When Philly folk favorite Chris Kasper approached me about creating a music video for a song from his latest album “The First Hundred Years are the Hardest,” the multi-headed visual animal in me instantly flew somewhere way over the rainbow. I have long searched for the perfect project to satisfy my craving for photography, video, illustration and computer animation in one fell swoop. Tall order, I know, but hey…I’m a tall guy. Fortune must’ve been smiling on me, for upon listening to Kasper’s “Walking on Water” on repeat for an evening, I was sure I’d at long last found the consummate conduit.
Now, after several months of what I like to call “a vacation from social life,” I’m quite excited to share the final result: a music video that was 100% shot, illustrated, animated, composited, rendered and edited all right here at Wonderful Machine. Enjoy!
For the curious minds, here’s a brief recipe for this dish:
1 Canon 5D Mark II
1 Green Screen (well, more of a grayish seamless backdrop)
2 Hotlights
1 Wonderful Machine studio
1 Chris Kasper
1 Incredible song
1 Paul Stanek
1 Fox
1 Droid 3 camera (and its surprisingly crisp macro shots of spongy Injera bread)
1 Zillion hours of keying, matte choking, curve tweaking, layer blending, alpha channeling, compositing, rotoscoping, animating, landscape building, bump mapping, lighting, effecting, and much much more in Adobe After Effects CS 5.5
1 gazillion particles
Copious amounts of patience
Stir well. Taste, evaluate, then stir some more. Repeat until flavor makes your brain smile. Render for about an eon or two. Serve while hot.
Share with friends, enemies, lovers, strangers, and several small species of furry animals.
Special thanks to Chris Kasper, Andrew Lipke, the Wonderful Machine crew, and all souls who facilitated, inspired, supported and endured the making of this video (you know who you are).
Keep on dreamin’!
If you’re interested in learning more about Wonderful Machine’s consulting services, please visit our consulting page.
In hindsight, Dom Romney‘s portfolio might have gotten a bit out of hand, but this can happen when an enthusiastic photographer is willing to entertain pretty much any idea I throw their way. What started out as a simple portfolio edit is now a portfolio/leave behind/mailer/powerhouse. Dom has been doing quite well for himself, keeping steadily busy with editorial clients like Motorsport and Fast Car. He also recently took home his second Renault MSA young motorsport photographer of the year award. To keep the momentum going after a good year, Dom wanted to start 2012 off with a new portfolio that would really wow prospective clients. Naturally, he came to us.
Dom told me he was prepared to spend a bit of money for something impressive, but reminded me that he’s “still a photographer” so price was certainly a factor. With this in mind, I started reviewing his images and brainstorming presentations. The longer I sat with his work, the more I realized that a standard portfolio wouldn’t be a good look for him, and that single shots worked better than pairs or spreads. I mulled this over, considering that something like a box of prints has the marvelous ability to be both a portfolio and a stack of leave behinds, provided you put your branding on every sheet. From there I arrived at my final concept, a perforated book which can be thumbed through and kept whole, or ripped apart and pinned on the wall. Dom liked the idea of creating a single piece that could be a portfolio, targeted mailer, and leave behind all wrapped in one. Or one hundred, for the moment.
The rest we left to the experts. Maria Luci wrote the introduction page, giving background on Dom, his career, and the work to follow. She was sure to explain that yes, you CAN rip this book to pieces, so long as you keep all the pieces. Amanda Friend worked on the design and layout to compliment his existing branding. Like his business cards, we used a glossy white foil stamp on the cover to add dimension, and like Dom’s branding, we used plenty of red. The good people at Fresh Color Press did a terrific job on the printing. And finally, Kayleen Kauffman worked with Dom to build a list of appropriate clients to contact for meetings when the books arrived.
It took the delivery a few days longer than expected to reach Dom’s remote cottage, but when they finally did, he was thrilled. “They’ve arrived, my god they are awesome!” he tweeted right away. Within one day of there arrival, Dom had scheduled 15 client meetings. This guy moves fast!
We’re just as pleased as Dom with the final result of our combined efforts. He said in another tweet “Blown away by the work Wonderful Machine has produced for me today, truly awesome. Also blown away at how patient Sean is with my OCD”. It’s OK, Dom. I’ve got some experience dealing with you creative-types.
If you’re looking for help with your portfolio, design, copy, marketing or to just want to learn more about our services, please visit the consulting section of the Cog.
I recently had the pleasure of working on a website with Scott Mlyn, former photo editor at Bloomberg Businessweek for over twenty years. Scott was branching out and needed a solid web presence for his freelance services. When we first got started—like with any design project I take on—I wanted to get a sense of what Scott was all about and what he wanted out of a site. Scott briefly filled me in on his experience as a photo editor and what fueled him to step out on his own:
As a magazine picture editor, it was my job to assign photographers of differing specialties—including photojournalism, sports, environmental and studio portraiture, still life and conceptual photography. During that time, I viewed many portfolios including those of photographers I wasn’t familiar with, as well as the portfolios of photographers I regularly hired. What struck me was how often photographer’s portfolios didn’t properly represent their work. This was particularly noticeable with photographers who I worked with for many years and whose work I was very familiar with. I knew their portfolios could have been organized differently to make a much stronger statement about who they are.
So I decided I would offer my experience to photographers who might need some help. I felt I had a good sense of putting images together and as a buyer of photography, I knew what would create a portfolio that would have impact. Of course, to start this business, I needed a website to make my statement.
After several email and phone conversations, Scott and I started to formulate what would work best for his website. He even took the additional step of sending over a rough draft of the home page to give me an idea of the aesthetic and copy he was going for. I took his draft and ran with it.
Scott's rough draft
I suggested Scott go with a WordPress hosted site since they offer great SEO, flexible design layout, and are easy to update. To save some time, we opted he pick out a design template to start as a base for the site and then design off of that. This gave me a solid foundation to work from and made it easy to implement the design elements he’d included in his rough draft. I out together a few layout options before we we settled on the final look, which we then refined to his specs.
Scott's new website
Scott's new website
Once the project was completed, Scott was kind enough to send over an assessment of his new site and his experience working with us:
Since I was in the portfolio business, I felt it was critically important to have a well designed website that struck the right tone. I generally knew what kind of website I wanted and had a good idea of the style I was after. Fortunately, I was able to work with Wonderful Machine, who understood websites, what functions were possible, and how to make it all happen. Most importantly, they understood my design sensibilities and created several options that I could choose from. We had a lot of back and forth collaboration and I am very satisfied with the result.
