Technical problems

Sorry for there not being an update for a while now, I've been having LOTS of problems here. The biggest problem has been the external hard drive deciding it doesn't want to work anymore, which is baaaaaaaad. It either doesn't mount, or mounts then disappears. I've managed to get a few really important files off it, and now I'm leaving it alone until I can get a new external and shift everything over to that, then re-format it, which seems to be the way to solve the problems, according to a few forums. I was *really* worried the other night when it failed, there's so much on that drive now, important work stuff and lots more.

With the current things I needed to keep working now on the (becoming increasingly full) laptop, I thought it would be ok. I wouldn't need to use the external until I've got the new one, so all I needed to do was work on the projects I had lined up for the next few weeks, get a new hard drive, and everything would be fine. I was of course, wrong.

Earlier this evening my wireless optical mouse decided to pack up, mid project. Tried pressing the connect buttons on the wireless receiver and the mouse - nothing. Tried changing the batteries for some fresh ones and pressing the connect buttons - nothing. Went to the Logitech website, trawled through their trouble shooting pages (ignoring the obvious statements about changing batteries and reconnecting the mouse and the receiver) and found a page about Mac problems. From this I tried verifying and repairing the system permissions - nothing. I tried their suggestion of downloading their connection utility software. Installed it, had to restart the Mac and opened the program. 'Please connect the wireless receiver then restart this programme'. So, according to Logitech, I need to have a working receiver before I can run diagnostic software about why it isn't working? THIS DOES NOT HELP ME, LOGITECH.

There's no way I can just settle for using the ibook's trackpad to work on some of the projects I need to get done, it's not feasible.

So, here I am, afraid to use the external hard drive and without a mouse to do any work. Sigh. And it's 7 days until pay day when I can afford to buy a new mouse to get working again. This is going to be a long 7 days.

Backwater, Dawn of the Dead

Back in 2005 I was on the BA Video course at Swansea Institute, doing a 1 year top-up of my HND Media Production, and another student was making a short horror film called 'Backwater' for his final major project, and I offered to make a title for him. He wanted something simple, and water based, so after shooting some footage of water from the dock near to where I lived at the time, I came up with the above pieces of work. Ben (director of 'Backwater') preferred the first one, with 'Backwater' as one word, all in upper case, whereas I preferred the second and third versions.

Technical notes: Shot using Richard Davies's camera (I think) on a very cold, wet and windy day at the dock, by the Millennium Quay flats, back when everyone thought they were posh. Made entirely in After Effects. Music is 'Scarey 2' by D. Scott from the original 'Dawn Of The Dead' soundtrack.

This is a fairly early piece of work for me, and it's something I looked back on recently and thought how much my skills have progressed since then, so I decided to do some newer versions.




I'd recently thought about making some generic horror based titles, and was musing on the idea of making one for a film called 'Thursday the 13th', which is a horror comedy that exists entirely in my head, when I looked at the early 'Backwater' work I'd done, and just thought about using that title instead. It was a fairly simple concept, I wanted to make the title look as if it was written in blood, somehow. I've played around with a few ideas, the blood revealing the text, the text being made from the blood, different background colours, and these are all those tests.

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects. Music is 'Desert de Glace' by P. Arvay from the original 'Dawn Of The Dead' soundtrack.



Ah, I enjoyed making this, and I'm also quite proud of it. After making a few of the above 'Backwater' revisits and listening to the 'Dawn Of The Dead' score, I decided to watch the 'Dawn Of The Dead' remake, and I realised that the idea of text made from blood was something that is used in the titles as well (although they used actual blood to quite nice effect). As I love zombie films, in particular both 'Dawn Of The Dead' films, I thought I'd apply the basics I'd come up with for the new 'Backwater' titles, and refine it to make my own 'Dawn Of The Dead' title. I really like this clip!

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects. Music is 'Scarey 1' by D. Scott from the original 'Dawn Of The Dead' soundtrack.

Special thanks to George A. Romero, the man who brought visceral horror home, and was a big influence on my life.

Fact: I've written 'Dawn Of The Dead' 9 times in the post.

Basic Productions ident

The illustrious Mr Jeffcoate wanted an animated ident for his work whilst he's away at university, based on a logo he'd created. I've tried to keep it as simple as possible, while at the same time giving it a slightly sleeker, more polished style to the original poster idea he sent me. The first half of the clip is the ident in red, which was the original colour on his poster, with the second half being an even simpler greyscale version.

The size and resolution on this clip really don't do it justice. It's lost the really nice sheet metal texture background, the bump shade and the drop shadow on the title and spinning hydrogen atom. Really needs to be seen full size. If anyone does want to see it, let me know and I'll email it to you.

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects.

A transporter, alternate 'Life of Death' and 'My Llanelli' titles

This is a sci-fi transporter effect I've been working on for a while. It's taken a while to sort out, for various reasons (mainly my never being happy with me own work), but I'm going to say it's finished now.

It was originally intended to look like the Asgard beams from Stargate SG-1, but I kept adding things to it. You can still see the original 'white out' style of the Asgard beams underneath the rest of the effect. I like this piece, overall.

Technical notes: Shot in my good friend Sue's front room (thanks for being an on-set dog handler, Sue!)
and in the Graig media studio, with a PD170 camera. I used Particle Illusion to make the energy and particle effects, with all the masking, the glow, the cloning (had to remove some stray light reflections), other effects and overall compositing done in After Effects. Apologies for the low resolution on this clip, it had to be done to get the file size down, even using H264 compression. Full size version is MUCH better.




An alternate version of the 'Life of Death' title. The original was made on quite short notice, with a simple concept that used up RAM like nobodies business. It can be seen over at Dai Jeffcoate's showreel blog, as well as the accompanying crystal effects that were needed. I made this alternate title because I just wasn't happy with the original, which I think looks quite ugly, looking back at it. I'm not happy with the original crystal effects either, but I'll save working on new ones for another time...

The concept behind this one was fairly simple. 'Life of Death' was based on the book 'The Book Thief' so I went with the idea of a book opening, with a sort of mystical text revealing itself, and then the book closes. The time between the prologue and first scene didn't leave a huge amount of room for anything complex, so this is quite short. I like this title.

Technical notes: Made entirely in After Effects, using some very nice textures, ink bleed footage and tutorials that I bought.




A more final version of the 'My Llanelli' title, with a more 3-dimensional text effect, and I've sped up the footage so the clouds move a bit quicker and it looks less like a still image. I much prefer this to the original version.

Technical notes: Same as my previous post, shot with Dai's JVC cam, made in After Effects. This one's a lot more polished than the work in progress, which you can really notice when you see the full size clip. It's not so noticeable on this resolution, but I know the cloning and the colour correction is there...




I was experimenting with different effects on top of the above 'My Llanelli' clip, and I came up with this chalkboard style. It's not fantastic, but I thought it looked interesting, so I'm posting it up.

As always, any and all feedback on the above pieces is welcome and encouraged.

Daf