Yes, I'm updating. So enough sarcasm kay?

So recently i looked back at a few things that i made back when i was in high school. Thinking back, i used to call them masterpieces, now i realise i'm just another teenager who found video editing to be fun. But looking back, i was a bit more ambitious and talented for my age, and for that time ( i know i'm being perasan; but bare with me as it's a form of self-motivational thing for now that i'm here, doing film seriously)

Anyways, what I'm really meaning to revisit here is that over-rated video i made for teachers day back in 2006 (All because of Amin putting it up on his blog; real embarassing). If you guys still dont get what i mean, can't recall such video, or don't even understand what i'm talking about since you weren't even there.

This piece of scrap is what i'm talking about



Rings a bell? No? Whatever..

Well to those who are getting it, or at least deja vu's of it, did you guys remembered what kind of hit it was? Coz i remember feeling like a rockstar when it premiered in our tiny little Dewan Putra Perdana. I also remember having a hard time backstage when the time to fire it up on screen closes by. Since I was using Cik Maryam's laptop (gosh, to think i was pretty close to her back then..urgh) back then, it had a problem projecting video using a projector because of insufficiency of codec (bloody acer!) so we had to go all trouble of finding a new machine, transfering all the videos and so on so forth. I even had my boys to go and grab the towers (desktops) which we used for the work. After all the trouble, our darling Miss Marwani ended up being the life saver since we used her codec sufficient hp laptop to broadcast all the shit we had to entertain the crowd.

Urghh!!
I'm drifting away again!!

Well i realized that i was ambitious enough, at the age of 17 to try chroma keying. For those who aren't familiar of this, chroma keying is the typical green/blue screen technique filmmakers use to superimpose image. Notice the green background of the video; it was meant for chroma keying. Well it didnt turn up all so well because the subject matters i'm superimposing are stickfigures - they have thin edges. I end up spilling the background all over their bodies! That's why the green screen stays.

Notice the animation too; it was purely drawn frame by frame in a 3rd party application (i.e. powerpoint kahkahkah how lowly software provided we were back then). The frames are then arranged one after another in a video editing application (i.e. back then - Ulead Video Studio) and then played in a timeline against the soundtrack. Pretty neat huh?

Well now that i'm far ahead of where i was back then, i thought that i could enhance the whole thing all over. So, the very keen me started the whole thing from step one:

Drawing new full fledged (well, almost) 2D characters.

Using Flash for the Animation (Notice The Green Screen)

And Using Final Cut Pro 6 to superimpose the animation on top of an actual footage of a location i shot.

This way I can get a more stylistic video when I'm finished. I already have some test clips up and running, and I'm really pleased by it. It rocks! But i wont post it up anywhere yet, not until it's done 100%. I really want to continue doing this little project of mine, but it seems that i can't since i'm still in my writer's block state and am coming close to a deadline for an interactive narrative piece. Heck, when can i start doing what I want?

And guess what? None of this would happen (with much reduced stress taht is) without my new machine:

Owh I just LOVE my macbookpro!