This is a backstage interview my friends and I were able to get with Dead Prez before a show they played at Indiana University last month, in which they discuss hip-hop, politics, their inspirations, and coming to grips with their recent fame. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did making it! The guys were probably some of the nicest most down to earth “famous” musicians I’ve ever got the chance to meet!

My involvement: Producer, Co-Director, Co-Camera, Editor

This is easily my favorite production yet. I am really happy with how this came out. It was my final project for T283: Intro to Production and Design Techniques. My favorite part is the intro, with the titles. Very dramatic, and it really works to draw the viewer in. I also am really happy with how the lower thirds turned out. I guess I’ve finally started to figure out the whole text thing. Although even in these lower thirds I feel like there is just something missing, so maybe it could have been better.

My next favorite part would have to be the Black and White slashes. When I was working on this project I just kept thinking of the dramatic flashbacks from The Fugitive that used to scare the shit out of me when I was a little kid (I was never able to watch those flashbacks and Newman getting eaten in Jurassic Park). I filmed them not expecting it to actually work out, but they turned out to be great. Every now and then taking that risk is just totally worth the effort.

This is kind of random, but for some reason I particularly like the shot of the Blue Light System at 1:13. There aren’t too many bright colors in this piece and for some reason that shot just really stands out with the beautiful blue light at the top. The shot itself is also just really well composed in my opinion.

The main technical problem in this project were the shots of Woodlawn. With the sun and all the snow, these shots were just way too bright. I should have put a neutral density filter or two on. By the time it got to post, those shots were so overexposed that there was no saving them and I just had to go with it.

This one is a bit picky, but I don’t feel like the shots of the police car fit well with all the quick camera movement. Unfortunately those were the only two shots of police cars or anything really police related, and I had to go with what I had.

My favorite shot in the entire project is the shot at 3:02. I love the way the camera follows the “slasher” around and then catches the light off of the streetlamp just perfectly. I also really like the CCTV shot, which I think makes me look like a complete badass when you see my shadow put its hood up. Unfortunately, I ruined it by looking at the camera, but what are you going to do? I’m an editor, not an actor!

My involvement: Producer, Co-Director, Co-Camera, Editor

This was a project for my T283 class. We had to make a video explaining what it was we loved about IU. The video will also be entered into an annual contest at IU next year for videos on “Why I Love IU.” To get that 50′s instructional video feel it really needs the narration, and the narration really ties it into IU. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to have any dialogue or narration in our project for school, so I had to do these two separate cuts.

I really liked this video. I think the music choices were great, both for the main video as well as the 80s inspirational montage.

I had a lot of fun working on getting the old film feel. I tried exporting the video from Final Cut with the Film Filter, but it just didn’t look right. What I ended up doing was setting up a timeline of just alternating dark and light gray, exported this with the Film Filter, then put it on top of my project at about 20% opacity. This made it look much better. Making it an extra layer on top also helped give the entire project a fuzzy feel which really helped the old film look. I used the Bad TV filter to make the title screen jump.

I also really love how the exercise montage turned out. I find it a really funny addition to this project.

The only real problem I found was that I probably should have included a shot of the main character getting off of the bus. It kind of jumps from him getting on the bus to the Recreation Center. But now that I think about that, it would be impossible because the bus doesn’t actually go by the Rec Center. Oh Well!

It’s still really weird hearing my voice on this interview and I feel like I could have done a better job of narrating. Fortunately I was DJ-ing at the student radio station at the time and was able to use their excellent mics and Pro Tools software to record and edit my voice. A bit overkill, but it was a lot of fun to mess with and learn the system.

My involvement: Technical Director

I was able to work as TD in the studio for this one. That was a lot of fun and a new experience for me. We got to use IU’s amazing million dollar studio set up for this shoot, which was really exciting. Unfortunately, they completely revamping the episode and edited it down from the original studio shoot, so my cuts as Technical Director weren’t really all that important!

Anyway, its an interesting little web-show. Its a neat concept, but definitely has its flaws. I’m sure many of these will be fixed down the road as GameZombie gets better at working in the studio.

My involvement: Editor

I was really excited to get this interview. Cliff Bleszinski is probably the biggest name interview GameZombie ever pulled, and our first interview with him went over extremely well. There was a bit of pressure to compete with Jessica Frasher, who edited the first interview with Cliff, but I think I lived up to the standard she had previously set.

I really like the green tint to the interview. The interview was actually shot in a room with that green lighting, I just brightened it up a bit. Before I had brightened it it was green enough to look weird, but not green enough to look cool. I decided it would be fun to keep the green in there rather than try to take it out with color correction.

The text at the beginning of this piece is an improvement on my part. It is less flashy and annoying as much of the texts I used for earlier projects, but it still just doesn’t feel right. I think the problem is that it doesn’t stand out enough and is basically pretty stale.

I have a good use of the pan and scan technique at :30. We were given such gorgeous Hi Res promo photos for this piece that I just had to use them, even if it wouldn’t be noticeable on YouTube. I think they add some good visuals to what Cliff is talking about without taking away from the interview, an important rule I learned the hard way in my Geoff Kieghley edit.

I really, really don’t like the fly-by guy at :42. It was a cool idea to have a visual representing Smash TV meeting Geometry Wars, but it was too cheesy and flew by too fast for anyone to tell what it was (Its actually the character from Smash TV riding the “character” from Geometry Wars). Sometimes I get so set on an idea, that I don’t realize until its too late that it just doesn’t work. I think, however, that I’ve really gotten better at this as time goes on.  

I really like the look I got with those B-Roll glamour shots. They were shot using a small hand-held HD camera that made the footage look like something you’d get off an old Super 8. I increased the contrast and saturation and got a pretty neat looking effect there.

I also really like the yearbook picture while Cliff is talking about high school. It looks good, is relevant, and fun. I think I could have done a much better job of blending his picture into the yearbook. It is pretty obvious that that was photoshopped in and thats always going to bug me.

The TV out effect was nice, albeit a bit unnecessary. I figured out how to do that effect while working on the Kieghley piece and thought I’d give it another shot. It was actually pretty hard to time out because I had to work with several different layers of those white ellipses. Anyways, its kind of cool, and the sound I found was golden!

The quick pan transition from the myspace screenshot could have been a bit cleaner. It jumps a bit and makes the edit pretty obvious. The polaroids turned out great, though. It was all pretty easy to set up in motion, and I really think it paid off with another nice little effect. Again for me, relevance to the interview is very important to me in these silly GameZombie effects, and this one had it.

I also really like the batman part. Its a bit distracting, but Cliff really isn’t saying anything important, and again its relevant to the interview.

The Jaegerbombs part turned out horribly. I should have just left it the way it was in the original footage. Don’t really know what I was thinking on that one!

My involvement: Editor

This is a relatively short piece and there really isn’t much to critique on it. The wonderful zombie shots were footage from the annual Zombie March in Bloomington, IN. I think it worked really well. I like that it still makes me jump when I get to those cuts. The only real mistake in this video was putting in the black and white glamour shots. They were pretty pointless, and the sound effects on them were way too loud.

My involvement: Editor

And now, the controversial Geoff Keighley edit. This video was also featured on <a href=”http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/245427.html”>GameTrailers</a>, and got as high as 7400 views. Unfortunately, while it got an 8.3 rating, it got completely blasted in the comments. A very large part of this problem was simply that the music and sound effects were WAY too loud. Also, the people really did not like all of the effects. This project may have been a bit of a victim to my method of deciding to use GameZombie as an experience to learn a new effect. Did the Geoff Keighley interview really NEED the whole Cloverfield thing? Not really, but in my defense I was trying to go with the GameZombie theme and also trying to creatively cover up the grainy footage. I figured if I made the video seem guerilla style, the poor image quality would fit right in.

All in all, despite the audio I think I did a really good job of capturing that Cloverfield/Blair Witch feel. I think there were some really well done effects in this piece, and I’m happy with what I was able to accomplish. I just think that an interview was not the write setting for these effects, even if it was a zombie themed interview! The pace of the effects throughout the piece was too fast and they were too often.

I really like the overlayed text at :54. This was a really good way to highlight what Geoff was saying, while not being to distracting from the actual interview. Plus it just looked kind of cool!

I also really like the way “Game Head” blows up onto the screen in synch with the music (:29).

The highlights of the other GameTrailers hosts at 1:11 is really poorly done. I thought it would be a cool idea to throw them in and relate back to my last video, but it wasn’t and I should have taken it out.

The text at the end of this one was really good. It was a great idea to but the credits in the “REC” place.