Collin’s Lab: DIY Sci-fi

Inspired by last month’s DIY Movie Making theme, I present to you the above-seen piece of homegrown science fiction. While waiting patiently for what is likely the galaxy’s slowest turbolift, spacefaring duo Metalmags(Erica Magrey) & The Alien Ambassador(yours truly) take a casual stroll through the seams of their own chroma-keyed reality, in search of an answer to that age-old question, “Why are we here?”

If the two pressed on in their search, they’d eventually stumble upon the two-dimensional plane of my laptop display running Apple’s Final Cut editing software. Luckily, FC’s chroma keying filter was able to accommodate our somewhat shadowy green-screen with a bit of tweaking. (FC Tip: be sure to try adding a Color Smoothing filter to the top of your stack + a Matte Choker @ the bottom)

The soundtrack for the vid was composed entirely in Ableton Live along with a monome 64 controller. Like most digital audio apps nowadays, Live can handle concurrent video playback – which makes the scoring process more or less a cinch. Also – the dialogue’s campy vibe is a pleasant side-effect of our necessary vocal dubbing (original audio had much unwanted background noise!)

All of the included sets, artwork, and costumes come courtesy of Erica’s handiwork – except for the Ambassador’s ocular prosthesis which I upcycled from a couple of Poland Spring bottles ;) More Metalmags+Ambassador antics can be found over at Tag Sale Cosmology – and be sure to check out our DIY Movie Making roundup(s) for more homebrew cinema goodness. See you @ the Elsinor launch!

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More:

• Top 10 Make: Online posts from DIY Movie Making Month
• DIY Movie Making article roundup
• Video Making Archive