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Behind the Scenes of My Interview With Keisha Jordan

By on June 2, 2011 in After Effects, LinkedIn, Premier Pro, social media, YouTube

Our final project assignment for my DC489 “The Big Picture” class was to interview a person in the field of entertainment. I organized my project by prospecting my LinkedIn connections list for potential interview candidates. I specifically researched some of the artists that I have reached out to via social media and found a couple of candidates with interesting profiles whose careers I wanted to know more about. Senior Art director Keisha Jordan of Common Ground Marketing was one of those who responded.

A couple of things stood out about Keisha. First, her artsy profile picture caught my attention. Instead of a head shot she uses a hand sketch of her face as her profile picture on LinkedIn. That instantly made her stand out from pretty much everyone else on my list (See why you should never leave your profile picture space blank?). It was proof enough to me that she was a serious artist so she was an immediate candidate. The other factor was that we could talk shop about the digital tools we use for our different artistic pursuits. Here’s the interview. Take a look and I’ll continue on the other side.

 

 

I mention the effectiveness of a good profile picture for a particular reason. In the case of scheduling Keisha for filming we agreed to meet at the Harold Washington Library. If you’ll take a close look at her sketch, it looks just like the lady in video. I knew exactly who she was as she stepped off the escalator and we headed to our meeting room. If you have any artistic leanings I recommend you use her idea as inspiration if you want to try something a little different for your profile.

As far as project logistics flowed, we rearranged chairs in the meeting room to stage her against one of the walls. I asked more questions than included in the final cut because I had a fifteen minute time limit for the class presentation so you’re hearing about 1/3 to 1/2 of them here. I used my SONY Handycam for filming and had Keisha reposition her chair so I could include a couple of different perspective views of her in the final cut of the film.

For post production I imported three clips of film into Adobe Premier Pro. I typically use After Effects just because I’m used to it but it’s not really a complete film editing program. It’s specifically designed for effects and animation and happens to have some good basic film making features. Premier Pro though is Adobe’s full fledged editing package (all the cutting, audio, color correction and other features of Final Cut Pro for you Mac people) so I made the choice to jump in and use it full tilt for the first time.

After filming, Keisha provide me a few PDF’s of some of her digital ad work and some personal paintings which I faded into the film at different points to demonstrate her skills. The white walls of the meeting room made for a lot of glare in the film so I was able to use color correction to ramp it down. In my first rough cut of the film I created a QuickTime and imported it into After Effects to create opening and closing credits on either end of it (again, because I was used to doing that in After Effects). Fortunately I got bumped to another class day on the presentation rotation and my copy of Adobe Premier Pro CS4, Classroom In a Book arrived in the mail so I learned how to use the title feature within the package to create the credits. So this is my first fully contained Premier Pro production.

I enjoyed this project because I was able to expand my technical skill which as always the objective but also I had the opportunity to network with another professional in the field which was our professor Dan Pal‘s objective. So what do you think of one of Chicago’s art directors on the rise?

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Subscribe to Your Favorite YouTube Channel

By on May 26, 2011 in General Interest, YouTube

Do you need a simple way to include your favorite YouTube clips in a blog post or to share on social media? Easy. Just “Subscribe” to your favorite YouTube movie maker’s channel. You can stay abreast of their latest creations and use the “Embed” code to include their video in your posts.

More specifically, the Embed code is used to post the operable video on your blog site. If you’re a member of a Ning social media site or other similarly styled custom social media groups you can typically embed the entire video there as well.

You’ll use the regular web URL to share on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

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Expand Your Hubness With A YouTube Channel

By on May 14, 2011 in YouTube

Know an easy way to expand your web video presence? Create a branded YouTube channel to compliment your FB page, Twitter page, blog site and web page. Then you’ll have no less than five venues to share your expertise. I built my channel a few weeks ago. Subscribe now to Aqueduct Media Corp.’s YouTube channel and be prepared to receive the feeds of my video projects over the last year or so.

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Feeling Kind of Bond-ish

By on March 7, 2011 in animation, General Interest, YouTube

I’m working on my final project for my Visualization Stylization in  3D Animation class and I’m going with an action adventure theme. I’ve had James Bond movie theme music ringing through my head for the last two weeks, solid. I have to determine which 15-20 second section of a famous Bond track I want to include as the audio for the animation short.

In my research of YouTubing 007 hits and sifting through Wikipedia background on some of the movies I came across this one for series author Ian Flemming including his career literary credits. Turns out I’ve been a Flemming fan all my life. He wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as well as the Bond novels and short stories among others. Amazing that an author can write all time favorites for kids and adults.

But back to my homework. The assignment is to create a short with the theme displayed in two different styles. I’m starting off with a 3 dimensional spy boat on a 2 dimensional background and then transitioning to a full 3D scene – similar to the 2D flat scene – to end my short movie. The first draft which is due tonight is purely to get an overall sense of timing. It’s coming together decently and I should get some pretty good feedback from class critiques tonight.

I’ll post it on my YouTube site when it ‘s done in a couple of weeks. In the mean time go ahead and subscribe to my YouTube Channel, martybiz, and check out some of my other animation work. Leave comments here or there and tell me what you think of them.

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The Adventures of Prince Achmed

By on May 22, 2010 in animation, General Interest, YouTube

Last weekend I took the family to see an old fashioned showing of The Adventures of Prince Achmed. The Silent Film Society of Chicago presented the Lotte Reiniger classic stop motion puppet movie from 1926 complete with a restored Hammond cinema organ from the era at the Portage Theater. The organ raised from a pit so the organist could accompany the movie and lowered back into the pit after the movie was done.

The photoplay organist was Jay Warren. We asked him if the purpose of raising from the pit was so the the could see the screen easily. He said  no. It was purely for overall theatrical effect. The house lights go down, the projector turns on and the organ rises from the pit.

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Animator Jacqueline Smessaert Brennan gave an introduction before the show began. It was an amazing experience to see how the first picture shows were presented to the public, prior to the “talkie” age of vocal and musical sound tracks. If you ever get a chance to go to one of the older, more artistic movie venues to see an old style production I encourage you to do so. In the mean time rent The Adventures of Prince Achmed and imagine a classic on a theater screen.

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Tuesday Tunes – When God’s Children Get Together

By on January 12, 2010 in Music, YouTube

I think “When God’s Children Get Together” is my favorite gospel song of all time. It is definitely my fave Mississippi Mass Choir selection. Not only is the message inspirational but the choir blows strong and the band rocks tough on this one.

I was attemting to include the lyrics and the video together but the web embedding code was disabled so I can’t post the clip here. But here’s the link to the video. The link will replace this page so you won’t be able to follow the lyrics. If you want to do that you’ll have to paste the link into a separate browser tab and play it there then follow along with the verses here.

Either way I guarantee you’ll save this to your portable player favorites. Check out the clip and see.

When God’s Children Get Together
(written by David Curry)
(recorded by Mississippi Mass Choir)

Chorus
When God’s children get together, oh what a time;
we’ll be rejoicing forevermore,
we, we’re gonna sing hallelujah,
we, we’re gonna shout forevermore,
we, we’re gonna sing hallelujah
when we get there.

Verse 1
When God’s children,
when we get together, oh what a time;
we’ll be rejoicing forevermore,
we’re gonna (sing, shout, praise God).

Chorus

Verse 2
When God’s children,
when we get together, oh what a time;
we’ll be rejoicing forevermore,
we’re gonna (tell the story)
(how we got over),
(trials, tribultations),
(persecution and distress),
(sing, shout, praise God).

Vamp 1
We will sing,
we’re gonna shout.

Vamp 2
Sing hallelujah,
shout our troubles over.

Vamp 3
Up there (5x)

Vamp 4
no more crying there,
no more dying there,
no more burdens to bear
up there, up there.

Ending
We, we’re gonna sing hallelujah,
we, we’re gonna shout forevermore,
we, we’re gonna sing hallelujah
when we get there.

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So What Are You Doing With Yourself Over the Thanksgiving Break, Martin?

By on December 3, 2009 in General Interest, Programming/Coding, YouTube

Dude! A ton. I’m catching up on some important technical reading involving 3D digital lighting technique that I’m sure we’ll be using more of next quarter. It involves inserting the right types of lights into a scene to illuminate the characters and the set appropriately. The book also explains how to cast shadows correctly. I’m reading a chapter a day of Jeremy Birn’s [digital] Lighting & Rendering. On chapter 6 today and should be done by the end of next week.

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I’m also scheduling time to revise some of my projects from the just ended quarter with stuff like better lighting rigs (thus the need for Birn’s book), animating some of the still models we created in MAYA like masks and shoes and hopefully adding audio which I hear is difficult in MAYA. It may have to be imported into some other program for more post production editing to add sound. I’ll just have to research it.

I’ve also been adding audio to my animation final film this week and I’m considering editing the ending graphics while I’m tweaking it. In fact here’s the latest with audio tracks added in to complement the graphics. What do you think?

Next week I want to make one or two more short films just to get more comfortable with the Photoshop and After Effects packages. There are some really cool tutorials on YouTube and other sites that teach advanced special effects techniques in After Effects. It is a really impressive package. I want to put some time in with Illustrator as well. I heard about this one a few times during the quarter so I want to get my feet wet with the program over the next couple of weeks. I’ll brainstorm a couple of ideas and see where it all lands before the Christmas holiday kicks in.

So, what are you guys doing with yourselves over the end of year holiday breaks?

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Old School Friday Music Meme – Can’t Find It On YouTube

By on August 21, 2009 in General Interest, Music, YouTube

This was last week’s meme but I’ll chime in on it anyway. Everything ever made by Prince has been banned from YouTube (darned lavender music Nazis) but until the Purple One figures it out and throws a fit you can find some of his material on the Fanpop and on Dailymotion web video players. Here’s one of his and The Revolution’s early hits that was a typical bass driven beat that lived up to it’s title, “Controversy”.

He may be a prince but he will always be the king of the Minneapolis Sound.

Want to play? Here are the rules and some of the bloggers who regularly participate in the meme. When you join in here’s the list of Friday topics you can post on. Happy OSF!

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Better Days

By on August 2, 2009 in Faith, General Interest, Music, Society, YouTube

I was thinking about my grandmother the other day and this song came to mind. Now, normally when I share a music clip on a Sunday it’s a gospel song but this one hearkens to family and heritage and for me part of that is the church tradition so I include the following song using that train of thought.

When I hear “Better Days” I can picture a little kid asking a family matriarch the exact type of little kid questions that Dianne Reaves sings about. If you reflect back on your life, don’t the lyrics make you think of some of the things that made you curious when you were much younger? Can you remember how the wise old grandma or maybe even a great grandmother would tell you in her own sweet way not to be in a rush? Didn’t sound the same way coming from your mother, did it?

Half the time it would go over your head and not register until you were a few years older. And how about the nuggets they would drop on you out of the blue when you hadn’t asked anything in particular? She just may have had the urge to share something deep with you. I remember one of those too. The life observation seemed like a completely random thought at the time and it confused me why she had made the comment, but years later after I was a young adult on my own, it clicked, “Oh, that’s what she was talking about.”

This piece always reminds me of the best grandmother who ever walked this earth. Always rest in peace, Mrs. Ella White. Love ya Grandma. This one is dedicated to you.

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Blogging While Brown Conference Review – Milt Haynes

By on June 24, 2009 in Blogging, twitter, YouTube

Blogging While Brown was a true blast. I got to meet a bunch of people face to face for the first time. Some were facebook friends. Others I had touched base with on the phone before and finally put voice to face. It was also a pleasure to make lots of new friends including many bloggers I hadn’t heard of before.

I missed the key thing that I really wanted, the beginning blogger boot camp, on Friday June 19th. That was the hands on, how to do everything blogging workshop. Things didn’t work out logistically or financially to fit that in this time but I’m making it a priority for next year.

There are lots of things that were a part of the regular conference on Saturday that stood out to me. I took in so much over the course of the day that I’m going to have to share just a little with you day by day as I continue to reflect and review my notes. Today I’ll tell you about Milt Haynes’ presentation, “The Competent Blogger”.

Milt covered a wide ranging variety of tools we can put to use in our blogging repertoire. He talked about Pod casting for iTunes and YouTube. He gave us some features of the Black’s Gone Geek web site including the Careers In IT page (check it out). Blacks Gone Geek will begin doing research on social media careers. The site also has an Online Community Start Up Guide. As well, Milt recommended that we also have a regular website to match up with our blogs.

There are a few other interesting concepts he introduced as helpful tools for blogging. He touched on the e-mail blast. If you get a lot of those unsolicited emails that you have to unsubscribe from, that’s an example of an email blast. Of course you also receive them from groups that you do want to stay informed of. Another tool is MindMeister, a site which allows you to do online mindmapping. You can also collaborate with others and share your mindmaps. HootSuite gives metrics for who’s twittering you. It’s billed as the ultimate twitter tool suite.

You can also generate reports of your blogging activity. MicroSoft Office Live and Google Analytics are prominent options.

A couple of good traffic tracking tools are Hubspot and Inbound Marketing, two sites that help your site get more traffic and more notice. Inbound Marketing also has what’s called “Inbound Marketing University” which includes a certification exam and a webinar from their marketing guru Mike Volpe.

Milt gave us a lot to chew on and I could spend an entire week just checking on his tips and seeing where they could lead me. I bet you could too so go ahead and check into some of these knowledge nuggets and I’ll share more conference gold with you tomorrow.

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