Although I still like the video a lot personally. In fact, at the time I uploaded it I figured it was one of our best to date. That was probably affected by the fact that I spent something like 8-9 hours on the effects. Probably more but I can’t remember now. I need to write these things down.

The video itself was for the Nikon Film Festival, which we didn’t make it into. I mean, we made it INTO the contest, but so did two minutes of footage at the public pool taken by some obese lady on a lawn chair. Half of the video consisted of some guy in cut off jeans’ butt as he paced back and forth watching kids swim. Weird.

Anyways, we had fun making it, mostly just Caleb and I taking turns filming, or a random table/chair doing the cinematography (which might explain why we didn’t make it into the contest). Miller, our roommate helped film some too and it was his Impreza that owned me consistently.

Now as to how I did that you can thank Video Copilot for their excellent tutorials. Basically I took footage of myself walking into an empty street, super imposed that on footage of Miller’s car whizzing by, matted out all the footage surrounding me so that I’m standing in the street, and then animated/warped myself along with his car.

The particle effects come with After Effects out of the box, and after some tweaking look like glass. The hood animation was made from a photo of a crushed car that I color corrected to look like (or close to) Miller’s car. That too is courtesy to the guys at Video Copilot. I tried finding my own photo to use but none looked quite as good.

The hazy after-worldly glow was made by duplicating a mask of Caleb a few times, blurring it directionally and messing with blending modes depending on the angle.

Unfortunately the “Bank of Americarp” sign didn’t make it into the final cut. Editing down to 140 seconds was rough, and making decisions like that are part of the deal.

I’ve owned that sign for a long time and never put it to any good use. We had to ‘modify’ it so as to keep branding out of the video. I think the “unnamed” bank should take my marketing scheme into consideration, however. I mean, what’s more patriotic than a red white and blue carp?

Either way, I spend time (like 5 minutes!) on the modifications to that sign so it HAD to make it in somewhere. Not that this blog is anywhere. And the most disappointing part of all of this? This is a side note more than anything connected to the sign, but despite all of the publicity we pushed to get this thing in the contest we have nothing to show for it because it wasn’t originally hosted on Youtube. The view count? Ridiculously low.

Oh well.

The song was Dremples by Sasha, I asked for permission and took his silence as such. I hope he’s ok with that if he ever discovers this on some random internet search binge.

Any other questions? Shoot.

Interesting fact: I didn’t really get shot twice, in case you were worried.

Slightly less interesting fact: I really did win that science champions shirt when I was in 5th grade, and it still (sort of) fits me. Of course, I think every kid that attended won that shirt, but still! I won it.

VASTLY less interesting fact: It’s REALLY cold standing in sub-freezing weather wearing nothing but jeans and a T-Shirt.

But I’m back, and got some work done on iSaber 4 while at my grandparents. Just because you don’t have the internet doesn’t mean you can’t do something useful with your computer; I had forgotten this. It was weird not having the webz at my beck and call, however. Especially when rendering previews; I ended up staring at my computer wondering what on earth I was supposed to be doing.

We got some sweet Spite and Malice time in though, and it was a great relaxing time with my family.

Hope to have the new video up soon, but in the mean time go check out our latest 140 Second Chances on YouTube. I’ll post it in blog format here when it comes up chronologically… I think. I’m not really sure how to go about all this. Bah, I’ll just post it now. But you should still go to our YouTube page and subscribe.

Seriously, we didn’t even make it in the dang contest. Go subscribe.

I just thought I’d let you in on the disappointing truth of the matter. To make things worse Nikon didn’t even tell me straight up that I didn’t make it in. They simply sent me an Email saying “go see if you made it in!” THEN the site has been down most of the last 24 hours so I had to wait until I was heading out to work at 5:30am today to see if I made it in or not. I can’t even double check right now because it’s down again (due to too much traffic, which seems to be a grave oversight on their part).

I’m assuming,  since my search turned up bupkis and the embedded version of it in a previous post is dead, that it’s been rejected and removed. They didn’t even keep it around… the pain. I need to upload it to our Live Charge YouTube account now if I want anyone to see it.

As for getting up at 5am to go to work, I started a new temporary job extracting venom from bees. Of course I got moved to packaging so I never got to extract any venom, but by the sound of it I dodged a bullet on that one.

NOW GO LEAVE A COMMENT!!!

Little did I know that somehow there would be  multiple glitches in the upload process that would keep me from getting it submitted by the deadline. So, unfortunately, the video never made it into competition and I wound up a sad little man.

I did actually belly flop a couple of times to get that shot, and I did get the cookie in the glass both times. It was just water in the glass though as we didn’t want milk splashing around in our pool. One Oreo did make it into the pool, and it was really cool because it dissolved at the bottom but stayed in its original shape until disturbed by an intruding hand. It then flew away in a cloud of chocolate particles and was sucked into the floor vent like a locust swarm from the Mummy.

This was one of Jeff‘s biggest rolls, as the Oreo stunt coordinator. I think he may have filmed another time but this was his largest direct involvement in any Live Charge production. Otherwise his main function was to watch and praise my work and make me feel better about making retarded crap on such a consistent basis.

The one ‘special effect’ in the whole video that was kind of rough was getting the Oreo to shoot out behind the bike. This required some fishing line and just the right camera angle so you couldn’t tell we were holding the bike off the ground. It also required John to use his sparse supply of muscles to hold the bike only an inch or two off the ground without it bouncing around or crushing the Oreo. Many a cookie lost its life in the making of that scene. Of course the end result was having a mildly crushed Oreo thrown in my face by a vindictive Dalbey who didn’t like his muscles being scrutinized.

Interesting fact: Oreos were introduced in 1912 and as of 2007 over 345 BILLION had been made.

Slightly less interesting fact: Doing belly flops while wearing a cheap inner tube is a quick way to regret life.

VASTLY less interesting fact: Oreos are 71% cookie and 29% cream.

(source for Oreo facts: Associated Press)

The theme, rules, whatever was: “A day through your lens in 140 seconds or less.” Most of the entries are pretty artsy (or just ridiculously non sequitur) which makes me wonder what kind of a chance I have. Of course I went for more of a narrative/comedy, which for all I know puts us out of the running too.

But I wanted to be true to who we are if the goal is to get our name out there. That’s really what entering contests is about for me right now, but I’m still waiting for it to be approved so we’ll see if we even manage that. Of course winning would be AWESOME, but I won’t hold my breath. And if I do I’ll cheat by silently breathing through my nose.

I figure my chances at winning this competition are much like my chances at winning in Fantasy Football this week. I had a slow start to the season but cranked it up and took four weeks or so by storm. After propelling myself to an impressive 3rd place from last (impressive because Miller stacked his team in the draft and hasn’t looked back since) I’ve been struggling to maintain 4th and get into the playoffs. This is largely due to a few major injuries sustained on my team (Owen Daniels anyone) but also due to a lack of luck and/or general skill.

This week I’m going up against one of the league’s worst teams, “Holy Crip it’s a Crapple!” One would think losing to him impossible, but unfortunately for me I’m the worst team in the league now and have been operating mostly off luck for a while now.

As you can see, things don’t look too good for the ol’ Jayster. If I win this I’m in the playoffs, if the guy in 5th place (Urine Trouble) loses I’m in the playoffs. However if he wins and I lose this week it’s all over for me.

Unfortunately (things just keep getting worse don’t they?) he’s been on a killer streak for a few weeks and is projected to win while I’ve been struggling along and am projected to lose. Granted projections don’t mean jack when it comes down to Sunday, but it doesn’t look good.

Similarly my chances at winning the Nikon Festival could be construed as decent, if you’re a blind squirrel, but I have this horrible tendency to get strong armed out of competition. Note the Oreo Competition and Nesquik Competition videos. Neither ever made it in to competition due to some ‘technical error’ on their end.

This, my friends, is frustrating. And we all know the true reason they weren’t accepted: they… well actually I have no conspiracy for this. However I’m sure it was a conspiracy aimed at destroying my hopes and dreams! Or a technical error somewhere along the line. I’d rather think it wasn’t my fault either way.

I’m rambling. The point is I’ve entered us in the Nikon Festival and when it’s up I’ll post a link on here. So please, for the love of squirrels everywhere, go comment on it if and when it goes up, and vote for it if it makes it that far. I’ll love you forever, or at least 30 seconds. Whichever comes first.