Old school attack! - Teach Me

Back in 1998 as part of the design degree i was taking at Wellingtons Victoria University, i did a paper that served as a sort of an introduction to 3D computer graphics. I forget the details of the actual design brief for this particular assignment itself - but it had something to do with the idea of injecting life into primitive objects.

Not exactly Ratatouille in its technical sophistication (hey - it was my first shot at it!) but yes - its still kinda fun. So i thought I'd embarrass myself and upload it for a laugh. Enjoy!

Old School Attack! - Paper Bagged.

A short film about a young man named Aidan who seeks help after being driven crazy by his flatmates.

Directed by Phil Van der Reyden.

Featuring, Aidan Forrest, Rowan Sharp, Sarah Ryan, James Van der Reyden, Dale Pugh, Greg Sharp and Kelly Sturgess.

Shot in Wellington, New Zealand, 2002.

Old school attack! - Dickies.

I've uploaded another old movie to Google Video.

Dickies is a short film created back in 1998 as a design school project integrating live action, stop motion animation and music!
The story is very simple - two young chaps are sitting around at home and decide to have a jam while the parents are away. Unwittingly, they awake something that was living in the garage! Fired up in the heat and aggression of the music, they run out to confront the beast.

The more observant viewers or readers out there might notice that Dickies was shot and presented in the spectacularly awesome cinematic format of low-res black and white!
This is because way back in the "old days" (which sounds quite funny as it was only 8 years ago) I had the restriction of not having access to the expensive high-end computer gear required to attempt this sort of thing at broadcast quality. (i was a poor student studying at the end of the 90's afterall) However when i watch it, i really don't cringe, i think it still looks kinda cool, and still plays well.

It was shot on a standard issue Sony Video 8 handycam and digitized into Adobe Premiere via the built-in AV video card on my 132mhz Power Mac 8500 with a ground shaking 32megs of ram (which i later upgraded to 90mb... woot!) ...it was the most powerful computer i could afford!

Clay animation was done by Phil in a makeshift mini greenscreen stage that we setup in our lounge at home. (yes we had tolerant parents) And the shots were puesdo-matchmoved and the monster added using After Effects version i can not remember. At the end of the day we thought it was a fun little flick.

MUTE: old school attack!

Haha, the web just gets better and better doesn't it. Found this the other day, turns out a friend of ours uploaded a short film that we did with him back in 2000 to YouTube.

The Film is called Mute, and I think this is the first time we have seen it in a good four years or so, so its a bit of a blast from the past!

My role (James) in the film was as a DP, we shot it on an old Canon GL1 that Nigel had borrowed, and edited it on our bitchin' blue and white Power Mac G3 running os9 and Final Cut 2.0!

I will admit that we were very new to the concept of digital filmmaking at this time , and I remember having teething problems working with the video as we also had very limited hard drive space to make the movie, quite the far cry from the gigabytes to burn that we enjoy now. So the film has a very soft, contrasty and saturated feel to it.

The Film was directed by Nigel Aymes, produced by Rowan Sharp and Features Phil as the dude who has the hots for the girl in the cafe.

I will also admit I always had my reservations about the soundtrack of this movie, what with its complete lack of dialogue, however, upon seeing it in retrospect I don't mind it that much. hmmm.

Apologies for the quality problem with the video, looks like it was recorded off a bad VHS dub of the movie. (got a better version somewhere Nigel?)