"Hit and Run" music video

[Keith Loh]

I've (finally) completed editing and animating a music video that Dylan Couper and I shot last November and it's now up on the musician's website here:

http://www.fidgital.com/video.html

It culminates a lot of work (off and on) that I would be glad to comment on after I catch my breath. I would like to thank Dylan for his camera work and his constant nagging to finish it. Just kidding. One of the reasons why it took so long is that it wasn't planned to be a music video until the last moment and so cutting it became a cycle of experimentation and then recutting to the music again. I began adding more and more post-production including Flash and After Effects as I went along (getting bored and frustrated and then envigorated). I learned a hell of a lot but it also meant the video kept on being delayed. I'm pretty sure many people thought it would be the one and only thing I work on in DV. It became a joke between the musician and I if I would finish it before his next album. I didn't. He released his album two weeks ago.

In the future if I do another video like this I would definitely sit down and plan the shots (duh storyboarding) rather than shoot from a script. We shot for an entire day and 90% of the material is on the floor (so to speak).

Random notes:
- shot on XL1, 3X wideangle, tripod, LCD display
- number of people involved: 14
- hours shot 10
- locations 7
- tapes 3
- edited on a PC using Premiere, Vegas and After Effects
- motion graphics created with Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash and After Effects
- crew trifles: pizza, coffee, Subway

Dylan can add anything now..

[Dylan Couper]

3 tapes? Really that much? I thought we only shot 45 minutes of raw footage. I could be wrong though.

I'll point out, that once we (I) realized how much we actually had to do in one day, I decided to ditch the light kit. There would have been no time to set lights up, plus it would save us 50 lbs of carrying weight while moving around.
So to answer everyone's lighting questions, there was no lighting.

Also, the first version (before the music) was 15 minutes long or so. As you can imagine, lots of stuiff had to be cut out.

[Keith Loh]

Maybe it felt like 3 tapes ??

[Curtis T. Stoeber]

Well, not sure what to say so I'll just type what pops in to my mind.

-Did not like the music. That is of course my opinion and there is no music in the world that everyone will like, unfortunately.

-The whole thing seemed like an intro to a much bigger project. The credits were still rolling more than halfway through.

-The outline effects were good and unique.

-Seemed predictable. When the two characters with obviously no peripheral vision collide and drop the umbrellas, it is obvious that the umbrellas get switched. Didn't matter anyway because the guy at the end would have been mowed down by the many guns pointing at him vs his single umbrella gun. The guy in the brown suit was all smiles when he was on the floor looking at the umbrella.

-Wasn't quite clear how umbrella man (with normal umbrella) defeated two thugs with guns in a parking lot. They just dissovled away it looked like after umbrella man approached.

-Nice props, especially the weaponry!

-Some slick editing with the cross fades of the characters moving around, etc. I like that.

-Very very choppy at only 10fps.

[Keith Loh]

http://videoclipstream.com/akamai/h-...HR_halfres.mov

Thanks for the feedback about the download and the video. I've provided a faster server link of my own above.

You're right about the smiling bit. What I intended was that the office worker character would be smiling more like 'a fool'.

You're not the only person to wonder how the Umbrella Killa defeats the two thugs (one of them me!) in the parking lot. I would just say that the Umbrella Killa is just an assassin and does some martial arts (O.S. haha)

The credits rolling all the way through was meant to give the impression that this was the opening credits to a movie. To tell you the truth, I dropped that motif half way through because I thought the titles were distracting, especially when I had other motion graphics going on.

The props are Airsoft replicas. We actually had more of that going on which ended up cut out.

10fps is a compromise but we've already had that discussion. :)

Thanks for your comments.

[Trent O Connor]

You wouldnt believe how long that video took to download if I told u - my modem is sooo slow.

I really liked the idea of the drawings over the imagery, looked very stylish. I also liked the way it had various types of transitions without being too bitty.
I didnt like the music, the singer sounds cheesy.
And I didnt really like the credits rolling for so long. Rather than a trailer, I thought it was more like the starting credits of a film - which u then dont c.
Ignoring the acting and music, I thought the editing was smooth and the idea a novel one. good job

[Keith Loh]

You're right. I meant opening credits, not a movie trailer. Thanks for your comments.

[Curtis T. Stoeber]

<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Loh :
The credits rolling all the way through was meant to give the impression that this was the opening credits to a movie. -->>>

Yeah that's exactly what it felt like, or maybe the opening to a TV show about high dollar gadgetry crime. Of course you never know if the guy dies, so he could have just gone nuts catching bullets with his teeth and beating up the thugs who like to hang out in an apartment with a video projector. Then maybe he steals the projector, turns it on and you watch the "episode".

Actually the 10fps wasn't too bad unless a title graphic was scrolling. But for the actual motion I was surprised how much I didn't notice it. Interesting.

[John Locke]

Bravo, Keith and Dylan!

I love everything about it...including the music. Good shooting, GREAT editing...but the animation and sketching made a tear of joy trickle down my cheek. Okay, maybe not...but I LOVED it.

So what toys did you use to do the animation?

[Curtis T. Stoeber]

Although the question was not directed at me nor am I qualified to answer it since I wasn't there, I'd venture to say "LEGO". Those looked like Lego men converted into Flash somehow.

[Keith Loh]

For the Lego scene:
Curtis is right haha. They are meant to be LEGO characters. I used some 2D reference photos of Lego characters and then I roughly made them in Lightwave as 3D. But instead of animating them in Lightwave, I just used them as still references so that I could clean them up in Illustrator. I'm just faster in Illustrator.

In Illustrator I made several characters by adjusting the vectors, adding things like hats, clothing, etc. Then each one I exported as Flash files. I assembled that Lego scene entirely in Flash and animated everything there.

For the other motion graphic transitions I exported beginning and end frames of the live action backgrounds as BMPS. Then I took them into Illustrator (sometimes Photoshop) and created vector outlines, jazzy stuff and added elements. I took all the elements and placed them in Flash where I animated everything.

Some sequences I put the elements into AfterEffects for basic animation. Any kind of fading or montage I did in AfterEffects. In fact I did most of the actual editing in AfterEffects though I did use some Premiere and I originally did raw cutting in Vegas Video.

[Curtis T. Stoeber]

How did you import the BMPs and make vector images out of them in Photoshop?

[Keith Loh]

I manually traced over the BMPs in Illustrator. Actually, there are plugins and separate programs that will do tracing but I've always found them to be messy and unsatisfactory.

[Bill Markel]

You gentleman should be very proud of your effort. Excellent work.

Bill

[Andrew Petrie]

Mad props :D Doing anything else this summer? I have vacation time to use, maybe I'll visit BC. Hehe!

What kind of editing was done in Premier and Vegas? I'm assuming each program has it's strengths over the other, just wondering where you used each application.