Miniature Helicopter Experiment part II - Making the Rotors Spin

Digitally attaching spinning rotors to the helicopter.

Making things move in post, including a hovering robot.

See the retro robot and the Crazy Fishman both in action in

Onyx Origins on Amazon Prime!

http://www.amazon.com/v/hocusfocusproductions

Stock Footage, Don't Knock it.

I bought some very expensive, at least by standards, stock footage way back when I was working in Digital 8 and miniDV.  Even now I occasionally use some of the more impressive, hard to get, realisitic standard definition clips in my HD productions.  I think of it like the old T.V. shows that used to cut 16mm military footage into a show shot on 35mm filmstock.  The quality isn't the match I'd like, but it's the only way a $15 episode of "The Simplest Things" is going to have a convincing shot of the planet Earth from space.  Using the footage as backgrounds helps a bit too, because you can play with the focus.  A softer focus on something that isn't the focal point of  your scene works pretty well.

Lately though I've been picking up a LOT of HD stock footage from a few sources.  There are companies that give it away for "free" on DVD.  Actually they charge about 3x what shipping costs and make their money by sending you the DVDs, but it's still very affordable and useful stuff.  Mostly I get CG iconic images, particl F/X or light and energy F/X from them.  Can I do a lot of these things myself?  Probably, but to be honest, I'm not really a graphics guy, so even the stuff I can do takes me longer than it should.  If I can save 3 or 4 hours of work and have the machines rendering stuff I'm being paid for rather than some abstract HD graphic I may want down the line and all for less than 10 bucks, it's worth it to me.

I also shoot the heck out of the world around me in HD to gain as much as useful footage as possible.  You've got to be in a public place, try to keep faces and logos out of it and not cause a disturbance, but you'd be amazed at the stuff you can get, especially if you travel.  Wildlife, planes, landscapes, construction equipment at work and weather are all things to have your arsenal.  I carry a small (slightly bigger than pocket) HD camera with me at all times and download a few great clips every month.  The stuff my Dad filmed while we were on our flight lesson has already made it into two features.

This past week I was capturing footage from a company called "Videoblocks".  Short clips and under the agreement you have to "change them significantly" to use them in your project.  Basically, screening people or objects in, editing them to music and using them within a bigger project should cover you. 

I've been planning on doing a "bloody" version of our HFP logo for awhile.  It consisted of shooting syrup blood dripping onto plexi at an angle in front of a white background and keying that into the existing three frame film logo.  Or I thought about pouring fake blood onto a printed version of the logo upisde down and running it backwards to make it look as if it filled with blood.

Between client work, trying to schedule my own projects, shooting the episodes of the online shows and writing, I hadn't gotten around to that for the past 4 months or so.  Then this week I capture a cool new set of flickering film frames as stock footage.  I went through my other clips and realized I had everything I needed to make this work.

The finished product uses almost all stock elements, including library music, which we'll get to in another blog.

I thought this version worked really well, but decided some clients may not want this opening a video of their family pictures or business's last big event.  I also figured shows like "The Simplest Things", which are more family oriented shouldn't open this way, so I made a second version.  You can see that on the main page of my site: http://www.hocfocprod.com/

Hello

I'm trying to expand my blogging and I noticed that a few my friends use blogspot, so I thought I'd give it a try.  My Blog over at FearNet has been kind of random and I'm going to try and keep that one more horror related.  Since my next few projects are sci-fi and only a few cross into horror, I figured my production diaries might need a home of their own.  This is it.

This is where I'll update you guys on what I'm working on now and what I hope to be shooting soon.  The magazines we're putting together and so on.

Of course, being me, I'll probably go off topic a lot, so that "Production Diaries" title may change, but for now, that's what I'll be doing here.

My blog under "Adom" over at FearNet will  still be updated on Wednesdays/Thursdays as regularly as possible.  This Blog, however, will probably be updated pretty erratically, so I suggest subscribing if you can figure out how.  I'll be linking this to the "About Us" page at http://www.hocfocprod.com/, so you can always find it there too.

So, today Nancy helped me shoot the "Premiere" of  our new sub-web series, "The Simplest Things".  I put "Premiere" in quotes, because while this will the first episode of the show a short film many of you have seen, "Alien Doors" is likely to be recut into an episode as well.  It was, after all, the inspiration for the show.  I call it a "sub-web series" because "The Simplest Things" (let's call it TST) will be part of "The Weird World of HFP".  Around every Wednesday we'll be posting a new episode of that.  Sometimes it will be "Cult Goddess Magazine - TV", sometimes it will be and archived episode of  "Jason's Jungle" and when possible it will be a short episode of  TST.

TST follows a stranded Alien as he tries to figure out how things work on our planet.  He'll have run ins with several people as the show develops, but he'll be spending a lot of time in my house baffling a character I'll play.

The episode that will go online next week deals with the hazards of texting and driving.  How does that fit into our format of an Alien fish out of water?  You'll have to watch to find out, but seeing me in the mulletish wig on an alien examining table should be reason enough to watch.

After that the next episode or two of  "Weird World...." will be a CGM-TV interview with Debbie Rochon.

I'm trying to build  up a few episodes ahead of time because I have some 3D conversions in the pipeline, a three weekend shoot of  "File Error" to schedule and the third installment of the "Alien Vengeance" features to finish writing, fund and shoot.  More on that later.

Meanwhile, check out the latest episode of "The Weird World of HFP" here: http://www.blip.tv/file/4649572

Oh, and for a limited time, you can check out the first "Alien Vengeance" free right at the website: http://www.alienvengeance.com/ .  It's important for people to catch up with it because a new web series is coming the middle of this year that will pick up after the first feature, but before the second.

Lots more to come, so subscribe.