Silence

Deafening.
Calm.
Confusing.
Respect.
What?
Unbearable.
Ego.
Talk.
Please?

More Stop Motion

For some reason I can’t seem to post 2 vimeo videos in the same post –

Stop Motion!

This was my first time attempting to create stop motion animation(other than keyframing in Flash) and we got to play around with fancy cameras mounted on fancy tripods and used FrameByFrame to create these short animations. Rachel and I made these two in class, very cool, lots of fun.

Animation Fun

Can’t even imagine, how long a full-feature film with stop motion takes to produce, but this one’s pretty epic.

This looks like a mix of video and stop motion. I thought it was cute.

Video Mashups – Kids

I found this on YouTube, because I’m in an addiction-phase with this song. It’s not an over-the-top mashup, but it takes some interesting clips and throws them into this video.
Then, I happened to read the description of the video and that’s a story in itself.

Here’s the hi-def version from the creator’s website –
http://www.itsjonsalmon.com/mgmt_kids/

And here’s the story behind the video, copy-pasted from YouTube, in case you’re interested.
Just to set the story straight: the facepainted kids in the video are a boy and girl from Los Angeles, two friends of mine, names Raf and Abby. MGMT was not involved in the making of this video, however, they became involved down the line.
The story goes like this:
December 2007: Rushing to make a due date for a USC Music Video class, I ask my friends Raf and Abby to appear in my video. I like the way they bounce off of each other despite completely different personality types, and think they both have interesting faces. Raf didn’t want to shave so I didn’t push him. We shot in one night, I cut overnight, turn it in and call it the worst thing I’ve done so far.
January 2008: On a whim one night while visiting home in Austin, Texas, I throw the video on Youtube just for kicks.
April 2008: Ray Tintori, who has directed 3 official videos for MGMT, finds my fan video online and invites myself and my two actors to come to New York to appear in MGMTs next official video for Electric Feel.
May 2008: We go to New York and have a great time on the set with the band and all their friends.

Vector Animation

This was intense!
Between learning Flash, unpredictable crashes, and losing frames, the creation of this animation was a long but ultimately fun process. Having my idea meet my knowledge of Flash was interesting, and I ended up combining a bunch of different techniques – keyframing, tweening, stuff I learnt from tutorials, and throwing in painted backgrounds. Since this was a first attempt at Flash vector animation, I found myself exploring rather than trying to create a consistent, stylistic feel for the animation, something that I’d like to do better in the future.

Anyway, here it is, animated to the dream sequence soundtrack –

Link to Dropbox – http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/2327286/animation_7.swf

It’s Not The End of The World

I saw this in Duesing and Hodgin’s animation class last semester. It would be nice to reach this level of skill. And if that was to happen, I probably would be doing video production for a living, which would be pretty freakin’ sweet.

Sound Collage

With this piece, I wanted to create a dream landscape, and convey a sense of the ever so out of reach feeling in a dream – when you’re chasing something and it’s always just a little further than you thought it was. I chose a somewhat enchanted forest theme for the collage.
I had fun recording this – playing around with the portable audio equipment, and running around Schenley crunching up leaves and getting sound on a digital camera.

Here’s a few sound sources for the piece –
1. Creepy Whispering Voice – recorded with the Marantz equipment.

I recorded a slightly haunting whisper, then reversed it.

2. Running on Crunchy Leaves – recorded on a digi cam.

I got rid of some of the atmosphere noise in this one, and edited the speed of the track, to get an evident combination of fast and slow footsteps through the forest floor.

71888

So some time back, I accidentally signed up for this text messaging dating service when I took a quiz on facebook, and really naively gave out my phone number. I got a text from 71888 trying to hook me up with ‘Brad who lives 15 minutes away from you’. Creepy. No thanks, Facebook. Anyway, the texts were free and I never took the trouble to unsubscribe, and as I have found out, some days they decide to send me my horoscope for the day.
Today I received the following from 71888 –
“Doing something musical, whether that’s learning an instrument, or going dancing, will help define your sense of focus today.”
I thought that was oddly appropriate since I spent the day playing with the Marantz, doing my sound collage, and watching a performance of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ in the evening.

Irish Jammin’

Testing Dropbox mp3 hosting –