29 Aug Like A Sun music video tests + various happenings
Hello Faithful Interweb Friends!
Oye. It’s been a while. Too long really.
Why haven’t I posted? There must be a good reason, right?
Well….kinda, not really?
I’ve done a little traveling this summer:
San Francisco
Seattle
San Diego
Aside from that I’ve just been grinding away. It’s a constant hustle trying to get more projects off the ground and to keep things moving forward. What exactly does this mean? Well in the past couple months I’ve written multiple music video treatments, worked with a writer developing a script for her to act in & me to direct, met with a producer for my sci-fi short, prepared and submitted a grant proposal for said short film, written a narrative essay, met with a sound designer for a short I completed a while back, talked with numerous production companies regarding my reel, sent my reel out to multiple managers and bands, had a meeting with a website regarding creating original content for them, met with bands, gone and shot test footage until 3am, talked with musicians in Seattle, talked with musicians in San Francisco, edited a music video, supervised visual effects for said video, and enlisted my Dad to location scout for me. And this coming weekend I’m going location scouting in NorCal.
Keep in mind…this is all in addition to my 40+ hour a week “day” job.
One project that has been completed is the video for Sirens & Sailors “Like The Sun.” We shot some additional footage in Malibu ..>, Ann gave me some super 8 she’d shot in the Huntington Gardens, Lex gave me some rollouts (the cool effect when the film gets partial overexposed as the camera comes to a stop), and I hired Ben (who did the drawings for “The Real Luke“) to do some visual fx on a couple shots.
I really like working with Ben. He’s a great collaborator, has good ideas, and we communicate very well over IM. Which is really great since we both have “day jobs” and it’s much easier to type a few lines then pick up the phone. I don’t think we spoke on the phone or in person until he dropped off the disc w/ the completed shots. Basically I suggested to him that the video needed something extra…like a little additional visual kick. Something that could be seen almost as an aberration on the physical film. I wanted it to be slightly subtle, yet still psychedelic
Here’s a link to our first test
A little refinement for our second test
I remembered that the first layer of film emulsion is the “blue” layer. Very briefly, film is a photo-chemical process, which means when exposed to light, a chemical reaction takes places, producing, in this case a picture. The actual piece of film contains different layers of emulsion. These are created using gelatin (that’s right, film is NOT vegan) and silver halide. The different layers react to different wave-lengths of light, which produce a color image. That’s why slight damages to film show up as blue or blue green. Heavy “trauma” to film – like “roll outs” happen in the red layer, which is the last layer before the backing.
So what does this knowledge mean in practical terms of the vfx?
Well generally like vfx, pacing, and intensity to increase in the course of my work. So it meant that at the beginning of the video the vfx would need to be in the blue spectrum. Then as the video progressed, they would move into reds and oranges. I told Ben and he worked his magic after effects skills to make it so.
And here’s the finished video
-Luke
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