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Cracker Funk

Cracker Funk

Avatards Unite!

JakeSully is a closet Avatard. He claims that he just got caught up in the excitement, and was just experimenting with his username, without knowing that he'd be stuck with it. But I know better. ;)

Oel gnati kameie, ma'tsmukan.

Anyway, he worked some really cool 3D graphics to update my logo. The improvement over the previous logo is huge.

There are a couple of weird artifacts in there (see the stars shift) as a result of me drastically slowing down the footage in AE. Sully, if you want to get rid of these effects, I'd need the same footage you sent me, but much slower.

I, however, am perfectly happy with what we've got right here. This is, after all, a very low-budget production company, and none of my productions are FX-driven. The logo is intended to be an homage, and I think we pulled it off. Nice work, Sully!

Irayo!

http://vimeo.com/22327897
PW: indietalk
 
Upvote 0
Cracker, great freaking job! It looks great. Yeah, speed is quite different to what I had in mind
Which footage do you need for me to slow down? The text? I got the same footage, with an original black alpha channel, maybe that'll work. Since you asked for a green chroma, I just placed a green solid under the alredy keyed text. Maybe that's screwing with it.
Again, I like it, I only saw the glitches because I was looking for them.
 
That was fun. I like the lighting, however the texture (or lack thereof) might look good with an upgrade.

I'm also not a huge fan of the text centering on the planet instead of the page. Maybe that's just me...but it looks odd.

Kudos overall.
 
Thanks, folks! Though this was a collaboration, the bulk of the credit goes to Sully. All I did was speed up and slow down certain parts of the animation.

JakeSully said:
Cracker, great freaking job! It looks great. Yeah, speed is quite different to what I had in mind
Which footage do you need for me to slow down? The text? I got the same footage, with an original black alpha channel, maybe that'll work. Since you asked for a green chroma, I just placed a green solid under the alredy keyed text. Maybe that's screwing with it.
Again, I like it, I only saw the glitches because I was looking for them.
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Well, IF you wanted to re-do it, then the part I would need slowed-down would be from :00 to :10. I only mention this if you want to re-do it for purposes of your demo-reel. But on my end, I'm totally happy with what we've got, perfectly satisfied leaving it as is. There is no doubt that you took my previous concept and improved on it immensely.

NickClapper said:
Looks very cool. Is it going to be make the Antihero final cut?
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Yes.

M1chae1 said:
That was fun. I like the lighting, however the texture (or lack thereof) might look good with an upgrade.

I'm also not a huge fan of the text centering on the planet instead of the page. Maybe that's just me...but it looks odd.
Click to expand...

You should see the video that this one is an upgrade of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZObuUtg9kUE

Yes, it's true that there could be more texture in this newer version. However, that could be really time-consuming, and Sully is a student with a busy schedule, working for free. The amount of texture he's added is clearly way better than that fakey pretend texture I had on the previous version, so I'm quite happy with the upgrade.

I can see what you're saying about the centering of the text. If (and that's a big if) we were to re-do it, we might consider moving the text, but as of now, the only thing I plan to change is the audio (the music stays the same, but the phrase, "you can't stop that option, son" was recorded over the phone as a scratch-track, and we do have a quality recording of it).

Cheers!
 
Zensteve said:
That's pretty cool! :cool:

I'm assuming there's an in-joke for the audio catch-phrase?
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Yep. It will confuse the heck out of 99.99% of the people who hear it, but I don't care. I guess that's the nature of an in-joke. It comes from this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0fy6UHUrIo

"Lost in Time" was the birth of Cracker Funk films. I got my filmmaking start in making documentaries, while getting my degree in anthropology. But then after that, didn't do any filmmaking for many years. After teaching high school math for a couple years, I decided that I'm an artist at heart, and I wanted to pursue a career as a recording engineer. Moved to Memphis, because I liked UM's audio engineering program.

Their audio engineering degree had a pre-req, however -- intro to video/filmmaking. I looked at the syllabus, and surmised that I already was proficient in all of it, with my experience from visual anthropology. I asked the professor's permission to instead be allowed to take intermediate video/filmmaking. I loved it, had a blast, made "Lost in Time" as a class project, and thought to myself, "hey, I can do this". Traded my musician cap for my filmmaker cap, and have been working on improving my skills and networking, ever since then.

Flicker Pictures said:
CF, I forgot to ask, where did "Cracker Funk" come from? Or should I be asking where does it come from? ;)
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:lol:

When I graduated from high school, I immediately moved out from home. Shared a one-bedroom run-down house, on the North side of Seattle, with three of my closest friends. Yes, you read that right. One dude got the bedroom. One dude got the laundry room, sans washer/dryer (exactly 7"x7"). The other two dudes shared the enclosed porch (sans insulation; we used LOTS of blankets in the winter).

All of the rest of our friends either still lived with their parents or were in a dorm. So, naturally, our dilapidated shit-hole was the meeting-place of choice, free from rules and restrictions. Back to that in a minute.

My brother (one of the house-mates), best friend and myself all listened to rap. One of our favorite drinking games was to rap a line at a time, and the first guy to mess up the flow had to drink. We would often say that we were going to form a rap group and record an album. Jokingly, we decided that our group name should be Cracker Funk. It was never a real group, always just a funny joke we'd mention to friends.

Anyway, though the group was a joke, the name stuck. But not to us -- the house. Our entire group of friends would refer to our place as Cracker Funk.

"You guys wanna catch the midnight show of ID4 at Northgate theater?"
"Hell yeah. Let's meet at Cracker Funk at 11."

When we left that house, our next residence would be refered to as "Cracker Funk 2". Then, there was "Cracker Funk 3".

When I started fooling around with MIDI sequencing, it only made perfect sense to say that all recording was done at Cracker Funk Studios. And when I transitioned to filmmaking, there was only one production company name that would make any sense at all.

Nowadays, though very few people know the fake-rap-group roots of this name, it still often triggers a laugh, so it's still serving it's original purpose! :)
 
Awesome story, CF. Thanks for sharing :) I always dig anecdotal connect-the-dots like that; one thing leads to another and some nickname or weird reference just sticks, for no other reason than that's what everyone knows it by and there's no going back. Fun!

* also explains why your Secret Santa video was so cool :cool:
 
Flicker Pictures said:
Awesome story, CF. Thanks for sharing :) I always dig anecdotal connect-the-dots like that; one thing leads to another and some nickname or weird reference just sticks, for no other reason than that's what everyone knows it by and there's no going back. Fun!

* also explains why your Secret Santa video was so cool :cool:
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:lol:

Thanks, man. I can't wait to meet you in person. That's not an "if", but "when", so long as you stay in SoCal.
 
Cracker? Is that you hiding behind those letters?

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;)
 
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