archived-videos The Secret Jedi - a short film

A

Astunoth

Hi everyone, I hope you can check out my film THE SECRET JEDI and let me know how what you think. I shot it with, believe it or not, an old school mini-DV Sony TRV900 camera. So SD standard def, but we performed an HD upconvert on it in Final Cut. EFX using After Effects.

A bit about myself, I went to grad film school at UCLA and graduated last year. If you have any questions at all about my experiences there, you can also ask away.

Great to have found this forum and hope everyone makes great films!

Best,

Richard Hom

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THE SECRET JEDI

On another boring day in the big city, Jack finds a lightsaber and it becomes his best pal in the whole wide world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC4LUCKLU2E&hd=1
 
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JoshL said:
That's really interesting about the Content ID tech...I wasn't aware of it (and only aware of artists such as Prince that publicly hunt down songs being used on youtube without permission). It's good to see it working on the other side to. Is there a list/database that details permissions? For example, if "I Ran" wasn't cleared, but "Space Age Love Song" was, it'd be nice to know before you finished editing/posting your video.

On a vaguely related note, I saw Flock of Seagulls in 96 with Modern English (I'm more of a Modern English fan..."Someone's Calling" is one of my favorite songs). They were pretty good live, though I learned that Mike Score is a creepy, creepy man. I was hanging around, seeing if I had the courage to talk to a girl there (I didn't) and he was sitting at the bar. Staring at me. Probably in a "I'm famous and you should want to talk to me" way, or possibly a "why is this kid just standing around...is he going to do something interesting?" way, but it seemed to me more a "I'm going to bury each of your bones in different apple orchards" way.

Fun show though, and awesome that you can use the song in your video!
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Oh man, that's funny about Mike Score. In the original music video for I Ran, he seems like, uh, an interesting man. lol. I always thought it'd be awesome to meet him one day, but now hmm...

You know guys, there isn't any database that shows what songs you can use and which ones you can't. Not to my knowledge. But at the same time, I'm fairly new to Youtube (just started posting this year) and I'm still figuring out how it works. But you pretty much have to post it up there and wait for Youtube to either allow it or pull your video. A friend of mine posted a video about saving pit bulls, along with a snippet of a song by some band, and they pulled it within a day. But then she argued Fair Use and she got the video restored. It can be a little wacky in Youtube land. Definitely, using any copyrighted music and editing your movie to it, is taking a chance. Because, what if it gets pulled. You just lost that venue to showcase your stuff. Or, you'd have to re-edit your movie to a different song. Personally, I might not use any more copyrighted music in my movies. Too risky.

Hope that helps, you guys!
 
I like the shots of the guy running with the raised light sabre. Funny!
So, why are UCLA students using a TRV900! That was my first digital camera, and I bought it a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
 
HedgesPictures said:
I dig it. A fun watch.

Fantastic editing.
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Thank you, Hedge and Brian! I'm lucky that my friend and editor Daniel Alvarado is a super pro.

For sure the TRV is old as heck. We used it for a couple reasons. One, I was lagging and when it came time to shoot, all the good cameras at school were checked out already. But we decided that might have been a blessing in disguise because we were planning to shoot guerilla style in a bunch of very public places (the most popular mall in LA during Christmastime; heavily travelled and iconic Griffith Park; and inside a KFC) and a pro looking camera would just get us stopped by cops and security asking for permits, which as a poor film student I couldn't afford. So a more toned down camera would be much more low profile. Enter my dust covered TRV900. It looks like a tourist camcorder, on the opposite end from the HVX. And if it broke somehow during the shoot, I wouldn't be too heartbroken. :lol: I think it worked out pretty well. And we never got stopped by the cops once. Heh heh.
 
I noticed at some times the lightsabre looks like a real one from the movie then at other times when it is turned off it does not. The zoomed in shots of it looked real good. Really for this short it looking fake at times does not matter because it is funny as a toy lightsabre.

Overall great work. It was funny and over the top. The music was a perfect fit. The editing was good.
 
rockerrockstar said:
I noticed at some times the lightsabre looks like a real one from the movie then at other times when it is turned off it does not. The zoomed in shots of it looked real good. Really for this short it looking fake at times does not matter because it is funny as a toy lightsabre.

Overall great work. It was funny and over the top. The music was a perfect fit. The editing was good.
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For all the daytime shots, I had to create the lightsaber from scratch using After Effects. I think those are the ones that look the most movie-like. The rest of the time, it's just the lightsaber replica turned on. Thank God I didn't have to do any more special effects because it took a month and a half to paint the daytime sabers frame by frame. A labor of love, I suppose. :yes:
 
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