Saving Creativity

Here is what Andrew and I have been up to at work these two weeks, I was DP on the 1st one, and talent on the 2nd one.  Andrew pulled out some great stops on the motion tracking!  Good job Andrew!!

Andrew produced the piece and the talent did an amazing job (it was me…).  He chose a bunch of stirring images and we worked together to light and place all of the images.  This one was also edited by Andrew…

Kingdom Of Comfort from Andrew Schuurmann on Vimeo.

Hope you have gotten the MMS update for your iPhone, if not, just update iTunes, plug in ye’ iPhone, update your phone and then restart your iPhone.  Once it restarts you should have a nifty little option under your text messaging icon that will give you the ability to MMS pictures or video to anyone in your contacts!

Saw this on the front page of Digg.com.  Awesome creative use of two forms of art: skateboarding (actually long boarding to be exact) and technology to power the colored tubes.  Even the tubes beat to the music, so there must have been some cool sync.

A blog that I follow (murphy24p) had a great post on the connections with people in our lives.  I loved this line form his post:

I guess it really struck me how far I have moved, in such a short amount of time, to a wholly electronic connection with people.  I mean, it has only been 4 months since I couldn’t check email, scan tweetdeck or check who commented on my wall with my phone.  Before that I actually had to sit down and check it on my desktop at home (Trinity blocked Facebook and Twitter…maybe that was a bigger benefit than a curse!)  Can I confess something:  I really want to start over, I mean get away from everything being on a screen, or via my phone.  How about instead of shooting off an email or iChat session, I should be picking up the phone or meeting someone, as Murphy suggests, over my beloved coffee.

Here is a piece that really inspired me this morning, hope I haven’t posted this yet, but Dan Stevers is a great motionographer and does some amazing work!

Dan Stevers’ 07 Reel from Dan Stevers on Vimeo.

So I guess it’s been a while since my last post.  Things have been so crazy around the Ackerman household and at Trinity.  With a job change in the next 3 weeks, moving 1500 miles away, packing, selling a house and making sure I have a happy wife and son…I have been slammed.  Things are tracking right along though!  Creatively I have been working to finish a lot of projects that have been hanging over my head and I am excited to launch the final version of Trinity’s fall series: Philippians: Live the Letter.  I am almost done with the bumper and have changed a few things with it since I last posted about it.  Any thoughts or ideas would be so great to hear from you AE pro’s out there.  What could I do better with the typography or ideas to help really polish the entire bumper!  Please comment and let me know how I can improve it…

Philippians Series Bumper from TrinityWired Productions on Vimeo.

I have gotten away from my bi-weekly inspiration posts and I will be getting back to that today.  My friend Adam over at ProgressIsBeautiful posted a bunch of videos but one that really struck me is Clayton’s Story.  What an amazing story and what an amazing young guy.  If you can watch his memorial service or his message at ABC, and not cry, then you have no soul!  Clayton’s legacy is one that has really challenged me to not just go through life, but to truly live life to the fullest!

Clayton’s Story from Jacob Lewis on Vimeo.

Well if you have been following my twitter feed or even facebook for that matter…it’s official.  The Ackerman household is moving to Houston, Texas to join a wonderful staff at theMet.  I will working in the Worship Arts department as a Video Director/Editor and working along side Andrew (a great guy might I add!).  We are excited and nervous all at the same time.  God has been doing some very cool stuff along the way and we feel confident and at peace with going.  Now comes the long list of things to do, to actually pick up all of our stuff and move it 1500 miles cross country to a town I have been to twice!  I am also trying desperately to sell my house and finish up all of my video work for the side business as well as Trinity!

Today is a woot.com woot!off so make sure you head over there and F5 often to get the woot! goodness that they slepp up every time a product sells out.  Right now it’s a professional slicer, but I just missed a Gutter Cleaner, a microSD card and a Pen scanner…. Oh the joys of woot!

I have been working hard on some very cool stuff here at Trinity.  Namely the fall series.  I wanted to create this…but alas my PS/AI skills are lacking to actually pull it off.  So I went with the default, find a cool look in AE and create it!  So without further ado, here is a sneak peak at what the rough fall bumper will be….

Phillippians Bumper from TrinityWired Productions on Vimeo.

I am working on a video piece right now that was shot and edited basically on the same day.  It involved a lot of moving our jib, running next to a kid in the woods and loads of fun with the interns!  I will post the final here on Monday because I don’t want to give away Pastor Marvin’s killer ending to his message for this weekend!  Here is are two screen shots…

A bunch of people have watched the rough cut with their thoughts and we are making the changes.  I am hoping to have this video done by this afternoon!  I really enjoyed shooting this with our three interns and the actor, Jonathan.  He did a great job and was very convincing.  We shot most of it in 24fps which looks amazing and then we shot three scenes at 48fps so we could have ultra buttery smooth slow motion.  The part where it kicks into slo-mo gave me the chills as I was editing it all together!  Intern Katie did some location scouting and really came up with three killer places to shoot the footage.  The morning lighting was amazing, but we did have some exposure issues when he passed through light, so I will be taking care of some of those today in AE, or maybe Color if I can figure out how to even load a video into it!  Later this week I hope to post my workflow and some of the tools that I feel are a must to shoot a decent short form film or at least have fun making a short form film….

Woot is going off right now and there has been some pretty cool stuff in this Woot! off.  If you want to participate all you have to do is head on over there and keep hitting F5 for the goodness.  I have gotten a few things off of Woot.  For example $2.99 6 foot HDMI cables, $10 solar garden lights, $5 bluetooth head sets (two for tuesday’s is great over there!).  I have no use for a Roomba (and trust me…they offer lots of Roombas!), but they might have something you are looking for, so go and check them out.  The deal with the Woot!off’s is that they sell them until that unit is done, and then load a new item onto their page.  You never know what the next items is and you don’t know when the current item will sell out.  The refresh button will become your friend!

Sorry for the long delay, lots going on these days.  Getting ready for the fall, getting ready to shoot two videos for the summer series, and general mayhem happening around here.  Yesterday was spring cleaning day at the church and Greg, Josh and I cleaned till we were tired!  I have never seen so much junk that we never knew we had.  Lots of stuff getting sorted, recycled or tossed!  We had the pleasure of vetting about 1000 old choir song books from around 1990 and lots of very, very, very old hand bell music.  We filled 2 4′ cube paper recycling containers and had a blast ripping the covers off all of those old chorus books!  We organized our large storage room and labeled all the shelves, put things where they should go and generally had a good time hanging out.  Here is a repost from Human3rror with a killer video, check it out….

Shift: An Animated Essay from Heather Arment on Vimeo.

Sun why do you taunt me.  I am sitting in my office with no windows only a door, no room to see the sun or the trees swaying to your friend…the wind.  To be out on the golf course hitting a few birdies, or sitting in a hamoce…oh wait Meaghan broke it!
Ok, so I am definately not a poet, nor did you come here to read my lame attempt at poetry.  Busy day so far, lots of good meetings and more exporting.  On to the good stuff…

If you are a movie buff, or even like movies you need to check out this site:

“The Art of the Title Sequence” is a very unique and amazing website.  It basically is an amazing collection of the open title sequences of recent movies.  While the website is not exhaustive by any means it is really a great place for some stretching Mograph video.  They interview film industry pep’s and show some still from the opening sequences.  Really a good place to get ideas and be inspired go and check them out.

As for inspiring videos, this one from Dante Nou is pretty cool.  He also has his show reel on vimeo.com.  Pretty tight reel with some good work.  In this running piece there are some very nice uses of light streaks.  I know it might be over used now since ColdPlay’s “Lovers in Japan” video and the Sprint commercial…but used sparingly it might have some real chops for creative uses too.  Well enjoy the video and write your own ode to the sun today!

Still Run from DANTE NOU on Vimeo.

Ok, so I need to come clean with you.  I needed some inspiration this morning just to write this post.  So I went out for you (and for me of course) to find some great tutorials, GFX, and MoGraph.  So here’s the list and of course the required vimeo.com video…

• VideoCopilot.net has an amazing tutorial on a 3D city scape in AE, really quick and dirty but has some many uses if you aren’t fortunate enough to have Cinema 4D or Kinemac…
• AEFreemart.com: Found this website this morning while working on research on looping particles for MoGraphs for our services here at Trinity.  They have some good articles, tutorials and free stuff.  I know I need to just purchase the Trapcode suite Adam.  If you work at a church, good news, you qualify for their Non-Profit pricing and can get the entire 2008 suite for $400, great deal!
• Flickr.com:  You might be saying… well of course Ackerman, how could Flickr.com not allow you to be inspired with some amazing shared fotog.  Well, thank to videcopilot.net showing me this little tip:  if you click on the advanced search next to their search feature you can turn on searching photos only under the creative commons license that can be used commercially, modified, adapted or built upon.  What does that mean: well it means you don’t have to pay for a photo and you are completely legal.
• Buckheadproduction.org: These guys always nail it out of the park and if you aren’t reading their worship pastor Carlos Whittaker’s blog….you should be.  Just stopped by their church production blog and noticed that they are starting to do online volunteer training.  What an amazing idea.  Why host a night of new tech training or advanced training (which can take up massive amounts of time and money), when you can shoot, edit and post a video in about two hours.  This makes me think about all the ways we can implement video here at Trinity for volunteer training.  It’s probably even trackable via a login, or google analytics.

Well that’s all for now, but here a great video that really helps me to get inspired on a sunny Tuesday morning:

Bellissimo from Leonardo Dalessandri on Vimeo.

So the title should be read in your best Monstor Truck Commercial voice.  After a decent weekend filled with: my wife sleeping in on Saturday morning while Brennan and I chilled out upstairs, yesterday’s Compass Alumni Board’s 24hour film festival watching marathon (hey it only took 6 hours this time…), and then the boy crying pretty much from 8pm till 11:30pm, then crying off and on last night… this past weekend was decent.  This week at Trinity will be filled with lots of: DVD order filling (something like 25 different services…wow people, you know you can download then for free from here), setting up the green screen for another month of LifeIn2, and no side jobs right now (and the people rejoiced…yeah…).  Here is something to get your morning going, someone I have thoruughly impressed with…Samm Hodges….

Mystery from samm hodges on Vimeo.

I work at a church and own a side business.  They both have ups and downs to them, but one thing that I know for both of them is: you never have a large enough budget.  I always seem to have these grandeous grandiose (guess I should spell check more often!) ideas and want to pull them off for peanuts.  So I am going to share a secret with you……you can get lots of free stuff from some really great sites.  So here is my list of daily and weekly websites that I surf to to get this some great pieces for my video or graphics pieces.

In very particular order:

• istockphoto.com:  They have a weekly pictures, monthly videos, monthly sound fx, and monthy vector art that you can get for free.  You should get an account here anyways since they have some of the cheapest and best stock photog and vector art on the web…
• bittbox.com:  A friend of mine who runs a website dedicated to all things graphics.  He always has free Texture Tuesday and often gives away a lot of other stuff if you comment on his site.  Really good guy, helped me on this design via a chat session.  Does really, really good work as well…
• revostock.com: One of the best all around video and mograph stock houses out there.  They give away a free monthly video.  I often go here to get some inspiration for future mograph or to just see what other people are doing for video work.
• Churchmediadesign.tv Brad runs a great website and has a weekly video podcast that helps to really cement what a lot of church’s need…good media.  Go there to get tips, tricks, and how-to’s.  Also the bobble head Jesus, Brad, Dwight Screwt and Colonel Sanders are a nice touch!
• PShero.com:  These guys crank out some amazing Photoshop stuff.  I go there to figure out how to do an effect, find a brush or even just get inspired for some new ideas or designs…

I want to know where you go to get free stuff.  Are there websites you surf to in order to get those great PS brushes, or how about a website that shares free video in good quality.  Please make them legal, no ripping videos off of vimeo.com or youtube.com.  Let me know if you are giving away free stuff so I can write about it and share it with others!

Ahh junk almost forgot the vimeo.com video…

Digital Slaves [Modern] from Digital Slaves on Vimeo.

Digital Slaves does intense projection via HD projection and sonic matieral, all in real time and can react to the beats of audio.  While I am not into the clubbing scene at all, what they are doing for projection and effects kind of makes me think we might be able to do a little more with thinking outside the box of using projection and experimenting with different types of materials for the surfaces…