporate video where viewers are told what to think. The whole behind this video is to let viewers draw their own conclusions. 

We take a peek into the thoughts of 4 characters as they ponder their decision to relocate to Singapore and the life that they lead now.

So join us in this voyeuristic multi industry journey through Singapore and the minds of our recently relocated friends.

This is a piece for EDB/Contact Singapore. The whole idea is not about hard sell captions and soundbites but about conversation with the characters.

Other related Links

Watch the completed video here

View behind the scenes production pictures

The characters in a stock library shoot, being used here

Other short corporate films that we like 

Ritz Carlton's "Last night"

BMW's "Star"

Ritz Carlton's "Heads or Tails"

Motivating Captive Audience to Action In a Retail Environment

Make videos make money with M1
Originally uploaded by motion media works

With plasma display screens increasingly making their appearance in retail outlets. Customers waiting in for their turn form a captive audience that retailers can cross sell to without the high costs of media buys or restrictive time limits placed on spots. 

Splicing useful information, trailers of upcoming movies(and who doesn't want to watch the latest trailers while waiting in line) to hold viewers attention with impulse purchase subscriptions, shoppers are shown what subscription services are offered.

Retail outlet customer call to action watch here