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Halo Rig vs Fig Rig Comparison

Submitted by Alik on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 23:36

Halo Rig vs Fig Rig - two very awesome hand held rigs.

You can read up about both of them here on Amazon:
HaloRig MINI Video Camera Stabilizer
Manfrotto 595B Fig Rig Video Camera Stabilizer

My experience.
After using the Halo Rig for awhile I thought I'd write up a little comparison between that and the Fig Rig.
First off I have to say, for my DSL I love my Halo Rig. It takes out all that little jitter and give a more natural professional handheld feel. Plus it's almost a must for doing any tracking for compositing.

That being said. It doesn't not completely eliminate hand held motion, but stabilizes the image a TON.

Now for the pro's and cons between the two.

Dday's latest John Carpenter-esk short: Jack Plissken - Little Escape from Big China.

Submitted by Alik on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 22:08
Jack Plissken - Little Escape from Big China.
Jack Plissken makes his last mistake in this John Carpenter tribute when he brings a child's toy to a mans fight. 

 

This one turned out a lot better than we expected.  Have to be honest. 
I think what really made it have that awesome 80's feel was the music and sound for sure. This was the first time I using Logic to edit and mix the sound and have to say, it's awesome. The program has so many more and better tools than FCP, I don't know how I ever managed without it. 
Even the quality of the sound turned out awesome and all we used to record was the on board H4N mics, which usually suck compared to a good shotgun. 
And of course our composer Jeremiah Saint was awesome as always. 

We plan on doing a few more films in this John Carpenter 80's style so if you have any great idea's leave a comment. Otherwise, thanks for watching. 

Raam's Shadow Trailer

Submitted by Alik on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 22:03
One of the more recent projects I cut.
Great game too.

The Ultimate Football Fans (Comedy)

Submitted by Alik on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 22:00
One of our latest at DDay Hollywood. 
Short comedy about two Ultimate Football Fans who piss off a friend with their outlandish knowledge of the game.

Thanks for watching.

The Almighty Battlefield 3 flashlight. (NEW UNLOCK)

Submitted by Alik on Thu, 12/01/2011 - 02:13
You won't know this one unless you play Battlefield 3. Or Alan Wake for some reason. Our latest vid basically takes the idea that the battlefield 3 tactical light unlock is way over powered and we bring it to a new level. It was a lot of fun to shoot, and took forever to do the effects. Shot it on a new lens too, Canon's 70-200 f.2.8 IS II which is a lot of fun. Check it out. I heard it even made someone laugh once. 

Video Copilot Armageddon

Submitted by Alik on Wed, 10/26/2011 - 00:04
For those of you familiar with VideoCopilot.net we made this one for you. 
A little backstory. Video Copilot is an online tutorial website hosted by Andrew Kramer. He started I think back in around 2005 where I remember first seeing his tutorials on Creativecow. His tutorials were the best and always most well informed. He left out nothing unlike most guys. Now he's blown up with each tutorial getting around 2 million hits. 
What's interesting is we have starting to see a lot of youtube partners who do a lot of the video game action parodies or other videos, completely rip off his tutorials, following them step by step and apply them to their videos.  Usually without giving Video Copilot any credit.  I guess the magicians don't want to reveal their tricks. 
So this one's for you Andrew, and Sam.

Duck Hunt short.

Submitted by Alik on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 20:14
Latest video. It's a parody on duck hunt my buddy Xtian and I shot last week. 
We are very happy with the way it turned out and the response we are getting from everyone.

We shot it in a half a day and spent about 4 days working on it in post. 

It was shot on a Canon 5Dmkii with the 24-70mm f2.8L lens. I used a polarizer and ND filter to cut down the light to give me a more reasonable shutter speed of about 1/30 and a nice shallow depth of field.
VFX were done by Xtian, who mainly used Video Copilots Action Essentials for the gun flashes and explosions. The 8 bit duck hunt sprites were found on google somewhere.  
I'm still impressed by the CineStyle color profile by Technicolor. With just a little tweaking in After Effects you can really get the image looking like it was shot with a pro camera. 

-Alik

Apples to Apples on ddayhollywood

Submitted by Alik on Sat, 09/24/2011 - 17:18
Finished a short for the youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/ddayhollywood. 


Shot on the Canon 5Dmkii with the 24-70mm f2.8L lens. And mainly only two lights. An arri 650watt and a CFL. 
We'll have more coming soon. 

My 2011 Editor Reel

Submitted by Alik on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 05:28
 
My Latest Reel from the last three to four years of work. Includes work from Game Trailers, Game TV Spots, Network Promos and Interstitials. 

In my title card sequence I mentioned I use FCP, Avid and After Effects.  Although I am proficient with After Effects I chose not to showcase any of my work in this reel. I consider myself an editor that knows AE, not a motion graphics artist.  I did however design my titles.

More information on my work, and projects can be found here. 

 Hope you like it.

Compressor serial number invalid Issues

Submitted by Alik on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 03:42

If you ever have problems with compressor telling you your serial number is invalid make sure you completely uninstall it then reinstall it. It’s a little more complicated then just trashing the application and removing the preference files. Compressor is linked to Qmaster and hold it’s serial information in files you might not know about.

Apple has on their website some “Compressor: Troubleshooting Basics” that will tell you how to properly uninstall compressor here.

Of course doing everything they say on their site is a pain and can take awhile.  So I found this program the other day that does a great job or properly uninstalling all of the Final Cut Studio apps. So if you ever want to roll back your final cut version or change serial numbers for whatever reason check out this app here.

It will remove all preference files and delete whatever final cut app you want automatically.  Better then app zapper or any other program designed to remove apps that cost way too much.

NOTE: Make sure you repair your Disk Permissions in your Disk Utility after you do all this and before reinstalling FCP or Compressor. 

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