It may be a bit extreme, but it works. Let us know in the comments below how this technique works out for you.

Hopefully this works for you in the field. Let us know and feel free to ask us questions if you have any, we’ll pass them on to Jean Claude, Lewis, and Dan The Man in no time.

Also, be sure to read Dan the Man’s first post “Overclocking your Attractiveness Server” when you get a chance. It’s hilarious. Below is a preview of Lewis’ next video, his Top 10 Pickup Lines part 1. Be sure to check it out soon… it’s rendering.

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.

It is though, as it turns out. The kids are cute at least. We had a great location to shoot, well lit, nice acoustics, great background elements, the works. Then a band started blasting at the restaurant next door and we were forced to head back to the toddler room, where we could still hear the band… but just barely.

The lighting and acoustics weren’t so great. Well, to be honest, they stank, but the background elements were still good.

The kids were pretty good to film with, though we made sure to get all their lines out of the way first so they could go play. Of course this video only served to make the other kids jealous and now I have ‘casting requests’ in for about 20 kids. Not sure how that will work out unless I need a band of roving, disillusioned munchkins looking for revenge or something along those lines.

Some of the questions, in case you couldn’t make them out:

Mason: “What is your favorite color?”

Sam: “Have you ever lied?”

Mason: “How many times have you lied?”

Abby: “Do you have any formal training in hermeneutics?”

Jack: “Would you consider yourself as a pre dispensationalist?”

Jack: “Can you give us a synopsis of David and Goliath story?”

Sam also corrects me by saying “David didn’t have a bow and arrow!” further displaying my ignorance and ineptitude to the world. As if my previous answers didn’t achieve this well enough. I debated putting subtitles in but we figured people would get it well enough without them. And if you didn’t, know you have.

Interesting fact: That giant jug of wine only costs like $12 at Safeway. The cheap price only understates the cheap taste.

Slightly less interesting fact: The tiny chair I sat in hugged my hips so badly I had to pop it off every time I stood up.

VASTLY less interesting fact: I didn’t mean to have my earbuds in there, makes me look like some cheap iTunes ad with my black shirt and all.

We needed some way to kill Cody off because, at this point, we thought he would be in the Navy before we could film anything else off. Kind of like how we “killed” Dalbey off in Satan’s Seat with his idle hands. No one wants to be around a guy with the devil’s playthings for hands.

This is all in all the most disturbing skit we’ve ever made, the licorice alone is enough to make you gag if you aren’t careful. Olivia made her final appearance here before she moved back to Boston, which was sad enough as it is. We wanted to ‘kill’ her character off too by having her break up with me in iSaber 4, but didn’t get to it in time.

What’s funny is we had a really scary, Edgar-like person approach us with his dog while we were filming in the park. He was dirty and mildly perverted, hitting on the girls we had with us and suggesting we put our videos on YouTube. His dog went about smelling our shoes as we awkwardly tried to get him to leave.

What angered me most, however, was that he was ignorant to the fact that we were already on YouTube. Apparently nobody knows. Not even dirty vagrant perverts.

Unfortunately we couldn’t find a van for the skit, which pretty much ruins the whole thing in a sense. It turns out we don’t know anyone with vans, least of all the creepy mafia/chimo vans we had in mind. I guess we have to have some sort of flagrant error or misstep in every video, that might as well be it.

OR the fact that we ended up recording in mono again… gosh dang it all to heck in a hamper. Actually in watching this again for the first time in a long while I did a terrible job editing it. It didn’t help we were trying to film as fast as we could before we ran out of daylight, but dang. Tons – of – errors.

Interesting fact: Dirty vagrant perverts are particularly attracted to anything being shot on camera.

Slightly less interesting fact: Budge (Edgar) covered himself with mustard to look extra dirty.

VASTLY less interesting fact: if you eat enough licorice while filming the same shots over and over again you’ll get sick.

This one was a lot of fun to film, we actually had lights set up and just had a good time standing around shooting for a few hours. There were, of course, a couple of errors, like recording in mono the entire time, but such is life.

Rainee Palmer made her debut in this one, the deaf hottie. Hot girls that are willing to be around us are hard to come by so we definitely try to treat them right when they do. Her sister, Rubie, one of our old roommates (from our 9-bedroom house featured in most of our early videos) can be seen on the couch in the background along with her boyfriend of the time, Harry.

This was where the pythons came from originally, I’d written this before the “Louis’ Love Corner” sketch and so it absolutely had to make it in. I definitely didn’t pull it off as well as Josh does, probably why it didn’t work…

The whole thing is delightfully ridiculous, IMHO, and we had fun fighting and yelling and pretending we knew what we were doing. The concoction of liquor Cody poured was incredibly strange and fruity, but ended up being pretty good in the end. Kind of like cough syrup minus the mediciney taste.

Another unfortunate oversight was that in the opening shot I wasn’t backed out of the frame completely, my arm is just hanging on the fence while they talk like I can’t hear them… I’m a tool. Should have noticed that in the editing process at least. Or maybe I did and just didn’t have a better take. Either way, suck.

Interesting fact: Cody plays the bartender as well as himself.

Slightly less interesting fact: I may have broken my bluetooth headset when tossing it on the ground.

VASTLY less interesting fact: The skull’s name is Frank, he was like a house mascot for a while. The crazy part was I named him about 30 minutes before seeing that episode of Lost where the skeleton falls out of the van and his name (according to the badge stitched into his jump suit) is Frank. We got a little weirded out by that for a while.

What’s funnier (or more depressing, depending on how you look at it) is that I’m pretty sure every conversation I’ve ever had with any girl I had any remote level of interest in went similarly to this one. How else would I be so knowledgeable on destroying myself within a matter of sentences?

Lewis the Womanizer was another side of things that hasn’t come to fruition yet. Josh does an amazing job and we need to have more of him at some point. I still want to do an “Ask Lewis” section of the site, for all of your relationship needs.

Interesting fact: We found Olivia via Craigslist. The first and last time we’ll do that. Glad we did because we found her, won’t do it again because it makes us feel creepy to post “need hot girls for video” online.

Slightly less interesting fact: You can buy that shirt from me for $20.

VASTLY less interesting fact: I may have been influenced a bit too much by Charlie on this one… just saying.

One thing that seems to go unappreciated by a large number of people is that this is a continuation of geek-soaked fantasy. None of this is real, which should be accentuated by the regular return to reality in those long shots where all we see are a couple of nerds hacking away at each other with sticks.

Thus the question, or rather the statement “I thought he was dead!” becomes a moot point. Although it’s funny that I’ve heard people refer to Brian as “the demon” in this video. That makes some sense at least since he’s wearing the devil’s cloak from Satan’s Seat. I guess I should leave this to speculation; here I go ruining the whole idea of interpretation. So go ahead, interpret.

In fact, I may have just made all that up to throw you off the trail of the truth.

To answer another commonly asked question: no, that girl had no idea what was going on. I hurried us up so that we wouldn’t miss the opportunity to run past her. Partly because I was hoping for a good reaction from her (which we really didn’t get) but also because having random bystanders adds a good element to the atmosphere of the video.

I spent about 22 hours on the lightsabers in this one, which at the time I thought was an obscene amount of my precious life. This was the largest contributing factor to the length of time between this video and iSaber 4. Believe me, an hour of rotoscoping light sabers will discourage anyone from choosing to do so again for a while. (Also, you may have noticed I struggle with spelling light sabers, not sure if it’s one word or not still).

The Batman-esque titles covering the punches were a simple necessity because we never bothered to mask them properly. Our fight instructor at Eastern’s Theater Department, Mac, wouldn’t be too proud of that. I also had to deal with a couple of errant sticks here and there which you can pick up if you’re paying attention. All in all I could have spent more time perfecting this video, but at the time I wasn’t ready to sit in front of my computer any longer.

We had intended to finish the fight then and there, but I had to teach a class at 3PM and we started filming at something like 2:30PM so we didn’t have time.Thus the “To Be Continued…” Not bad for really cranking this one out though eh?

Interesting fact: Frank (Caleb) screams “My Mommy bought me an iPhone!” when he joins the fray with his new iSaber.

Slightly less interesting fact: I made the “sneaky” music deaf. In other words I couldn’t hear it when I was making it because I was pumping it into my computer to be recorded, and it works for how poorly it should have turned out.

VASTLY less interesting fact: Jonathan and Caleb are brothers in real life… I warned you when I said it was vastly less interesting.

Of course I’m haunted by a few editing choices, and some bad rotoscoping, but it was my first round with light sabers. All in all I think I spent 15 hours on them, and it panned out pretty well.

Yes there is a Zippo lighter app, and no it doesn’t light anything on fire. That would be cool, but it doesn’t do that.

The song is Phantom, by Justice, and yes it is that cool. This (as well as iSaber 3) was filmed by my buddy Andrew Taylor, whose name I messed up in the credits: “Taylor Andrews.”

It was thanks to his skateboard that we could attempt the vertigo effect and almost pull it off. Brian’s looks better than mine, but it’s possible that it’s because he’s that much cooler than I am.

Someone corrected me once on saying “2G Networks” when I should have said Edge, but I recently discovered that 2G networks do exist so take that… er, I mean I knew that when I said it.

In case you were wondering why we had the closeup shot mid fight where all you see is either Brian or me with just our light sabers, it’s because that type of shot comprised about half of the lightsaber fights in the original trilogy. Funny… joke…

Caleb broke two of those fluorescent lamps over my back, leaving shards of glass in my sweatshirt both times. It hurt a lot, but was well worth it in the end. Especially the second shot which I used because a huge portion of the tube bounced directly over the camera.

Why “Frank?” No idea, it just worked well in the moment. To be honest Caleb’s “Frank” is probably my favorite character in any of our skits, he makes the iSaber series what it is.

This is a fairly disjointed conglomeration of thoughts, but if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments below and I’ll answer them!

Interesting fact: We use sticks to fight, wooden dowels to be exact, which makes it possible to add the lightsabers in later with the proper angles and blur.

Slightly less interesting fact: That epic archway Brian stands in at the beginning is part of the science department at Eastern.

VASTLY less interesting fact: Well, more an embarrassing fact, I didn’t make the saber mark on the wall in other shots after the first one. And the mark I made wasn’t quite as good as it could have been… in fact one could say it sucked.