Movies I've Made

The Paper Trail Movie Trailer Project

What a better way to start off this section of my blog with the fake movie movie trailer I made a year ago.  And
just so I can call it informative, I will throw in some tidbits of things I learned in the process.

 The Paper Trail was a funny idea I had when my newspaper kept getting stolen from the apartment I lived in.  I wanted to see if I could show in a dramatic sense what a normal guy could go through, or be forced to go through, to get to the bottom of it.  To see where exactly the paper had been going... Was it a clerical error on the part of delivery?  Or something much... more.. sinister??  Oohhhh!!

Camera Jib

I will have to make a video explaining all of the various pieces of the camera jib, but looking and numerous
different DIY jibs, I was intrigued.  I saw one made out of an old bed frame, but didn't think that would be
very user friendly.  Then I saw one that had all kinds of lazy susan type pullies to move the camera around, but
figured that I would get out of my price range in a hurry if I try to make it too fancy.  Then I saw film riot
make one out of wood, but that didn't have too many directional features.  So I will make a blog post about
how I went about making my own DIY camera jib.  I was going to film it this afternoon, but it looks like
a huge storm is moving in and I do not have faulted ceilings so we'll have to wait.

Low frequency blasts of orchestration

I've noticed that many many many movie trailers since about the inception of Inception the movie have had
these blasts of strings where they fade the screen in and out.  I had made a list of these trailers, but it
was getting so redundant looking for trailers like that I quit.  Transformers, Battleship, Inception of course,
and a few of those Greek Mythology movies that came out in tandem, they all do it.  So, not to be outdone by
Hollywood, I grabbed my cheap keyboard and started playing with my electronic orchestra.

I had to find a good mixture of low and mid-range.  I started by transposing it down as low as it would
go, but then it started to sound like a whale underwater.  Or at least my brain's interpretation of what a
whale really sounds like.  My viewpoint is most likely from Star Trek IV.  Here are the two aptly named "burps".
They are free for you to use and download for free without any signing up or contracts or crap:

short-burp.mp3

long-burp.mp3

To download them to your computer if they just play when you click them, right click and choose
"Save Target As" or "Save Link As", then you can find a place to drop it on your computer.

The Rifle Shot

The last thing I'll talk about is the shot with me screaming with the rifle.  This was the first
gunfire special effect I had done and I think it turned out really close to what I had envisioned before I
did it.  Unlike my normal directorial expectations that what is in my brain will not even be close to what
goes through that camera lens.

Warning!

Like any responsible adult, I must put a warning in here to the ones that may or may not ever read this
that are not gifted with the gift of common sense!!  Do not, really don't, aint gonna do it, refrain,
cease and desist from use firearms of any kind fake or real in public.  You may get extra holes in you from
your local police department when they protect the public from you!  Dur!

That being said, I used a real rifle for the shot, a DPMS .308 AR style rifle.  I did the shot on my
back patio and took the time to hang up sheets in any and all directions so no one outside would see me
toting my rifle dressed in army gear.  Then I used a green screen behind me to later turn that black.  In hind-sight,
I think using a vignetted out grimy city scape like the one at the end of the trailer that way my black
had would have stuck out more, but que sera.

I've seen in a lot of real movies that shell casings are usually not included in their effects.  You can
get blow back bb guns at your local Big 5 for $60 - $100 that are metal, no orange tip, removable magazines
and the top slide moves like a real weapon, but no shell casings.  I knew I wouldn't really be able to
shoot my rifle on my patio so I had to improvise.  I used the closest thing that I could think to an actual
.308 shell casing (cause I wanted to keep it accurate) - AAA batteries!  Their even shiny!  So I stood in
front of the green screen and tossed the batteries into the frame one by one.  Then using AfterEffects,
edited them so they come right out of the chamber.

So, that's it for now.  Leave feedback if you have questions.  I'll have many more tutorials and tips
on my blog here as I learn them.  Hope you feel entertained!

 

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