star wars clip finally done

[shredmaster]

alright guys, here's one less monkey on my back. what started as a simple lightsaber test turned into a huge editing event! i spent the last 12 hours working on foley sound, half i created myself in the basement. we filmed this short clip maybe 3 months ago? took that long to edit. although it was fun, after painting the 400th lightsaber layer, i was out of my mind...it turned out well but looks much better on the big screen, being that it was filmed in HD. enjoy..... and have a great weekend.

www.steverotter.com/temp/sw.wmv

Steve

[DJR]

haha... good job. My fave bit has to be the batdude guy saying "f**k" after throwing the gun to his right during the gags bit LOL! I can certainly appreciate the time these things take.

[Pursuit]

ooooooh

fancy

[Myst and rain]

Those sabers looked great. Seeing that this was a lot of work, it makes me realize just how much work the real Star wars movies were. Wow...

Hey what kind of camera are you using, Steve? Is it a handycam? Or do you have one of those big, expensive, professional cameras? Like this one:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...52921665551067

[shredmaster]

hey guys, glad you liked it. it was a lot of work.... we will be doing another one soon, when i recover from this one.

myst, yes, i am shooting with a pro cam, somewhat like the sony you pictured, but much better...i'm shooting a canon XH-A1. mine was about twice the money....yikes! you get what you pay for...and i'm tapeless. i record direct to hard disc mounted to the camera...a tape does run for backup purposes.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...Camcorder.html

[kotornut]

Ha it was funny. I'm a SW nerd so I love fan films.

But Darth has been eating too much Nerf steak. He needs to cutback.

[shredmaster]

haha, yeah, unfortunately the clothing we used for the undergarments made him look bulkier, and the freezing wind didn't help much either, kept puffing him out. i do have a pleather suit, but it was tailored for me, i'm a little shorter and thinner, so it wouldn't fit Dave! we had to make due... bummer

[Myst and rain]

Originally Posted by shredmaster

hey guys, glad you liked it. it was a lot of work.... we will be doing another one soon, when i recover from this one.

myst, yes, i am shooting with a pro cam, somewhat like the sony you pictured, but much better...i'm shooting a canon XH-A1. mine was about twice the money....yikes! you get what you pay for...and i'm tapeless. i record direct to hard disc mounted to the camera...a tape does run for backup purposes.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...Camcorder.html

Kind of a late reply here, but.. That's interesting. I've been meaning to actually make one of the films I've been writing for a long time. But I just never got around to it. But I mean to do so either late this year or early 2010.

But I won't be able to get one of those camera's you've got. So I'm going to shoot it with a Sony HD Handcam with an onboard hard drive.

[shredmaster]

that's the problem....we don't have time. i NEVER have time. i just HAD TO DO IT. i just set aside 2 hours on the weekend and told the guys to meet up. as nike says, just do it! if you don't, it will never get done. then i had spent a couple months in post. that's when i really had no time. do it, have fun, enjoy. i'm sure your cam will be great. you don't need what i have. i don't even really need what i have right now. just watch your lighting and exposure and it'll be great. please keep me updated!

[Myst and rain]

Thanks for the encouragement. I've been putting it off for quite some time but I'm determined now to keep moving forward. I still don't know which film I'm going to make, though... I'm working on quite a few.

One movie I'm likely to do is a surreal, romantic drama. It's about a couple with relationship problems. Another one is about two detectives who go to investigate strange events in a mysterious town. But I also might start from scratch on a whole new movie. I dunno...

I'd love to post a movie up here when I've finished one. But I don't know how my friends (who'll be in it) would feel about that. So I can't make any promises.

In any case, it's very exciting. I'll keep you updated on developments.

[shredmaster]

please keep me posted on the developments! have fun!

[courtney2018]

Originally Posted by shredmaster

hey guys, glad you liked it. it was a lot of work.... we will be doing another one soon, when i recover from this one.

myst, yes, i am shooting with a pro cam, somewhat like the sony you pictured, but much better...i'm shooting a canon XH-A1. mine was about twice the money....yikes! you get what you pay for...and i'm tapeless. i record direct to hard disc mounted to the camera...a tape does run for backup purposes.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...Camcorder.html

That's a nice cam. I bought this one when it first came out. I've since sold it. I might be in the market for another one pretty soon though. I'd like to see a record to bluray cam that does HD. That's what I'm holding out for. The cams that record to flash, like the Panasonic just cost so damn much. I'd rather spend $20 on a bluray disc and get an hour of record time out of it.

The Star Wars video looked pretty good. I know how you feel on doing all those layers for the light sabers. Been there and done that. What program did you use? I used After Effects. I was pretty much Adobe all the way. I used Lightwave for modeling, Premiere Pro for editing. One critique on the light sabers. Tweak the color levels a bit so that it blends into the location - not so bright, and you could use After Effects to vary the intensity randomly so that it has the slightest bit of flicker to it. Those are little, easy things you can tweak. Otherwise, it looked really good.

[shredmaster]

Courtney, why did you get rid of the Z1U? That's a great cam from what I've heard. I too use all adobe. It was premiere pro and after FX for that clip. Thanks for your tip on the sabers. I did see the flicker option in after FX and used it on a few of the clips. There are so many options I wanted to try during post, but didn't have DAYS or WEEKS to finish it..heheh.

[courtney2018]

The cool thing with After Effects is you can even write a formula to use to vary whatever effect you want. For instance the saber flicker you could write a formula if you wanted to. Don't know what that would be straight off, but it's an option. Yea, there's lots of stuff in After Effects. I love that program. If you have Photoshop you can transfer a few seconds of footage into Photoshop and do wire removal. Like when Vader was pulling the gun out of the person's hand. You could've done it why fishing line so it really looks like there's a force pulling it from the person's hand. But then you'd have to spend some time to do wire removal. It's a fun exercise though.

There used to be this one site I would go to and they would do stuff with After Effects. They had several tutorials on how to do stuff like sabers. I can't remember what the site was, but creativecow is a good one. 2-pop is another one.

I sold the Sony when I moved down here. I was doing a few weddings and sporting events. Had a blast with it. But I didn't have any clients and didn't feel like going out and trying to find any. I was new down here and just wanted to adjust to my new area.

I wouldn't buy it again though, and it has nothing to do with the camera. I LOVED it! I really want that camera with bluray. Until flash drives come down in price I'll stay away from it. Bluray discs are just a cheaper option and you should be able to record uncompressed HD without a problem. That's what I'm waiting for. Then I'll jump on one.

I might be getting back into it soon, so I'm hoping that a bluray cam will come along. Or maybe flash drives will come down. I know Sony came out with a new type of Memory Stick recently for video cameras, so maybe they'll go the flash drive route instead of bluray. I just hope it's decently priced and not like the Panasonic flash cards. Those are outrageous for an indy maker with no money. If you have the money you're most likely not going to be shooting HDV anyways. You're going to using a CineAlta cam or something like that.