Friday Film Making Finds: Freesound.org

Cool film-making find for June 29, 2012

Whether it's the smacks, cracks and thuds of a fight scene --

-- or the high-pitched laughter of a heartily amused flying squirrel --

-- you've just gotta have sound effects! While there are lots of places that offer royalty-free sound effects for just a few bucks a pop, the fact is that with $5 here and $8 there, those bucks can add up quickly into a great deal more than an amateur movie-maker can afford.  Enter Freesound.org -- a great place to get creative commons, attribution and attribution non-commercial sounds. From explosions to whooshes to the wah-wah-wah-wah of the sad trombone, more auditory goodies than you can shake a stick at are all to be had either entirely for free, or for nothing more than the "cost" of an attribution.


Happy filming!

The Movie Stunt Class Concept ~or~ Girl, What the H--L Were You Thinking?

We have a long history of movie making at Martial Artistry Shaolin Kung Fu and Chinese Wushu. From promotional videos of our exhibition and competition teams in action back in the 90’s -

to James “Sparky” Esparza’s full length cheesy-chop-socky flicks in the 2000’s,

 we’ve been filming since the school opened its doors.


However, the idea of a structured class that incorporated the completion of an actual finished product film was new to us. As I searched on the internet for anything similar, it appeared that the concept was entirely unique: either the idea had never occurred to anyone else, or no one had been able to figure out how to make it work. Either those, or such a program was the best kept secret of teh intra-webs.


I began to see why as I started work on the class concept. Oh, the actual bulk of the class was simple enough - how to sell a hit, camera angles for stunt work, the nuts and bolts of making a not-real fight look real yet stay safe - especially in the hands of mostly raw beginners. The true challenge -- the one it appeared no one else had ever attempted -- was how to take 20+ people, teach them how to develop a character, how to have that character be reflected in their fight choreography and -- biggest challenge of all -- take all 20+ of those characters, and on the spot write a viable script that made each and every single actor a star, not just a bit player.

Promotional poster for the Movie Stunt Class.

I would have to do all this, and not have it interfere with the stuff I get paid to do. This seemed pretty much impossible, so naturally, I couldn’t wait to attempt it. Martial Artistry’s Movie Stunt Class was born!

And absolutely no one was going to learn more from it than me…

Friday Film-Making Finds: FreeStockMusic.com

A film without music is like a Wal-Mart shopper without clothes. It's just wrong and you never, ever want to watch it. Think about it. Even in the days before talkies, they made sure to have a musical score that went with each movie.


So, what's a law-abiding gal with no movie-making budget to do? Who will save our heroine from the nekkid Wal-Mart shopper music-less movie syndrome?


Ta-Da! Enter FreeStockMusic.com! 



By the time I stumbled onto FreeStockMusic.com, my search for stuff I could use to jazz up our House of Flying Squirrels had left me jaded and cynical. “Yeah, right, free music”, I thought, “and now for the catch”. You see, I’d already discovered there was ALWAYS a catch. But, the terms of agreement were in plain English, and -- holy crow -- it really was FREE!


“Okay,” I thought. “The music must be horrible. You get what you pay for, and I can’t pay anything.” I cringed and hit the play button on the first song.


And it was good. Really good. As was the next song, and the next, and the next! All the music was coherently categorized, the descriptions so accurate and succinctly detailed that I could find the right music first time, every time.


I can't say enough good things about the helpful folks (big shout out to Evan Powell) and the talented artists who contribute to this site. Thank you, FreeStockMusic.com!


S3Y5UW4AZ8GT

The Curse of the Haunted Table ~or~ A Lesson in the Importance of a Tripod

Our very first shoot for House of Flying Squirrels was on June 2, 2012. With the exception of a brief chroma-key experiment with a flying squirrel puppet, I'd never done blue screen before. It seemed simple enough. In the last words of many a dead man, "What could possibly go wrong?"


We shot scenes 1 and 3 with a handheld camera against a blue screen, which was actually comprised of two of the largest muslin blue screens I was able to purchase for less than an arm, a leg and a newborn (someone else's, I assure you. But, still...). The joining of these two screens resulted in an 18' by 15' expanse of seemingly demon-possessed material, which insisted on splitting into fissures roughly the width of the Grand Canyon or your standard-issue plumber's crack.

Only slightly more attractive than a plumber's crack.

You see, I didn't want to sew them together because it might "interfere with the chroma-key process".


Bwahahahahahaha! It always makes me laugh when I'm an idiot.


I also figured that I'd hang the whole affair from a series of giant clips affixed to the wall above the mirror at our martial arts school. This resulted in deeply shadowed, attractive draping for the entire length and breadth of the blue screen -- ever so helpful during my chroma-key adventures in Sony Vegas.

Saggy as my old, decrepit booty. No wonder Ellie is sad-kitteh faced.

Since my last post already dealt with the joy and happiness which results when the color teal meets scalloped blue, I'll move right along to


CHROMA-KEY: TRIPOD = IMPORTANT


Unless, of course, you're really seeking that oh-so-spooky haunted table effect.

Many thanks to freeSFX for the nifty spooky music for this clip.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Chroma-Key ~or~ Why the Grand Ninja Has Teal Colored Stone Inside Her Stronghold

Let's get this straight. This girl just wants to have fun. Fun is not organizing 20+ people and moving them from location to location. So, I had this brilliant idea. Let's do EVERYTHING using chroma-key! Then I need never leave the comfort of my wushuguan to film, and I can have any background I desire.

In the background, a blue screen, aka. the bane of my existence.

Oh, if only I'd have known to kill myself then. Instead, I have spent the endless days of the editing process praying for sweet death.

Silly me. I thought that so long as my victims-- er, actors -- didn't wear anything close to the shade of blue used by the chroma-key drapes, I'd be golden.

Yeah, laugh it up. I'm glad you find my naivete amusing.

When the beautiful teal color of Cindy's Grand Ninja outfit (below) played havoc with my blue screen chroma-key function in Sony Vegas HD11, I thought I would get around it by investing in a green screen. Boo-yah! Take that, chroma-key! 

Hah! Take that, blue screen! I shall defeat you with my GREEN screen-BAM!

All the green in the teal keyed out. Instant unwanted costume color change.

FML

I ended up going with the original blue screen footage, with tons of creative and time-consuming editing to ameliorate both the horrendous ghosting (a result of poor hanging of the screens) and the wave-like rise and fall of the hand-held camera (another lesson learned: chroma-key + hand-held camera = bad).

Oh, Scene 3....

So, yes. That is why the Grand Ninja has teal colored stone inside her stronghold. Also, why I have a migrane.

One Fine Day...

One fine day, I woke up and decided I wanted to make a martial arts movie. This is not as crazy as it seems. Not that I'm not crazy, mind you - ask any of my friends or family and they'll tell you I'm pretty much certifiable. But, in my copious spare time (snicker, snort) I run a martial arts school, so capturing all this insanity on film was a natural enough extension of my interests. Besides, sleep is for wimps.