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'Space Invaders' Invading London - Made for under £2,000

Jonathan Petts

Jonathan Petts

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Last March myself and some friends I met at filmschool came together and decided to shoot a music video to showcase what we can do on a budget!
After months of VFX and hard work it is finally here!!!

https://vimeo.com/135279123

I am really happy with what we managed to achieve for what little money we had - this was shot on our Epic MX before she became a Dragon!

I would love to hear what you guys have to say about it and get any feedback from you and get an idea about if you think it is any good!!

If you have any questions about how we made it, I would be more than happy to answer any!!



Jonny
 
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Very cool! Fantastic idea. VFX is not easy and quite frankly I would never want to get into it - you really have to be very, very good. That's a compliment, you know. :-)

Okay, as for the details, there was a lot not to like. In places, the editing and direction felt a bit... unrefined. Which is not a big deal, given the budget. ;-) I would have preferred you shoot this on clear days, but time is never on your side if you have little money to spend.

As for the choice of the 10:1 aspect ratio: who was smoking what, for how long, and have they come down from their high yet?

BTW, what sort of legal issues did you have to deal with - not just the Space Invaders theme, but in terms of everyday shooting.
 
I love VFX but man I love your shots more ;)

I cant help think of all the different sets/shoots, was this a huge task?

Was everyone on board and were they all professional actors?

Love that the VFX was just secondary in all this :)

Even though I know its a freakin nightmare to do even as (so we think) simple as Space Invaders.
 
Karim D. Ghantous said:
Very cool! Fantastic idea. VFX is not easy and quite frankly I would never want to get into it - you really have to be very, very good. That's a compliment, you know. :-)

Okay, as for the details, there was a lot not to like. In places, the editing and direction felt a bit... unrefined. Which is not a big deal, given the budget. ;-) I would have preferred you shoot this on clear days, but time is never on your side if you have little money to spend.

As for the choice of the 10:1 aspect ratio: who was smoking what, for how long, and have they come down from their high yet?

BTW, what sort of legal issues did you have to deal with - not just the Space Invaders theme, but in terms of everyday shooting.
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Hello Karim!!

Thank you very much for your positive feedback - the editing at the start if the video has been something that has come up a fair bit which I do agree with - I did edit this, the Director wa in charge of that and this was really something I should have brought up to him when I got some early draft (learn from your mistakes right?).

I do agree with the weather it would have been amazing to shoot this on a lovely day with some great clouds, or to be honest I quite liked the overcast look but if we could have got something more out of the sky with clouds that would have been perfect I think. I personally dont think a nice blue sky would have suited this piece.

In terms of the crazy apsect ratio Ill hold my hands up and say this was a purely creative decision on my part - when we were doing some early research and tests we came across a few videos that adopted the same ratio.... sorry to say I loved it and due to the nature of this music video and knowing this was going to be on the web we decided to spice it up and do something different with these wide frames. Some people have loved it others have not :) I totally accept that, just trying something new!

We had no legal issues to be honest - we had permits for every location... apart from two locations on the streets of London but rather suprisinly we manged to get permits for all the roof tops and 90% of the street locations for next to nothing (thanks to our producer) so it was very easy actually - the only bits we didnt have permits for were not actually used in the final edit :P

Jonny
 
darren scott said:
Very filmic. Loved it. What lenses did you use? Also what film grain and diffusion?
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We shot on the Optimo 56-152 Ananmorphic lens and shot mostly at around T5.6.

In terms of film grain this was supplied by the post house who did our grade- they had their own custom 4k and 6k scan of film stock so they allowed us to use them free of charge which was great! Colourist did a great job - massive props to him!

In terms of lens diffusion I used a Black pro mist 1/2 for the entire shoot.
 
Eric Santiago said:
I love VFX but man I love your shots more ;)

I cant help think of all the different sets/shoots, was this a huge task?

Was everyone on board and were they all professional actors?

Love that the VFX was just secondary in all this :)

Even though I know its a freakin nightmare to do even as (so we think) simple as Space Invaders.
Click to expand...


Thank you for taking the time to have a quick look at this!

It was a pretty huge task we shot for 5/6 days the 6th day being pick-ups of various bits and bobs. The set designer had a pretty big job - with a few locations cancelling on us the day before we were due to shoot there, we had limited lights and I worked hard with the Director and set designer to really get the most out of each location (we did use one location twice due to the cancellation if you noticed?).

Actor's were all professional apart from the scene with the computer and tracking towards it - those were crew shot on the night before we officially started shooting (Gaffer, 1st AD and 2nd AC).

The VFX was a huge task for this budget we had a great team working on the VFX and they spent a very long time doing the very best they could in their free time and getting the Director everything he wanted - especially that shot with the metal bars wiping the frame and invaders in the background!!!
 
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