happy Comic-Con week to you! this will be my 4th year going…last year I felt like I was just hitting my stride with planning and execution of the convention. the only major change for this year… a closer hotel. all the better to facilitate afternoon iPhone recharging and naps. anyhoo, I’ll be talking about #SDCC next week.
this week, here are a couple of things I’ve seen on the interwebz
here’s a video where some nefarious characters battle with “cardboard” weapons… take a look.
I think this video is a perfect example of putting the cart before the horse. these guys have made a visually impressive video. they’ve taken a funny concept- “cardboard” weapons- and added in great vfx.
the different sorts of weapons and the escalating nature of the fight are great.
but story? characters? emotion? these are nowhere to be found.
visual effects should serve the story, not the other way around.
if they’d spent 30 seconds at the beginning developing the characters and setting up say, “a plot,” I’d want to watch this again…instead, I found myself losing focus during the 3.5 minutes. does it work as a visual effects demo? yes. does it work as a short film? no.
take a look at this Milk ad from Japan. it took has cool vfx and an interesting premise…but there is a STORY and we identify with one of the characters. caring about the characters makes it an ultimately more rewarding viewing experience.
a couple quick updates. my experimental narrative, “JEROME” is coming right along. sound design is done, a composer is working on the score, and *fingers crossed* I’ll be doing color correction and vfx tomorrow. also, I’m in the midst or working on an EPIC blog about my trip to New Orleans for Jazz Fest this spring. stay tuned.
“new media,” “internet distribution,” “going viral,” what do they mean and, more importantly, how does one utilize them?
these are questions that I’ve been exploring, investigating, pondering, and testing the past couple years. there are millions of people watching videos online everyday. and out of those millions there must be thousands that would be interested in my latest music video or short film, right?
so how do I find those thousands? or how do I find the hundreds that will attract the thousands that will attract the tens of thousands and so on?
the methods I’ve been working on recently include: posting and interacting with people via my twitter account, my blog, updating and maintaining my mailing lists which includes several Yahoo filmmaking groups, posting on facebook/myspace, and directly contacting blogs.
in marketing an internet video, blogs seem like one of the best bets. they represent a “reputable” 3rd party which adds legitimacy to your project. it’s one thing to say “hey, check out my video, it’s AWESOME.” it’s another to have someone you don’t know say “hey, check out this video, it’s AWESOME.” additionally, a blog will have its own unique set of readers… a group that you probably don’t know and wouldn’t have access to it. if one of them likes it and passes on to ten of their friends and one of those ten likes it passes it on, well, you’ve effectively promoted your project in true grassroots fashion.
for my snowboard travelogue, “Chingón Aguilas: Turn it to 11″ I set out to do this for the first time. the first question to answer was, “who is my audience?” I figured that fans of Chilean snow sports, snowboarders, and lovers of Super 8 filmmaking would be interested in the project. with the help of my intern Mustan, we searched the web for blogs that fit those categories AND had history of posting videos. He would compile a list of potential sites, then I reviewed and contacted the ones that I thought were a good fit.
the responses were overwhelmingly positive, people liked the film. But I didn’t just want them to just say “cool film”…I wanted them to post the film on their sites.
of course, anytime you put yourself out there, you risk getting a response like this from www.angrysnowboarder.com.
Luke,
What do you want me to tell you? That it looks like a bunch of guys went and shredded Chile and didn’t even venture off into the real terrain most people should go there for? Or that it’s all filler and like zero thriller?
I’ll be honest it doesn’t do shit for me as a snowboarder, writer, or someone that has had some whacky ass trips that have been documented. To me it just seems like 2 guys went to chile had fun and shot it in super 8 (sick medium that I love personally) but over all isn’t something I’d ever care to watch again. I love raw and gritty shit classic example is I love what June and Esthera are doing with Peepshow when that movie came out I was like, “holy fuck an all girl shred flick I can actually stand to watch”. My .02 cents is you got skills with a camera either next time show the turmoil of getting there and shredding or show me the goods none of this artsy fartsy shit. Also more metal in the edit, the world needs more metal. Running free by Maiden would have been a good one.
interestingly enough, some of the things he didn’t like about the film were the very things I was trying to accomplish. but that’s besides the point… if you share your work with strangers, you have to be prepared for some of them not to like it.
of course, some of them will really like it. another site, www.shayboarder.com, liked the film enough that they interviewed me about the trip and filmmaking process for their blog.
here’s a little excerpt:
Often snowboard journeys are undocumented travels, lost in our memories and shared secrets between friends. Snowboarders from California Luke and Will shared their journey in a super 8mm film for the world to see and while many Chilean travels are left to the pros, I enjoyed the passion and creativity that came out from their film.
I caught up with Luke to find out more about their travel experience to Chile and how they documented the experience in a short film.
and from Shayboadrer’s interview the site www.shredunion.com tweeted about the post & film, sharing it with their 2,300+ followers. those are 2,300 potential viewers that I didn’t have access to before! I’m not sure it went too much further than that, but all and all I’d call it a successful first foray into the world of blog promotions.
promoting and distributing short form projects on the internet is something that I’m still learning and experimenting with. I’d love to hear any experiences, thoughts, or stories you may have!
I’ve just finished a new music video for Grand Vanity’s song “Got A Nerve.” the band is composed of Greg and Dani Jong, a husband and wife duo that I first met on the Procession’s “Major & Minor” video (watch it here.)
the video was a lot of fun to make, the Jong’s have a great attitude and since it was pretty low budget, I got to work with friends. that is, I had to convince people who like me to come work for free or cheap.
since we were going to be pushing the limits of our budget, I wanted to make sure the video was well planned. a month or so before the production, I went to Van Nuys with my Canon Powershot and shot some tests which I then cut into an animatic.
soon the week or the production was upon us…unfortunately the Jong’s came down with the flu. being a performance video it was kinda important that they were in good shape for filming, so we pushed the video. this is never a fun thing to do. once you change dates, the availability of crew and gear can change drastically. and the later we were going to shoot, the worse the weather would be.
yes, this is Southern California, but it does rain here. and the closer you get to the end of the year, the more likely it will rain. but this time, fortune smiled on us. between our initial shoot day and the day we shot it got cold. cold enough that the leaves changed.
leaves before
leaves on day of shoot
this isn’t something we could have planned, but it totally worked in our favor. the potential negative of delaying the shoot turned into a positive that enhanced the mise-en-scène of the video.
the shoot itself went smoothly. no one hassled us at all, which was great since we were shooting IN THE STREET without permits. this means that if anyone had a problem with us shooting they could report us to the police and the police would shut us down. thankfully, Saturday morning in Van Nuys is a pretty mellow place.
you can see a woman walking her dogs stopped to say “hi.”
this was my 2nd video with the director of photography Brett Pawlak he shot the “Come Around” video. it was good getting to work with him again. since we were shooting on a long lens, we were pretty far from the band and would often chat during the takes. listening to the audio tracks cracked me up. maybe someday I’ll cut together some choice lines. until then, you’ll have to be satisfied with a pic of our sweet kicks.
Tony Federico came on board to produce. this was also our 2nd project together, the 1st being the Rotten Apples video. many of these pics are ones he snapped on set. it’s pretty great working with someone who has an even more ridiculous mustache than me.
early morning Tony
the day consisted of much walking around Van Nuys, some stop motion shooting, a bit of green screen, and ended with a short narrative scene. this “house” was actually a small, detached guest room in the backyard that the Jong’s used as their recording studio. add a knocker and a coat rack and viola! another location. part of this scene we had to film after the sun went down. luckily the small lighting package we had did the trick.
to celebrate the shoot I treated a few of the guys to a pretty awesome meal at Umami Burger.
a big thanks to Ben Ceccerelli, Steve Romero, Andrew Drapkin and AJ Ullman for their help with the post production. these guys have all helped me with numerous projects and I couldn’t keep doing what I do without them.
p.s. the next day, Tony, Brett and I would be going on an adventure… we had the camera package for the entire weekend, so we decided to shoot a little short film. a couple posts on craigslist, many headshots, and a few phone calls later we had our talent…
more on that once it drops. until then, here’s a teaser pic from that shoot.
Greetings and Happy Thanksgiving my intertubian friends!
Recently I’ve made a few updates to my website. First off, I’ve added an “archive” page. There you can find my older music videos, short films, commercials, and of course…The Real Luke. Check it out here lukeasa.com/archive.
I’ve also taken advantage of YouTube’s HD abilities and uploaded Voxhaul Broadcast’s “Rotten Apples” video in High Definition. It really looks amazing. Just a few years ago I was so anti-youtube. The quality was bad, it took forever to stream, and it seemed like the site was lowering overall expectations of image quality. But now, I have to admit – using their site for an HD file provides a quicker and more accessible viewing experience than a quicktime of equal quality. For standard definition or smaller files, I still prefer quicktimes. But for HD…youtube’s options look really good.
And…here’s a trailer for the Super 8 film that I shot in Chile last summer, “Chingón Aguilas: Turn It To 11.”
Check out the videos full screen, they really look great.
So a while back I got an email from an account executive at dbdchile.com. Someone at their Japanese office had sent them the street mag that my Real Luke pics were in (check them out here). They wanted to chat with me about making a vintage inspired Coke ad. I was into the idea, and even better the job was going to shoot in Winter… i.e. July.
A chance to escape the SoCal heat, go snowboarding, and film a Real Luke ad in July??? Yes please!!!
On the flight to Santiago I ended up sitting next to a wild haired, tattooed German guy. His name was Wilhelm Von Schmakënbrau. We talked a lot about art, music, and incidentally snowboarding. Wilhelm is quite the artist. He has exhibited or performed all over the world, from Berlin to Johannesburg, from Mumbai to Tokyo. It’s hard to classify his work, the best I can come up with is Metal Infused Post Deconstructionist Performance Art. But it’s not to hard to describe it, basically he “blows shit up with sound.” It’s pretty badass. He’s pretty vigilant about keeping it strictly PERFORMANCE based and spends hours everyday searching youtube to eliminate any clips of his work that may have popped up. If you could say anything about the Germans, it’s that they are thorough.
After 14 hours in the air and 3 hours going through customs, we’d become pretty good friends. I needed a camera person, so I asked if he’d like to help me with the production. He was a little resistant, it being “commercial” and all, but when I explained the character of The Real Luke – a Post Industrialist Waldenian on a Vision Quest – and that we would be shooting on Super 8, he was hooked.
The shoot went smoothly, and the client notes were surprisingly simple. The only problem was getting a dang copy of the piece. My best guess is that Alessandro, my account rep, left the agency. He’d been mumbling something about a kayak trip in Patagonia. I’ve been scouring the web looking for the video and it finally popped up online. Some dude (well, it’s the internet, so who really knows) posted a bunch of weird beverage ads from South America… and mine is in the mix!
Hopefully I’ll have a pretty quicktime online soon, but until then – click here for the youtube video or watch below!
really, calling this an ad hardly does it justice. it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of media I’ve seen in a while.
it probably helps that I’ve been editing my snowboarding film from Chile for the past few weeks…and subsequently winter has been on my mind.
this ad is an excellent representation of the feeling that we snowboarders (and skiers) have in the fall. the cold air and changing colors brings anticipation to our days. we visualize the lines that we’ll be riding. we are filled with the expectations of the excitement and fun that the winter will soon bring.
in this spot, those daydreams are visualized in a wonderful and mesmerizing fashion.
As some of you may know, I recently went on a snowboarding trip to Chile. And while I was there I shot a bunch of Super 8. It’s the first time I’ve shot celluloid since college and the first time shooting snowboarding in 3 or 4 years.
Filming snowboarding and skateboarding was my entry into filmmaking so I’m excited to see the advances made in the “action sports” genre. The past couple of years the quality has jumped dramatically. And this isn’t just because of the availability of inexpensive (relatively) HD cameras. The actually production of the videos has become more sophisticated.
Take a look at these two clips and you’ll see what I mean. Granted, one of them IS a Nike commercial, but I think it still holds true.
Hello fellow riders of a series of connected tubes!
My most recent directing project has just been released. It’s a music video for Sing It Loud’s song “Come Around.” It was my first time working with Bucks Boys Productions. And let me tell you, it was great to have a production company. For the first time I was able to just focus on directing. I didn’t have to worry about how to get the gear there, or what we were going to have for lunch, or how much each costume was going to cost to rent. I just showed up and the trucks and crew magically appeared. It was awesome.
Heh, ok, what I did was a little more complicated, but it was great to be able to focus on creating.
Here’s a little bit of behind-the-scenes production goodness…
5:30am is early, especially on a Monday. And in January it’s cold…I mean not “Mid-west” cold…but cold.
The facility guy was late. But at least he showed up…unlike the day before. By 6:00am we were in and checking out the location. We’d planned on shooting at dawn on the roof. Nail the performance. Shoot the rooftop scenes, then work our way into the streets and film until there was no light.
The instruments were coming from Studio Instrument Rentals. A pretty big and supposedly reputable rental agency. Everything was supposed to be there at 6:00am so we could load up to the roof for a 7am shot.
7am
They hadn’t even left. Uhh….wtf. How do you leave over an hour after you were supposed to arrive? Well no worries, we could just shoot the rooftop scenes. We just needed the band, a couple props, and the girl…
The girl…uhhhhh.
This is why I’m never allowing casting to be done with Craigslist again.
The girl got “hives.” The morning of the shoot.
So….plan A was to shoot the performance. Plan B was to shoot the girl. Plan C was….well I wasn’t really sure what Plan C was going to be.
Meanwhile my producers were calling the other actresses we liked, trying to find a last minute replacement. At about 8am the instruments arrived. 2 hours late.
So back to Plan A…only THEY DIDN’T INCLUDE ALL OF THE DRUM KIT.
8:30
Ok, Back to Plan C, which by this time I’d figured out was to “shoot the gags first.” Unfortunately Plan A had the props being prepped during the 2 hours of performance. So nothing was ready. A quick chat w/ my Production Designer, Bradd and we decided what would be the quickest prop to prep. We’d shoot that first, then roll onto the next, shooting scenes once the pieces were prepared. And hopefully by the time we got finished with the guys’ scenes we’d have a girl to film.
We started with the glue, then the net, then…we had an actress.
11:30am
I was pretty stoked, because the girl we got was actually my first choice.
But…she had to go to an audition in Santa Monica…at 3pm.
Let’s do the math here.
Changing out of costume 15 min + Downtown to Santa Monica, 30 min. + Audition, 30 min. + Drive back 45 min = 2 hr.
That meant from 2:15 to 4:15pm she was gone.
Sunset was at 5:15pm.
This was what I was working out in my head…best case scenario was that we’d have 1 hour to shoot her rooftop scene SOMEWHERE in between shooting the band’s performance….which meant we’d lose additional setup time.
But…somehow, someway, she was back by like 3:40pm. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. That extra time saved us. We’d shot everything else at that point and were able to move seamlessly to the final rooftop scenes. (Oh, and by this time the drum kit had arrived and was assembled.)
4pm
We’d been working fast all day and the final two scenes were the biggest push. We shot until we had no more light. After each take I was sure we were done, but Brett kept tweaking it and we kept shooting.
At the very end we were filming Chris, the drummer. Let’s just say, they don’t call him “Sick Boy” for nothing…he puked mid take. Hurling right over they edge of the building. Apparently it happens all the time, go figure.
6pm
The very last thing to shoot was the insert of “what’s in the briefcase.” I wasn’t really sure what I wanted it to be…my original idea had to get tossed due to our actress going to Santa Monica. I wanted to have a “Looney Toons” style explosion happen, but that would have required getting her in/out of special effects makeup, plus an extra shot or two of the guys on the roof. We didn’t have any extra time with her at all. So I decided that we’d have something clever in the briefcase that would be disappointing for the girl. We’d shoot her reaction, then have the rest of the day to figure out WHAT was in the case.
We scoured the crew, the band, and the set for anything interesting to be in the case. Here’s a couple examples of what didn’t make the video
———–
At the end of the shoot, my AD told me that in the morning he thought “we’d blown our day.” In other words, for all intensive purposes we were totally hosed. But if I do one thing well, it’s thinking on my feet and staying calm. I don’t really think about it, I just do it. I don’t want there to be problems, but if there are I know I’ll be able to figure out a solution. Filmmaking is a collaborative art form, so even if I can find a solution, I need to have a crew that can rise to the task.
We lost a bunch of time due to SIR and Actress #1, but thanks to the hustle of the crew, especially Vinny our AD, Brett our DP and Jonathan our producer we got it done. There were a few shots I’d liked to have had, but I got what I needed for the video.
Thanks to Matt @ Epitaph, Doug @ Feisty Management for all their help. A big thank you to AJ Ullman, Mike Jacks, Andrew Drapkin, and Juan Behrens, for the post production help and finishing work. I thought about writing about the post workflow, but it’s pretty technical and a bit dry. If anyone wants to know about how we finished using FCP, RED, .dpx, and the Nucoda Color Corrector…let me know and I’ll do a blog on that.
Part of the edit was done at Mammoth Mountain, part was done at my folks house in Bremerton, WA. Here’s my view from Bremerton.
