I have been always a batfan. A superhero with no superpowers, yet fighting the bad guys, was always an icon. Chris Nolan’s vision finally made justice to the true Batman. The latest and final installment in the Dark Knight trilogy left me spellbound. It was a fitting epic ending to an epic series. This is a tribute to the Dark Knight. Drawn using the Wacom Intuos tab in GIMP.
Before you watch the following video, please note the following facts:
1. This video content was created for use as an entry into a contest within my employer company, IBM.
2. All rights to this video are owned by IBM, and I am publishing this with the express written permission of IBM.
3. This video cannot be published elsewhere / copied / reproduced without express written permission of IBM.
I work with IBM India Pvt Ltd. As IBM is celebrating this year as its centenary year, many things are happening within the organization. As a part of this celebration, a video making contest was organized by IBM for its employees. As soon as I came to know about this, I had to jump into it.
So I came up with this interesting 60 seconds video – ‘To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before’.
The philosophy I used in this video was that of the synergy between man and the machine. In the science fiction and popular culture, these two entities are always shown fighting for the domination of our dear planet. But IBM has been constantly striving to make better and smarter machines to make our lives easier.
This 1 minute video took 10 hours to make, all of it after work late in the night. I finished the script, background narrative recording and thumb nailing on night 1, followed by all other work (drawing the final images – 30 of them, editing, sound effects and final touches) on night 2. I spent the next day being a zombie (a very happy and contented zombie indeed).
I had my first wonderful Parasailing experience when I visited the town of Diveagar in Konkan as a part of an adventure camp in 2006.
Diveagar beach is a spectacular and clean site. The parasailing team attached our chutes to the back of a jeep and drove over the beach at high speed. We reached nearly 100 feet in the air.
The videos were shot with my Nikon Coolpix 4300 digital camera. The camera has a capacity to shoot low-res videos of max 40 seconds without sound! Doesn’t it sounds so primitive now? Still the information captured in those low-res videos was so interesting that I decided to make this little video of my own here. Hope you like it.
You can watch this video on youtube here:
It’s been more than three months since I completed the PADI Open Water Certification course in scube diving in Lakshadweep.
A couple of days ago, I completed making a film on my underwater experience. I had carried an adventure cam with me (Oregon Scientific model # ATK2000). The cam captures bit low res video, but this is one tough guy!
The official specs for the camera said that the camera is ‘water resistant up to 5 meters depth’. But I took a chance with it, and it actually worked perfect for a depth more more than 16 meters! I love this gadget.
So here’s the footage of my underwater dive in the pristine Lakshadweep lagoon. The actual footage was more than 3 hours, which I have edited down to less than 12 minutes of (interesting) video.
Click on the picture below to watch the video and enter a new aquatic dimension.
Click on the picture below to see ‘Winds of Change’ in its full glory (on YouTube)
Nearly one and a quarter year had passed since I had made my last film, What If … A Love Story Gone Wrong. Making What If … was an experience which made me much richer in my film making skills. It also gave me enough confidence to try things out on my own.
So when the software company I work for decided to hold an intra-company contest in film making, I was one of the first to jump and take notice. As the themes were announced, one theme – ‘Winds of Change’ attracted me. As I heard the theme, the whole short film literally visualized in front of my eyes. Now it was just a matter of some time (and much effort) to bring it into reality.
Previously, I had made short films using 2 approaches:
1. Filming using camcorder, with live actors (Secret Desire)
2. Stop motion animation using clay models (What If…) – Taking pictures of clay models in various positions, animation style, and then ‘stitching’ the photos together to form a continuous motion.
This time I decided to combine the two approaches above. Making a stop motion animation using live actors!
Approach 1 above has advantages in terms of smoother motion, but has way too much dependency of live actors and there’s little scope for special effects (I am not an expert user of complex special effects software such as Adobe After Effects – YET).
Approach 2 has a lot of scope for special effects (Each frame can be easily edited using a photo editing software), but it’s a lot of hard work, and I mean REAL hard work!
The time given was very short, just 10 days (Actually it’s sufficient time if one is not doing anything else, which is not the case with yours truly).
I created the entire script in one hour. The ‘script’ was a series of rough drawings, storyboard style. It was my long time dream to shoot a fight sequence parodying ‘The Matrix’ , and I took my opportunity here!
We finished the shoot in 6 hours flat on a very hot afternoon, most of the shoot taking place on a very hot terrace. The ‘green screen’ used as background to the fight scenes was in fact a pinkish clothe held together by whoever was not participating in the fight scene.
The following pictures compare the 3 versions of photos. The original one, the ‘green screened’ one and the final result with a hand drawn background.
After the shoot was over, it took me more that 6 nights (and one entire weekend) to complete the editing (There were 250+ photos to edit!). By the end of editing run, I resembled a Racoon!
We submitted the film one day before deadline. The results of the contest are awaited, but I don’t really care. For me, the rush of creative energy is worth more than all the awards!
