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Siliconmaster
November 29th, 2009, 11:26 PM
When talking with Reaper in NYC today, I realized I'd never shown any of my video work, which is really what I do the most. Halo and 3d stuff is merely a side project, as evidenced by the rate of progress on those projects. :v:

I'm going to create a portfolio of everything I have ever done, in the order I did it. It will take a while, as I have to upload everything to youtube, but I hope people will be interested, and not only watch me improve as an artist, but provide critiques on new stuff as it appears.

First off, my first ever movie: Stweird. I had just bought my video camera, and I was staring at the fish mobile. Behold a strange and amusing short film. Also, the first time I had edited anything- thus began my interest in editing video to music.

Stweird- 2004- 8th grade
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Soon after I made that trippy vid, I found a summer film camp called Hollywood in Vermont, which was led by a guy who had been part of the industry and now teaches at Dartmouth. The movies were always amusing, and generally made little sense. Unfortunately, this one has the very end cut off, but it didn't exactly clarify anything anyway. If I ever find a version with the end I'll replace this one. I'll also add a spoilered (lol) plot summary for those who actually care.

Clockwork- Summer '04- Hollywood in Vermont Session 1
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So, the original plot (sort of explained in the flashback mere seconds after the video cuts out), was that way back when, Clockwork and Mark were friends. Clockwork walks in on Mark and his girlfriend, Sally, so he knocks out Mark. For no apparent reason, Sally knocks out Clockwork with a hair brush and sticks his fingers in a fan. Hence the clockwork fingers. Later, Mark wakes up, sees a gun lying on the ground, and blood, and assumes Clockwork killed Sally.

Now, in current time- Sally calls Clockwork, and tells him to kill Mark. She is also the secretary who tells Mark to kill Clockwork. However, Mark is about to kill Clockwork WHEN:

Sally walks in and tries to kill them both. Clockwork manages to shoot her, then tells Mark "I forgive you." He walks out and closes the door. Cue epic music.
Ok, so that one made even less sense than I remembered. Ah well- early movies are always amusingly terrible. We did bring that character back in a later movie as an easter egg, so remember Clockwork of the mechanical fingers.
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That same summer, my family took a trip to visit the grandparents in Colorado, and I took a lot of footage of hiking in both Colorado and Utah. The result is a half-hour long video, set to music. I'm not sure if anyone has the patience to sit through it, but it's a decent video.

Colorado '04- Summer '04
http://vimeo.com/7890314


After that I took Hollywood in Vermont again, this time in their winter session. The result is a far superior movie to Clockwork, although it is still quite simple. We also forgot a crucial shot- a mint lying in Sally's bloody hand. And yes, we managed to put girls with the name "Sally" in more than one movie. Call it a useless inside joke. Note that the guy is also "Marcus", similar to "Mark Foley", from Clockwork.
Of Murders and Madmen- Winter '04/'05- Hollywood in Vermont Session 2
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Around this time our group from camp began filming March of the Killer Rabbit, the first of 3 large projects that would come to define my high school years. The below paragraph is spoilered for longish explanation- interesting and relevant to this forum, actually, but disruptive to the video narrative.
The second of these 3 large projects was Precipice, which many of you are now familiar with. I discovered Halo 1 and CE this year, and began to make my own map. I of course had no idea what I was doing, and after a year of dedicated work I gave up. Some of you commented that it looked like a 2005 map. Well, it was. :v:

More about the third project later.
March of the Killer Rabbit spanned at least 3 years of on-and-off filming, and although it was never fully filmed, I finally cleaned it up and filled the gaps with narrative text. Here is the result, split into two 10-minute sections. Keep in mind that though we started filming at this point, other scenes were filmed as late as my junior year. This was also my first project working with other people on our own.
March of the Killer Rabbit- 2004 through 2007- Independent Project
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March of the Killer Rabbit is probably one of my favorites in terms of its absurdity and humor. My dad played General Aahnold, and he could never quite get the accent right, but the intent came through pretty well. I'm also in it- I get punched out after giving Aahnold a high five instead of the pen.

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The last movie I made in the normal Hollywood in Vermont camp was called Immortality. It's longish, and not only has a decent plot, but is actually understandable! :haw: The airplane footage I took on the same trip as Colorado '04.
Immortality- Summer '05- Hollywood in Vermont Session 3
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After giving up on Precipice after a long struggle with tool (see spoilered paragraph above for more on this), I realized just how much work mappers put into their stuff, and how much love and effort goes into video games in general. I sat down and decided to make a tribute to their work. What I made was the first version of A Halo CE Roadtrip.
A Halo CE Roadtrip- Summer '05
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Now, to discuss the third major project of high school, Dust to Dust. Coming off the heels of Precipice and the majority of the Rabbit filming, I was looking for a new project when I met [EJ]Bean, known then as Hailstorm, on Gruntmaps. He had an idea for a "war of the worlds miniseries" which sounded sort of cool. I wrote a few pages, he liked it, and the project grew from there. The first trailer was filmed completely from scratch, and had been written before I even joined the group(duo?). As such it was cool, but lacked any real plot, except for a few scenes that I had written.

Dust to Dust Trailer #1- Fall '05
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I'm going to take a chance and upload the entire script for Dust to Dust. I made it into a .pdf file, so people can read it, and I theoretically can keep my claim on the words themselves. Looking back on it, it isn't brilliant, has terrible formatting, and lacks a whole lot of character development. However, I'm still proud of it, and I hope whoever reads it likes it. It can be read in just a few hours- don't be overwhelmed by the length.

Dust to Dust Script- Fall '05 through Summer '06
http://www.filefront.com/15033779/Dust%20to%20Dust%20Master.pdf

To save this poor first post, I will now go to a "part 2" post.

Dwood
November 30th, 2009, 06:49 PM
You do not have more to show off? :P

Siliconmaster
November 30th, 2009, 06:51 PM
I'm only getting started. :D I still have a hell of a lot of Dust to Dust-related stuff, a few more school projects, and then my current college stuff. I only hope people have enough patience to watch it all. Haha.

Siliconmaster
November 30th, 2009, 08:07 PM
HERE BE GALLERY POST PART 2.

I suppose at this point I should write a brief (if possible) history of Dust to Dust. After Bean and I started pre-production, we talked with a few other people and found IceDragon, aka Ara, who joined up to help build custom sets in Halo CE. Over the course of that year, he built an entire city block or three of North Galeton, the primary set for the first few episodes. This progress was noted on gbx with much interest (http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=59725) (and my silly attempts at D2D promotion), but because we never released anything the thread died and we faded back to obscurity. The group, of course, kept working, and preparing set after set for filming. I tweaked bipeds to have different textures, animations, etc. I still have almost every, if not all the sets we built in my maps folder, but last time I checked Ice didn't want to publicly release them for fear of them being ripped and exploited.

Our plan all along had been to do everything we could ingame, then use 3ds max to animate the few things which were impossible (at the time) in Halo. However, then Ice announced that he had someone to help us with the animating. That someone was Whiplash Daemon. He convinced me that with him doing the animating, we could easily do everything in animation, and also make it look a lot better than in Halo 1.

We spent 7 months prepping stuff for animation.

5 of those were working on a short, but illogically complicated trailer, the production of which had been plagued by rendering errors, rendering times, and file transfer from person to person. We finally got that blasted thing finished and posted it here (http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=6651).

What followed was 3 pages of backpeddling as I realized what a waste that year had been. Timo gave me my only -rep ever. :( Though it was probably a good slap to reality. After that, Dust to Dust remained dormant until the end of my Freshman year of college. Antediluvia, the group making the project, slowly drifted apart.

And without further ado,
Dust to Dust Trailer #2- Late Summer '07
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My senior year of high school, I had exhausted all summer camps of the filming variety. However, there was a class called "Mass Communication". This turned out to be a history course with movie projects. These projects were extremely quick and messy, rarely with a script and usually filmed in just a few hours. Even so, the class was a lot of fun.

The first project we filmed in Mass Comm was called The Writer. We filmed it in less than 45 minutes, with no script, and barely any idea of what we were going to do. For that, it turned out pretty well. It was filmed, like all the rest of my movies up until then, on my Canon ZR60.
The Writer- Fall '07
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The second movie was filmed in 2 class periods, and video quality notwithstanding, it's actually one of my favorites for its simplicity.
Underpass- Fall '07
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The third Mass Comm movie was Elevator. This was a silly, but simple indoor movie, as it had become snowy outside, making it hard to film. All the dialogue was also improv, which made the movie hard to edit and make understandable.
Elevator- Winter '07/'08
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The last group project we did in Mass Comm was a bizarre, semi-finished movie involving a kidnapping, secret agents (of which I am one), and an overgrown child. By this point my faithful ZR60 was starting to die, and the audio port was buzzing, resulting in a terrible high-pitched whine.
Dubious Intentions- Winter '07/'08
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The plot of this one isn't even worth spoilering, so I'll just explain it. The secret agents and the kidnappers were working together to steal Larry, then "recover" him for the reward. We forgot to actually film the last scene, so I had to fake it with editing. - _ -

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The last film project in that class was the class final, basically a giant semi-improved group project. We weren't allowed to script anything (idk why), but we could do general day planning. I became the project leader since I actually knew what I was doing. Even so, I knew it was going to be hilariously bad because of the lack of planning. To my great chagrin they loved me for it anyway. Behold the most ridiculously dreadful movie I have ever made, but not from any fault of mine. :P I made do with that I had. It's too long to go on youtube, so I uploaded it to vimeo.
Not Another Superhero Movie- Spring '08
http://www.vimeo.com/7945757

Con
November 30th, 2009, 10:13 PM
Stweird:pcgaming:

Siliconmaster
December 2nd, 2009, 05:12 PM
All right, I've uploaded all the large stuff up until college, with the exception of a LOT of Dust to Dust stuff (never really shown before), and a few videos I don't have with me. Next I'll get the first few college videos up, and once I have all of those set up, I'll do a D2D dump. Test renders, 3d stuff, shot WIPs, etc. This thread may branch out at that point to include still pictures, as there's less video to show in those areas.

Siliconmaster
December 15th, 2009, 04:22 PM
Gallery Post 3: College Stuff

I finally have enough time to upload the last of the non-D2D related videos. When I got to college, my first film class was with Professor Hoffman, the human equivalent of a slow droning typewriter. Our video projects were pretty amateurish, mainly because of the restrictions he placed upon us, assuming we knew nothing about anything.

Our first project involved taking 10 moving images. Horray. I won't even bother to post that one. Oh wait, I can't. Because he made us edit in-camera. :ugh:

Our second project was to find a scene in a movie with very little dialogue and try to replicate the pacing, the camera angles, and the feel. We picked a scene from the remake of "When A Stranger Calls". It was filmed with one of my group member's camera because he didn't want to use the school's cameras. I currently use the school cameras, for good reason.
When A Stranger Calls Video Project- Fall '08
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The best video project we did last year was a documentary, where we had to pick someone interesting and make a film about their life. I chose one of my suitemates because he was theoretically from Australia, and he was easy to film. As it turned out, he was faking the whole thing, and he was only using his accent to get women. He's finally given up this charade, but this video is a remnant of that time period.
Nick Interview- Spring '08
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This semester (Fall '09), I took Production I, and finally it was a class where we got to use equipment, microphones, lights, and actual actors, instead of friends. Our first movie was called "The Tic Toc Diner". It's an annual project, where the professor takes a script written by a friend and makes the entire class work as one large film crew to film it. I was one of the camera men. In post, each of us edited our own copy of it. The following is my edit. As for what the script means, take your pick. We had no idea. It was also filmed in letterbox, because our teacher hates technology and doesn't believe anything does anamorphic.

The Tic Toc Diner- Fall '09
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We learned a lot from Tic Toc, the most basic and important being that we couldn't make a film by ourselves, no matter how hard we could try.
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The second project was a little less structured. We split into groups of 4 or 5, and everyone got the same script. The script, entitled "You're Late", was all subtext, and there was no actual plot. Our assignment was to figure out what the scenario was, and to film it so the script actually made sense. We did a fairly decent job, although we had no idea how to really light a scene yet and we forgot extension cords. As such it was a nice trial run for our final project. This was also filmed in letterbox because I didn't feel like arguing with the teacher.
You're Late- Fall '09
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Our class final for Production I was far more organized and well-executed than any other movie I've been a part of. Our strengths appear to lie in comedy-horror, so we wrote a story involving a hobo, a trash can, and a few possible zombies. We're quite proud of the result, and I'm happy to show it off.
Hobophobia- Winter '09
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Hobophobia Blooper Reel
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thehoodedsmack
December 15th, 2009, 04:47 PM
Hold a microphone over her head. You're getting too much background noise, and a very weak pickup of her voice.

Siliconmaster
December 15th, 2009, 04:52 PM
Hold a microphone over her head. You're getting too much background noise, and a very weak pickup of her voice.

That's ironic, actually, because for that project we weren't allowed to use a microphone. In fact, the professor would have preferred we not have any sound at all. We ended up just using the audio from the camera mic, which is obviously rather terrible. I'll post the interview documentary next, which has a little better audio, and when I get to our current videos you'll see the huge difference in video quality and audio quality.

Mostly huge. We still have scenes now and then which have audio issues, but we're learning.

Corndogman
December 17th, 2009, 06:53 PM
Nick is my Idol, just saying. I've been meaning to test out my Australian accent on people who don't know me.

Siliconmaster
December 21st, 2009, 09:39 PM
Nick is my Idol, just saying. I've been meaning to test out my Australian accent on people who don't know me.

Haha. If we weren't the gullible party, I'd say the idea is hilarious.
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We finally finished our Production I final, and it is now up on youtube, listed in the correct place in the gallery. If you're only going to watch one of my videos, this is the one. It reflects my current skill set, as well as the skills and teamwork of our entire film crew. The colors and brightness is a little odd on youtube, but once it finishes processing it should look better. The blooper reel will be online soon as well.

Dwood
December 21st, 2009, 10:12 PM
DO IT AGAIN, AND DO IT RIGHT THIS TIME!!! lol!!!!!

Siliconmaster
December 22nd, 2009, 01:42 AM
Glad you liked it. :P

I've also added the blooper reel to the gallery page. It's pretty dang amusing, if silly.

Edit: It got rejected- 11 minutes. - _ - I'll trim it a little and reupload it.

Edit edit: Reuploaded now, and fixed.

Siliconmaster
February 26th, 2011, 08:38 PM
Was messing around with Dreamscape, a plugin for 3ds max. I took a large unused piece designed for Precipice in, and threw this together.

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/1700/forerunnerocean.jpg

All in all, not that much time to do, but it looks pretty cool. Comments?

ThePlague
February 26th, 2011, 11:30 PM
Seems like it'd look better if the camera was up higher, and showed less water. The structure would seem bigger.

Siliconmaster
February 27th, 2011, 01:17 AM
Good idea. How's this look?

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/3253/forerunnerocean2.jpg

ThePlague
February 27th, 2011, 01:35 AM
Way better. The clouds near the sunset seem a little long and thin though.

TVTyrant
February 27th, 2011, 11:42 AM
Reminds me a lot of the Bioshock intro, with the tower rising from the sea. The second one seems much warmer than the first. Not as dreary.

Siliconmaster
March 24th, 2011, 11:25 AM
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Anyone remember this old project? It's where my sig comes from. Found a whole bunch of old renders of varying quality and entertainment, thought I'd put them up for public viewing.