Sunday, November 12, 2006

boxViolet's "PUNDING" video is UP!

Bless me, father, for I have slacked. It's been a month since my last blog post.

Actually, it's been quite the opposite around here lately, and Red Hatchet Films has gone into hyperdrive over a new project I'll be talking about soon. For the moment, I'm happy to announce that the "Punding" video is edited and online! "Punding" is a song by boxViolet, a trio of hottie indie-rockers based here in La-La whom I've grown to love. The video was directed by Michael Wormser (who kindly gave me co-director credit, thanks Mike!!), who I worked with previously on the "Shrimp & Cookies" video for singer Mooney Starr. Michael is one of the hardest-working guys I know, and his videos rock! He's setting himself up to be a major player in the film biz and I'm hoping to ride his coattails straight to the top :).

The finished video is a combination of my original cut, the director's cut, and the band's, and I think it strikes a nice balance. Enjoy!


14 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Holy smokes! That's quite an accomplishment, Michael! Congratulations!!

You really managed to wrap a whole world around these characters. I'm impressed with stunts in the alleyway -- those falls really came off well. All the little animal observers (moth, rats), really added richness. And the tears were wonderfully wet and soppy. (Just a few of the details that leapt out.)

I'm curious about the establishing shots of the city... How did you assemble the city scape? And then the pan through the buildings -- I can't identify the texture.

Any chance we'll get making-of posts when you have time?

1:25 PM  
Blogger UbaTuber said...

Great vid, congrats! And its definitely nice to see you posting again :)

I'd like to see some behind-the-scenes posts or pics too....

10:35 PM  
Blogger Michael Granberry said...

Hey guys! Thanks for the props..I'll definitely post some behind-the-scenes stuff as I can.

The city was something of a compromise...it wasn't in the original storyboards, since I figured we had neither the time or the money to build a city. The director really started to want a city when he saw how the rest of the video looked, but there wasn't any money left to do it. I ended up slicing up some old foamcore to make buildings that were visible from the corner and covering them sculptamold, which is cheap and great for texturizing. I glued on some little windows (which the after-effects editor put some lights in). For the panning shot, I just slowly dragged the buildings past the camera (note to self: build a camera dolly).

11:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah! Sculptamold -- thanks!

...I know I've seen at least two or three tutorials on how to make dollies for stopmo. You want I should dig up the links?

2:41 AM  
Blogger Michael Granberry said...

Sven, yes! That would be incredibly helpful right now! Camera mobility is one of my biggest issues which I'm trying to overcome...

9:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here's one link...

http://www.stopmotionworks.com/articles/stopmocamdolly.htm

I know I've seen easier designs... Still looking.

11:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK -- I found the other ones I remembered.

(1) There's this one, which is less helpful than I'd hoped:

http://www.rondexter.com/stop_motion_animation/dollies_for_animation.htm

I found that link via Ron Dexter's site, which has a lot of interesting stuff:

http://www.rondexter.com/

(2) And there's a stopmo motion rig on these two pages:

http://www.skullwell.com/blog/2005_04_01_skullwell_archive.html

http://www.skullwell.com/blog/2005_05_01_skullwell_archive.html

...If you google "how to make dolly" you get a bunch of further options, although not specifically for stopmo purposes. It seems that the real key here is to have a long threaded rod which turns, and a nut that's fixed onto a moving platform of some sort.

12:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Afterthought: Some of these designs use aluminum tubes as tracks. An alternative I've seen is to use PVC tubes, which are much easier to cut.

12:37 PM  
Blogger Michael Granberry said...

Wow, I feel like a kid in a candy store. Thanks man...I'm looking forward to this project.

12:00 AM  
Blogger Darkmatters said...

A simple way to get camera movement of up to 11" one way and 7" on the other axis is to get a machinist's table. It's made to clamp onto a drill press or a milling machine and it has two hand cranks (they advance threaded rods, so basically it's a ready-made dolly). I use one as a component of my Camerajack.

2:19 AM  
Blogger Darkmatters said...

Not only have you made a great video, but you've introduced me to a new favorite band. Box Violet is incredible! Best band I've heard since Mastodon (and i can listen to them a lot longer than Mastodon). I downloaded their album through iTunes.

I also looked up what punding means... pretty intense. I guess you researched it before making the video. It makes for a cool sort of neurotic/obsessive/compulsive type of activity, great for a music video - assembling, disassembling.....

3:37 AM  
Blogger Michael Granberry said...

Actually I couldn't find the word on dictionary.com so I thought they had made it up...I guess I doped out the definition thru the lyrics because the putting together of the broken doll was the basis for the story, and the band really liked that.

I'll tell the boxViolets they have a new fan! They'll appreciate it!

7:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

very nice. it is incredible how you can produce all this work so quickly. did you end up working in hi-def like you mentioned before? P.S. i like the song as well. to me, it has a sound reminiscent of Interpol.

5:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just did a websearch for "punding" and the first listing I looked at was on Wikipedia:

Punding is human activity characterized by compulsive fascination with and performance of repetitive, mechanical tasks, such as assembling and disassembling, collecting, or sorting household objects. For example, punding may consist of activities such as:
collecting pebbles and lining them up as perfectly as possible,
disassembling doorknobs and putting them back together again,
People engaging in punding find immersion in such activities comforting, even when it serves no purpose, and generally find it very frustrating to be diverted from them.
Punding is the result of dopamine overactivity. It is commonly associated with side effects of drugs used against Parkinson's disease and with the use of methamphetamine (in which context it is known as tweaking), which increases dopamine release and blocks its uptake. In Parkinson's Disease it can be cured by lowering the medication dose, or adding (atypical) antipsychotics, which act by counteracting the effect of dopamine.


- Darkstrider (having computer issues, can't log in)

5:13 PM  

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