Got it covered

I just finished some design work for Heartland Baptist Bible College, and I thought I would pass along some of the graphic design. These CD case packages consisted of a 2 sided insert (front and inside), the back of the tray card and the CD label. And NO, the watermark is not on the client's graphics :P

ALUMNI '07 CD

1st idea for the front (it was not quite what they were looking for)

2nd idea (FINISHED PRODUCT)

Front

Tray Card

FAVORITES CD

(FINISHED PRODUCT)

Front

Tray Card

CD

If anyone has tips for me to improve I am wide open and listening :)

Filming Fire

What would a movie about a firefighter be without a fire? The five FIREPROOF actors playing members of the Albany Fire Department battled the flames for the first time on camera on Wednesday. It was a day to remember for everyone on the set, including director and co-writer Alex Kendrick.

“It was very exciting, but it was also scary...." Alex says.

“This kind of stuff is very exciting,” says Bob Scott, the director of photography. “It gave me goose bumps.”

READ THE POST ON THE FIREPROOF BLOG!

Christmas Video

We did some shooting tonight :)

Camping BTS #3

This one is out of order, but I didn’t want to put two major posts right next to each other. So here it goes for audio….

NOTE: I use Apple Final Cut Studio to edit with, so key commands are from the Mac OS.
NOTE 2: You can click the pictures to view a larger version.

AUDIO

CUTTING THE FINAL AUDIO
-First of all I actually finish the edit before I mess with the audio (more on editing in a later post). Sometimes I don’t need to adjust the audio at all, other times it requires a lot of time and work (Joel’s Journey). Since I recorded on two audio channels, I have a high volume audio track and a low volume audio track, and I was able to capture the high volume track without any clipping. I duplicate the high volume track (option-click the track) and then drag it over the low volume track to replace it. I then adjust the volume as needed and sometimes that requires some manual keyframes of the audio level. I didn't end up needing to keyframe for this project though.

Once I am happy with the basic video edit I begin to apply the audio filters. Final Cut has lots of audio filters that I normally use for audio needs. However in this case I needed some extra tweaking control, so I used Soundtrack Pro. Next step is to turn off all other audio layers and export just my dialogue to a WAV file. Importing that file into Soundtrack Pro I am then able to take out background noise and add filters.

SOUNDTRACK PRO
-SP has a “background noise reduction” feature that I applied to this project and I also applied a Low Pass audio filter, which limits the amount of high frequency levels and allows more Low frequency levels. I didn’t apply this filter very much because I found that if I cut out too much of the “high” the dialogue became hard to understand.

When I was done with the audio fixes I exported it back out. Now the default SP audio export is AIFF and for some reason FC doesn’t really seem to like that format so I used iTunes to change it to a WAV format. After importing the WAV file back into FC I was ready to adjust the music.

MUSIC
-The music I used for this video is from the Digital Juice Stack Tracks library, specifically the HOLIDAY and SPOOKY stacks. I like DJ’s music because they allow you to take out any instruments you don’t want. Normally I would have had the Morris brothers compose some music for it, but I didn’t really have the time and they were busy too ☺ (they composed the music for Joel’s Journey)

I won’t go into all the monotonous details of adjusting all the music to fit and match correctly, but you can look at this picture of my timeline and see what I did.

Stay tuned for the next BTS article – [EDITING] coming next….

Joel's Journey DVD

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD!!

For more information visit: www.joelsjourneymovie.com

Camping BTS #2

If you haven't seen the "Camping 2007" video yet....you might want to watch it first.

VIDEO AND ACTING

B-ROLL
-The hardest part was to make sure I got all the needed footage WHILE camping. I mean my family wasn’t real excited that I was always video taping them. ;) Also, because they didn’t know my whole plan, some of them thought that the stuff I was taping was kinda strange ☺ In the end I had about 45-55min of footage to edit from. (editing will come later)

NARRATION
-Location
first I had to find a location. Thus to find ‘just the right spot’ meant I had to spent quite a bit of time traveling around and around our yard. I settled on a spot in the front yard that would allow me to have trees with “fall” leaves for the background and it also gave me sunshine for a backlight (since I wasn’t using any lights.)
-Lighting
I did use a reflector though to bounce the sunlight and fill some of the shadows. I used the gold side of a 5-in-1 reflector that I have.
-Audio
Well, it wasn’t by choice, but I ended up just using the on camera mic. So I set one channel to be an expectable level and then set my second channel to be slightly lower, to accommodate for any “spike outs” from the audio. The biggest problem (which you can probably tell) is the outside “background” noise, and the passing cars/trucks ☹
-Assistants
I enlisted a couple of siblings to help me with the video shoot. Maggie held the reflector for me and Carinna held onto the script so it wouldn’t blow away. Thanks to the twins for their wonderful help!!
-Re-shoot
I shot the opening line for the video and then got reports from trusted sources (family) that audio wasn’t clear enough. Soooo, we reshot it and I moved the camera a little closer to the main talent (Benjamin). The “walk-up and put on the hat” was added the second time. In short, the 2nd time was MUCH better ☺
-Tapes
For what it is worth, when labeling tapes I like to include: The title of the project "Camp Trip 07," the tape number "01" - "02," and what is included on the tape, "Video footage" - "Narration." AND I also flip the save/rec tab to SAVE when I am done shooting.

CASTING
“Benjamin are you busy? – Let’s go shoot some stuff for the camping video.”

EXTRA VIDEO
-I wasn’t able to attend the grand water ski adventure due to the premiere showing of “The Call of Courage” and “Joel’s Journey.” Special thanks to my siblings who captured some priceless footage via the video function on their still cameras. ☺

[AUDIO EDITING] coming next...

Fireproof rained out?

Find out on today's blog post...

Sony Commercial

What happens when you drop over 250,000 bouncy balls on the streets of CA??

You can watch the ad and the BTS for it right here.

Mac Ads

With the introduction of the new Mac OS, comes new commercials - Vista vs. Leapord! They have 3 new ones out!

Camping BTS #1

This is the beginning of the BTS for the Camping 2007 video. I know y'all claimed "uninterest" in most of the BTS sections...nevertheless, I am going to post them in a somewhat video production chronological order. However, I will give more info on the "interested" sections. :)

SCRIPTING

The Idea
After doing a camping video last year, I knew I wanted to do one again this year, but of course I didn’t want it to be the same. The idea of “Camping tips” came to me right before we left, so me and my brother Caleb worked on the script on the way down to the camp spot. Some of my other siblings could hear us laughing and thought we were having WAY too much fun in the back seat (which we were)!!

The Narration
The narration script was written the day I taped it. :P I scribbled it out on a piece of paper and then read off a line to Benjamin and we would tape that section, and so on. I guess it turned out alright.

BTS pics can be seen from my old post.

You can watch the video and outtakes on my website.

[VIDEO AND ACTING] coming next....