The Dollar Trick

This was a fun shoot. It was really cold (well… not really. My actor’s complained). There wasn’t a lot of planning or… anything. I’m not entirely sure I told them the whole idea either.

The premise started out as the classic Dollar trick. It needed a twist. So we made the changes.

Shooting was a mess. The shots were just a guess as to what I need. We shot a lot of coverage to be safe. The same shots from different angles so I could be picky. I probably had 20 or more minutes of footage for this minute long (non-action filled) scene.

The edit was simple. After sitting and scrubbing through the footage, the video almost built itself. I didn’t use as many VFX as I planned. But I am a firm believer in less is more. Yes there are time when packing a shot full of VFX (like the next video I’m doing). But in this case simple is what I wanted.

I’ve had issues with the action essentials 2 pack from VideoCopilot.net and their blood splatters working the way I want. I took a page from FreddieW and used smoke tinted red. A little masking helped shape it. simplifying everything in this video really helped give it the feel I wanted.

The music SFX was probably the hardest part. This is an area I struggle with. Tim Lundy, who does most of the music and SFX has to deal with detailed descriptions like “Strolling/Ambient music” or “it sounds like Fwoosh-Thwap. But punchier or maybe more high ends.” And finally “Rolling Grumbles” for the gun shot. I think he always comes back with great stuff. The music came across as overly cheery and I think one email said “Doh-De-Doh-y.” We tried a few things to see about giving the music the simplistic feel that I wanted. Even had maybe 8 different songs for the video and a list of different cues for when the music would start.

I finally settled with a version of the original song Tim did for the video and that was tough. I liked it and it was really good for the video but there was definitely a lot of “silence” ideas running around. But I felt it was just… a little too simple.

So, to finish, I like how the video turned out. I’m not sure what I’d do differently… maybe started earlier on the edit so that I didn’t get bogged down by other stuff coming up and that way more time could have gone into working with Tim on the music. All in All, I like what I got.