Thursday, April 30, 2009

Red Alert.....


Besides it being International Commie Camera Day tomorrow, May 1st 2009 where you can win any model Holga....we also found out the maker of kickass high-end video equipment Red is hosting a video competition to win their newest creation the Red Scarlet 2/3....all submissions must be no longer than a minute and the story must revolve around a red box...if you haven't seen any footage captured with the red camera...look below:

test with red camera - paris from Opus Magnum Production on Vimeo.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

"No..Wire..Hangars!"

We found this really great video that runs through 100 movies classic movie moments in 2 minutes. It's pretty cool. You'll definitely be chuckling at some of the old movie quotes that pop up. Enjoy!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Flickring....


, originally uploaded by Filmm.

So tonight we are playing with a new tool on our Flickr account that allows you to post to our El Roberto blogspot page. Going forward, we are going to try to use as many photos and video clips that we created rather than relying solely on the internet. Anyway checkout our Flickr account and let us know what you think.


Doin'Work...
Not sure if you have seen the trailer for Spike Lee's new vehicle..Kobe Doin'Work...but by the looks of it...its not very objective and looks terrible. Perhaps its because we don't like Kobe Bryant or like the Lakers, but honestly it just looks like a waste of time...Checkout what Spike Lee has to say about his new film. Has anyone seen it yet? Let us know what you think.

Monday, April 27, 2009

San Diego Commercial Incentive


So we were checking out the San Diego Film commission site for any news on local productions and we discovered this new commercial incentive program. Starting July 1, 2009, under this program eligible production costs may be reimbursed for local productions. To be eligible, 75% of the filming must occur in San Diego and 50% of the crew must be local...checkout the site for more info.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Future Home Cinema

Hey everyone,
Just got back from a long weekend and had a chance to read an interesting article about TV/FILM aspect ratios and the introduction of a 21:9 cinema display. Currently TV's are either the old standard 4:3 or HD 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. Checkout this article about the new Philips 21:9 Cinema display.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

More Tribeca




Just another quick post about Tribeca..you can check out trailers for a lot of the featured flicks on apple's site here. The film "Hunger" looks particularly good.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Tribeca 2009



The 2009 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City is currently happening. And like many film festivals, it looks like they're taking a low key approach to the festivities this year. We were actually in New York during the 2008 festival and had planned to attend a couple of films..but things got too hectic and we ended up not seeing any. There were festival posters everywhere we went, and on certain streets you could see vestiges of the previous night's premieres i.e. red carpets, enclosed awnings, and strewn film schedules littering the street. For me, it was cool even getting close to such a popular film festival.

Anywho, one of the movies that premiered at this year's festival is Woody Allen's new movie "Whatever Works" . The film revolves around a neurotic guy (Larry David, playing a slightly younger version of Woody Allen) who encounters some strange adventures with a young girl (played by Evan Rachael Woods) and her family. Its the first film he's shot in New York since his four film foray into Europe (Matchpoint, Scoop, Cassandra's Dream and VickyChristinaBarcelona). It looks great- a typical NY Woody Allen film so I'm excited to see if it does well at Tribeca.

I couldn't find a trailer for this movie online, but was able to find some behind the scenes production footage that was posted on youtube that is actually pretty neat (you would never think it'd take this many people to shoot a scene on a park bench, would you?)

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Keepin' Busy

Afternoon Everyone,

Sorry for the lack of posts the last couple of days, we've been busy doing pre-production on commercials for two other local businesses so things have been a little hectic. But tonight we're having a little fun and working on an experimental pet project. Think Grey Gardens meets the Doors movie

Meanwhile, here's a cleaner clip of the commercial which you can now see at cafe elevens site

Monday, April 20, 2009

Here's the video...

We are still playing around with the export settings because the footage is a bit stretched from the 16x9 to qt conversion..anyway hope you guys like it. More to come...



Camera Obscura
Oliver Stone's camera technique -- We found this interesting article about how Oliver Stone uses varied film stocks, contradictory cutaways, and more to make his films. I have been interested in learning how film directors like Oliver Stone and Tony Scott work with their Directors of Photography to develop the overall look and feel of the film. And have tried to emulate their techniques in my film work. Later this week I will post some videos where I used multiple formats to create a unique look. Check out the article.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

It happened so fast..

The weekend that is. It seems just yesterday, I was in my car drumming my steering wheel and singing cheerfully, as I peeled out of the office parking lot. Now its Sunday night, and I'm glumly laying out clothes for work tomorrow..Boo.

Well at least we got a lot accomplished this weekend. We finished the commercial and finally saw Observe and Report.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we were really interested in seeing this movie. It was written and directed by Jody Hill, who made The Foot Fist Way one of the nuttiest comedy films out there. "Observe" has a lot of the same elements: A delusional, self-absorbed protagonist who has intense love for his job. And a lot of the same actors show up in this movie. Seth Rogen plays Ronnie, a security guy who takes himself waay to seriously.









He's overprotective to the point of raging violence. For instance, he smashes a fast food manager's head into an oven for mocking an underling. He breaks skateboards over the heads of juvenile delinquents. Oh yeah, and he shoots a flasher. The guy's pretty psychotic but its all done in hilarious way, and you end up liking him.

Seth Rogen does a good job playing Ronnie as an idiot savant, to the point that you're rooting for him to reach his dream of becoming a cop even though he is so obviously a danger to the public just being a security gaurd. So definitely go see it if your a fan of quirky, shocking comedies (and who isn't). But just be forewarned there's a nude scene of a fat guy running around with his genitalia flapping in the air, that goes on for like ten minutes..very disturbing. Otherwise, another good Jody Hill film.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Working all night long..




Hi Ya'll,

Well, we were going to head over to AMC 20 in Mission Valley to watch
Observe and Report tonight (we're big Jody Hill fans), but instead decided to stay in and make the final touches on the cafeeleven commercial. Right now I am helping Andrew with some voiceover work, and once that is complete, we are going to spend tomorrow morning formatting the commercial for local television requirements. Its been a loong night and thankfully were almost done editing this project. Have a fun tonight and be safe!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Record Store Day


There is something about the record store. The wall to wall columns of endless tattered records. The smell of dust and old paper that fills the low-lit rooms. Feeling that your on the verge of finding some mythical long lost Doors recording that wasn't supposed to exist. The thrill of the hunt. That is what drives most music lovers, who happily spend hours hunched over giant bins looking for the proverbial diamond in the rough. But sadly, as the record industry continues to die, and music has become firmly planted in the intangible digital medium, the record store will soon be going the way of the rotary phone. It's become too expensive for record stores to stay open. Happily there are many who still celebrate the cultural significance of the record store, and hence we have Record Store Day

This is an annual event that occurs every April 18th where all the independent record stores celebrate music and art with live shows and events. There are lots of cool giveaways and many bands make special releases specifically for this event. So on Saturday, we are going to head down to M-Theory in San Diego to celebrate the music world and the special place record stores have in it.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

So its flooding in Pt.Loma...





On our way home city officials blocked off most of the blvd due to a water main break. I was able to capture some pics and send them to sigonsandiego.com....check them out. There were camera crews everywhere and helicopters buzzing overhead....the only thing is that currently we are without water...



Anyway its a busy night for the El Roberto..... we have a ton of editing and preparation for a meeting tomorrow. Everyone have a great night and check out this trailer.....

Monday, April 13, 2009

KeepVid


Have you ever seen a hilarious video online of a giraffe riding a bicycle, and thought "hey, I really wish I could download this clip into a stand alone video file so I could forward it to my friends instead of sending a link"? Well, wish no more! We discovered this really cool website called KeepVid that allows you to take any online video and convert it into a viewable file on your desktop, such as an MP4. Its a really cool way to access videos you want to save offline. The site has served us well in the past, allowing us to download files for research so that were not constantly having to go online. It's pretty neat.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Monday is approaching....


So its Sunday night and I am surfing the web again....when I noticed on that some users are posting feature films on youtube. I am not sure how they are able to keep these films posted without them getting taken down. Anyway, as I found out, you pretty much find any film out on video on youtube.
Camera shake:Enemy#1!..Read about it here
and how to avoid it....of course you can always try to clean it up in Final Cut Pro but why waste the time.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Do it your self.....


Good morning,

We stumbled upon this interesting Shepard Fairey interview online where the Obey Giant creator explains how Punk Rock and skateboarding influenced his art and the do it your self attitude.

We can relate to Shepard Fairey and how he relied on self promotion to gain notoriety.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Good Friday....


Its been a busy Friday for the El Roberto production crew. We spent the afternoon putting some finishing touches on the Cafe Eleven commercial and started planning some future projects. In between visiting with family this weekend we plan to sneak some work in when possible. We have a lot of upcoming projects to focus on the next couple of weeks.

Before you go, check out this trailer for the Limits of Control directed by Jim Jarmusch.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

So happy its almost Friday...


What's up everyone,

So we basically have the commercial edit completed. It was the first time Candice edited one of our projects, and we are both mentally exhausted from the experience. Just kidding....it was easy. Right now we just have to record the voice-over and insert some text and its done.

Next up... we are in pre-production for a music video and are honing the God with a Gun script. Hope you guys are having a great Thursday and are exercising your drinking muscles in preparation for the Easter Holiday weekend.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

The joys of editing....


So its Tuesday night and we are deep in the passionate throes of editing. We should have a rough cut of the Cafe Eleven commercial done by tomorrow. Personally editing is my favorite part the production because of the amount of control you have over the finished product. To understand what film/video editors do, checkout this clip from the documentary The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing

Monday, April 06, 2009

Aaand here we go again!



We found out today that Barona Casino has began promoting a video contest . I know we promised that we weren't going to do anymore video contests (their time-consuming, unorganized, and often compromised by viewbots), but this one seems too good to pass up. First off, its local which is a huge advantage. With national contests the competition is pretty fierce. There are literally dozens of professional production companies that devote themselves to entering every video competition that pops up on the web. Pretty ridiculous. But at least with a local video contest, the competition is limited to San Diego talent-so we're golden! Hahaha-just kidding. There are some incredibly talented and professional filmmakers in San Diego and I'm sure that we'd be up against a lot of really good videos-but I think we'll shoot one just for the hell of it! We'll let you know how that goes.

On a side note, it seems that our video contest standards have been slipping; our last video was for bourbon, and now we're onto gambling. Let's hope Hustler doesn't plan to launch a video contest anytime soon or our souls we'll be lost for good.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Sunday night codec problems

Hello everyone,

It was a productive weekend for us. Below is an outtake from our Cafe Eleven shoot below.



We were having some errors pop up when we were trying to export this clip using Apples H.264 codec. Apparently its a common problem when exporting from Final Cut Pro. Check out what the folks at Apple are saying about this software bug. Besides having issues exporting using H.264, the clip we were able to post has some sizing issues since it was shot on HDV 1440X1080 HDV and resized to 320x240.


I was surfing the web and stumbled upon these great Stanley Kubrick resource site called the Kubrick Site. Its a great resource archive of the late filmmakers life work. The site is a non-profit educational site made possible by contributions of readers. Anyway, that's it for now....

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Commercial Shoot


Happy Saturday! We were busy all morning shooting a commercial for a local restaurant
Cafeeleven. The owner of the restaurant wanted a commercial that showcased the coffee bar, dining room, Sunday brunch and remodeled bar. Here's a pic Natalie took where Andrew let me film a couple of entree closeups. This shoot was a bit harder than usual, because there were so many different setups, and a lot of choreographed scenes that needed to be done in one take (pouring sauce on entrees etc.)

We got there very early in the morning when the place was empty and shot all of the inside setup work. Then once our actors arrived, we spent the rest of the time shooting scenes at the bar, and dining area. Natalie and Rob were our actors and they did a great job (plus they got the extra perk of having some fancy drinks concocted for them by the bartender during the bar scene). We have a couple of final Sunday Brunch scenes to shoot tomorrow, and then its a wrap-on to editing! Tomorrow, we'll post a little video footage of the shoot so you can see how it went down. Ciao for now!

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Oh yeah...

So the interwebs have been buzzing all day with the unveiling of the new trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" movie. This looks so good. There are some definite, cringe-in-your-seat-laughing moments in it just like Borat. I'm excited to see it. The designer African baby is classic!


So funny!

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Production jobs and other facinating things....



Happy Wednesday,

Just as promised, we wanted to tell you about some more online film resources. And today we wanted to tell you about Mandy.com. Mandy.com is the Craigslist of film/media jobs and resources. Everything from production services, jobs, casting calls, classifieds, manufacturers and resellers of new equipment, and films for-sale seeking distribution.



Switching gears a bit...grafitti Icon Shepard Fairey faces 87 years in prison after his arrest on his way to a show in Boston. Here is the story. In addition to facing multiple vandalism charges in Boston, Fairey is also being sued by the Associated Press for lifting a photo of Obama which he used in his iconic hope poster. According to Shepard Fairey: 'They are suppressing an artist's freedom of transformative expression.' We agree.

We leave you with a video produced by Shepard Fairey and his team.





Mandy.com