This is the result of the first prototype of a workshop I’m planning to call “Flashmob Filmmaking”. The idea is to get a large group of people together to make a film — from pre-production to post — in two hours. Writing the script, shooting the footage, and cutting it together, all in that short span of time.

When this idea hit me, I envisioned it as something to do at some kind of fandom convention — a place full of regular people who’d be interested in doing something creative. But I needed to make sure it worked first, so I tried it at a party.

As you can see, it definitely worked. For the most part. We did go slightly over two hours total, so I’ll need to refine the formula to keep things moving along.

And I need to figure out a better solution for shooting footage that can be edited right away, without wasting any time to capture, transfer, or transcode. We shot this on a camera hooked up to Adobe OnLocation on my MacBook, and carried the laptop around along with the camera. Then, I put it into Target Disk Mode and connected it to my larger and more capable iMac, and used ClipWrap to make the footage editable into Final Cut. Unfortunately, the process of Target Disking and ClipWrapping took up a good five minutes — which is fast compared to capture or transcoding, but still too long for this purpose. I’ll probably need to get a camera which shoots to SD cards in a QuickTime-native format (or maybe ClipWrappable, since that process only took about a minute; I can live with that).

It was hot out. Our Macs weren’t quite able to cope. So we put ice packs on them.

Here’s some video of us recording the dialogue for Episode 2 of Your Face is a Saxophone. We got about 90% finished that day — Raye Gestwick was ill and couldn’t make it, so we’re recording her lines at a later date.

Plankhead members will get access to all of the footage we shot that day soon enough.

Music used in this video by Distemper.

This is the first behind-the-scenes video production diary for Your Face is a Saxophone. Once every week or two, we’ll be posting a video showing off the happenings of what happens with things happening.

In this video, Andrew Camenzuli and I test out the microphones and mixer that we were able to buy with the help of our esteemed benefactors. If you’d like us to be able to afford more awesome things, like computer equipment and epic car crashes, please donate. This is your last chance to get a lifetime Plankhead membership for just $5 before our pricing changes on June 15th.

Music used in this video by xIk.

Fortunately, my brother Alex is available, and he certainly has the chops to fill Andrew’s gigantic pinhead. So, allow me to formally announce to the Internets at large that Alex Green will be playing Andrew in the remaining six episodes of Your Face is a Saxophone.

Alex has acted for me before, most prominently as everyone-but-the-main-character in this film I made for English class when I was 15:

He also appeared as the only redeeming factor in this thing which you absolutely should not watch. The fact that I have linked to it in no way implies that you should actually click on that link and watch it. Please don’t.

Step Two: Go to YFIAS.com to find out how you can help.

At 8:55 PM on December 29th, 2010, the “production” phase of the pilot episode of Your Face is a Saxophone was officially completed. I would have posted about it then, but I wanted to include that 23 frame video, and it took an hour to render. Oh boy, is rendering the rest of this gonna be fun!!!!!!…oh god help me.

January will consist of post-production and promotion/proliferation prep-work. The episode will premiere on an Internets near you on Super Bowl Sunday, February 6th, 2011 — the best day of the year to make fun of the advertising industry.

The lighting was originally going to be a bit more complex, but then I hit Render, saw “8 hours 40 minutes remaining,” and was all like fuck that let’s do something else.

Speaking of lighting taking an exorbitantly long amount of time, no work on Your Face is a Saxophone would be complete without yet another aggravating aspect of Apple Motion’s awful, awful programming rearing its ugly head. I’m convinced that the Motion team’s competency reserves were completely used up on the top-notch UI, leaving only a bunch of mentally retarded goldfish for anything under the hood.

You see, in other programs which do 3D lighting, there are a number of different settings you can use to prevent your graphics card from melting while you work. For example, Cinema 4D, which David Lanz is building some of the other environments in, has, I believe, two or three lower resolutions for lighting than “full”, all of which don’t look particularly nice, but give you a good idea of what the final product will look like while using less processing power.

That way, you can adjust and work with the lights without having to get up and go make a cup of coffee every time you click a fucking button. Needless to say, this is not how Motion does lighting, because that would make too much sense. Instead, Motion has two quality settings for lighting; one is called “On,” and the other is called “Off.”

Now, from what I’ve said so far, you may have surmised that lighting is a particularly intensive task for a computer to do; the kind of thing which could potentially slow the system to a crawl. You bet your ass it is, especially in Motion, which already takes every other opportunity to attempt to incinerate your motherboard. Therefore, your options are to either not be able to see what the hell you’re doing, or see the full-quality, full-resolution results of your work at all times and only be able to move your mouse every five minutes.

There are other quality settings you can use, as Apple’s how-to guide for improving performance “helpfully” states:

Resolution
If you have a complex project that is causing your computer to play video at a very low frame rate, you can lower the resolution of the Canvas to reduce the strain on the processor. This frees you from waiting for the image to be rendered at full resolution each time you make an adjustment.

That’s great. Except for the fact that that doesn’t work.

Motion Blur
Turning this setting off disables motion blur previewing in the Canvas. This may result in a dramatic performance improvement.

That’s true. Which is why I never turn Motion Blur on while I’m working. And nobody else ever does. And why it’s disabled by default.

And that’s about it. That’s all you can do to make Motion perform better. Amusingly, this article is about improving the speed of playback. I’m not even trying to play anything back with lighting turned on. I just want Motion to not crash while I’m looking at one, single, non-moving frame.

God, this program is a piece of shit.

But if you’re doing animation, there’s no such trouble; the camera is invisible.

Look at this:

You know how hard it would have been to shoot that in real life? Really fucking hard. And no, I’m not referring to the difficulty of casting an actor with a lightbulb for a head.

Also, isn’t that a sweet reflection effect, you guys? Right? Isn’t it? Totally worth me wasting about an hour and a half on that I could’ve put towards making actual progress? Right, guys?