"Skyline"
(Rated "G") 10/07
NEW"Skyline"The
First Internet MovieMorph October 2007 brought the Morpheus
morphing animation suite into my digital bag of tricks.The second experimental
morph, and the first full blown "MikeMorph" Internet Movie,
"Skyline" is only 3 minutes and 40 seconds long. Utilizing
the Morpheus morphing software, and combined with the Sony Vegas editing
suite, "Skyline" offers a continually morphing urban landscape,
backed by moving cloudscapes. 39 separate photos of over 35 differnet
cityscapes have been cropped, masked, and morphed.READ
THE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY on the WhenWordsCollide blog.
"The Tall Ships"
(Rated "G") 9/07
NEW"The
Tall Ships" A
tribute to the sailing vessels of old and the three masted schooners
of today. MikeVideo combines footage shot aboard four full size sailing
ships at the Dana Pt. Tall Ships Festival on Sept. 8th, 2007, with photos
and paintings acquired through websearches, and scored to a music file
that contains lots of traditional sea shanties.READ
THE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY on
the WhenWordsCollide blog.
"Floral Dreams "
(Rated "G") 05/07
"Floral
Dreams " This is the latest in my "Dreams"
series of art videos. Flowers and plants photographed, and taped at
different botanical gardens across the South bay, including the Huntington,
the Getty, and the South Coast Botanical gardens, and arranged to the
Celtic music of Steeleye Span, with vocalist Maddy Prior. I've always
loved flowers, and my very first job was as a manager for a Garden department
for a retail chain. The attempt is to mix the video and the photographs
using layering and effects so that the viewer can't tell the difference,
and the overall effect is somewhat soothing. This is only the second
video I've made using the new Vegas software, and it was made in one
day. (Photography was shot over a four year period.)The chroma key effects
pioneered in "Clowns" are much more sophisticated in this
video, which also uses the title animation feature in the Vegas software..
"Cultural Blender"
(Rated "PG-13") 05/07
"Cultural
Blender Feature Page " Over one month in the making,
the completely animated "Cultural Blender" internet movie
is the centerpiece of the newly redesigned "Cultural
Blender" website.Featuring 20 of the 40something images in
the Blender composite, this imaginative piece of videomaking uses my
new Sony Vegas editing suite. Some of the several icons represented,
with images, video, old television footage, and music, are John Wayne,
Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and the Smiley Face. The Feature Page
includes a high quality MPEG download of the movie and a comments page.
"Moviola Dance"
(Rated "G") 03/07
"Moviola
Dance Feature Page " The
"Roxette" section from the MikeVideo "Moviola Dance"
has been on either this page or the YouTube Channel for over a year.
Now I have re-edited the "Moviola Dance" video for the internet,
in three segments under 10 minutes long. The Feature Page is online
with streams and downloads as I add them to the site. On the first weekend
in March I have Part 1 and 2 uploaded, and Part 3 is being rendered.
All should be online by the end of the week. "Moviola Dance"
does not contain any of my photography or videomaking skills. It is
made up completely of musical segments from old MGM films, scored with
different soundtracks. The movements were made to match the music when
I created the video in the pre computer 80s by manipulating the fast
forward and reverse knob of a CAV laserdisc player in real time, and
capturing the "performance" on VHS tape. These videos will
not be added to my YouTube Channel for fear that Warner Brothers will
claim I violated copyright, as they did with :"42nd
Street Dance", whch is a similar pairing of different music
with a dance clip from a later MikeVideo. The embedded files on the
Feature Page for the video are from Google, and the downloads are on
my server. Not only did I master three segments of the "Moviola
Dance" but I also created another "archival" MikeVideo
internet movie utilizing footage from 1991 showing me performing an
improvisational dance to one of the tunes on "Moviola Dance",
"Begin the Beguine" by Artie Shaw. The video is available
on my Xanga blog, WhenWordsCollide. It's called "Dancin'
Fool".
"ArtViews"
(Rated "G") 01/07
"ArtViews"
The latest Internet Movie is a "remake" of one of my very
first streaming internet movies. First conceived and edited as a four
minute realvideo file in 2001 and announced on the MikeVideo section
of AllThingsMike, "ArtViews" was composed of footage shot
at the Huntington Library and Art Gallery in 2001, and was scored with
the classical piece: "Hungarian Dance #1" by Johannes Brahms.
The streaming realvideo files in those days were almost unwatchable.
The resolution was nonexistant, and since the video showcased works
of art displayed at the museum, shot in low light, the shoddy resolution
and the physical size of the video, which was thumbnail sized, contributed
to an unwatchable experience. The video was one of the first three "internet
movies" I displayed on the "MikeVideo Internet Movie"
pagein 2001, when I announced that "someday we will all have our
own television stations on the web."
Slowly but surely, I'm "recreating"
the three original internet movies, in celebration of MikeVideo's 20th
anniversary, which was November of 2006. All of the links from the original
MikeVideo Internet
Movie page, which was online years before YouTube existed, are now
active again, linking to the newer "internet movies." The
first one was "Selling Sex at the CES",
which I completed during Summer 2006. "Artviews"
is the second little film to get the treatment, and I've now combined
a new music track with the footage shot at the Huntington and also footage
shot at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in early 2005, to create a brand
new "ArtViews". Although a lot of the original footage from
the Huntington was unusable because of shaky camera work and the aforementioned
low light, there are enough good shots, combined with the Getty footage,
shot with my latest camera, and framed with more of an "artistic"
presentation, to fill an almost nine minute video. I've also uploaded
my original test footage for the VideoWave program I was learning. The
video is called
"Camelia Dreams" and although it features footage of a
rose bush, I had planned on assembling more footage of flowers, and
soon I hope to "remake" this one as well, using footage of
gardens I've shot over the years. 
Some of the art, when photographed,
displays an almost 3-D quality. I have used the chroma key and transition
elements in the Pinnacle Studio video editing program to make some interesting
combinations of different artworks, and each individual element is timed
to the music "mashup" which was created first. The clips are
arranged not with regards to the museum where they were taken, but might
seem haphazardly presented, although the intent is to "create art
from art" and hopefully the end result proves entertaining. It
took slightly over two weeks of almost sleepless nights to assemble
this latest MikeVideo "masterpiece". At first, I only wished
to create something for the link on the original "Internet Movies"
page, but once I began the actual construction of the video, I became
almost obsessed with making the most original, interesting, and entertaining
video I could with the footage, reaching into the MikeVideo editing
bag of tricks more than a few times, and in some cases, layering more
than six elements in a single "shot".
All the videos which contain the MikeVideo
brand have a certain trademark, and this is no exception. Even the VHS
MikeVideos contained many disparate elements combined in such a way
as to make a new presentation. A simple dissolve, if performed with
the right two shots, can be stunning and awe inspiring. Since this is
a video showcasing the fine arts, every attempt has been made to insure
that the viewing experience is enhanced even for viewers who have visited
the museums.All editing choices were reworked until I was satisfied
with the results. In fact, some of the "traveling mattes"
I've used to great effect in "Betty
Boop Dreams" and "Clowns",
are also used here, and the combination of stills, video and graphics,
utilizing the transition effects in the program, all combine to enhance
the viewing experience. Ten minutes seems to be the perfect size for
internet video projects, and I like to insure that not one second is
wasted. There are 270 separate video and 51 separate audio components
in this video.
"The History
of MikeVideo" A MikeVideo Internet Movie Series (Rated "G")
01/07
"The History
of MikeVideo: Episode 1: The Analog Years 86-88"
A new Internet Movie Series begins with the History
of MikeVideo. Letting the original videos and raw footage tell the story
of 20 years of videomaking, this overall view of the "early years"
contains newly digitized scenes from some of the original VHS MikeVideos
from the 80s, including "Sacked", "Kris Cleans Up"
and footage for the unfinished "Back To Lomita". There is
plenty of narration, and a younger version of me stars, but the original
footage, with the addition of text intertitles, tells the history pretty
well. A companion piece to the MikeVideo
History page on this website, here the actual footage is showcased.
Some of the VHS footage looks rather good, and any glitches in the analog
transitions have been repaired digitally. Stay tuned for more episodes
of "The MikeVideo Story".
When affordable home video appeared
in 1981, I bought one of the first CED videodisc players, one of the
many formats in which I've invested that have ceased to exist over the
years as the technology got better and better. I used the videodisc
player and a Beta tape deck to create "video collages". By
1986, I bought a marked down video camera and I embarked on the first
steps toward realizing my childhood dream. I became "MikeVideo",
and I started to make movies". Take a look at the past, when YouTube
was nonexistant, cameras were really heavy, and computers were large
unwieldy machines. .
"Nantucket Holiday
Video Series" (Rated "G") 12/06
Nantucket
Holiday Feature Webpage: The
history of the new digital "internet movie series" called
"Nantucket Holiday" is presented, along with video captures,
and streams of the chapters from YouTube just as soon as I get them
online, on the new "Nantucket Holiday" feature page.
Nantucket
Holiday Episode One: The Calm Before the Storm( 1999-2006) In
September 1999 I travelled to Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts.
Since I was spending two weeks in Nantucket for a vacation/lovesearch,
I brought along my year old digital videocamera. I announced the creation
of the MikeVideo movie "Nantucket Holiday" on my then fledgling
website and created a
section of the site for the video. The original video is slightly
over an hour long, and was mastered to SVHS. Using the master as a reference,
but going back to the original digital videotape, I am reconstructing
the video as a "movie series" of five or more 10 minute episodes.
In the first, Mike arrives on island just in time to hear that a hurricane
is approaching.
Nantucket
Holiday Episode Two: Nantucket Architecture and Hurricane Floyd (
1999-2006)The hurricane is approaching and Mike prepares for the worst,
but first tours the area out of town and comments about the singular
Nantucket architecture, enforced by building code to insure that all
structures on the island look as if they had been built in the 17th
centrury.
Nantucket
Holiday Episode Three:Brandt Point Light, Steeple Views, Whaler's Homes,
and Widow's Walks ( 1999-2006) Another 10 minute episode ot
the video. Starting with the Brandt Point lighthouse the moring after
the hurricane passed Nantucket, MIke makes his way around the island,
shooting from inside the Congregational Church tower, the tallest point
on Nantucket Island, and describing some of the 17th century Whaling
mansions at the top of Main Street.
God's
Movie (1999-2006) One of the highlighted sections of the 1999
"Nantucket Holiday" video was a series of shots of the sun
setting on Madaket Beach. Now I have used the sunset footage for "God's
Movie". Although shot in 1999 on Nantucket, I enjoy watching the
sunset into the ocean, and have always called the experience "watching
God's Movie." Now "God's Movie" is a MikeVideo.
MikeVideo from 2006
San
Diego Dreams (2006) A weekend getaway in September 2006 to the
beautiful Southern California beach city of San Diego resulted in "San
Diego Dreams", a MikeVideo "travelblogue" set to music.
Visits over a three day period to Coronado Island, The world famous
San Diego Zoo, and Balboa Park yeilded scenes from each area. The first
part of the video was shot on Coronado Island, and since I didn't take
a lot of video footage, far less than I had thought, I use some of my
photographs to supplement the footage. The second part of the video
features shots of animals at the Zoo, scored to Toto's 1980s hit "Africa".
The next scenes are from some of the museums at Balboa Park, which are
housed in the photogenic buildings of the 1917 Pan American Exposition,
a World's Fair. The entire video was assembled, edited, scored, and
uploaded to YouTube in one day.
Selling
Sex at the CES: Video Postcard
( 2001)In August of 2000 I uploaded the "Video Postcard"
for "Selling Sex at the CES" to my YouTube Channel, as an
"advertisement" for the ambitious "Selling Sex"
internet video, a 30 minute three parter which I intended to upload
to YouTube as I created it from the original source tapes for the 2001
VHS tape already existing. I shot fottage from 1999 to 2001 at the Video
Software Dealers convention in Las Vegas, a trade show I call "The
Pornothon". The "Video Postcard" was originally made
for the JVC video sharing site online, since my first digital video
cam was a JVC. The original digital elements, including the opening
credits and narration, was recently found on an almost discarded CDR.
I transferred the files onto my present computer, and I have all three
parts completed as of November 2006. Sex sells, and at the Consumer
Electronics Show in Vegas every year, all the big porn companies put
on quite a show, including a large amount of porn stars and starlets
signing autographs and "posing".The
" Selling Sex at the CES" Feature Webpage The "Selling
Sex" saga is a long one, and the story merits it's own page on
MikeVideo. I am offering all three 10 minute "MikeVideo Internet
Movies" for download or streaming from this site. The history of
the video is related, as is the story of how my first two "Selling
Sex" videos were censored and removed from my YouTube channel.
Now you can watch the complete MikeVideo "Selling Sex at the CES".
I must warn that this video is not for everybody. I am not conflicted
about featuring what amounts to soft core porn on my website. I have
rated the videos "R" for restricted, and hope to dissuade
anyone from watching them if they are offended. Before the videos were
removed from YouTube, each one received almost 10,000 viewings, so they
were popular. "Selling Sex at the CES" is a documentary, and
while somewhat titillating, these are just the latest MikeVideo "internet
movies" for your enjoyment.
Clowns
(June 2006) I have a "thing" about clowns, and when I created
a website called Clowns,
this video was begun utilizing the images I had collected for the website.
The internet movie lasts six minutes and 23 seconds and is a series
of over 250 images of clowns set to and edited to clown themed music.
Using the special effects in the Pinnacle Studio 9.4, the images overlay,
move, and fade, so that the effect is more of a moving film than what
is essentially a slideshow. All kinds of clowns are here, from the "funny"
to the "ferocious". A lot of people are afraid of clowns,
so their evil nature shows through in this video, as well as their comical
nature.The video has proved to be one of my few "YouTube hits"
and has been viewed over 13,000 times and has received 15 comments since
June of 2006.
With my 2007 videos
I have begun to develop a discernable "style" which was begun
with this video. The early use, for me, of the chroma key feature has
turned into a standard effect in most of my internet videos since "Clowns".
There are visible "green" edges in this video, because I hadn't
learned how to diminish this part of the chroma key effect until a few
videos later. Perhaps I will revisit "Clowns" in the future
and clean up the less than perfect effects.
DooDah
(January 2006) This MikeVideo Internet Movie clocks in at over slightly
over 9 minutes long.Part of my streaming videos on YouTube,
"DooDah" is a visual and aural representation of the DooDah
parade, Pasadena's "alternate" take on the annual Tournament
of the Roses. The parade had gone on through over 30 irreverent years,
and I have captured most of the "attractions" like the Men
of Leisure and the Bastard Sons of Lee Marvin, plus this year's Grand
Marshalls, the "Barbecue and Hibachi Grill Team." The music
track for this internet movie is "800mg" from the CD "Evacuation
Routes" by Andreas Braeunlich. I plan on using more Braenlich music
on future projects.
Some of the groups particpating
in the DooDah parade have their tongues planted firmly in cheek, and
others, such as these "well hung" gentlemen, have their backs
pierced. There is never a dull moment, and hopefully I've captured it
all in my new MikeVideo Internet Movie. Streaming to a computer near
you.
MikeVideo from 2005
Arbitrimage
Dreams (October 2005) The most diverse MikeVideo Internet Movie
is slightly over 9 minutes long and features a variety of images, strung
together in a very interesting way, edited to the flow of almost angelic
music supplied by the Bulgarian Women's Radio and Television Choir.
Announced in February 2005 on WhenWordsCollide,
the creation of "Arbitrimage Dreams stalled when my older computer
kept freezing, crashing the famously unstable Pinnacle Video software
I use to make the movies. I was able to save the master MPEG files,
and when transferred to the new faster computer, I finally put the finishing
touches on the movie and am presenting it for the first time. In three
days on YouTube,
"Arbitrimage Dreams" received over 125 viewings.
I utilized
scenes from all of my digital videotapes, dating back to 1998 when I
purchased the first digital videocamera, to find footage which was edited
together to make "Arbitrimage Dreams". Every time I go on
a photography expedition, since the camera also shoots video, I take
some video whenever I can, and what you see in the film is basically
moving photography. Plans are afoot for a sequel using new music.
"Renaissance
Day" (May 2005) became a film after more than four years
of promising, on the internet, to create a MikeVideo called "Renaissance
Day". The wrap party was held Saturday afternoon, April 23, 2005.
I have MPEG files on my computer, and on Video CD. The streaming video
is available in the Windows Media format. I used both footage from the
first 'Renaissance Day" video, and the last footage I shot in May
of 2004 at the last new Faire location.The video is 23 minutes long,
and tells the "story" of the Queen's visit to a countryside
merchant town sometime in the late 16th century. I planned "Renaissance
Day" when I first established the MikeVideo page on AllThingsMike.
Now this ambitious undertaking, mixing music, dance, and scenery, horses,
bards, and players is complete. The original "internet movie"
which was a Realplayer file was six minutes long. The 23 minute "movie"
was halved for uploading to YouTube, and regrettably, I didn't save
a high quality MPEG file of the film before I removed the avi capture
files from my computer. The only files I have are the under 100MB wmv's
I uploaded to YouTube. The resolution is not really high, because of
the length of the video. I have plans in 2008 to go to the latest RenFair
location, shoot more footage, and then recombine the old and new footage
into another "internet movie series" of three or four 10 minute
"episodes" like I recently did with the hour long "Nantucket
Holiday".
"Renaissance Day"
as featured on my YouTube channel utilizes footage shot originally in
1999 with the JVC digital camcorder purchased in 1998, and footage shot
in April of 2004 with the latest Sony DCR-PC105 camera. Attention was
taken to insure that each shot looked "cinematic" and that
there was no unneceassary camera movement, pans, or or zooms. In 1999
I created a page of video captures from the original digital tape. Here
is a link to the very first page I created on the internet for "Renaissance
Day
MikeVideo from 2004
Beach
Dreams (March 2004) A day at the beach with MikeVideo. Shot
during a particularly sunny weekend in early spring at Huntington ,
Seal, and Cabrillo Beaches in the South Bay, the images are edited to
the beat of "Mr. Moto" an old surf tune performed by Zed57."Beach
Dreams" is the first video shot with my Sony digital videocamera,
purchased new the month I made this video. Actually, this is "Beach
Dreams 2" There was another, shorter "Beach Dreams" shot
on an overcast day at Cabrillo Beach. I scrapped all of that footage,
went back when the sun was brighter, and shot the Cabrillo footage which
is in the present video.This and "Painted Desert Dreams" were
originally streamed from this website, and then the files had to be
deleted because of bandwidth limitations. I put them back online on
my YouTube Channel in 2006.
"Painted
Desert Dreams" (Summer 2004) With footage shot in the summer
of 2000 in Arizona, MikeVideo captures the majesty of the southwest,
with a tour of the painted desert edited to an original tune, "Latin-esk"
by Jim Zabel and performed by Zed57. The footage sat unused till 2004,
however I did create a small internet video in 2000 showcasing some
of the shots, and at that time I figured I didn't really have enough
good footage. You will notice a lot of transitions in this film, because
a lot of the shots are just the camera pointed out the window of a moving
truck, so not much that was taken was usable. During editing, I noticed
I only touched half of the trip with this video. The other half, including
The Petrified Forest and The Grand Canyon, will be showcased in the
sequel, "Painted Desert Dreams II: The Grand Canyon" which
hopefully I'll create sometime in the future..
MikeVideo Archives
"Dancin'
Fool"
(1991) An archival MikeVideo from 1991. Mike performs some improvisational
dance to the music of Artie Shaw. During the late 80s and early 90s,
I frequently turned the camera on myself when performing dance, to music
as varied as rock, big band, and rythym and blues. These tapes, originally
on VHS, predated the "dance craze" videos on YouTube by almost
20 years. I would simply turn on the record or tape player, the camera,
and start dancing. I never used these tapes in MikeVideos, and now that
"dance moves' videos are really popular, I dusted this one off
from 1991 and posted it on the
WhenWordsCollide Video section in March of 2007.
"42nd
Street Dance"
(1989) This sequence originally was part of a longer video entitled
"Judy Garland" and is a beta tape. It was made as an experimental
beginning for a series of short "episode" type videos which
were about 20 or 30 minutes long. Each "episode" has crosscutting
between movie sequences. The first had three different Judy Garland
sequences, hence the title. The piece here, from the Warner's musical
"42nd Street" with Ruby Keeler performing to the 1989 Paul
McCartney tune "Rough Ride" was an early
"Moviole Dance". There was also a cartoon on each tape.
I finished two of them and began a third.It might be noted that this
video was deleted from my YouTube site by Warner Brothers for copyright
infringement. 42nd Street was a Warner Brothers Film, and Ruby Keeler
was one of the studio's stars. Busby Berkeley directed the film, from
1932.
