Rolph Worgen: some good news!
Jul. 1st, 2009 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furtechHey! I got "runner up" in one of the Blizzard fan site contests! One of the sites (D3DB) had an open video contest and I actually got my act together enough to whip* a quick film together. I'd already entered a bunch of other sites trying to win a ticket (no luck with either sales window), so why not?
I'll bet you thought I'd link to the video here! No...it's kind of embarrassing. Those who are determined will be able to find it fairly easily, but I don't need it staring me in the face here.
This turned out to be more complicated than I thought it would be: what was originally going to be a simple video-in-costume ala a web cam ended up using most of my meager video production skilz. I found I could do two of the three things I had to take care of in the video: act broadly & puppeteer the mouth; remember my lines (even my simple script); stay in character (in this case, my voice). Invariably, I would lose one of those elements. The voice-one was particularly embarrassing (deep-throated character voice subtly becoming asian whine).
So I grabbed a digital audio recorder and recorded my lines in-character first. Note: if I eat/drink certain foods, I have a mild allergic reaction that makes my throat all phlegmy and gives me a better resonance, rather than my generic nasel-asian twang-- so I ate gummy candy and fake lemon ice tea. If I had some milk-- that would have been even better, but I didn't want to buy a whole quart of milk just to make myself sick, so those would have to do.
Once recorded, I dropped the audio onto the computer.
I took the audio disk and barged in on a friend's home to shoot the video. Sh*t-rig lighting and sound, but a perfect set. My admiration for puppeteers has always been keen, but once again I found myself in awe of their ability to multitask and still bring something to life. Here I was just lip-syncing to the audio, but I still had to remember physical cues and match lip-flaps. And it all had to be done in a single continuous take-- no time to edit! Twenty seven takes later I prayed I had one take that would work...
...because the deadline for entering was an hour away and I still needed to digitize the video, sync it with the audio and upload it to YouTube in time.
Fortunately, iMovie is fantastic and-- in typical Mac/Apple style-- very intuitive. This was the first time I had actually opened up the program and I was able to kludge everything together. I found a decent take and got everything smushed together and uploaded in time. Go, me!
I'm not sure who or what got first place (the website doesn't have any info), but whether I was second out of a hundred entries or second out of -two- entries-- who cares! A Blizzcon membership! And a credit at the Blizzard Store! Woo!
I'll bet you thought I'd link to the video here! No...it's kind of embarrassing. Those who are determined will be able to find it fairly easily, but I don't need it staring me in the face here.
This turned out to be more complicated than I thought it would be: what was originally going to be a simple video-in-costume ala a web cam ended up using most of my meager video production skilz. I found I could do two of the three things I had to take care of in the video: act broadly & puppeteer the mouth; remember my lines (even my simple script); stay in character (in this case, my voice). Invariably, I would lose one of those elements. The voice-one was particularly embarrassing (deep-throated character voice subtly becoming asian whine).
So I grabbed a digital audio recorder and recorded my lines in-character first. Note: if I eat/drink certain foods, I have a mild allergic reaction that makes my throat all phlegmy and gives me a better resonance, rather than my generic nasel-asian twang-- so I ate gummy candy and fake lemon ice tea. If I had some milk-- that would have been even better, but I didn't want to buy a whole quart of milk just to make myself sick, so those would have to do.
Once recorded, I dropped the audio onto the computer.
I took the audio disk and barged in on a friend's home to shoot the video. Sh*t-rig lighting and sound, but a perfect set. My admiration for puppeteers has always been keen, but once again I found myself in awe of their ability to multitask and still bring something to life. Here I was just lip-syncing to the audio, but I still had to remember physical cues and match lip-flaps. And it all had to be done in a single continuous take-- no time to edit! Twenty seven takes later I prayed I had one take that would work...
...because the deadline for entering was an hour away and I still needed to digitize the video, sync it with the audio and upload it to YouTube in time.
Fortunately, iMovie is fantastic and-- in typical Mac/Apple style-- very intuitive. This was the first time I had actually opened up the program and I was able to kludge everything together. I found a decent take and got everything smushed together and uploaded in time. Go, me!
I'm not sure who or what got first place (the website doesn't have any info), but whether I was second out of a hundred entries or second out of -two- entries-- who cares! A Blizzcon membership! And a credit at the Blizzard Store! Woo!
