Looks really nice, Tommy.... First class

How did you do the slot sequence?

TomG

Nice work mang, appreciate ya posting it. Liked the site to ( though I didn't understand a word ! ) Nice design though !

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

Thanks a bunch!
TomG - The Slot machine is made in LightWave, in my opinion the best 3D creator/animator for video/film. If you're into 3D stuff make sure to turn on motion blur. Actually, turn it on for 2D animation too. It makes a difference, other than increasing render time. :) It was made for a local bank and its property division. The slogan goes something like: "Bet on a jackpot - let us sell your property". When it first aired we overheard a media professional believe it was a 100 % pro production which had cost loads of cash. Then we told him we made it and he was stunned. Made us feel good. Then we thought - well maybe we should have made the client pay more...

Ray - Thanks. So you took a tour to the site as well, huh? It's all in Swedish and it's my first attempt in creating a website. Made in DreamWeaver. One thing I find not so good with DW is that you mix design and content. I would like to keep them seperate and have a back end window to change the content. But I dunno s**t about that stuff. One mistake I've made is that I mix business with private stuff. Soon I will make a new site, in English, that concentrates ONLY on business and market myself more towards those in production needs. Thanks for kind words.

Best/Tommy
www.stormstereo.com

By the way Ray, you definitely seem to know what you're doing when it comes to making websites. And it seems we're offering the same wide range of productions. Would I be right if I said that you produce your stuff from idea all the way to finished product? That you're in all the steps? And would I be right in stating that you enjoy that because it would be boring to just do one little thing? Because you WANT to be creative and you WANT to be a tech guy? I know, you specialize in music vids but imagine doing nothing but that for ten years.
Best/Tommy

An Absolute KNOCKOUT!!! - Brilliant. Loved the use of white space and the animations . . .A lotta of work, but what shows is your creativity . . It isn't "Tech over IMpact" - The impact shines through . . excellent! - I loved the gentle tinkling instrument over the section of the heavy, machines and MACHO quarry scenes. Great use of "opposites".

You've inspired me! - THIS is what this site could be about.

Grazie

Many thanks Grazie, you make me feel proud. You always have a kind word for your fellow humans. I really appreciate it.
Best/Tommy

I think you've done a very nice job there. Well done!

J--

Brilliant!

I had to watch it a few times...

BTW: I really loved the "I had a dream" segment, how did you do that part? The image is like a golden feathered blurred from the past, just loved that part.

Great stuff!

I'd like a lot of parts explained (ie what other than Vegas was used for the "Wonder Media" animation at around 00:15) but to start with, at around 00:24 how did you get the word "representera" to go behind the babe?
TIA,
Randy

Really nice work.

Man, that is funny. I just got the wierdest sense of deja view. I used that same piece by the Propellerheads as music for a video piece that I just handed off tonight. It was for a friend who ran in the NYC marathon

Julius_911 - It's an advanced composite made in an expensive program called Digital Fusion. (http://www.eyeonline.com/) First we had to buy the ML King and Kennedy footage along with some of Hitler and the assasinated Swedish PM, Olof Palme, which is seen in the full length clip. Man, was that expensive! Then we made a bunch of stills in Photoshop with different gold tinted words scribbled all over for the background. All was put layer upon layer with alpha channels and then i think we used slow layer XY-movement along with glow, blur, colorizing to make it feel more bronze-goldy, rays, slow-mo, animated masks with soft edges and something called crash-zoom. The idea itself is doable in Vegas but the result will not be good since Vegas does not offer complete compositing control. The workflow is very different. With Vegas i would have to make masks in Photoshop but then the edges are not animatable. And then again, Vegas is mainly an editor and not a compositing program although it offers a lot in that field.

g_randybrown - Again, Digital Fusion, for both your questions. Animated masks is the answer. A rectangular one for the green line and then other masks which move away and reveal the word under, as the green line passes over. There's also some green glow on the line. The word at 00:24 is simply blocked out with a mask that follows the babes body movement. You step ahead one frame at a time and adjust the mask to the body. Those of you with Boris RED (or perhaps with the upcoming WAX from Satish?) will be able to do this stuff. One way to animate a mask in Vegas could be to shoot with greenscreen or some other single colored background. Then apply the Chroma Keyer and Mask generator and tweak plus add FX to your liking.

busterkeaton - That song WORKS! Especially in that shootout scene in The Matrix . :)

Best/Tommy

I agree - a most impressive piece of work, Tommy.

My only comment is that if you work at that level of creativity, you should be using original music!

Peter

PeterWright - You are absolutely right. And I'll do better. That's why this time, the vid is for us Vegas-people only.
Best/Tommy

Stormstereo,

Was it in the first Matrix? Because I don't remember it. Maybe I didn't have the album then.

Someone here suggested a copyright proposal where the artist set up a streamlined and easy to use system. Like if the music is used in this type of video, the cost is $100 or $500, if it is used in that type of video the rate is $1,000 and so on. If they ever came up with a system like that, the Propellerheads would probably triple their income from decksanddrumsandrockandroll, because that whole album is incredibly kinetic and cinematic.

stormstereo, look forward to the English version ! And yea, your pretty much on the mark. Funny, I used to do web design for a living and an access TV show as a hobby ! My how times have changed. When it comes to all this stuff I'm much more of a design person than a coder, when I did design for a living I had a partner who did all the backend. I do do it myself now, but not near as gracefully. Doing it all not only to break the potential monotony of doing just one thing, but I'm also a hardcore control freak. =)

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

busterkeaton - Yes man, it's on the Soundtrack CD. I'm 99% sure it was used in the huge shootout when Trinity and Neo enters that building to rescue Morpheus.
That proposal you're referring to sounds good to me.

Ray - You and I seem to be built from the same batch of cells. The tricky thing is to know when you should hand over control to someone else and trust their abilities. You know, to not get in over ones head and miss the deadline or not having time to sleep or maybe even get sick from stress.

Best/Tommy

Sleep ? Who sleeps ? It's 5:30 in the morning and am I sleeping ? Most mornings I'm still up when the girlfriend is getting up for work. lmao, and on top of that I'm sick all the da*m time. My diet is more Tum's and Tylonol than anything else ! Now, I'm not a whiner, but ya made me laugh cuz in those two sentences you pretty much summed up the entire last 8 or 9 months of my existence ! To funny. Ever since I dove into this full time that's all its been. Again, not complaining, no one had a gun to my head and I knew full well starting my own biz wouldn't be easy. With that said I dream of a day when I make just enough to eat and cover bills and one day can sleep again. Right now, any time off of the computer or in bed and I'm ridden with guilt thinking I should be doing something to generate more ( or at least some ) business. With all that said I believe in myself and my abilities, for all the stress and worry I honestly think I can pull through. Its the price I pay I suppose, and while I've said it before I'll say it again, I simply can't imagine doing anything else.

Thanks for making me laugh mang, that was just hilarious.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

Ray . . I know this aint the thread topic, but . . . sorry to hear about your illness, nasty! As to the sleep thing, yeah!?!?

Myself I'm spending more time looking for "the job" - yer know? - I've got some ironds in the fire and have had my showreel accepted by a wedding vid outfit. I'm looking forward to be involved with a 2 camera shoot. I've also shown what I can offer them in terms of my Vegas editing. So .. . I'll see . . I too love what I'm doing and have a few more vid business ideas I want to explore . . . but yes, it's tough . .

Hope this helps,

Grazie

Muttley & Grazie,
take my advice, it ain't worth it. If it 's taking a toll on your health go flip burgers or whatever. Take some serious breaks and get some serious rest. Nothing destroys creativity like being brain dead.

And remember one thing, getting 'busines' is the easy part, first and foremost you've got to make it work as a business. Do a rough business plan, take a hard look at the real costs, reckon you could sell it to the bank manager for a big loan to buy some serious kit, maybe hire some extra staff?
What I'm saying here is no matter how much you love what you do, if you want to do it as a business then it'll have to follow the same rules as any business.

I really don't want to put a downer on anyone's dreams but I see so many many people in this business ecking out a living, driving clapped out vehicles, unable to think straight from stress and lack of sleep. And the really sad thing is they're all so desperate to get the big break they're undercutting one another. Then they get the big break or what they think is the big break, find they can't do it for the money even if they don't eat for a month and if they do finally deliver the goods do they get repeat business? No, next time they put the price up thinking they've proved themselves and the clients just find another sucker.
The other thing to remember, when the client pays for your work, they get to decide what it's going to look like.

I've been going as a one man band for ten years - I do everything myself from planning, scripting, shooting, editing, composing music, doing voice overs, put out the garbage ......

In the early days when things were slack, I'd compose a letter telling of what I could offer, and suggesting some ways that video products would benefit an organisation, and send this to 100 businesses or associations from the Yellow Pages directory.

I never got less than two jobs out of one of these mail outs. I also gradually acquired a network of contacts and slowly things began to snowball. Each client I have gained is still my client, and some come up with one project a year, one has three or four, some have one every two years, others once in a while ....

It does take time and persistence, and there were some rosy coloured bank balances in the early days, but nowadays I never advertise or do mail outs and I have more than a year's work lined up at the moment.

One thing that has helped is having an office/editing suite at home - if I'd have had to pay rent I'd have disappeared long ago.

So hang in there, believe in yourself and keep spreading the word about what you can do, but as Bob says you need some sort of business plan and cash flow to work with, otherwise your coffers can run dry at the wrong time.