From 1 to 2

We finished up the UW Commercials last week.  The clients were all very pleased.  Here's a look at one of them.

The Lolita music video is 90% edited and should be completed by the end of the week.  We went back and grabbed a few more RED camera pickup shots with one of the actors early last week.  We ended up with a lot more action and cake explosions.  

Alex and I have been editing the video in 1k (1024 x 512), but we're finishing it at 2K.  I did some of the conversion to 2k and the footage looks better than anything I've ever seen on my 30" monitor.  

Between working on this music video and finding spots like this Ford commercial it's getting pretty easy to imagine a world without Kodak, or maybe a world with a lot less Kodak.

This week we're also putting together an estimate for a Dungeons and Dragons TV commercial. How awesome would that be?  Mike and I are making plans to build a semi permanent green screen in the studio. Bad ass cinematographer, Adam McDaid is in town for the week working on Megan Griffith's Fly Film.

Links:

MTV Bloom - Winners announced

Sled - It's the simpler things

The Fleet Foxes - are on fire, and Robin's solo stuff is just too good

Isis, Holy Tears - this is cool and disgusting

Time Flies

The past week has been filled with many, many, many hours behind the keyboard.  The HL2 guys have been in the studio working on the UW TV commercials.  All 3 spots have been edited now.  I'm just putting the final After Effects touches on them.

We celebrated daylight savings last Sunday and it's officially starting to feel like spring in Seattle. Thad was even out weeding the courtyard just outside the studio window. Eventually we're going to build a miniature city skyline to go where the weeds grow.

Rob Dalton came by for lunch yesterday and we talked about a new idea he had a for a short visual piece that sounded pretty sweet.

One of my iPhone photos was selected for the Flickr photo of the day on the Stranger's Blog: Slog.  I also put up a few stills from the TMTS music video footage this week.

More links:

• Funny photoshopped celebs - Would love to see a video version of these
  
• Shots Ring Out - Have been listening to this guy's podcasts all week
• My Name is Amy Walker (21 Times!) - Great actor promo vid
• Ridiculous music video - I'm having trouble getting this out of my head
• Del music video - Awesome to see that Del's still workin it.

It's a Wrap!

The UW TV Commercials and the TMTS Music Video shoots went off without a hitch. These were a couple of the biggest jobs I've directed and were done back to back. More like a sandwich really.  We shot long days on the music video last Sunday, Saturday, Sunday and shot the commercials on Tuesday and Wednesday.  It felt like a marathon of days running all over the city, but I couldn't be more pleased with how everything came together.

The RED camera held up well on both projects and I'm excited to be learning (inventing) a RED/FCP/AE workflow.  I plan to be in the studio doing a lot of After Effects and Editing for the next couple of weeks.  Working with these 4k video files, It might be time for a new workstation.

uw commercial, originally uploaded by thinklab.

I haven't been online much lately, but here are a couple of recent finds:

• Scared Girl - Made me chuckle
  
• Decoy.tv - Ryan (insanely talented freelancer) is also shooting a music video on the RED in Seattle right now
• Justice Music Video - Sweet retro motion graphics heavy music video