This was the first time to Detroit this year for the kids and they had a blast. Here are a few pics of the visit.
They can also be found on SmugMug
Tag: Sydney
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Brother vs Brother Video
For the first time in my video editing career, I was asked if I could create lasers for an upcoming project. And if so, how long it would take to do a bunch of lasers as 2 people ran through the building. That’s something you don’t get asked every day – if ever.
I gave what I thought was a good estimate, but also knew that regardless of how much time I said I needed, we only had 5 days to complete the entire video. That included shooting in multiple locations, so really 4 days. I found this all out on Tuesday or Wednesday the week before it started.
I always like to be prepared and try to under promise and over deliver as much as possible. At worse, you give them at least what you promised. So the weekend before the project started I grabbed the kids and had them run around the yard “shooting” at each other. They didn’t know exactly what it was for and knew nothing of the story. They just knew they were supposed to take my direction and do what I asked while I shot some video.
So I grabbed my GoPro Hero 3 and started shooting. The entire shoot with them took no more than 20 minutes.
That evening I put together the video featured here as a proof of concept for the video the client asked me to do.
While there were no big surprises, I felt a lot more confident walking in on Monday knowing that I could in fact do it in the time specified.
The other big takeaway is that this sort of laser shooting is very forgiving. I wasn’t sure if I would need to camera track or do any other kind of motion tracking, but because the laser shots are only 4-12 frames long you can do it all by hand. It turns out it’s pretty easy to trick the eye with this effect.
One thing that helped make this really easy to do was the relatively new plugin Saber from VideoCopilot.net. While it’s real strength is creating light sabers as seen in Star Wars, it can be adapted and used in many different creative ways. And what’s amazing is, it’s a FREE plugin for After Effects.
So I ended up with a fun video for the kids, and walked in on Monday feeling like I was as ready as possible for the job. (Which in the end, was done almost a full day early).
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What I Did Over Summer Vacation – BTS
I knew I would be taking the summer off to spend with the kids. While I was probably over ambitious at the onset about what activities we would do over the summer, one thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to do a video with them. It’s something I’ve been thinking about almost since the moment they were born.
Not only would it give them something to enjoy and relive for years to come, it would keep me practiced and allow me to push a few boundaries for myself. It was also a good test of how far you could push an iPhone when all you have is an iPhone. I was both pleased and disappointed with my iPhone only experience. More on that later.
So with a loose plan, iPhone 6s Plus and plenty of time on our hands, we set out to make a summer music video. Here are some of the BTS details and lessons learned.
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The 2016 Concert Series, Elementary Style
Let me start by saying I miss having a real and decent video camera. Both of these were shot on the iPhone as best I could, but man it was painful.
While these both have limited value now, 20 years from now they will be priceless. This post is really a deposit into that archive.
In the kids elementary school, each teacher decides if they want to do something special at the end of the year. Andrew’s teacher had the kids perform in a play, Sydney’s teacher had them put on a concert for the parents and Max’s teacher didn’t do any performances. Most classes don’t do anything so I guess we were lucky to get two out of three. I’m making this point so that years from now I’m not asked “Where is my video Dad? You always make videos of Sydney and Andrew but not me.”
Blame your teacher Maximus.
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The Days of Summer Vacation
I’m SO lucky. Never in my life did I think I would have the opportunity to have the summer at home with the kids instead of working full-time. Yet due to the unexpected turn of events of the last 12 months fate has delivered just that to me.
The short answer is that, due to Brenda having the full-time job with benefits and me being the freelancer now, I have to work around her schedule – thus I’m taking care of the kids this summer. I’ll still be taking jobs that I can do at home in the evenings, but I will be more limited over the next 2 months than I would otherwise be. Gone are the on-site freelance jobs or traveling gigs for a short while.
I’ve been making a mental list for weeks now of what I want to do with them over the summer and in typical style I’m probably being overly ambitions. However, here are just some of the things I’ve come up with.
- Learn to swim, at least well enough to not sink like stones in the water (they start next week).
- Learn to tie their shoes (Andrew is the only one so far that can do it).
- Rock Climbing (did that today)
- Learn to ride bikes in the next 10 days or so. Andrew has that down and has been practicing and getting better every day.
- Home Schooling – I want them to still be learning every day through one thing or another. It can be fun too, but I want them to get into the habit of always wanting to learn.
- Introduce them to martial arts. Maybe an introductory class of some kind.
- Have them help create and be the stars of their own music video (we’ve already picked a song and I’ve started planning it out).
- Weekly field trips to somewhere educational, but something that ties into other things we’ve been learning about.
- Try some new hobbies.
Even as I write that out I’m feeling like I’m overreaching! But a plan that gets cut down is better than no plan I guess. I’m just excited and want to make the most of it because this could be my only summer to ever do this, who knows! A year ago I wouldn’t have imagined this was even possible.
We’ve been having fun this week but they’ve only had 2 days off so far. Fingers crossed I pace myself and don’t have a mental breakdown before we even get to July!
PS… If you’re wondering why there are no pictures of Maximus on the rock climbing wall, it’s because he made “bad choices” earlier today and part of his punishment lost some preferred activities. He was sitting with me pouting the whole time.
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