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.

Just finished a series of videos for the Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis doctoral program at ETSU’s College of Education. All videography was provided by Jason Jones and Zion Madden of the ETSU Office of eLearning and talent by Dr. Bethany Flora, Dr. Don Good, and ETSU president Dr. Brian Noland. I performed all post-production duties with Final Cut, Audition, and After Effects.

Just finished another pair of documentary vids for the George L. Carter Railroad Museum at ETSU. These videos give a quick tour of the construction of the upcoming Tweetsie Railroad exhibit led by museum director Dr. Fred Alsop.

I found myself in Jones borough, TN with a little time to kill the other morning so I took a walk through Meadowlawn Cemetary and snapped some stills . . .

To check out the whole shoot, follow the link below to my Flickr set

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vfxjake/sets/72157629933693945/

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

I was messing around with a design in Photoshop and came up with this!

I finally got the time to get this one finished – at last. Carter Legacy a mini-documentary that tells the story of how East Tennessee State University was founded and the role its benefactor, George L. Carter, played in making the school’s founding a reality. John Fleenor, Media Collections Manager at ETSU’s Archives of Appalachia, provides narration of a story by Ned Irwin, University Archivist. David Currie, Josh Elliot, and Jason Jones assisted with the live action shoot and all still photography was provided by the University Photo Lab, the Archives of Appalachia, and the website Johnson’s Depot. Thanks & props also goes to ETSU Digital Media Services who produced the project and aided in the distribution. I served as director, editor, visual effects artist, and producer utilizing Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, and Audition on a Mac & PC.

This project required a massive amount of Photoshop & After Effects work for the 2D/3D shots which I’ll go into a little more in a future post. It will be featured during ETSU’s Centennial Celebration next month. Check it out below.

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.

One step closer to web organization of vfxjake.com.

Go there now!

Threw a bit of the kitchen sink in on this one in terms of jQuery tricks.  Still getting my feet wet with all of that madness, so don’t expect anything to come through your screen and drastically alter the course of your very existence . . . just yet.  The new 3D reel is also in the works but in a bit of a holding pattern as the new Compositing and Editing reels are ahead of it in the queue.  As always, all the new stuff will include exerts from the great phantom that is Choices.  ‘Til next time.