Here is a new video I've been working on. It features my good friends, Renée Brna and Dan Jones.
I had written "How I Missed it So Much" for a short musical I was writing in 2004 and I had Renée in mind as I was writing it. I was thrilled that we were able to come together in fall of 2012 and get her recording it on video. I was finally able to complete the video over the holidays.
I switched up some software working on this. I started using Adobe Premiere CS6 instead of Final Cut and I have to say, it has been terrific so far. I love the way it's setup and the way it handles media. I'm still climbing the learning curve but I believe it's totally worth it and I won't be going back to FCP.
Quick Breakdown of how I put this together:
- Shot all characters in front of green screen
- Created the "Night Club" with PNG's that I either created or pulled from Google images and edited in Photoshop, and then built the whole thing in in Motion 5
- add the filmed characters into motion - Garbage Matte and Key
- animated the swinging stars in the Background in Motion 5 and export as ProRes 4444 with Alpha Channel
- animated the singing bird to a temp track of flute using After Effects CS6, and then exported it with the alpha channel and dropped it in to Motion 5
- Created the opening credits in Photoshop (3d Elements) and then brought them into After Effects and did an animation moving a virtual camera. Exported as an animation with Alpha Channel
- add whistling (my friend did on his iphone) - convert mp3's to aifs - drop into Logic 9.
- Synced all the parts in Logic 9, mixed and did some light editing. What you see me playing is pretty much what you're hearing.
- Created the closing credit cards in Photoshop, and the Subscribe card in motion
- Dumped it all into Premiere, filter everything to Black and White and put the "Old Film" look on all of it. Added some transition dissolves and then rough draft export
- dump movie into Logic 9 - make sure all sound is synced to picture. Master, distress to old film sound, Master and then export final draft of sound to an aif
- Drop the sound in the Premiere Session, and Export final High Res H.264 for youtube. DONE!
I did the video in a 1280*520 aspect ratio and I feel mixed. It looks great and accomplishes everything I wanted, but it does look a little too small in the standard Youtube player window. Here was my thinking behind it:
- The Letter boxing gives it a more cinematic look
- The shorter height made it easier to move around the virtual night club (none of the filmed characters have feet)
- The shorter screen height reduced the render time a bit when exporting the animation out of Motion 5 (because there were less pixels to render)
For fun here are a few of my favorite elements I put together for this:
Animated Bird
(as Gif for web)
Band Stand
The Microphone (PNG)
If you have any questions, put your comments in the questions below, tweet me at
or email me at
.
Enjoy!