Desktop Warfare

After almost an entire year of production/procrastination, Desktop Warfare is complete. I had a lot of fun with it actually. I shot the film last year, and unfortunately I forgot about all about it. It wasn't until I found it squatting in my hard drive that I began to finish it. And I am really pleased. The effects look decently real, and the collaborative sound effects are just as good. The only thing I regret is the camera I used. In some scenes it looked like I filmed it with a potato. It was my webcam. I was experimenting with onion skinning which I must say was WONDERFUL, and the only way I could do it was with the webcam. Unfortunately the webcam is the only camera I have that can hook up to a computer. It was so much easier and looked so
much better between frames. The issue will be resolved eventually. As some people say: baby steps.

Desktop Warfare from Trellis Haynie on Vimeo.

It is finally finished. The project I had been working on for the longest time is now finished. And I can honestly say, I am content with it. I did all the green screening I could to the extent of my abilities and I am almost impressed by myself. It took a while, yeah, but it was pretty worth it. I must say it's quite a bit shorter than I thought. I expected at least 7 minutes, but apparently not so much. The story behind the actor in this is a painstaking one: I chose someone else before and this person was impossible to meet up with. He was always doing things, he never responded to text messages, and he was a bit of a brat. So I used my brother instead which turned out for the best in the end. It was so much easier. Anyway, I'll spare you the boring details. Here it is:

Idle Hands from Trellis Haynie on Vimeo.

I've Seen Enough of Green

 I'm starting to hate green-screens. I've pandered around with my most recent video project tirelessly, and the color keying is absolutely AWFUL. It's like picking up a toothpick with a pair of tweezers being held by another pair of tweezers. It can be done, but it is difficult. Now the deadline is fast approaching, and I'm still fiddling around with it. The next few hours are going to be long and hard. It's annoying at best.
And on top of that my laptop is really choking on rendering this stuff. It's like a diabetic trying to eat an 8 foot MarsBar.

The Trouble With Foley

Last year I had a stop-motion project called "Desktop Warfare". Initially it was a box of pencil top erasers at war with each other. They had paperclips for weapons, tape rolls and CDs as helicopters, and even a glue stick as a nuclear missile. The project was actually really fun to make, but unfortunately, after I got all of the shots, effects, cuts, and frame rate fixed, it came to audio and sound effects I drew a total blank. Not only did I have a lack of a sound effects library, but I was at a complete loss for what should go where. I manage to scramble a few gunshot sounds from a few of my old computer games, and that's frankly as far as I have gone up to this point.
But I vow to myself: Finish it. What I'll probably do is pay someone to time together all the low key things: individual gunshots, background noise, just the most tedious things. And since my teacher has a whole class full of kids who I think would gladly do it. In that case, I would still have to figure out what I want them to do and what I don't want them to do. I think I will tell them that to only put in sound effects for the standard paperclip rifle. Everything else like the crayon bazooka, the wire clip sniper rifle, and the glue stick nuke would be much easier to put sound effects in for.
On another note, I need to ask around and see if there is a program in After Effects that can match the frames color wise. Unfortunately, I used a regular webcam for the video, and since it is automatic in virtually every aspect, each frame differs slightly in gamma and exposure slightly from the one before it.
Should I ever get this finished though, I will definitely be proud of this. It's the first stop-motion film I've done where there are a multitude of moving parts scooting about at once. I do look forward to being able to post this online, and here on the blog.

Why I Prefer Stop-Motion

     I'm a big fan of stop-motion animation for two reasons:
a.) I thoroughly enjoy it
b.) I don't have to put up with actors
Even with the short films I've always been doing over the years, there has consistently been a problem of the actors/grips not giving a flying f#$%. I'm not much of an extrovert, so this generally does drain a lot out of me to constantly have to keep everyone else focused. It's exhausting for me. Therefore, I like using stop-motion. I don't need to get my actors rides to the set, I don't have to pretend to care what they are talking about between shots, and I can start and stop shooting whenever I feel like it. Not a single person in my way except me, which in itself is still quite a task. I have a lot of ideas I would like to put into paper, but in many cases I lack something that makes me rethink it completely. Whether it is the right camera, proper materials, or even sometimes the things I am using breaking. It's extremely frustrating on a lot of occasions.
However, it beats having to deal with other people.
Other people just annoy the living daylights out of me.

InkBlood

Over the past week in my graphics art I've been working on an image, and it's finally finished. What started out as a bored sharpie doodle evolved into something AWESOME. It wasn't too complex: just your average four-armed ink alien. I drew it on paper sometime in July, during one of the many hours I spend barred in my room. I started with the head, as I always do, and soon the rest of the body followed suit. And frankly, I've been fussed at before by multiple people for doing that. Of course, I try to follow their advice; drawing a quick basic sketch-skeleton and then merely adding details. Unfortunately I seem to draw worse that way, and drawing the head first gives me almost a theme for everything that follows. I feel it's almost a much more fluid system of channeling ideas to paper. Almost like a comedian performing improv. Sometimes the best ideas hit like a train with no warning or preparation. I'm proud of it frankly, no matter how much the rest of my family laughs at the connection I have drawn between the phrase "ad nauseum" (latin for 'to sickness'). The black ink reminded me of death and illness, and also the black plague, so i figured it was perfect for the title.

Skydiving Rig

In my next video project, I need to create an effects that looks like a person is skydiving. There is a problem though: finding out how to make it look like someone is floating in front of a green-screen. I have a theory on how we should do it.

The basic idea is to take an office chair, remove the back rest, and wrap it in green construction paper. As the subject is filmed, someone below oscillates the chair with a rig around on the floor; spinning it and moving it in a circular motion. And to give the impression that I want, i'll need to put a fan in front of his face to make his hair act like its being blown. Either that or I make him wear a hat. The illustration below shows what I mean, however crude it may appear

My Anatomy Presentation

Here is my "PowerPoint presentation" on a skin disorder we were each assigned. In my case, it was seborrhea: a special kind of rash. This video didn't take long to make, and writing and recording the script was pretty seamless. Anyway, I had fun with it and here it is.I got the idea from watching "Zero Punctuation" on youtube, but decided to make it a bit simpler than his hilarious videos.


Seborrhea, I Adore Thee from Trellis Haynie on Vimeo.

Documentary Failure

I was once tasked with creating a documentary on something. Being lost for options, my friend and I decided to do paintball. We got there, and right there things started spiral down the crapper.Nobody wanted to do an interview, which in documentaries B-roll is incredibly important. Without it, the film would be like a twelve year old's essay on giraffes. Anyway, here is pretty much the only thing worth showing off. I had an idea for a neat introduction where I introduce the subject matter, put down the mask, and get shot a few times. As you might be able to tell from the video, it hurt a lot more than anticipated. It's still kinda funny to watch.
Documentary Intro Failure from Trellis Haynie on Vimeo.

5 Video Tips for Complete Amateurs

     1.) Always have an original idea. While parodies and spoofs do have their luster, sometimes a really good idea will take you far. It doesn't even need to be complex. Just the bare bones of an something mildly entertaining, and then chisel out the finer details later on.

     2.) Have a plan. Whether it's a quick scribble you did on the bus, or something you even had multiple drafts for, planning a video is key. If you don't plan events out, everything is going to lack structure, and a strong foundation is all you need. From there you can throw a few decorations on top.

     3.) Make sure the people you are working with a.) have enough enthusiasm to help, and b.) actually know what they are doing. If you're the director, it's your job to make sure everything ties together smoothly and everyone does their job right.

     4.) Be sure to have the right equipment. This includes cameras, SD cards, software, lights, props, microphones, and most importantly actors. Make a checklist and run through it before every shoot.

     5.) Get everything legal out of the way. Copyrights, for example, for a song you are doing a music video to. It's finally finished and uploaded, and it's not even able to be played online. Make sure anything along those lines is completely out of the picture.

     Hopefully these tips will help you learn them by merely reading this rather than personal experience, like yours truly.

Storyboarding

            Storyboarding is an extremely important part of video production; just being able to write down your ideas, plan it out, and know exactly what needs to get done is incredibly helpful. While professionals can hire people to pretty up their drawings and make them look nice on paper, I don't quite have that luxury. Therefore, most of the drawings seem like they were walked on by a chicken with muddy feet. But it doesn't have to look good. All this is is a way to express my views and instead of having to describe them individually to everyone who's in on it. And in a lot of occasions, if there is a large amount of not-talking in the film, then it may also double as a script. Bottom line is, storyboarding is important
         The following images are scans of my storyboarding for my latest project entitled "Idle Hands". This video features a kid alone at home who dreams of skydiving. And I do apologize if my handwriting's a tad difficult to decipher. I'm really the one who is going to read it the most anyway.
Click HERE To See The Storyboard

Fat Lip [Sum 41] unoffical Music Video

Here is a music video I did a while back. I got the inspiration in class one day when I was pretending to take notes, so I wrote down song lyrics. The idea stuck with me for that as a music video, so I went home, sketched it out, and here's the final product. The interesting thing with things like this is that they require very little planning, and in the end that's how I've always been. The video took about three times as long to edit as a normal video mainly because the timing had to be really on track, and even now I still feel like it isn't quite as in-tune as I hoped. Eventually I got sick of hearing this song, which I think is something music video producers all go through, and frankly I was relieved when it was finished. Frankly speaking my computer isn't exactly built for this kind of work-you may have seen one of my previous posts describing the beginning of building a new one-and it took a while to render the video each time. But, lo and behold, it is finished.

Whiteboard Tests

Just some more experiments with animation. In this case, classic whiteboard animation. Nothing but washable markers and a washcloth. The theme of it was "Things that annoy me about technology".
Obviously it isn't finished, but it is still worth displaying at any rate.

Whiteboard Test Animation: What I hate About Technology from Trellis Haynie on Vimeo.

Claymation Practice

I've been toying with different forms of stop motion for a while now, and this is just one of my many experiments towards this. The goal was to have the red ball on the left have a short conversation with the blue ball on the right.
"Hey"
"What?"
"Happy Valentineth day."
One of the hardest parts of this was moving the eyes around. They were Airsoft BB's that I drew a dot on, and the really stuck well in the material. I'm really proud of the blinking portion of it, as it makes it a little more realistic. The rest of it was supposed to be a back and forth of them arguing about the fact that it's June, but the Play-doh I used dried out REALLY quickly. I figured the lip-syncing was a bit off; that portion of video takes a lot more thought and processing. Believe it or not, I really enjoyed doing this. Maybe Ill make a real video from this. Anyway, here is what I got done.

claymotion test from Tyler Haynie on Vimeo.

Bringing Toys to Life

I have always loved those little Hot Wheels cars. Mattel can recall all the Barbies they want, Hot Wheels is where it's at. I have long since now attempted at making a decent stop-motion race with them, but unfortunately they never exactly turn out how I want them to. Well, almost 2 years ago I finally made one and approved of it. So here, I share it with you today.

Bringing Toys to Life from Tyler Haynie on Vimeo.

Building The New "God-Machine"

Over the past few years, I have done every video project, all graphics jobs, and most of my video games on my 5 year old Toshiba laptop. It's been faithful, enduring, and has never failed me before, but frankly it's time to move on. After 5 years of files clogging the system like Fat Albert's arteries, and boot-up times that remind you how long an ice age can last, it's time for a new one. This time, I'm going to build this myself, and make the ultimate video-editing/graphic-designing/video-gaming desktop. So today we completed step one: buying a case. My dad (who is a technological genius) and I found a MSI Ravager case. Besides the oddly aggressive name for a computer tower, it's a pretty sexy box.
Next month comes the important guts; motherboard, processor, graphics card, etc.

The Great Wiener Chase

I have loads of fun with the Go Pro. Mainly it's because the thought of being able to relive all of your adventures and thrills is pretty awesome. This time we strapped a hotdog on the back of an RC car and made our dog chase after it up and down the street. Poor Millie.



The Great Wiener Chase from Tyler Haynie on Vimeo.

This video even got featured on a news cast one day.

The Fruits of My Efforts

About an hour ago I saw one of the commercials that I helped make while I interned in Seattle with SuperFad. Each photo you see I edited to look like an Insta-gram photo. It's awesome to finally see it on TV!

The Incline: A Documentary

Here's a documentary I made a while back for my advance video class on the Manitou Springs Incline. This is something I felt deserved some more attention. Therefore, this is the result.

The Paper Escape

This was one of my first major stop-motion projects. The idea came mostly from a video game, except the monochromatic style was inverted. I used paper and cut out, positioned, and photographed every separate appendage. Now that took patience. I learned that thicker/heavier paper works better for this type of animation. That might've been how they kept South Park so tidy.
Enjoy.

The Paper Escape from Tyler Haynie on Vimeo.

37 Miles Per Hour

I found some old Go Pro footage of me on my bike hauling down the hill I live on. It's not the most impressive, but I'm certain I must have broken the speed limit on my way down.

37 Miles Per Hour from Tyler Haynie on Vimeo.

In Seattle With SuperFad

Over this past summer I spent about 2 weeks in Seattle interning at an advertising company, helping out with them building commercials for things like Chevy, Nintendo, and Taco Bell. None of the things I did there were generally substantial of course; mainly minor things such as cleaning up textures or color-keying photos to look like they were taken through Insta-gram. However, the entire time I was there I got to see a lot of behind the scenes mechanics of this kind of industry, and frankly speaking I was impressed. Their building in the middle of Seattle was part of a complex and had one narrow staircase going from the first to second floor of their office. on the first floor was where the secretaries worked (though i couldn't quite figure out what exactly they did) along with the kitchen that had every kind of food you could imagine and two of their graphic designers' workspaces in the corner. The second floor was much more interesting; a majority of the area was taken up by massive televisions blasting sports and 3 or 4 old-school arcade games. There was also the 3d department up here, which was a ring of loud twenty-or-somethings who occasionally engaged in an all inclusive game of Call of Duty. The two other graphic designers sat in a large closet and adjacent to that was their massive render farm. Literally stacks and stacks of computer power built to handle the gargantuan amount of 3d objects that need to be processed. It was an extremely fun atmosphere too: nobody took anything too seriously, but managed to budget their time well enough to get everything done and then some. It was a very loose environment.
Needless to say, that's what I should look into being a part of.
Check them out at http://www.superfad.com/

An Emphatic Undertone

I was told I needed to pick an emphasis for the videos I make this year, in other words a theme for all each of them to share. After careful consideration and a few cans of Coca Cola I decided on the theme being "perception".  It's a broad enough subject that I can take to different levels and therefore seems ideal to me. Quite frankly I've already come up with a few short film concepts in the past few days and as I wrote them down i couldn't help but notice a few of them circled around fairly dark subject matter. And as I write this I reflect on all the other things that have been born from the more darker ideas sitting in that grimy mud puddle I call a brain. Drawings, writing, and even merely the ideas lying around worthless in my head during school occasionally look depressing. I don't necessarily see myself as a disturbed or depressing person; in fact I rather enjoy the company of myself, but nevertheless I feel like I'm a strange place to hear these ideas from.

Trellis

            Some people wonder why my name online is always Trellis.
To put it simply, I like Trellis. It's kind of a funky name. Aside from being something you hang petunias on, it was a character from a book I read when when I was about 11. He was a CSI investigator named Mike Trellis, and the last name just rang well for me for the longest time.
That and that the popularity of the name is about 1.42 per million people.
Needless to say it's quite uncommon.