Filmmaking

Charity Giving for Free: CauseWorld

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:33:19 -0800

Happy holidays, everyone! For all you broke filmmakers, writers, artists, and other people with more heart than money, here's a free way to spread good cheer to charities and start the new year right. CauseWorld is an iphone app where you direct sponsors like Citi and Kraft to donate money to the charity of your choice just by walking into a store. Here's a story on it. Pretty sweet, huh?

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Sky Hi Studios Is Renting Its Greenscreen Film Studio For $25 An Hour

nobody@vox.com(MusicDish) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:30:14 -0800

http://www.skyhistudios.com/
http://www.facebook.com/skyhistudios

There is a revolution taking place in South Florida's film industry. Sky Hi Studios, the little studio that could, is offering its full green screen chroma key film studio to the film and production community for as little as $25 per hour, including lights. This ridiculously low price is virtually unheard of in the film industry. Typically film studios rent for upwards of $1,000 per day and more and that does not include lights. Additionally you have to pay extra for the green backdrop. This revolutionary offering has already made a big difference for many production companies and aspiring filmmakers in South Florida over the past year. Sky Hi also rents professional HD cameras for as little as $50 a day, which is less than one fourth the cost of a typical camera rental house.

Sky Hi Studios has played host to Power 96's DJ Laz and their 411-Pain client. Other celebrity clients include Get Radio Tag out of New York and their client, local fighting sensation Kimbo Slice. Morehead Productions brought an SUV into the studio to film portions of a movie that they are working on, and The Witness Project flew in from Detroit, Michigan to film the music video Fly Away that will be airing in heavy rotation on MTV Europe. There have been a number of music videos filmed at Sky Hi Studios including videos for Da Pretty Boyz, Qilo and Nicoi El Travieso.

In addition to producing TV commercials, Sky Hi Studios helps their client place their advertisement on television locally and nationally. They work closely with the client to create and build a set for the production when one is required within the client's budget. Sky Hi Studios also works closely with the client to help them reap the maximum benefit from their commercial, music video or other production by placing the video on all of the popular social networking sites including MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Sky Hi Studios also rents its studio to bands and dance groups as a rehearsal spot.

"Sky Hi Studios is striving to be more than just an elite studio for major filmmakers, but a place where the community can come and explore their creative talent and learn more about the film industry," says its President, Rodger Knowles.

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$300 YouTube Video Lands $30M Deal

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:51:30 -0800

Check out the story of the guy who made a YouTube video for $300 and landed a $30M deal with Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures. He put up the video on a Thursday and by Monday, he had a bidding war going for him. Pretty cool.

Here's the video:

Ataque de Pánico! (Panic Attack!) 2009

$300 is obviously not a lot of money for such high production value. Now that I have a tiny bit of knowledge of how VFX and 3D modeling works, I have a little bit of insight into how this might be done. Here are my guesses as to what he did:

1) He bought premade 3D models of a robot and a spaceship. You can buy this stuff for pretty cheap over various 3D model sources on the Internet. Actually, you can get a lot of this stuff for free--it just depends on whether you find the model that works for you. He then duplicated and animated them in a 3D program like Cinema 4D, Maya, 3ds Max, Lightwave, etc. If he's a desktop creator, he may have used a program like Adobe After Effects to combine the live video with the CGI. It may have cost him $300 to make the movie, but there's a good chance that he needed about $10k worth of gear to bring it all together. That's assuming it's all done on the cheap with a desktop or three (the render time has to be horrendous for something like this--he would need to work in parallel).

2) He bought a collection of premade explosions. This stuff can be cheap or expensive, depending on where you get it. The explosion that impressed me the most is the domed building. Either he bought one premade (you can sometimes buy a 3D model that comes premade with an animation of it exploding), or he had to make the model of the building (which you can do with the 3D programs listed above), then create an animation of it exploding. If those buildings are not actual models of the buildings in Montevideo, then I'm less impressed. But I'll bet it is.

That animation looks professional. What strikes me as odd is that the green screen of the kid with the robots behind him is not perfect, which tells me that maybe he doesn't do that kind of VFX for a living. But the 3D stuff was great. Getting that kind of smooth motion and explosion action takes some practice...unless he bought it premade. But $300 is not a lot, even in Uruguay, so I'm guessing he had to make at least some of that himself. Very nice work.

3) If he was using After Effects or some such program, he can duplicate actors into a crowd, or maybe he managed to get a lot of people to act for free with no food (feeding a crowd that size would eat his whole budget up in no time). He can also create fog.

The water splashing, and the dust puffing when the robots stamp their feet are nice touches, and probably not easy to do. The camera work is great too because it not only increases the tension, it doesn't let you look too closely at the CGI, which is very important for suspension of disbelief. He got a lot of things right beyond the technical stuff.

Overall, it's great, and he obviously put in a lot of work. Kudos to him. What's strange to me, though, is that so many studios would come to him and offer up so much money over a cool video that had...um...no story. Maybe 2012 did so well (biggest box office hit in the history of both India and China) that they figured stories are overrated (and so darn hard to get right!) so long as you have engaging destruction. Well, they may be right, up to a point.

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Some thoughts

nobody@vox.com(Oliver the Illustrious) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:10:37 -0800

Hey Gang,

My buddy is working on creating a website for a webisode I've produce/wrote. He's learning HTML and he's doing it for free, so I can't ask for too much.

So wanted to get your thoughts on the site and what reasonable changes could be made. www.qpid.tv

Let me know, thanks.

Ali

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Four Eyed Monsters Movie Review

nobody@vox.com(Dain's Movie Reviews) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:43:39 -0800

Four Eyed Monsters (2005) is a truly original and artistic narrative film; part drama, part documentary. As part of the project there are also thirteen webisodes that make this experience more than a movie. It is a story of a relationship at its core but turned into so much more. The title refers to a couple, the oneness of two people, and how that oneness can often turn into a... http://www.dainsmoviereviews.com/2009/12/four-eyed-monsters-movie-review.html

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Panic Attack Short Film Review

nobody@vox.com(Dain's Movie Reviews) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:42:27 -0800

Panic Attack!/Ataque de Pánico! (2009) is a short film out of Uruguay by Federico Alvarez. It is an amazing accomplishment for only $500; of course a lot of time, effort, and favors helped it along... http://www.dainsmoviereviews.com/2009/12/panic-attack-short-film-review.html

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Before I Self Destruct Movie Review

nobody@vox.com(Dain's Movie Reviews) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:10:06 -0800

Before I Self Destruct (2009) is an uncompromising view of life in the inner-city that focuses on how things can change without warning. When that happens, you can be forced into making decisions that alter your path and the life of those around you. The story is told from the view of Clarence (Curtis Jackson), who also... http://www.dainsmoviereviews.com/2009/11/before-i-self-destruct-movie-review.html

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Ink Movie Review

nobody@vox.com(Dain's Movie Reviews) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:56:04 -0800

Ink (2009) is a climax of audio and visual stimulation that takes you on a journey of the subconsciousness. The dark and light forces fight over the soul in a thrilling and thought provoking metaphysical world that is linked to the physical one. Full review: http://www.dainsmoviereviews.com/2009/11/ink-movie-review.html

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A Friend's Suicide

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:44:09 -0700

I stopped posting to my blog when something shocking and personal happened, and I didn't know whether it was right to post it for the world to read or not. On the one hand, a woman cutting herself off from her friends and committing suicide in a rented attic seemed deeply private. On the other hand, no one knowing about her life and death just seemed wrong. It bothered me that no one would use the word “suicide” and that people suddenly only talked about her in a circular way, as if tacitly suggesting that she never existed.

I ended up not posting about it. But then I couldn't really pretend it didn't happen and post about happy events. Hence the long break from my blog.

She was a beautiful person and a beautiful writer.

[--EDIT NOTE: There used to be a paragraph here that described what she was like and my fond memories of her. But her family has requested that I delete it. Everything I deleted for them from the original post is indicated by --DELETED--. For ruminations on why I agreed and my feelings about this, see Jane Doe's Suicide Post--]

No one seems to know what happened. [-- DELETED--] had a brief memorial service for her but I heard that it turned into a discussion of people wondering what happened.

I did a search for her on the net. There's a mention of her publication in a respected literary magazine, and her name is listed as a volunteer on [--DELETED--]. And that's it. No obituary or any mention of her existence. It's sad to think that this is the most any of you will know about her. She was one of those special people worth knowing...

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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The Transformation of Gerald Baumgartner Movie Review

nobody@vox.com(Dain's Movie Reviews) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:32:32 -0800

The Transformation of Gerald Baumgartner (2009) is a tremendously quirky dark comedy wrapped up in the blanket of life (or better yet, an afgan with those annoying holes your toes poking out of). Gerald (Randall Malin) is an uptight man, seeminly with obsessive-compulsive disorder, that leads a very structured... Full review and production still available at http://www.dainsmoviereviews.com/2009/11/transformation-of-gerald-baumgartner.html

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