Going Somewhere (A very short film)

This is a little experiment in cinematography, sound design and colour grading. It took about an hour to shoot, and another couple of hours to edit and organise the sound and music. I'm the first to admit that the subject matter isn't very exciting, but it gave me a chance to use my 50mm lens for some nice shallow depth-of-field shots, and mix and match some focal lengths for good effect.

All of the sound was recorded after the fact, using the same car. The lack of manual gain control on the Canon 600D proved to be a bit of a problem, as most of the sounds (particularly the background noise, or "room tone" effects) have hideous volume discrepancies to each other.

I ended up shooting a bunch more shots that I didn't use, mostly close-up detail of car keys and some more shots of the car reversing. Ultimately, they weren't needed.

The only mistake I had to cover up is that I wasn't thinking when I shot the piece where I put the car into reverse, and I actually slid the lever all the way to "D", but I've now cut it off when it clicks into "R".

The music is a bit of electric crap I made up in GarageBand.

An experiment in editing and sound design. Canon 600D, Final Cut Express (which hates the 600D, by the by), Garageband, HTDZ-HT-320A shotgun mic (which also hates the 600D). I used the 18-55mm kit lens from the 600D, and the Olympus OM 50mm f1.8 for the details and any shot that has any depth of field.

Thanks for watching!

Olympus legacy lens video experiments

Here's another quick YouTube dawdle. In this case, I'm experimenting with using my Olympus OM 50mm f1.8 lens for video on my Canon 600D. Apart from some exposure issues which are easy to deal with, it works splendidly and I'll be exploiting its smooth focus and awesome depth of field in the future! Music is an original, A Step Backwards, which you can find here in its entirety, should it take your fancy. A bunch of other original tunes are over on my SoundCloud.

Teleportation effects, as you do

I've been screwing around in Final Cut again. This time, I've whipped up a fairly craptacular Star Trek-style teleporter effect. Ingredients:

• Scrunched up tin-foil waved in front of the camera to create shiny particles
• Footage of myself wandering around the back yard like an idiot, hoping the neighbours don't look over the fence
• A mask of my shape, used to isolate the shiny particles to only appear where I'm standing
• A sound effect created in GarageBand by layering all sorts of instruments and pitchbending them in directions they don't want to be bent
• An insert shot of my iPhone with a Star Trek LCARS graphic on it, with some beepy sound effects

I had plans to make more of these. We'll see. For now, enjoy.

(Also, I'm aware that the iPhone's interface appears when I press the buttons. It was just an image stored in my gallery. Next time, I'll motion track a screen replacement.)

Clearance sale

John August, screenwriter for Charlie’s Angels and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (and several other movies that don’t involve Charlie) and all-round nice guy has answered one of my questions, via his website. Thanks, John!