Interrogation Droid (2010)

This blog is becoming very Star Wars themed lately but please bear with me for just a couple more posts! Back in 2007 I made another Star Wars parody, this one was a fictional deleted scene.  It's one of my most popular videos notching up around 500k views on the web.

After being approached by a non-profit organisation to use this video in one of their projects to support children's health.... don't ask me how!  I decided to spend a couple of days remastering it and giving it a new lease of life for this HD age.

What's New

1. Re-rendered the entire film at a wide-screen HD resolution of 1280x720.  The original resolution was 320x240!
2. Tightened up the edit, I removed 20 seconds without losing a single joke!
3. Tweaked the animation and added new music/FX to improve the atmosphere.
4. Made Greedo shoot first.

If you haven't seen this sketch in a while, please check it out in all it's Hi-Def glory.

I actually wrote another 'deleted scene' in 2007 which showed how Han won the Millenium Falcon from Lando. Perhaps it's time I dusted off that script?! Or maybe it's just time to step away from the Wookiee!!

Satire Schmatire

I found out a few days ago that I had a short sketch/joke performed at the Edinburgh fringe festival. It was one of my submissions to the Treason Show which they re-used for their Edinburgh run. It went something like this.

SAM CAMERON
Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen for coming to Madam Tussauds today. It gives me great pleasure to unveil this waxwork model of my husband David.

REPORTER
Mrs Cameron, how accurate is the waxwork?

SAM CAMERON
It looks exactly like him... Except, it doesn't have that thing on the end of his Penis?

REPORTER
What thing?

SAM CAMERON
Nick Clegg

X-Wing: Brown Squadron

After a morning of last minute editing I've finally pushed the button and made it live!  Thanks to Steve, Chris and James for their awesome acting.  I hope you all enjoy!

Hurdles World Champion

If Sony Vegas Platinum 10 HD was a person I would punch him cleanly and squarely in the face.

I switched to Vegas because Premiere Element's interface was a joke! I now find that not only is the Grass NOT! greener on the other side, but it is in fact not even Grass at all. It is Poo. Someone has carefully weaved several hundred thousand strands of Poo, painted them Green and then called them Grass... and now that I'm here it stinks!

When I purchased Sony Vegas, it never mentioned anywhere on the box the 'RED SCREEN OF DEATH' feature. In fact I try to avoid products that contain any [INSERT COLOUR] Screen of Death features.

I suppose it's my own fault really. An i7 processor, 8Gb of RAM, a fancy new graphics card. What the hell was I thinking trying to make a 3 minute long video!? Especially one at a sub HD 640x360 pixel resolution. How was my PC ever meant to cope?!  ...Ignoring the fact that as rubbish as Premiere Elements was it never keeled over and died when I was working on much larger videos!

Sadly it has been a complete weekend of hurdles as far as the Star Wars project is concerned with several rendering problems with Blender (At least Blender is free and clearly labelled BETA!!). I will eventually get there but it will be despite Sony Vegas, not because of it.  On the plus side, the audio sounds good :0)

Anyway, here's a screen capture of Chris in his X-Wing.  There's probably going to be a touch more colour grading to add but this is roughly final image quality.

That's no Moon!

Yesterday three friends and myself shot the footage for my live action/CG Star Wars sketch. This is the first big project we've made using green screen and looking over the footage today I'm hopeful it went quite well.

I'm annoyed with myself that I made a stupid mistake on the positioning of the actors in some of the shots. I'm even more annoyed that I knew exactly what to do, I just forgot to do it under all the pressure of directing! Hopefully I can work around this, and next time remember to write check lists!

The sketch should be finished in a couple of weeks but until then here's some shots of the awesome looking helmet James re-painted.