June 29, 2008

This one went down very well. I got a lot of people together for this that would normally not really be together, so that created an interesting dynamic.
Lots of clever moments in this, and I particularly enjoy Steve's meanness, and June's cruel laugh.
Ben did a great job with the title screens for this too. Actually, he filmed some of this, giving me a much greater directorial role, which I really enjoyed.

June 22, 2008

We wanted a news format that we could re-visit when we wanted to. As usual, because Ben Jackson and myself are the brains behind the announcements, we ended up with a BBC feel to it. I really enjoyed making this one, and I think it came off really well.
I think my favourite bit is where I claim to be John Tanyan. Classic.

I learned a lot with this one - I used a lot of different transitions and visual effects. I think at one point I had 10 video channels running. It took forever to render, but I think it was worth it. We'll re-visit this format at some point, I'm sure.

June 15, 2008

I wanted to make the most of the fact that Jon Puddle was back in town, so I came up with a plot that would involve the whole IT team. I like the storyline, and particularly the impression given that Jon has come simply to sort out Jon Long's problem with his Mac. I had a great sequence with Pudd getting out of bed, and then a map with dots showing his progress across the Atlantic in the style of Indiana Jones, but the video was too long, and that scene ended up getting cut.

The video also features a guest appearance from Ken Lyons. Ken used to work in IT at TACF a long time ago, and was back in town at the same time. I decided to just put him in there, and see who noticed. A nice addition, I think.

After some problems with lighting in previous weeks, mainly at the TACF Airport campus, I decided to brighten this video post filming, but it didn't really work. I haven't used that function in Final Cut since.

June 8, 2008

Kevin Alfred was leaving the TACF offices in favour of education, so I wanted to get him in the announcements. We also had the Trumpet Call conference at TACF that week, so there was a series of tents set up in the parking lot for an installation. It all fit together to make this video.

Kevin really got into this, and went home to pick up those clothes, all of which were already in his wardrobe. This is the first time that people seemed to notice how contrived my efforts were becoming in getting the announcements to fit my plot.

The 'lullaby' at the end of this video is The Sprout and the Bean by Joanna Newsom.

June 1, 2008

I think I ended up getting in a little over my head with this one. I wanted to make a mock movie trailer for the sci-fi genre, and I allowed Ben to persuade me to rip-off the Matrix trailer. I took some scenes from the movie, and some sequences from the trailer itself. I even used the Crystal Method track that the trailer used. Most of the time it all works quite well, but in places I sacrificed my style for making it more like the original, and I rather wish that I hadn't done that.

I used green screen again for the scene where B.K jumps the buildings, but this time I filmed him running on the screen, and I was in a crane shooting down on him. Shame I didn't light the screen properly again...

Some of the dialogue in this is quite clever, but lost in the sense of the thing. Didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, but it was rather ambitious to try to copy a movie with ground breaking special effects.

May 25, 2008

Another insight into 'office life'.
I appear in this one. I rather like that. I think I got Sam to film my scene. I also like the fact that this introduces the North York team to the other congregations - one of the original ideas of the video announcements was to help make us a closer knit community by introducing people to different campuses. This is sometimes quite difficult to do, because not everyone is around at the office when I'm filming.

My wife and daughter are in this one too. I think the moment when Adelaide smiles at Linda got the biggest laugh in this one.
I love working with Linda, because she is so good at ad-libbing. Her excuses for lateness in this video are superb and all off-the-cuff.

May 18, 2008

This one went down very well indeed.
I did quite a bit of research before I made this, trying to get the feel of the thing just right. My final port of call for this was to contact my good friend James, who is an expert in film, cinematography, and particularly early film. I was very pleased to read his response to my question of conventions for silent film, because I had fulfilled all but one of them.

The music plays a big part here. It's amazing how much atmosphere it adds. When we showed this at the North York congregation, the sound didn't work, and I found it rather dull.

Yawan really got into this one, and I think that all three main characters will reprise their roles at some point in the near future; I don't know how I'll top the pie in the face at the end though...