The King of Final Cut Express September 26, 2009
Posted by gregchiaramonti in Animation, Apple, Creativity, Editing, Final Cut Express, Greg Chiaramonti, Music, Video, Visual Effects, Web Video, YouTube.Tags: alternative music, Apple, Apple software, compositing, digital video, filmmaking, Final Cut Express 4, folk rock, king, king of anything, luma key, music video, rock music, Snow Leopard, special effects, video editing, YouTube
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Just completed this new music video for my song “King of Anything”. Once again, I used Final Cut Express 4 to edit the video and create all of the effects and compositing. I went kinda retro on this… my cheesy green screen (a neon green tablecloth from Party City) got a bit roughed up from trying to film my cat on it, and I didn’t feel like heading out to buy a new one, so I used a good old Luma Key to composite video I shot of myself and guitarist Mike Z. against a blank wall. It added sort of a transparency effect that I feel makes the video look kinda old-school, classic rock, you know? I did the same for my “Crashing Down” video. I even added some noise and “Bad TV” effects to make it look more retro. And if you notice certain things start to look a bit shaky… it’s the Earthquake effect. I utilized Earthquake to give elements a shaky film projector feel in King of Anything. Overall, it’s been fun working on these videos – FCE4 is a little quirky sometimes, but for the most part it’s a smooth experience. Especially since I learned to render scenes to video as I work in order to see the effects in final form and to make “real-time playback” smoother.
By the way, does anyone know if a new version of FCE is coming out for Snow Leopard? I haven’t upgraded to SL yet, but I’m planning to soon (actually, I’m ashamed to admit, I’m still on Tiger… I never got around to Leopard and then decided to wait for SL, but still procrastinating. I’m pretty happy with the setup I have so not in any real rush, though some of the SL features look cool and I do want the latest iLife, especially GarageBand. And the speed increase will be nice.).
Transformers 2 filming in Princeton! June 27, 2008
Posted by gregchiaramonti in Animation, Movies, Pop Culture, Robot, Science Fiction, Transformers, Video, Visual Effects.Tags: autograph, director, entertainment, fantasy, filmmaking, Isabel Lucas, Megan Fox, Michael Bay, motorcycle, movie extras, movie production, New Jersey, new movies, Princeton University, Ramon Rodriguez, Revenge of the Fallen, robots, sci-fi, Science Fiction, Shia LaBeouf, Transformers 2
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Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen was filming over on the Princeton campus this week!!! I hung out there the past couple nights after work – it was awesome! I noticed Michael Bay right away – he’s really tall and had a bright red cap on. Then Shia LaBeouf started hanging around waiting for his scene, and eventually Megan Fox, Isabel Lucas and Ramon Rodriguez turned up. One of the spectators near me had a huge, fluffy white sheep dog, big as a baby bear, and at one point Bay and all of the actors noticed and came over to pet it for a bit. Got to see Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas up close… real nice…
Mostly they were filming shots of the leads running around the campus, with a bunch of college student extras running, too. I managed to get a few blurry photos – there was a lot of security constantly watching us for cameras. Got yelled at a few times. There was a large amount of lighting and camera equipment, trucks everywhere. Bay kept yelling at the extras to reset the scene quickly and making them run over and over before the sun went down. Bay also rode a bike around the set, since the actors were set up far from the camera for some scenes. While preparing for his runnng scene, Shia started jumping in place, and then he was swinging from a branch high up on a tree (it reminded me of that goofy scene in the Indy Crystal Skull movie where he’s swinging like Tarzan with all of those CGI monkeys).
On the second night, Megan and Shia were riding on a red sport motorcycle that I believe is a new female Transformer. Megan was driving so maybe it’s her guardian, the way Bumblebee is to Shia. Shia was great – he stepped out a couple times just to sign autographs. I managed to slip through a sea of screaming college girls (all of them seemingly texting and talking on their cells while simultaneously sticking paper and pens in Shia’s face…) to get his autograph. Total mayhem. At the end of the night, after most people had gone, a few of us hung out for a while, and it paid off since we got to catch Bay going to his van to leave. Bay was really cool – he even waited a moment while I fished for a pen in my pocket to get his autograph.
It was just perfect weather the past few days, so it was nice chilling out on campus and watching the action go down. I heard they did one car crash scene on Washington Road earlier in the week, too.
