Friday
Nov192010
BRICK & STEEL
Friday, November 19, 2010 at 9:49AM A fake trailer for a sequel to a movie that was never made, a birthday party gone horribly wrong, a CalArts reunion, and a fun test of achieving a hyper-poppy Stephen Sonenfeld (colorist on Transformers, Mission Impossible III and my Playstation spot) look on 5D and 7D footage (+ Redrock Micro Stubling, Eyespy Deluxe, Zacuto Z Finder Pro, and Zoom H4N) using Magic Bullet Denoiser, Colorista II, and Mojo. Budget = beer. Lots and lots of beer. Also available at 1080p on YouTube. For some reason.
Reader Comments (21)
Very entertaining! I want to ask, what is the short answer on how you are doing that freezeframe that crawls inward effect? It looks like its mapped onto 3D geo?
Cool.
Thanks Matt. That effect is created in After Effects using a stack of 2D layers sliced up by a hand-made depth map.
That is a very subtle and very cool effect. I love the edit...very funny to see a freezeframe smiling/cocky expression transition to getting smacked in the face! Love that part.
That looks like way too much fun! Was the principal photography all done in one afternoon? How long did the post take?
One day shoot. Post is harder to say because I picked at it between other things, but from first converting the footage with Grinder to the locked edit was five days, and the final was uploaded 23 days later.
Loved the fun involved in making and the colors. I always wonder when would one decide to hand held a shot or use tripod.
Sound was so awesome that it attracted my entire family to see what I am doing and at exactly during Lar's ass :) and it was super embarrassing for them :)
Some people have way to much time on their hands ;-)
Oddly enough, I watched the Rebel Epic tutorial yesterday for the first time, then watched this right before work. Loads of fun.
A few questions though:
How does the published deliverable compare to the prepro storyboards?
I'm interested in the Prep to shoot to post aspect of the video.
Did you loosely board it together or was each shot preplanned?
Did you run-n-gun it without boards and then find the edit in post-production?
Your feedback is appreciated!
No previs, we just made it up as we went. It's a miracle that anything semi-cohesive came out of it. These are a bunch of really talented filmmakers and this kind of collaborative improv filmmaking is what we did to blow off steam back in film school.
Good stuff.
We're doing something similar next weekend in San Jose on a 1D Mark IV; "Film Students vs. Zombies"
The police called us in advance. "Let us know if we can help."
If the zombies get out of control we'll call them in.
Cheers.
Really nice!
Thanks Bob!
For those who don't recognize the name, Bob = Detonation Films, and several of his badass stock pyro elements are featured in this trailer. Go get some!
Mohamed - That was not my ass that was Marks ass. But from that angle it can be hard to tell us apart.
I sent out the email when I turned 39 to let them know what I wanted to get the old film making gang together when I turned 40. My goal was to drive around the Santa Ynez valley where I live and shoot in a few locations. By 11am it was clear that no one could operate a moving vehicle so everything took place around the house over I think 6 hours. I am thankful to Stu for helping to pull this off since the brunt of the work fell on him in post. I wish I could turn 40 every year because that was an amazing day, thanks dude!
Anytime man.
And by "anytime," I actually mean, once every 40 years.
That's superbly disturbing. So many layers of awesome goofiness. I think I might steal the idea when I turn 50 next year!
"I wish I could turn 40 every year because that was an amazing day, thanks dude!"
Lars, a good friend of mine this year celebrated her 7th annual 27th birthday, next year it'll be her 8th annual 27th birthday...
Fun Film!
I have a question about lenses that I was hoping someone could answer.
Stu recommends Tamron as a cheap alternative to Canon lens, and I was wondering if anyone has any insight to the Tokina 16 - 50 f 2.8? I heard Tokina is almost as good as Canon.
Thanks!
So much fun! Looked fantastic as well; totally blockbuster. The "point-blank sniper" has got to be one of the funniest hitmen ever! Cool stuff Stu.
Very cool, Stu. Was the image flipped at 3:06 for continuity or to see how many people would ask if the image was flipped for continuity? The soundtrack has a farty noise when they turn at 3:33. Either that was brilliant editing or I have an overactive imagination.
Hi Chris,
The image was flipped because that's a completely hacked-together happy accident shot. I felt I needed a moment of B&S "looking ahead" with trepidation but resolve to the new challenge before them, and I found it between takes of the back-to-back guns shot. I flopped it since, to a western audience, "looking ahead" means left-to-right. I also added a different background to the shot, the flare, and faked a BAD BOYS camera move by sliding the background behind them.
The farty sound is in the music, and while it wasn't meant to evoke flatulence, if that's how you read it I love that.
Hi, Stu. Long time lurker, first time caller. Loved the film.
Can you give us a bit more detail on the zooming still-frame effects? Is this your effect or is it from someone's tutorial somewhere?
You say:
That effect is created in After Effects using a stack of 2D layers sliced up by a hand-made depth map.
1. Sliced up by masking? keying? or somehow else?
2. How do you make a depth map by hand?
2b. Or is it a plugin called 'hand-made' (that would be ironic!)
3. Is this similar to the way you created the 'Shot you can make' parts?
Would love to see a full tutorial from you, but just a quick step-by-step would be nice.
-Olaf