Just the trailer

Now the trail just by itself is here:

It's here!

Video on youtube (I really recommend watching in HD)

Video on viddler

More coming soon!

The countdown is on!

All the manual work is done. I'm just waiting for a couple of bits to re-render. For the show, I've gone for a really clean look. There is only one gripe that I have about this episode and that is the chirping noise I get when I'm chopping between audio segments. I'm almost certain I know the cause of this. Everything adds up for this theory, and the only thing which is stopping me from saying "this is it" is the fact that I haven't sat down and proved it. The nice thing is that it's easily solveable... but too risky for me to change things this late into this episode, so I'll make the changes in the next episode.

For the grand finale, I've gone for a more rough look. Allowing the hand to be visible in places and leaving a bit of debre from the chroma key. I'm really happy with how the sound has come out. The music really suits it too.

Music!

After an immense amount of time, I've found the background track to have in the feature. And boy does it fit! The biggest issues were finding something that was both the right sound and had a license that would allow it.

All filming is finished. The audio editing is almost finished. And then the only thing remaining is the compositing and the video editing. The compositing will be the time consumer, but it looks possible that I will finish it today.

Stay tuned!

Final stages

The editing for the show itself is now done. Now I'm filming the remaining parts of the grand finale and will start editing it together within about an hour. This is getting exciting! I really want to release it today. Stay tuned!

Green screen and editing

All the green screen work is done. I really pleased with the results. There's still room for improvemnet, but it is a big leap in quality from Episode 1 and 2.

I've got all the filming done for the grand finale, and I'm well on the way with the editing.

I hope to release within the next few days.

Filming of the grand finale

I got up on the hill just after sunrise, however the wind up there was still too strong. I'm not going to try again until Sunday when things are predicted to calm down a bit. The forecast will most likely change between now and then, but that is the plan for now.

Plan B was another location where I could get similar shots. It typically has different wind patterns at any one time, however this was also unsuitable today.

Plan C was to go to another location to practise getting the shot. This proved very sucessful. The location doesn't lend itself to the original goal, but it did allow me to practice the shot and iron out a few problems. So the day was definitely not a loss. I also got some cool footage, and looking at it, I can see a few things I need to work on.

A lot of aspects of the Episode are flexible, however the shot that I'm trying to get is a substaintial part of the grand finale of the Episode, so skimping on this would be a shame.

For the remainder of today, there are some aspects of the title sequence and other supporting material that I'm not totally happy with. So I'm going to work on these.

Tomorrow I'll be doing all the green screen stuff. I'm very pleased with the experimentation I did yesterday. The new method is producing excellent results and gives me so much more freedom with how I can move on set.

Filming Episode 3

We get very strong nor-west winds here. Normally this wouldn't be a problem but the still conditions are essential for the grand finale of Episode 3. At the moment the winds are starting much earlier than I expected, which means that by the time I'm ready to go, the wind is up.

So today I'm filming everything else that I'm not weather-dependant on. Then tomorrow I'll get up really early and head out as soon as possible regardless of the weather. I'll have my laptop with me so that I can work on other things when ever the weather is not good enough. The forecast is for it to turn rainy tomorrow evening... This isn't necessarily a bad thing since there usually isn't much rain during the wind here. So if I don't get the shots I need tomorrow, I'll probaly get them the next day in between patches of rain.

This is going to be a really interesting episode in a number of ways:
- The content is cool!
- I've found a source of music that is licensed in such a way that I can use it in the episodes.
- I'm going to try a different method doing the transparency on the close ups. Hopefully it will be much more accurate, and therefore higher quality.
- I'm working on my presentation style.

As always feedback is really helpful. Especially if it's something which I haven't listed above.

Behind the hacks is here!

Behind the hacks is here! There are two purposes of Behind the hacks:
1) To talk about changes that I'm making in Funnyhacks and get feedback
2) To give enthusiasts bonus material that didn't fit into the original show for some reason (usually format,focus or time)

Anyway, everything is up for feedback, so if you have an opinion, let me know on ksandom@gmail.com or leave a comment.

- Kevin :)