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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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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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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I promised you all something big, so here it is! I invite you to visit Hotcakes New Media, my new video production and design company. There is still a bit of organization left to do before I start taking contracts (getting a business bank account, setting up accounting, and awaiting delivery of my new lighting and chromakey kits) but everything is registered and well underway.

Today marks the official launch of Hotcakes New Media.

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(yes I am sucking up)

Due to our recent move back to Ottawa, and our new house not being ready until December or January, we are in a bit of a quandary. We have been living with MC’s parents for about a week now, and it really isn’t working for us. The biggest issues are due to living in the middle of nowhere… between the gas and the parking, MC and I are wasting a lot of money (i.e. over $300 a month) that needs to be saved for the down payment on the house (not to mention MC losing almost 2 hours of her day traveling). On top of that, the internet connection here in Bourget is incredibly bad, so I’m unable to do some of my work (I need a fast connection for work, to do video conferencing daily). There are a number of other pressing issues that are making this a difficult experience for us.

So here it is; We need help. We really need to have a place to stay that is OC transpo and high-speed internet accessible. We can alternate between where we stay, so if you could put us up for one or two months, it would help us out tremendously. We would be happy to give you $300 each month, pay for the high-speed internet, and help out with cleaning and chores. All we need is a room for our bed and a place for my computer.

So… if you can help, please let us know!

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[note: this post will be moved to the personal category in a few days]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7doanW8fKw]

The video features my sister Sam singing and performing Overprotected by Britney Spears. It was made as a contest entry to win tickets to a Britney Spears concert. This was my second video production ever, and was created using an old VHS tape camera, and a trial of Premere (version 2 I believe!) on the PC. Looking back at it now, it was actually pretty well done considering the technology I was working with. I just can’t help but laugh at the hilariously cheesy transitions I used. Thankfully, I learned my lesson about transitions by the time I made my third video, so nobody had to endure the horror of bad wipes and transitions ever again.

Historical note:
As mentioned, this was my second video production. My first was a video package for my high school graduating art class for the school’s arts gala. I wish I could find a copy of it; Ironically, that gala video featured me naked (though I wasn’t really naked… we just made it look that way), which later became a recurring theme in my OCAD works.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this little piece of history.

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Jack’s Son Models Silver in the Birch Trails.

Good luck.

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