Hello, All. I've been a member here for a few years, but rarely post. Now, in an act of blatant self-promotion, I'm forced to reveal myself. Here is the link to my first music video www.jamiebonk.com/video.html. I would be more than willing to swap "trade" secrets for constructive criticism.... such as.... I tell you my green-screening technique and you tell me my video sucks.

I did this with my XL1 and Final Cut Pro on a G4 400 with 512MB of RAM (75 gig boot and 160 gig capture drive). Let's just say it's a good thing that beer is a staple of Canadian diet. The final version was rendered with Magic Bullet on my buddy's dual 2GHz G5 (took about 7 hours for the 4 min video.)

And, yes, when you click on the link and see "Bonk", that is my last name. I suspect that Ken couldn't believe it when he registered me, slapping an 'a' where an 'o' ought to have been.

Hope you enjoy it.

Randy

jangledproductions@rogers.com

I can't see either version of the movie. Are you sure they are up?

Sorry, this isn't very critical. I loved the music and the video. Excellent guitar and bass playing. I thought the video was well edited, well shot and I liked the overall look of it. As a guitar player myself, I liked that there were a lot of shots where you could see the players hands. It always cheeses me off when a musician is ripping away and you aren't shown them playing. Excellent job!

Sharing your green screening techniques would be great as the composites looked really clean.

Thanks.

@Rob

Thanks for pointing this out to me. After I received notification of your post, we did a series of tests on different platforms and browsers and a few times the video(s) didn't load. It could be that it's mid-day here and the high internet traffic, as well as the number of hits to my brother's site, has caused things to go a little wonky. In any case, here are the direct links to the files:

Small: www.jamiebonk.com/Jamie_Bonk-My_World_sm.mov

Large: www.jamiebonk.com/Jamie_Bonk-My_World.mov

@Joe

Thank you for the compliment. We also felt it was very important to show actual playing for exactly the reasons you stated. As far as the green screening goes, it wasn't as daunting as I thought it would be. We basically sanded down a wall in my apartment and applied 4 coats of Flat, Green Pantone 354 paint. We lit the wall evenly with 2 double-headed, 1000-watt halogen work lights and lit the subject with another two 1000-watt lights, one 500-watt back light, and a 150-watt key straight on. As long as we kept the camera, subject, and background equidistance from each other and the light properly diffused, we were good to go. The editing, on the other hand, took some time to learn and required a great deal of patience as my machine was so slow (hence, my beer joke above). If you would like to know more about that part of it, I would be more than happy to share.

Take Care.

I really enjoyed this piece, Randy. It was awfully busy, particularly during the first half. But the imagery was very appealing and creative. The pacing slowed just a bit during the 2nd half and it just felt a little mode comfy to me. I liked the mixture of color and monochrome panels. I also liked the music very much.

Bravo!

Thanks for the comments and positive feedback, Ken. It's highly appreciated.

I thought this was great. Liked the music and I am impressed that the moving boxes were done in a way that did not get old, although I did get to wondering if I would see Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda.

Seriously, a really great job. Very impressive.

Randy , is it you who was the guitarplayer? It's just fantastic. I was playing funky, rock and jaz the last 20 years as a guitarplayer and I like your music very much.

Lasse, the guitar player/composer of this piece is my brother, Jamie. Like you, he has been playing for many years and I'm sure he will be flattered by your post.

@Peter

Thanks for the thumbs up! I had a good chuckle when you mentioned Curtis and Fonda. Personally, I was more tempted to throw in Marcia Brady in one of those boxes; yet, something told me (call it a hunch, if you will) that it might not be suitable for this particular video :).

Man, that was fun to watch, and as another fellow veteran guitar player (10 yrs) in rock and fusion bands, a fun listen. Critically speaking, I thought the moving boxes effect was excellent for this piece, I thought they could have been used a tad bit better to fit the rhythm in certain sections and you could save the most visually interesting sections for your climax or finale rather than just hitting the whole piece with a barage of box effects throughout (obviously the time lapse sunset was your climax or finale). Ok, well your post production work seems to really rock, but I was confused why more time wasn't spent color correcting the guitar player walking while outside. These images, although framed well, screamed out bad looking GL2 to me. Otherwise, this is one fun piece to watch. Congrats on the all nighters but man, isn't it the most fun when you have such a fine piece to show for it.

I'm glad you enjoyed the piece, Bryan. And, thank you for some very constructive criticism. You made valid points and they are most certainly well taken. In regards to the colour correction, I had actually spent a great deal of time trying to get this right; however, I ran into a series of problems when I took the Magic Bullet TV version (which had made my blacks almost a grey), colour-corrected it again in FCP, slapped a HSL filter on it (to make it brighter for the web), and then compressed it with Sorenson-3. Since I was dealing with finalized composites by that point, some parts were affected more than others. Being a noob to web presentation, it is definitely something I'll have to work on.

BTW, nice job on your trailer!

And, yes, it is the most fun to have a something to be proud of when the delirium of sleep-deprivation has finally worn off.

GREAT EDITING!!!!

I can only agree with everybody else here. Great music and great editing. (I'm just editing a music show shot with three different cameras with quite poor footage. I thought the result was poor looking until I had a look at your clip. Now I think mine is just horrible. Something's gonna have to be done! You gave me some ideas, even though I won't be able to apply most of them..)

GOOD WORK!

I finally watched it and I thought it was nice, but thought the
rhythm with all the things moving around was too fast for the
music in this case. A little bit slower might work better for me
at least.

Nice piece, the flow is very good, some of the opening clips are a bit too dark for my taste. Those first few seconds are key to keeping a viewer attention!

ABH

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to watch and comment on my video. Since my last post, I was fortunate enough to have it picked up for broadcast on Bravo! Videos and Cool TV.