Due to the crazy amounts of emails I recieve
because of this video I've finally decided to crack down and write
a little bit about it. First things FIRST, I'll answer the question
everyone asks...
The song is by DAFT PUNK and it
is titled TEACHERS. Sweet. Now that we got that over with
lets continue.
Second, it is a huge misconception that this video took a long time to make. I've probably read a million times things along these lines; "el oh el! wow that probably
took FOREVER to make.", "a couple of college students
with A LOT of time.", "Students + too much spare time",
etc. etc. etc. What killed me the most is in one forum there was this guy pretending to be us telling everyone things like,
"it took ages to make! it took us about 3 months to make.
it was very hard getting it 2 match the music". Lies. Lies. Lies.
Honestly, this video took us like 2 seconds to make, and by 2 seconds I mean exactly 5 hours from start to finish.
We had just finished watching a movie and since we weren't tired we
figured, lets make a movie. We've been making movies together since 2000 only this time we decided we were only going to use a still camera. So we
did.
There really was no plot involved from the beginning. Our idea was to just keep
taking pictures until we had as much random stuff we could think of to fill it. My friend Andrew Yeager chose
the song. We ended up using it because it had such a distinct beat
that we could flow the pictures to easily. We got my music wiz
friend Jordan to then listen to it and count out the beats to
figure out exactly how many photos we would need to take and then
we just started.
Around 1 am we started taking photos. Photo after
photo after photo. It ended up taking over 400 pictures to fill
up the song. I forget the exact number but it was over 400 and
by 6 AM it was completed and uploaded on our website Give
Me Back My Son Productions. To save time I was actually editing
the video while the other guys were still taking pictures. As
the cameras memory card would fill up they would hand it off to
me and then continue taking photos. Really, the hardest part of
it all was just thinking of what to take pictures of to fill the
song.
Only a couple hours after being uploaded on our site it was submitted
and accepted on College
Humor, I Am Bored,
and a number of other websites. We were totally amazed by the
viral effect the video had. It was everywhere. It shut down our
website due to bandwith issues 3 months in a row. It was insane.
I think the most flattering thing was seeing other people create
their own "spasmodic videos" and sending them to us.
For all of you guys that did that, thanks! You guys all rock!
For all you tech nerds out there that are wondering what kind
of equipment we used. It really isn't all that complex. We used
a Kodak EasyShare DX7630 digital camera, importated all the photos
onto the computer and then ran them through Adobe Photoshop using
a batch converter to change all the images demensions to 720x480
(4x3 video standard) and then edited the the stills in Adobe Premiere
synching them to the music. Thats about it. Simple. The only effect
added in the video was the part where the chair spins upside down.
To do that we took a picture of just the hallway empty then I
had two friends go and hold the chair up, one on each end of the
chair. Then we just took those stills in photoshop and put the
blank hallway image on the layer underneath the image of them
holding up the chair. All I had to do then was use my eraser tool
and erase them out of the image leaving the blank hallway layer to
then show through from underneath. Pretty basic but it left for a cool effect.
Well, that should pretty much cover it. THANK YOU SO MUCH! For
everyones emails, comments, videos sent to us, etc. You guys are
too kind. We're glad so many of you enjoyed this video because
we sure had a blast making it! I did my best to describe the experience
that went into filming it. If any of you have any other questions
or comments feel free to contact us at any time.
OH! And if you liked this video than be sure to check out all
our other stuff on our website GiveMeBackMySon.com
/ gmbms.com!! I
promise you that you WILL NOT be disapointed! Take care!
- Will Robertson (06-18-2005)
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