Lancelot Link – Studio Promo Shoot
I’ve just uploaded a bunch of new promo shots for rock three-piece Lancelot Link, taken in the HotShotz Studio in Callan last week (thanks Benny).
I can’t find any sort of web-presence for the band yet but it features two former members of Mata Hari who I did a shoot with last year.
The new band are currently working on their debut E.P which will be released this Summer and they needed some clean promo shots for the artwork.
Shot on my 18-135mm at F8 160 with a four light setup in the studio. The lads got clean images but I’ve added some vignettes to mine.
You can check out my favourites here on the Oss237.com homepage with links to the rest of the shots. I’ll post some links to the band when they discover the internet!
Selfish Bass (Music Video)
The music video for DJ Diarmaid O Meara’s track ‘Selfish Bass‘ has just gone online. Produced by ThanklessFilms, the video was a five-day shoot filled with mannequin madness.
Behind the scenes photos coming soon.
Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay? Forgot to Pay! (Photos)
Following Devious Theatre’s production of ‘Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!’ in the Set Theatre last month, I’ve spent the past few weeks quietly battling a severe case of what is commonly known as “post-show blues”.
I’ve had withdrawal symptoms for everything from wearing orange dungarees to Angela’s obsessive manners!?
My memories of the week of the show (and the weeks before it) are a crazy blur of colour, sweat patches, laughter, sessions, swanky surroundings, shenanigans, hilarious moments and madcap farce!
The production definitely goes on my list of favourites for so many reasons, going into them further would probably just make me sad all over again.
Today, I realised that I had completely forgotten to upload the only photos I took during the production, a collection of shots taken during Act One of the dress rehearsal before I made my entrance as Luigi… god I miss Luigi!
You can check out my favourite photos here on the Oss237.com Homepage with links to the rest on my Flickr.
You can also check out all sorts of behind the scenes bloggery, reviews and info from the show over on DeviousTheatre.com.
Green Screen Test: Backgrounds and Bullets
I’ve just uploaded a new video, some basic green screen background replacement tests I’ve been playing around with the last few days.
Shot on the Canon HG10 with the green screen set up in the sitting room; I was on my own so had to keep it simple with the camera set up on the tripod. I only had one construction light so it was pretty difficult to key properly after.
The first shot was the easiest, adding the alley to footage of me walking on the spot and then playing with the scale and position to add some movement. The second shot took a while to get right, my first attempt was scraped after I got well and truly lost in 3D & time.
Attempt 2 went better, but you’ll notice as I raise the gun at the start that it disappears briefly, I spent hours trying to adjust things so that wouldn’t happen. I’m told it’s not my fault… it’s something called inter-frame compression on the camera. I’ve had Sla explain it to me a few times and kind of understand it but if I tried to explain it then my head would explode.
The next problem I had was timing the movements of the two separate clips of me with the background as the camera follows the bullet. Once everything was in sync I added the muzzle flash and the bullet hit. I did some very basic colour correction on the whole thing and added the bars, some sound effects from iLife and music from Garageband.
The first version of the shot was sped up by precisely 715% (thanks Sla) to get the fast whip and the second shot plays at the speed I put the whole thing together but appears in slow motion thanks to a nice bit of sound design, once again thanks Sla.
Finally, after explaining inter-frame compression several times then cleaning up my speed and sound issues, Sla added some colour grading in Magic Bullet.
Overall, it was good fun and better practice and as always comments, feedback or advice are welcome.
Veggie Kilkenny: “11th No Meat & Greet”
Irish Blog Awards 2010 – Net News Nightly – Blooper Reel (Video)
Out-takes from the Net News Nightly sketch for the Irish Blog Awards 2010 featuring Ken McGuire and lots of bad language. Enjoy!
One Take Sessions: Kieran Byrne (Video)
The 2010 series of KilkennyMusic.com’s One Take Sessions kicked off last Friday night in Cleere’s Theatre with four more acts taking to the stage; first up on the night and fighting for the record of most OTS appearances is Kieran Byrne.
This new video, ‘Seven Day Mile‘, is the first of four videos from the night (one of each of the acts), we’ll be uploading a new video every week in the run up to the April Sessions and hopefully by the time the Sessions close at the end of this year we’ll have built up a great collection of videos over on KilkennyMusicTV.
Shot on a Canon HG10 and Sony Hybrid HandyCam; with the Canon set up on a tripod at the back of the room and me with the Sony at the front right of the stage (standing on a chair) with Ken recording the tracks through the desk and mixing in Pro Tools.
Cut together using Final Cut Express 4 (the other three are currently rough cut), Ken designed the titles and overlays and I added them in After Effects. In post I also added some zooms to the shots from the Canon.
I’m really looking forward to the constant flow of video footage for editing practice, I’m currently working on an animated intro sequence for the videos and we’ve got a few more content ideas that we’ll be adding as we go along.
Don’t forget to subscribe to KilkennyMusicTV for upcoming videos and keep an eye on KilkennyMusic for news on the next One Take Sessions.
Irish Blog Awards 2010 – Net News Nightly (Video)
The 5th annual Irish Blog Awards took place in Galway on Saturday and here’s the Net News Nightly video sketch myself and Ken McGuire threw together to be shown on the night.
Ken had asked me weeks ago if I was interested in throwing something together for it but with the run of ‘Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!’ we had forgotten about it. With the play finished and the awards looming we met up on Tuesday afternoon to brainstorm ideas. Most of the afternoon was spent drinking tea and coming up with dead-end scenarios, all we knew for certain was that we wanted it to focus on the highly debated topic of late “Blogging is Dead!”.
The videos had to be sent on Friday so given our time constraints we needed to keep it simple, opting to go for a single set-up news bulletin with everything shot on green screen (giving me more practice in After Effects). We met up again on Wednesday for the shoot in my sitting room. The main problem was a lack of lights, Ken brought a double-headed construction work light but only one of the lights worked; I used this to light the green screen and used my small desk lamp to light Ken. It wasn’t ideal but we were working against the clock. We shot the whole thing in about 20 minutes with Ken as the Net News Nightly reporter and me as the terrorist leader responsible for the death of blogging.
The opening sequence was put together using a royalty free graphics sequence and music from the iLife collection then I added the animated titles designed by Ken. The background behind Ken is another royalty free graphic sequence, the green screen removal is a bit rough but that’s simply because of the lack of lights. The riot footage was pulled offline and Ken designed Sky News style overlays which I added to the entire sketch.
With the rough cut assembled, all the backgrounds replaced and the overlays in place, we added the finishing touches with the scrolling bar at the bottom displaying retweets from Twitter about the death of blogging and finally a completely random image of a cat and a laptop to finish Net News Nightly; your daily internet news… nightly!
I’m told there was a great response to the video at the awards on Saturday night, having missed the session this year I’m already making a plan to go to next years awards and hopefully we’ll put together another video for that too.
You can check out all the videos from the night here and you can see the list of Irish Blog Awards 2010 winners here, well done to all the winners.
KilkennyMusic Animated Logo 1
The first One Take Sessions of 2010 kicks off tonight in Cleere’s and over the past few weeks myself and the Chief have been planning out video content for this years Sessions.
While that content will hopefully start appearing online over the next few weeks I’ve just uploaded a first attempt at an animated logo for KilkennyMusic.com. I’ve spent the past week or so playing around with animated title sequences, getting to grips with 3D elements and creating camera movements in After Effects.
It’s a lot of fun but my main problem was that I didn’t really have any real content to work on, so with the Sessions approaching I asked Ken to send me on some KKM logos to play around with. The above animated logo was the preferred one in the end.
I kept it very basic to start with; bringing the K logo and the splatter in from opposite sides then moving the 3D camera so they move upwards as KilkennyMusic.com appears underneath. To finish it off I added a royalty free sound effect from the iLife collection.
I’m quite happy with it giving that it took about 10 minutes to create, they’ll get more complicated as I progress with After Effects and we start pushing out video content from the Sessions. As always feedback is welcome.
The first One Take Sessions of 2010 kicks off tonight in Cleere’s Theatre with performances from Kieran Byrne, Eoin MacNamara, Little Black Wren and Mugger Dave.
Doors open 9:30pm and it’s FREE! Check out KilkennyMusic.com for more details.
Bulls, Koalas and Addicts
Finally, 20BullsEach make their return to Kilkenny, it’s about time as far as I’m concerned.
The Bulls are currently writing songs for a new album so expect the gig to be an awesome sneak preview of hardcore things to come. You can check out tracks from previous releases ‘Lost Causes’ and ‘The Incompetence To Follow’ here on the 20BullsEach MySpace.
They’ll be joined on the night by English punk rock quartet Koala Attack, they’ve only got one track up on their MySpace but it’s pretty awesome. Local support comes from Chemical Addiction.
It should be an awesome gig and what else are you going to do for a fiver on a Wednesday night!?
DON’T MISS IT!!!
