OT: My Video & Audio Hearts Vegas

Jonathan Neal wrote on 2/11/2007, 12:43 AM

About half a year ago I was asked to create a 25 minute comedy/action summer kick-off video for my church.

I had never produced anything beyond personal short comedies, and this project had absolutely zero budget, not that I would have known what to do with a budget. However, I took things very seriously, and I knew that whatever I put into it was what I would get out of it - because I had Sony Vegas! it is by far and without doubt my favorite Windows application, ever. I paced around my room for a couple of nights and scribbled out a somewhat entertaining, barely feasible plot. I sketched costume designs on college-rule paper, and finished my script in Windows Notepad.

For two days I filmed without a steady cam, and a week later, "The Pursuit" was premiered to a small auditorium of a couple hundred junior high audience members. The film was no where perfect, but I couldn't have done it without Sony Vegas. What I loved most about using Sony Vegas was how easy it was to push linearly through a story, while easily going back to a few key spots and fine-tuning them, without risking the rest of my time line. The plug-ins are always easy to use, and the envelope controls in Sony Vegas are unmatched!

Thank you Madison team, and also thank you to the folks on this forum who have shared their know-how with me. It was and is ALWAYS appreciated, greatly.

Well now, I have gone back and extracted all of the soundtracks that I had layed down for the movie, and started working on an Original Soundtrack Album. I recorded the music in Cakewalk Sonar (yea, still wishing for MIDI support, sorry Spot), but most of the audio portions were recorded directly in Vegas. Now I've taken all of the music tracks and completely re-mastered them in Sony Vegas for a stereo album. Now, the source was MIDI controlled virtual synthesizers (and not a real orchestra, so mind you I couldn't work miracles), but I'm insanely pleased with the results. I've been gleefully passing the soundtrack (which, with the full songs is longer than the actual movie) out to my friends. I re-inserted lines from the movie back into certain tracks, and it's just been a real blast.

Here are five musical tracks from the movie, all mastered in Sony Vegas, but remember that I'm not a professional, and that this movie was a melodramatic comedy. I'm also going to convert the video tonight for web.

   Theme from 'The Pursuit'

   Scotty 3000

   Putting Brendan Down

   Pesky Ninjas, Exploding Penguins

   The Pursuit, Opening Credits

Comments

PeterWright wrote on 2/11/2007, 1:04 AM

Congratulations Jonathan. You've created some fine musical textures there. Look forward to seeing the web movie.

You may be aware, but if you want to "keep it in the Madison family", Acid Pro 6 is now a fully featured DAW, and you can combine Midi, legendary Acid loops and Audio in the same timeline, using a familiar Vegas-type interface. I used Logic Audio until this latest version of Acid, but now it's all Acid!

Jonathan Neal wrote on 2/11/2007, 4:51 AM

PeterWright, thank you sir, thank you.

It's hard to make the financial investment of ACID just to "Try it Out for REALSIES". :)

I would (if I could) try it out though, I prefer the Madison way of controlling plugins. I've just been a Cakewalk user for years. I wonder, which is more processor efficient?

farss wrote on 2/11/2007, 5:14 AM

In a word, WOW!

Tattoo wrote on 2/11/2007, 2:26 PM

I'll see Farss's "WOW" and raise him a "Holy Cow!" That's pretty cool. I had no idea you could do that much with just a MIDI synthesizer. We're getting our kid a keyboard as an intro to piano. Of course, it's just a MIDI controller in my mind (forget the kid), and I'm anxious to check it out with Acid. Of course, there is that minor issue of talent ...

Hey, the "Scotty 3000" - is that a reference to a lawn fertilizer spreader?

Brian

Grazie wrote on 2/11/2007, 2:52 PM

Jonathan . . you are ONE awesome talent! We are privileged to have you on the Forum.

PLUS, you gave me goose bumps!

Jonathan Neal wrote on 2/11/2007, 4:45 PM

Wowsa, maybe I should stick to soundtrack work! As I said I would, here is a video clip.

This is the opening credits of the film. To set you up correctly, these videos have a history at my church, because they were made by the same guys for about 5 years, then there was one made one without them, and then I was making this one. So, as an extra entertainment for the parents and staff, I imported portions of earlier videos into Vegas and took snapshots for use in the opening credits. This helped provide a backdrop of familiar faces to the kids, and let's not forget that by junior high they're smart enough to pick out certain keywords and images in an introduction before fully understanding what they mean to the story. Anyway, everything in this opening was done in Sony Vegas.

Opening Credits [ 1:19 - 10.6 MB - *.mp4 video ]

Coursedesign wrote on 2/11/2007, 7:36 PM

Outstanding.

1. Hang out a shingle.

2. Study the masters. (Why not start start by listening to today's NPR program about the Oscar-nominated scores for The Queen and Babel?)

3. Compose scores until the corners of your mouth meet at the top of your head.

Don't forget to include us humblebutts in your Oscar acceptance speech (at least somewhere after thanking God and your parents... :O) :O) :O)