Some films from my website Blackout.com

Blackout

Blackout

Veteran
Hello all. Nice to meet you. I am an actor/director as well as many other things.. I run a website called Blackout's Box at http://blackout.com

I am currently shooting with the DVX-100 and have played with the XL2. I am eagerly awaitign the new HD prosumer cams.

Here are some streaming films. Please give me your input:

The Light Crystal - How to Cure Migraine Headaches, Cook Turkey Burgers, and Proper Art Thievery

http://blackout.com/thelightcrystal

That was shot on believe or not a little crappy sony handicam because it wasn't supposed to have big film look production qualities. Just quick fun.

Smallville Paraody - What happen when Clark gets... ready for some hot stuff?
http://blackout.com/blackout/video/smallville-broadband.wmv
shot on dvx100 (not dvx100a) at 4x3 24p regular mode

Art's Point of View - a short film
http://blackout.com/artspointofview
shot on a canon XL2 at 24p.. I believe regular mode as well as I could not for the life of me extract the edited piece back to 24fps I had to do a 29.97 quicktime encode.

I did not shoot this but did the cleanup, color enhancement and encoding and provided online distribution. I really admire this film and will be working with the director on a project.

The Quiznos Corporate Scandal
http://www.blackout.com/blackout/video/quiznos_scandal_blackout.com.wmv

Sony Handicam

Milky - One man. 16 glasses of milk.
http://www.blackout.com/milky.html
Canon XL1

There are many many more.. let me know what you think... I do a live internet radio show on thursdays and often have film makers on.

- Blackout-
 
Some really funny stuff you've got there. Quickly shot and jerky shots and all that, but just the right amount of absurdity and personality that just makes it all really terrific. Great job.
 
The only one I liked was Art's Point of View. I liked that a lot.
Interesting story. Some clever writing at points. I liked the visuals. The "in your face" footage was nicely disturbing. Casting was good. The whole thing held my attention throughout, and it looked good.

The other films were, in my opinion, less than engaging.

1) Cheap and bad footage, extremely shaky camera work (to the point of nausea for the things like the Quiznos bit).
2) The bits were way too long. I caught myself almost just closing the windows before the films ended simply because they dragged. Edit down. Less is more.

The shorts seemed to be mostly (with rare exception) "Hey let's get burnt then turn on the camera and be wacky and spontaneous". I'm too old (late 30's) to be in your target demographic for these, so you can take my opinions with a grain of salt. I'm sure some folks will like them.

You want to grab the audience's attention and you want to engage them. You can still do the X-treme anti-establishment guerilla stuff, but that doesn't mean you have to settle for unviewable shakycam footage and bad (nonexistant) editing.
 
Thanks for the comments guys. I try to mix it up with spontaneos in your face fun and then fully planned shoots. I always cary a tiny little sony handicam with me wherever I go that I call my "battlecam" so that if something fun happens, I can document it. Those are more like fun video diaries rather than what I would call real short films, although there appears to be a big fan base for them. My planned films obviously take a lot more time and so are harder to pump out for a hungry web audience but I am concentrating on putting together a couple of feature length projects. In trutgh, I would be much happier ACTING if I knew I was in a capable teams project, as acting is my greatest strength. I am very imaginattive so I like to do it all, but as we all know, doing it al is extremely difficult.. meaning from the initial idea to the final project. Writing, acting, directing (sometimes even self Shooting) editing, promoting, encoding, web distrbuting selling. You have to do that at first to get noticed and then hopefully you hook up with the right people and networks and your talent gets used more efficiently and you don't drain yourself into the sub ether where pens and socks go.

ARTS POINT OF VIEW is my favorite as well and was directed by Alex Marquez. He is someone I trust enough to go and just act and leave the tech up to capable people.

Also... while it may seem so... I was not high in any of those clips. Lol. I don't even like pot. There is a clip up called, "Dude, Where's My Brain"

http://blackout.com/blackout/tesser/dude_wheres_my_brain_broadband.wmv

And believe it or not. We are on nothing. We made it as a test to make fun of a couple 'stoner' friends we had to show them what they looked like, and the stoner friends REFUSED to believe that we ere not on anything, but I can assure you, we were not. It now appears to be all over the internet as some sort of stoner classic, yet I tell you once again, I don't like pot at all. If I smoke it I get all paanois and freaked out. Give me an ice cold beer any day over a joint.

Now the old magic muchrooms on the other hand....

But this is a film forum.. lol. lets get back on topic.

Here is some crappy footage that I captured thursday night and sold to the cover of the miami herald and it was played on al CBS affiliates... it's the goodyear blimp right before it went down:

NOTE: footage is copyrighted do NOT reddistribute this or you will be hunted down:

http://www.blackout.com/blackout/video/michael_bigansky_blackout.com_goodyearstruggle6-16-05.MPG

The last few seconds are amazing.... lightning all around the blimp. My DV tape died and all I had left was an mpeg on a memory card. Lucky sony battlecam saves the day again with dual recording mode.

For you bungee people, this is just neat.. no great feat in film making. I went to the worlds tallent free fall drop and MADE the guy use a DV tape and not the crappy VHS they try and sell you for $20 and I think the music goes PERFECTLY. If you dont feel a little tingle of fear and triumph then you have no soul:

http://www.blackout.com/blackout/video/the_drop_blackout.com.wmv

Enjoy, and thanks for the comments even negative are much appreciated.

- Blackout -

http://blackout.com
 
Also. Does anyone know how to keep quicktime from clogging up after several plays? It seems that after someone plays one of my quicktime films a few times, the disk cache can get clunked up. AM I embedding something wrong?
 
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