In case you didn’t know, I have a number of sites and blogs I maintain, each with different purposes. Lately I’ve been so busy building the business that I haven’t had time to update this site much, but I have been posting other items all over the place. Here’s a list of where to find me:

iMakeArt – A more general purpose site about me and my conceptual art

A7is – My portfolio site for more commercial works

Ottawa Video Production (and more) Blog – The official Hotcakes blog where I talk about business related announcements and articles

In addition to those sites, there’s also the Hotcakes twitter account @HotcakesOttawa that gets updated several times a day and the Hotcakes Facebook Fan page for major announcements.

So there you have it. Now you can follow me everywhere I digitally go.

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Have you ever wondered what it takes to put a music video together? Do you ever find yourself watching MTV or MuchMusic, eyeing the plethora of visual candy – some good and some just way out there – and say to yourself “What was involved in the making of that video?”  I recently found out as I tagged along with Hotcakes New Media, producers of the new music video “Are You Bulletproof?” by To The Rescue.

Click here to read the full article at CONFRONT Magazine and watch the music video.

I have finally gotten around to importing the footage of the crime scene shoot (formerly known as the accident scene). I am completely blown away by the beautiful lighting, and the superb acting by everyone involved. Shannon and Alfredo’s scene is especially convincing, and both performed with conviction.

You all know the scenario by now. We got Jeff to come up from Toronto to help with the lighting. We got extras, PAs, grips, and makeup artists… and at the last possible instant, literally minutes before shooting, we got a call saying our lead actor was not coming in, and our props and extras were not coming either.

You can read the full story as narrated by the lovely and talented Tina, who was not only documenting the shoot, but jumped right in to fulfill a PA role and assist in the shoot. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a few stills from the actual captured footage that night.

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The second shooting weekend for To The Rescue’s new music video being produced by Hotcakes New Media can now officially be considered a successful shoot. It was, however, a rocky shoot. Want to know why? Keep reading.

Doing night shoots are tricky. Unless you are able to properly block the windows to simulate nighttime, you have to wait until it’s really dark to get your lighting set up correctly. In this case, shooting this scene at Anne and Dave’s house, it was crucial to wait until it was fully dark out before starting (past 9:30pm!) because of the HUGE windows in the space. This led to a very slow start, but ultimately, not really a issue as I had informed people that the shoot would run until midnight (which it did, almost to the minute). Instead, the main issues we faced were due to the small space we were working with, and the performance of our lead female.

First, the small space; Small spaces are always difficult to shoot in. It makes it difficult to set up lighting far enough away to avoid hot spots on the skin (completely white areas due to too much light) while providing a decent fill light to make the lighting look natural. In this case, we had to soften our lights with frosted gels because they were too harsh, and place lights in precarious positions in the stairs. For the entrance, we had to literally hang a light with a softbox over the stair railing. The good news is, Dave and I are getting better (faster?) at lighting, so everything turned out very nice. The only issue is one shot where the light is a little too bright (at the entrance, directly below the light), but I was able to fix it in post.

Second, the acting; Jay, our lead male, is a natural. His performance was very consistent and very well acted. Our female lead, Kandisse, was not as natural. It was a little more difficult to get the performance the way we wanted. In all fairness, after looking back at the original script (before the editing), the dialogue was not 100% believable to begin with, so it made matters worse than they should have been. The issue was that she was not conveying the emotion we wanted for the scene, which was hurt feelings driving to anger. Instead, she was portraying it more as self-pity and despair, with long drawn out sentences that felt completely manufactured. After taking a break from shooting and Dave going over the inflection we were looking for with the actors, we on a roll, and the performance was becoming more honest.

With all the issues we had in shooting, we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to put together a believable scene with the footage we had. But it turns out we have more than enough footage to put together a great intro scene with nice pacing and flow. The editing is now done, and it’s official; The scene works very well and Dave and I are both happy with it. I should also mention that Lorelei, the producer for Moonrise Productions, was on set to help, and provided the scene saving gels for our lighting. She has a great eye, and noticed a few glitches I didn’t catch while looking at my monitor.

So you want more pictures? Of course you do! (but crafty people will find the video on YouTube if they know how to search well enough)

Here you go:

On to July 4th for the big accident scene shoot.

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Notable updates to this version include a proper full 15 second animation, updated mountains, more “shine”, and a fade out at the end to reveal just the company name. Note that the music is just a temporary filler until the proper music is written.

(Original post)
I put together a rough (yet completely polished) draft of the intro video for Moonrise Productions (the company Dave is releasing his short film under). It is actually a 15 second intro, just like the Hotcakes “chomp” intro, but it got sped up a bit when I exported, and the YouTube version loses a lot of detail (like the sparkling letters). The final High Definition version will be a full 15 seconds. Let me know what you think, and if you have any ideas for improvement!

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After a long wait, and large amount of planning, Hotcakes New Media‘s first weekend of shooting was finally started this past weekend. Dave and I just wrapped the “bar scene” and all the live band footage. Keep reading to see more pictures and find out how it went.

The video shoot was spread out over 2 days. Saturday night was filming the crowd, live band performances, and the final acting scene (cop chases criminal into the bar, criminal tried to get lost in the crowd, gets taken down by the cop). We started the night with the live performances of the band. We needed to run the song 5 times, each from a different camera angle (middle of the crowd, back/left, behind the band, and two roving steadicam shots of the band and the crowd). Those shots went amazingly well, though incredibly slow. The “crowd” was not made up of paid extras, just the band’s friends. So in between shots, they all left to get drinks and go party upstairs. It took forever to get everyone back in place each time. Of course, since that extended everything, it meant that people were getting increasingly more drunk as the night went on. We ended the night by attempting to film the acting scenes. By then, the crowd was drunk, rowdy and belligerent. Things were getting out of hand, so we had very little time to shoot. We gathered all the crowd we could and just shot everything as fast and as furious as we could, hoping that we got what we needed. It was hectic, and messy, and I had all kinds of alcohol spilled on me, but I think we got most of what we needed.

As a result of the drunken partying, people were stepping on the camera’s cords. The camera was unplugged abruptly on a couple of occasions, which caused us to lose some good footage. We also had a number of people in the crowd looking directly into the camera (which made those shots unusable). But as I said… there was enough footage to put the scene together (but just barely).

Now we are on to planning and shooting the final 4 acted scenes of the video, including one huge scene with police cruisers, bloody bodies, smoke machines and a cast of 10-15 actors. So far everything has gone relatively well, and the footage we have is unbelievable. I forgot just how amazing my camera is. Doing this video shoot has reminded me how much I love it. And Dave did a fantastic job of working the camera in question. I think we work well as a team… I was like the director watching the monitor to ensure the footage and shots were clean and we got the shots we needed, and he was co-director and camera operator. Judging from the footage, it looks like that setup worked quite nicely.

A few more pictures of the footage we captured are below. For more information on Hotcakes New Media, visit our site at http://www.hotcakesnewmedia.com .

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EDIT: More pictures from Day 2!

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After looking at my design a bit more and analysing the comments on my submission at DBH, I decided to re-work the Temptation Tree design a bit. I did 3 small but ultimately important changes to the design.

1- I made the whole design 5 colors instead of the original 8. This allows me to submit it to other design sites or print it myself if I choose to go that path (I am looking for resellers at the moment… I need to secure 50 orders before I print the design). I did so by using some halftone techniques to retain the semblance of shading.

2- I changed the placement of the main print design. I always felt it looked better with the girl at the bottom near the edge of the shirt. I didn’t do that in my original design because it left a large void at the top of the chest which looked awkward. So that leads me to…

3- I added the word “Temptation” to the upper chest. This rounds out the design, helps define the concept a bit more for those who are a little slow, and adds a cheeky undertone to the shirt (like the person wearing the shirt is the temptation).

I’ve submitted the new design to a new site called TeeFury. They have an interesting concept; They put up a new design each day, and that design is only available for one single day. Once the time is up, you can never order that shirt from them again. The bad news is, there’s no huge prize money. They do however give one dollar per t-shirt sold in that 24 hour period. And the good news is, the shirts sell for really cheap! On average, the shirts are only $9US. There’s no voting process on this one, it’s up to the site’s curators to decide if they like it and will print it. I’ll keep you all updated if it happens to get printed.

A7 is (making things better)

This is my latest t-shirt, based on a tattoo design I created. The original tattoo work was designed as a half sleeve, and was influenced by a number of tribal styles, including traditional North American tribal, Samoan, Maori, Indian/Thai, and more.

Conceptually, the work represents the growing fusion of cultures in the global village that the world has become. It also symbolizes the erosion of tradition and indigenous cultures.

I hope you enjoy the work. I’ll be posting it for voting soon.

A7 is (cultural)

I just finished a new artwork I’ve been working on. I was sitting around the other day, wondering (jokingly of course) what happens to all these video game characters once their “fame” is over. I imagined a world where a down-on-his-luck Pacman would be begging for “cherries” while the corporate “ghosts” go to work.

This artwork is a lot “deeper” than it appears. It’s a witty social commentary on the state of our current economic and social climate. We have workers (like Pacman) who have been doing one single job for years, and they are now forced out of the job market, while the corporations’ top executives enjoy high pays and bonuses.

This work has not yet been submitted, so the final design may change a bit. Any suggestions welcome.

The design has been updated based on comments by the DBH community. The old design can be seen below. The new design has been submitted and is currently awaiting approval. Voting will begin soon.

A7 is (pacman)

It’s official. I have just submitted my very first t-shirt design to Design By Humans. It is currently awaiting approval. I will update this post with a link to view and vote for the design as soon as it is available. It has now been approved! Please visit my design at: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/53690 and VOTE. You will have to sign up to vote, and please only vote once. Once you are signed up you will be able to easily vote on my future designs (and any other designs you like as well).

The artwork is a modern take on Adam and Eve’s Tree Of Knowledge, but the temptation is a cupcake (much more tempting and yummy than an apple). It also has hints of Little Red Riding Hood and other old tales. The concept revolves around temptation and trust within storytelling.

I hope you enjoy it!

Help spread the word about my art! Send people to A7 is : Art” href=”http://www.a7is.com”>this site, or get them to follow me on Twitter!

A7 is (pimping his wares)

Image of original drawing above.