I Live For Video

kaffee short

admin — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:15:41 +0000

so i have been wanting to practice more with visual fx’s and also with green screening, so my buddy cory and i decided to shoot this little short the other day. basically set up a little noire scene with a green screen in the window so i could practice compositing that out first. i’m pretty happy with how the short turned out and thanks a ton to cory for acting and lighting, jimmy for giving me the music and some sound fx’s and to video copilot. here’s the flick:

here’s some production stills so you can see what i did with the green screening, color correction and FX’s

prost netz!

skrillex first of the year (equinox)

admin — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 04:18:10 +0000

as many of my friends now i’m a huge fan of skrillex. he’s beats are amazing and if you ever get the chance to see him in concert, do it, the dude puts on one of the best live performances i have ever seen.

that being said, skrillex has a new album coming out and my friend cory showed me this new music video for his mix first of the year (equinox.)

i think this video is amazing! first the creepy stalker dude gets fuk’d and second, it’s no secret that i love animation and motion graphics, and the simple effects used in this video are awesome! anywho, watch it for yourself, i have about 13 times now and let me know what you think. keep rockin skrillex! and come back to portland!

prots netz!

fun with masks

admin — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:19:01 +0000

i was a little bored in my office this morning, so i decided to have a little fun with masks in after effects. i’m trying to learn after effects better so i’m practicing these little things a lot. the colors are a bit off with some of the masks because i was using mostly natural lighting for the scene and it changed over the period i shot. also, a few of my masks are over lapping. i’m better than this, i promise. hahaha anywho, enjoy!

day_in_the_office

prost netz!

final cut “pro” x released today

admin — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:45:07 +0000

so i had planned on actually buying this product, playing around with it a bit and then writing up a full review, and i’m sure that i will in the future, but for now, no. i’m going to wait and see what apple really does with this program. from the many sites that i have been reading, since it’s release, it sounds like the new final cut pro x is basically imovie on steroids. sure it has some amazing features, color matching, clip connections, a magnetic timeling… etc. but one major thing that it doesn’t do, which is major to me, is allow you to open older versions of any fcp product, yet, it does allow you to import older imovie projects. HUGE FAILURE!…. so is this final cut pro or just another version of imovie? here’s some articles you can read and judge for yourself. i will inevitably download and use the program, so look for a better review later, but for now, i’m not impressed.

http://philipbloom.net/2011/06/21/finalcut/

http://library.creativecow.net/adcock_gary/FCPX/1

prost netz!

funny video friday!

admin — Fri, 06 May 2011 19:48:55 +0000

everyone needs a laugh, so do it or i hear gremlins will still your socks while you sleep…

this video will help and apparently it’s making its way around the netz because i have now gotten it from my boyz jon and mr. diggles, and now my brother cory is in on passing it around. well i found it hilarious, so it has made it to the funny video friday wall. enjoy!

happy friday!

prost netz!

db clay…. the come back!

admin — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:00:12 +0000

i have carried a db clay wallet for about 4 years now and let me tell you, i have never had a better one, or one that lasted me this long! well, garett stenson is now bringing db clay back from the ashes with a kick ass kickstarter campaign! with a ton of work from garett, mr. diggles on the web side, and myself and my friend brian on the video side, check out his huge kickstarter site to help raise some money to produce and release his new line of wallets Line 0.0. garett has amazing vision and i know that db clay is going to extremely successful, big shout out to all those that helped him get this campaign going! huge thanks to brian for helping me shoot this, that dude can frame things through the lens like no other!

check out db clay’s new site and freaking contribute!

funny video friday

admin — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:15:25 +0000

happy friday world!

thanks to my buddy jon for sending along this video to me, good luck with that prostate exam today bro!

prost netz!

Adobe follows suit and releases an update to premiere… but quietly

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:25:16 +0000

hello world, as all you video nerds know apple announced that they are releasing a new version of final cut pro, if you don’t know you can catch up by reading about it here. well to follow suit, adobe announced that they are also going to be updating parts of the CS (creative suite) to a 5.5 version. most the software being upgraded to the new 5.5 line is all in the video production line, to compete with the fcp update no doubt, and wildly has a lot of the same features that the new fcp is coming out with, up side, it’s coming out at the end of may (a couple days before fcp), downside unless you can get the upgrade price, it’s going to be a little more expensive than apple’s $299 price.

check out the video!

there a lot of changes coming out with the cs 5.5 upgrade so please check them out here, but some of my favorites are:

1. auto syncing audio and video, thanks to the uprise of using dslr’s to shoot video, this has always been a hassle, sorry pluraleyes, this is bad for you.

2. audition is now included in the production premium package, which is going to be amazing for audio editing, cleaning, and mastering.

3. the warp stabilizer in AE is going to be amazing now, with how it can smooth the camera movement, but than also uses the surrounding pixels at the edges to complete the image so you no longer need to crop a 1080 comp to a 720 comp because of the stabilization

4. working between adobe story and premiere is amazing to giving your video metadata and being able to find specific shots just by clicking and searching in the script

5. all the lens blurs and 3D light fall off added to AE

all in all, and i’m not just saying this because I have taken a liking to using adobe products, i think this is going to be an great upgrade, and they are doing it all without changing the entire UI and making people learn all over again apple. granted it is probably still going to have it’s problems and i do plan on testing it out as well as apple’s fcp x, but most of what i love is the workflow between all adobe products that apple has yet to master, so we will see.

till later

prost netz!

Apple unveils Final Cut Pro X…

admin — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:50:42 +0000

UPDATE: here’s the full announcement speech

no, i am not at NAB unfortunately, but i was pretty sure that apple was going to unveil the latest version of it’s pro editing system. now for the record, i currently edit using adobe’s cs5 production suite, but for many many years i was a final cut only type guy. the new final cut is finally going to have full 64 bit support, allow you to use up to 8 cores and also finally going to have background rendering to look forward to, which is pretty exciting.. finally. it also is going to have a mess of features like, a new way of handling all of our massive quantities of media, a new process that allows you to start editing as you are importing, content auto analysis (people detection, shot detection, auto color balance, audio cleanup) and a slew of additional features. you can see a list of them here on macrumor.com coverage of the event.

now it may be too early to tell, but many things about this release stick out to me and make me question whether this is going to be a “pro” application anymore, or if apple, being apple, is moving it more towards the ios and consumerville…. it’s going to be released in june on the app store for $299, there’s no mention of any of the other studio programs coming with it. from the images of the announcement the screenshots make the application look like a hybrid between final cut express and imovie and with some of those new features it sounds like it is going to be on auto pilot, kind of doing what it thinks would be best for your footage… hopefully there is a switch to turn the code driven pilot off, i like editing my own footage thanks.

i know i know, it’s too early to tell anything, but these are just my first impressions of the software coming out and the announcement. as with most things, i am still excited to see it released and am definitely going to try it out, but until then, i’m a little hesitant of it….

also check out loopinsights post for additional high-res screenshots of the software

prost netz!

sony nex fs100

admin — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:58:35 +0000

the world is abuzz with the rumors of new cameras coming out constantly, well here is one that i am pretty excited about, the sony nex fs100. sony is going to unveil it at this years nab conference. it’s going to be an amazing step in the whole hdslr vs. camcorder war that is going on. sony was very smart in recruiting the people at f-stop academy to get their input about why everyone is so excited about the hdslr’s and what are the pro’s and con’s of them. working together with them, they were able to create, what i think, is going to be an amazing camcorder to finally match the quality of the hdslr’s that i have been using, but also add the functions of a real camcorder that we all have been missing from shooting video with a dslr camera. read all about the processing and the amazing features of the camcorder on f-stop academies site here and here is also the video featured on that page announcing the camcorder.

NEX FS 100 Video Blog from Den & James on Vimeo.

great things coming video nerds!

prost netz!