Jake's Production Notes

I’ve been working on a new kind of project this year that’s a little off the beaten path for a typical promotional video for the university. A few months back our department was approached by the head of parking services at ETSU to create a series of videos that underscored most of the common issues with parking violations on campus while “softening” their image on campus. Our department director suggested that going with a narrative web series that featured the violations driven by a larger storyline might draw more viewers and broaden the comprehension while not sounding too preachy – thus Spaces was born.

By allowing our department to have a little creative freedom with the project, we decided to create a comedic series that focused on an awkward yet endearing online student named Mason who is tentatively pursuing traditional student Charlotte by offering to give her a ride to class. After holding auditions with ETSU theater students, we settled on the leads and the winner of the part of Mason suggested that he had a couple of friends who would be glad to participate – and the parts of Mason’s geeky friends Steve and Sheldon were created.

The first episode consisted of a two man crew featuring myself with my Canon 60D and our director, David Currie, with a Sony HXR-NX5u filming our leads played by Everett Tarlton (Mason) and Danielle Tucker (Charlotte) as well as guest stars Zach Starnes (Sheldon) and Josh Holley (Steve) in three different locations across campus one Friday afternoon based on a script by David Currie. Due to being shorthanded, we ran most of the production with lavalier mics except when we could afford to lock one camera down to use a boom mic.

I edited the resulting footage with Final Cut and Premiere, cleaned and graded the footage with After Effects, utilized Mocha and After Effects to handle the visual effects shots, and processed the audio with Audition. You can check out the results below and check back for parts 2-4!

Just finished a motion graphics project for rc aerial photography & cinematography company Got Aerial last week. This was my first project working with the Element 3D plugin for After Effects from VideoCopilot.

First impressions working with the plugin are definitely promising. The biggest issues I ran into depend on what 3d tracker you employ to work with Element. I had some solid tracks with the 3D Camera Tracker plugin that ships with AE CS6, but, too often, the shots proved to be a little too much for the tracker to deliver anything solid due to the constant changes in perspective. Ultimately, I relied on The Foundry’s CameraTracker for most of the shots with very reliable results. The reel title mountain ridge flyover, however, proved to be too much for either the 3D Camera Tracker or the Foundry CameraTracker. For this particular case, I found the best results with PfTrack which provided me with a rock-solid track that I was able to use for both the Element 3D Text and the main title “The Art of Flying” which I created in Cinema 4D. Originally, I had created the title with the Element plugin, but, due to some strange artifacting, I switched to C4D to solve the issue. Overall, it was a fun and challenging project and an excellent opportunity to log my first project run with Element & AE CS6!

Check out the final results below. All footage by Got Aerial LLC and music by Krewella.

Finally found the time to punch up my mograph reel. Have a look below:

This intro is from a massive project that I completed in late September. The project was for NPI’s continuing dental education webinar series – Dental Marketing Summit Series – hosted on Dentaltown. The project consisted of a little over 7 hours of greenscreen footage that I edited down into 7 hour long episodes. Each episode had it’s own custom intro and outro and a myriad of slides in between. All slides and intros were written by co-host Mark Dilatush and I provided the design & animation. This is the opener for the first episode.

It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Boardwalk Empire, but, I’ll have to admit, they slipped in more visual effects shots of old Atlantic City and the Boardwalk, itself, than I realized. Check out all the work that went into digitally re-creating the sights and sounds courtesy of Brainstorm VFX.

Came across this breakdown reel the other day and was very impressed.

Of course, that hooked me and I checked out the movie itself. Good stuff & it turned out to be similar in style to Cloverfield – that is, if Cloverfield were set in Norway and was about trolls . . . Regardless, it’s a great film and, despite the PG-13 rating, delivers a fun and exciting ride. Check it out and be sure to give the makers some pub & buzz!

Official site here.

Just got this opener together and approved for the College of Nursing to be used in their presentation to a national nursing conference on the plan of care regarding their Public Housing Clinic initiatives with the JCHC. Script, narration, and photography supplied by the ETSU College of Nursing with additional photography courtesy of University Photographer Charles Warden. Video footage filmed by Zion Madden of ETSU Digital Media Services. I was responsible for motion graphics, animation, and scoring with Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, and SonicFire Pro. Nothing super special here, but I thought I’d share the results.

Moving Picture Company released a new FX breakdown recently that showcases an awesome frozen time effect in a burning room. Check it out:

Finally got this one online so I thought I’d say a few words about it.  This video was created as a PSA for the ETSU College of Pharmacy.  The script was written by the pharmacy students who also seved as the talent.  On the production side, I was assisted by Leena Agrawal of the Office of eLearning, and in post by Rob Russell who provided the main voiceover as well as the vending machine “voice.”  I used After Effects, Mocha, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Audition to complete the post duties.

I remember going to the the old school Harry Hamlin flick when I was a kid, and, when I heard about the remake, I thought the same as a lot of people – BAD IDEA.  Then I saw it – sans 3D on Blu-Ray – and I did a complete 180.  Maybe it didn’t hold up for some critics, but I was more than pleased.  So, just in case you were wondering, here’s some of how they made it happen.

Man, it must be awesome to have a team like that.