Welcome to the AnimiVirtus.com film blog, writing up free web-based resources and showcasing cool, interesting or inspiring shorts in whatever free time I can muster as regularly as I can muster it. Enjoy, subscribe and tell your friends!
May 18 09
Showcase: The Guild & GTCMS
First of all, I’m shocked at myself for not showcasing this series earlier, especially with my parading Felicia Day around as a ‘web show extraordinaire’ in the past. Along with that, her co-producer has another web series I found recently and watched the first episode of, and it’s great fun as well.
Apr 30 09
Link Dump: Eclectic Edition
Well, here’s the finale in those “tons-of-stuff” brags I’ve been making the last few posts. There’s a bit of a mix in here, but mostly the usual categories of free stuff and tutorials, with a few random ones thrown in at the end just for the sake of it. Enjoy, and see you next week!
Gimme the goodies…
Apr 27 09
Showcase: Signs
Today’s showcase item is something I found through Videomaker Magazine’s newsletter last week. It’s a pretty cool little short that shows pretty successfully the effectiveness of editing, a simple concept, and a good, short, human story. The coolest part I thought at first was identifying with the main (male) character of the story, and then being able to watch his life go on an upward curve from there. I suppose that’s what we most often find intriguing and lovable in the first place, when we find bits of ourselves in the characters whose lives end up being what we wish ours were. Or maybe it just gives hope. Anyway, on the low-budget side of things…
Apr 23 09
Link Dump: Tutorial Edition
As promised, here’s a pretty mondo list of tutorial and resource sites for your educational pleasure. I’ve organized the list, just like last week’s, into what made the most sense at the time. If you’ve got additions, suggestions, objections, or anything else, definitely feel free to comment on the post and let me know about more knowledge available for free on the ‘net. Yess…knowledge….
Apr 16 09
Link Dump: Free Stuff Edition
First off, welcome to the new blog! Yes, I know it’s awesome. I’m proud to say it’s my whole site collection hosted on one domain, inter-linked, organized and consolidated. Awesome. So now…on to the link dump.
I’ve got a massve…and I mean massive collection of links ready for ya. So massive, in fact, that I’m breaking it up into a multi-part series, because frankly, opening tons of links at once won’t be fun for you, and copying and pasting and reviewing what all of them are won’t be so fun for me. Not all at once, anyway. So next week, Link Dump: Tutorial Edition. But let’s get started with part 1.
Oct 10 08
Link DUMP
Alrighty…sorry for the late post, but I think I’ll make up for it this time. I’ve got a whopper of a list tonight…tons of stuff I’ve been discovering over the past two weeks. So I’m not going to intro…here they are: Gimme the goodies…
Jul 03 08
Featured on Microfilmmaker!
You may have heard me mention my friends over at Microfilmmaker Magazine before in some previous post, say announcing their review of my last film, or something like that. Well, they’ve come through for me and the low-budget filmmaking community again and published an article I wrote about self-promotion and distribution in the DIY, low-/no-budget filmmaking arena in their most recent July issue.
The magazine is a great resource for all kinds of things from simple DIY instructions to cheap or free music for your film projects, reviews of films to reviews of software tools and packages, as well as articles by people working (and playing) in the industry. Check it out, it’s a great resource, and they happen to like my stuff so far, so obviously, they’re good in my book 
.
Feb 01 08
LATENT(CY) Reviewed!
My good friend Jeremy over at Microfilmmaker Magazine, an e-zine for – you guessed it
- low-budget filmmaking, recieved a copy of LATENT(CY) a while back and has reviewed it for the new issue of the zine. It was great to hear that this project hasn’t lost steam (something I’ve warned against in my report on DIY distribution that has yet to be online). The review was more than kind, and though the score wasn’t high, it was a justified and even helpful review. Go ahead and read it over here and feel free to download or watch it from the links over on the Films page. Thank, Jeremy, and the rest of the Microfilmmaker Magazine crew for watching, critiquing and showing my film’s review to the internet community.
One little tip for all you self-distributors out there: keep the submission fees for your films in the same package as the film when you send them to festivals, it makes it harder for the money to be lost. And you’d probably rather not learn that the hard way like I did just recently. Also, checks are much better for paying through the mail, since if they don’t make it to the right person, they usually can’t be signed and cashed or deposited, since the account and “Pay to…” names won’t match, and you probably won’t be cheated out of your money… whereas if you send cash… that’s a whole different story. Best of luck, and I’ll put an announcement up once I get the e-book version of my report on self-distribution and -promotion online. Happy filmmaking!
Jan 08 08
Showcase: Infest Wisely
This is a decent trailer for a pretty cool sounding sci-fi miniseries. The trailer’s what interest me the most, however, since it’s the only video piece of the film I’ve watched so far, but also, check out the bike mount shot following the riders through the trees! That’s sweet! And there’s no evidence as to how they did it. Great shot.
Dec 29 07
The Waiting Room…in the can!
The Waiting Room is finally completely shot and locked! I’m super excited to finally have this done. We fiddled with lighting more than usual on this shoot, and I liked it quite a lot. Direct light from my work light was too harsh, so we simply bounced it off a tinfoil-covered piece of cardboard sitting on the desk on the opposite wall, which gave a perfect soft back light from behind me. Next, we taped a piece of tin foil on the window in front of me, pointing the two track lights on the ceiling toward it, bouncing that light off the tin foil and onto my face, giving a nice soft glow that looked almost like it was coming from the paper I was writing on. It was a very nice effect, and perfect for the scene. Michelle really helped out on this shoot, being the cameraperson, the lighting technician and whatnot. It was fun to play with the lighting and get the shots I wanted to get in a relaxed, small-scale environment. Unfortunately, I only had the chance to take four pictures while shooting this stuff, but at least it demonstrates the lighting configurations I had set up. Take a peek at all of them here.
I think an awesome thing about low- and no-budget filmmaking is the ability to just improvise with what’s there at the time, with what you’ve got and what you know. I knew I had two little tin foil reflector type pieces (actually I just knew metal is reflective and I had some at the time), and I could use those to light up the scene in the way I needed and wanted. I’m excited now to relax tonight, and I have all day tomorrow to cut the thing together, start figuring out music, and finish up my school violence piece I’ve been not-so-diligently working on since last Spring.
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