In May this year, (as part of work) I filmed and edited a little campaign video for Mt Evelyn Primary School as part of their road safety project. The project was part of Vic Road's 'Towards Safer Speed Challenge'. The school commissioned an amazing 3D painted artwork of a Platypus that when viewed at the correct angle would float above the ground.
Filmed with the Blackmagic Design 4K Production Camera
3 years ago I met my beautiful girlfriend as part of a film related study tour to China. The year after I flew back to Chongqing. One of the reasons was see my girl and the second was to film an art film for my third year at Deakin University. What resulted was a short film titled 'Strangers'.
When viewing the film as normal you get a certain narrative. But when you play the film backwards while superimposed over the film playing forwards, you get a totally different and more sinister narrative.
It was screened at 2017 Melbourne Underground Film Festival. Filmed on Blackmagic Design 4K Production Camera
Sometimes as part of my work at Yarra Ranges Life TV I get asked to submit footage to some of the biggest TV channels. This was for the ABC as part of their special on author Lynley Dodd. Another one of those 'run around like a ninja and grab what you can' type shoots. Unfortunately having to rely on the lighting of the venue and trying to get what I could. Shot with the Blackmagic Production 4K camera, and Samyang / Rokinon glass.
October last year I had the privilege to DP another Deakin student film. This time for a friend doing their Honours. We spent a week filming near Frankston and Little River. The film 'Rabbits' was recently shown at OxSnax in Melbourne, and is currently being shown over in the UK at Aethetica Short Film Festival in York, and Nottingham International Film Festival. Filmed on the beautiful RED Epic-W 8K
So this little project was done for Advantage Futbol, who are a soccer glove manufacturer. It was one of those cases, where the client wanted it to be filmed in under an hour. Just me and the owner and we quickly capture as much as we can before the grounds keeper came to take the net away. From this extremely short, no lights, run and gun style I was able to create about 7 instagram videos promo out of it. Camera was the Blackmagic Design Production 4K camera.
This was for a short film a few years ago. To be honest I didn't know much about lighting as this was shot during my first year at film school. The project was never released as I guess there wasn't enough material to finish it and it was more of a montage of scenes, with no script to go of. A Chinese friend wrote this short film based on her experiences in Australia. It was filmed on my Blackmagic Design Production 4K camera, and the location was mostly around Deakin University.
So a ‘Musical Machinima’?
Yes. I’ve always loved music and being a musician myself for many years, wanted to incorporate music into the movie somehow. It all started with I was listened to Brand New’s song ‘Play Crack The Sky’. I was picturing a story as I listened to the lyrics. I thought of a guy lost at sea, stranded and cold. I questioned as to why he was trying to get away. Tax envision or child welfare payments were ideas, but no really truly scary enough. So zombies became the next best thing. From there I worked backwards and started filling in the spots. At that same time, I thought about trying animation. I want to get into game development, so in my spare time; I was currently learning all things about modelling, texturing, level design and animation.
What tools did you decide on using?
It was originally going to be filmed with Garry’s Mod [a Half life 2 mod tool]. One day I was home, sick with the flu. To pass the time I thought I’d watch some Youtube videos and came across DasBoSchitt’s channel with his ‘Gmod Idiot Box’ series. As I watched and scanned for more Machinima of this type, I realised that there wasn’t any serious action packed Machinima available. Well not that I could find easily. Nor could I find any that were full length movies [only one I found was ‘War Of The Servers’ by Robert Stonemen]. Then June last year, Valve released their toolset, Source Filmmaker; that they use to film their game trailers. Having seen what it was capable off, I was eager to start using it.
So you’ve never animated before?
No this is my first attempt. First of many things. I never even used Source SDK, but because I wanted to make custom levels, I thought about giving it a go. I remember that it took me a whole weekend just to do the work office [Scene 1, Chorus 1]. But once I got over that learning curve, I was able to build the whole city block [Scene 1, Intro and Verse] the following weekend. Source Filmmaker is such a powerful animating tool, and I recommend anyone to give it a go.
How long did it take to create?
I started in June last year, when the beta for Source Filmmaker was available for everyone. I’d work on it every spare moment I had. When I got home from work, I’d spend 5 hours on it. Weekends would see me put in 14 hours+. I didn’t go out, and even stopped playing games [even those Steam sales tried to draw me back in]. But I loved every minute of it. I was learning and I was being creative. It wasn’t a chore. To date, I’ve spent over 2400 hours in Source Filmmaker, but that includes level creation, filming and rendering out scenes.
So why the choice of music?
For me, and having played in a progressive metal band until recently; people viewed that music as talentless, with no emotion or feeling and thought of it as ‘simply screaming’. I found this frustrating. So I wanted to create a film a film that featured music, from the likes of Slipknot, Killswitch Engage, Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed, and Atreyu, to show the world that heavy music can have feeling and emotion.
