...and how do you feel now?

Cherry Sauce: Corporate Video Kick Off

Being the busy little B I am, I've also just kicked off another project with Cherry Media, working on a new corporate video for them, helping to promote their new adult (NSFW) information site Cherry Sauce.

I've compiled all the source material and am starting to lay the project out in terms of assets and flow. Its going to be a good project (I've been told "no tits" - I'm thinking classy, not sleazy) and I'm aiming to get it in before the new year. Watch this space!

Hosted Accountants: Intro Sequence Kick Off

So my good friend Ian has started up a business (Hosted Accountants) that provides cloud based services for accountancy professionals - something that sounds very sensible when you think about security and single points of failure.

I've been on at him for some time to let me create a video for him that he can stick on his website and he's just sent me some graphics and fonts! Woo hoo! Now, in my spare time of course, I can begin to put something together for him to show him what he could have as a bit of added low cost content for his website. You gotta love digital video! 

Samsung Video: Samsung Developers Title Sequence

So this video became a little more complicated when I was asked to update the corporate graphics which had changed since the last time we asked about branding materials. The Samsung Developers brand has a new funky look and feel to it, but no assets from the usual mysterious agency in Korea.

Without further ado, I got busy with some Red Bull and some Motion to make something interesting!

Come back inner monologue, all is forgiven!

I've been on facebook since 2007, three years since it launched in the U.S.A. and as I'm physically removed from most of my friends, I've relied on it heavily, becoming both an active socialiser and the go-to guy at work for Social endeavours, even taking on the responsibility of the Samsung Developers LinkedIn Group management. Away from the corporate side of things, I'm at the point where I have a though, then copy-edit it and store it for future release via a social channel... Something doesn't quite feel right about the fact that my good, often unformulated ideas, become soundbites, reduced to 140 characters presented to a pool of connections I might not know as well as I should, or value as much as I should....

 

Recently I caught myself trolling on-line. I hadn't expressly set out to, but I'd found myself being mean, harsh and derogatory toward my connections on both facebook and LinkedIn and I realised I should know better. I gave myself a 10 day time out from facebook, (coinciding with a busy period at work) and did some thinking about Social Networking.

this is what I do: 2011 Test Flash movie

Found this while checking through my YouTube channel and thought I should make it live... The final version (in Flash) was used in the Commerce: Making money with bada video made in 2011.

appsworld 2012 shaped obstacle

So it's been about a month now since my last post, announcing work on the S Pen tutorial video and it's been a good experience so far. After shooting all the direct to camera, we recorded all the audio, leaving me able to go away and start chopping it out into scenes. I was quite happily sailing along, one eye on Motion, one on Final Cut when Apps World 2012 rushed us from a dark alleyway.

Same time every year - Diamond Sponsors 2012

Post vacation content planning

So this is my 2nd day back at work from my week and a half vacation and I've just submitted our most recent technical script for review. This video, looking at the S Pen SDK for the Galaxy Note devices should be a lot quicker to produce than usual, as I'm really pushing to not have any presenters on screen for speed of production. 

The S Pen (S is for SUPERFREAKINGAMAZING)

We've used a technical presentation as a storyboard but I'll create all the animations in Motion to improve the look and feel. I'm looking forward to getting started on this project as Motion is a great tool to play around with.

Samsung Video: The UK Developer Programme

The Brief - Come up with a teaser introduction video to show at events, with no budget ASAP.

I set about writing some scripted lines for everyone, thinking I'd splice them all together in post production, but when we started filming everyone wanted to freestyle it and say something 'like' what had been carefully written for them. Not wanting to cause any offence I let them get to it and we ended up with some good content.

My 2D to 3D Experiment

Following on from the excellent Premiumbeat.com article "Still Images: 2D to 3D using After Effects or Apple Motion" I thought I'd try my hand, as I often am on the scrounge for content and there is only so far Ken Burns will take you...

Being in possession of Photoshop and Motion I tried out Jonathan Fowler's approach but instead opted for Pixelmator as I've gotta get used to using it on the iMac.

Quick Mask Mode - A comfortable way to extract

Samsung Video: UI Scalability

Just finished my most recent project, which ended up taking twice as long as normal, although I learnt a hell of a lot about keyframing and 3D camera's in Motion while making this video. We shot the DTC footage in one go, but the battery on the wireless mic ran out, so we had to re-shoot. I did a very rough cut in FCPX, before realising the audio needed producing into false stereo, or dual channel mono via MPEG StreamClip, rather than dual channel mono in FCPX. I muted all the non-voice over audio, then exported just the audio from the whole project. Then I converted that whole track into dual mono with MPEG StreamClip and re-imported it into FCPX. As I carried on editing, some parts fell out of synch, but those were quickly trimmed and lined back up again (slightly laborious but quite fun looking for word shapes on a zoomed in pair of lips...<shudder>)

Evaluating Pixelmator as a Photoshop Replacement

As I'm currently between video projects and our IT department has given away my license for Photoshop, I'm trying out Pixelmator as a very cheap alternative. As most of the image processing I end up doing ends up being used in either Motion or FCPX as video assets, so it needs to be able to handle high quality potentially large files and produce vector based graphics for print.

£10 on the App Store! 

Thoughts so far - The UI is nice, icons expand when selected and the look and feel of the menu system is very similar to Photoshop for all you pro's. There seem to be hundres of effects/filters you can apply (no auto draw for crap artists like me!)

Samsung Video: MWC App Demo Playlist

Just before MWC I was asked to supply some demo content showing off the Wave 3, and a selection of approved apps. This was a fun little project before the bigger show.



As you can see I used a standard 3.5mm male to male headphone lead to capture the audio coming straight out of the device and played through the apps with a camera in front of me recording my movements. The static TapTu, Accuweather and SkyView were screen grabbed right off the device, but TinTin, Asphalt6 and The Sims 3 needed some movement and interaction.

Apparently they broke up the presentation a little and were generally well received, which is always nice to hear :-)

Samsung Video: Using the bada Test Kit

It's always a proud moment when you are asked to make a video for someone. Enthusiasm is high, people involved are energised and your reputation is alive, well and wearing its suit and tie.  



Then you realise, you've got no assets and no light box to create on-device footage.... Still I think in terms of simulation and footage nabbed off the developer site it's not a bad video. I also got to use some of our excellent, but LOCOG un-approved Olympic themes designed by my talented friend Nick over at TwoTrees Graphics & Publishing.

The moral of the story - get the clearance, before you run the interference.