movie mashup

[Reinhold]

i want to try and make a 30-60 second photorealistic movie mashup scene.

i want to start out fairly easy with the compositing in terms of characters moving/interacting with the environments, but if any of that matches it's better.  it's a chance to closely watch some movies, put some more rotoscoping and motion tracking on my reel. i want to cut two characters from different movies into the same scene, and put them on screen together, so the more matching angles the better.

you don't necessarily have to have specific scenes in mind, but  what might you guys like to see?

somebody posted a willie wonka in the shining gif that is along these lines, but i'd like to do something a little longer.

[Jeremy Blackman]

somebody posted a willie wonka in the shining gif that is along these lines, but i'd like to do something a little longer.

Can you repost that or another example here?

[Reinhold]

[matt35mm]

I can't really visualize how this would be done in a "serious" fashion.  Wouldn't it still end up looking a bit goofy?

I guess that I'm gonna go with funny and photorealistic, unless you have a great idea for a serious way to do it that also has some point for existing other than to demonstrate your ability, because the ideal thing would be to have something that's really entertaining that also happens to show your ability.

[Reinhold]

I can't really visualize how this would be done in a "serious" fashion.  Wouldn't it still end up looking a bit goofy?

I guess that I'm gonna go with funny and photorealistic, unless you have a great idea for a serious way to do it that also has some point for existing other than to demonstrate your ability, because the ideal thing would be to have something that's really entertaining that also happens to show your ability.

the more i'm looking around with this in mind the less i think it's really even possible. but i agree with you that something entertaining is the best way to go. if i did do something serious, it would be an homage thing, like to have a few wong kar wai characters in the same restaurant or a few hitchcock characters on the same train

as for an obscure with obscure, i'd put the main character in eraserhead walking up to the house from killer of sheep or something like that.

my biggest issue right now is that i have no good ideas. i wish the idea had come to me as " X movie ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO BE MASHED UP WITH Y movie" but instead i've got all this equipment and nothing on my reel and i had an idea more a long the lines of "i need to show off and can't commit enough of my time to real project, so i guess i could mash something"

[Pubrick]

this seems like it would take much more effort and time than committing to a real project.

[matt35mm]

If it's just a matter of needing to practice or just to do something, then my advice is to mess around with whatever but keep it to yourself, unless you happen to wind up with something that you think is really impressive.  If it's not gonna wow people, it probably shouldn't be on your reel.  Most of the reels that I've seen (from friends and so on; I've never been in any sort of position to ask for someone's reel) are really tedious and unpleasant to watch.  Maybe they're supposed to be that way... I don't know what those hiring/firing people are looking for, but I've never seen a reel that didn't serve to convince me that what I already suspected was true: that this person is average.

The only exception is one reel that I saw here on XIXAX by Redlum, because it very quickly shows a handful of impressive and diverse VFX shots and then also breaks them down to show how he did it, which was involved enough so that I could guess that I could ask him to do some shot that I need and he could figure out how to do it.  It being short and neat helped a lot.  I don't know a whole bunch about reels, but I know that I liked this.

[Neil]

going off of what matt said, and this might be a dumb question, but what are you trying to showcase by having this a part of your reel?

Definitely a neat idea, but what is your intended goal in having this externally shot footage (that you did not shoot) and showing it to a future employer?

Your editing skills? I just don't full understand how to go about something like this, or whatever, just wondering if it was a fun exercise or what.  Since you did mention it might go in your reel.


not harping, just curious.

[Reinhold]

thanks guys. i'm not really trying to make art with this project. as i mentioned above, the idea didn't even really strike me as something that needed to be done.

p, since nobody's paying me to do this, i can do it around my full-time job and drop it for freelance gigs as they come up. i know that it will take a lot of time, that's fine with me. i find this kind of thing fun. i want to make this on my own as a low stakes fun project in which i get better at using my tablet in AE without having to worry about a client's schedule.

in terms of what i'm looking to produce... i'd like it to be something that at least has a decent amount of novelty (could get a lot of hits on youtube, perhaps) but basically, since i'm looking for assistant editing gigs and don't have much to demonstrate that i know how to do this stuff, i want to show people that i'm capable of matching extremely diverse footage: compositing, animating masks over time, and matching grades to make them look like they are the same footage. clean is the main thing. if it's creative that's a plus, but people infrequently give a shit about an online editor or assistant editor's creativity. these jobs usually involve either be cleaning up masks or doing color correction on work after the creative editing is locked.

matt, my hope is to make my reel not painful. as it is right now, it kind of is. i've just got P9 (that panda film with the blue light), the vfx stuff i did for Warren (i recolored it again, by the way, and i'm making a very quick before/after sequence), some crunch spec spots, and some miniscule shit that i did for Xavier that went to air. what i want it to be is a 90-second reel of 5-20 second bits of different things, and then link to the full versions if people want to see them. that will need more color work, compositing, animation of some kind (text or roto), and of course more creative editing.
i did some spec work a couple of months ago for a documentary that is going to be big in theaters -- my cut of the interview won't be seen in theaters but what i put together is the film's footage, used to secure more funding mid-production. unfortunately until the film is released theatrically i can't put that out at all.

neil, i'm an editor. it doesn't matter who shot what's on my reel as long as i cut it. it helps a hell of a lot, though, if it's clean and nicely shot. i do something like this to avoid having a reel full of spec spots and student films (both of which i already have) and nothing else, like everybody else who's fresh out of school. obviously, the idea is to start replacing all of this shit with paid work but i'm not even there yet and i don't have availability for the time being to commit to paid work.

btw, redlum's reel is awesome. i'm nowhere close to that level right now. i'm looking for entry level stuff at places where i could grow into doing work like that.

so reel or no reel, it doesn't matter. this is something i want to try. matt's advice to keep it to myself is obviously good advice, but ideally it'd be something to work at until it's worth showing.

[Reel]