Making a Reel: What is this Nightmare?!?

Some of you might remember me writing a post in which I optimistically talked about how I was getting my reel together and all the exciting doors that could open for me once I had one. All I had to do was get the footage together! Well, that was more than a month ago. Here's what I've run into.

I want my reel to consist of my segments on 1000 Ways to Die and Operation Repo, my zombie PSA, Melvin Becomes a Man, and Dude Tips. As you may have noticed from all the hyperlinks, all of these clips can be found on the internet. So it should be super easy to collect all the footage, right? ...Right?

Let me say first off that Youtube is awesome. All you have to do to lift a Youtube video is put the url on www.keepvid.com and it takes care of everything for ya.

1000 Ways to Die and Operation Repo is where I'm having problems. My clips are streaming on their respective websites, and are protected against greedy little data thieves like myself. Okay, fair enough. But these shows have employed hundreds of actors, surely all I have to do is just email the folks from the show, and they'll send it right to me!

Psh. One show sent me an email that said "we don't send original copies to actors" whereas the other one just flat out never got back to me after two straight weeks of emailing, I guess in the hopes that eventually I'll buzz off

Looks like I'm on my own with these two.

Well, nothing like shelling out four bucks on iTunes to buy an TV episode that you're featured in. But I did that for 1000 WTD, only to discover that iTunes won't let me convert the file into a format that I can edit with. Even tried to use it on crappy iMovie, still wouldn't work. Bought iSkysoft Converter. Won't work. The episode is just sitting on my computer, and I can't use it.

Repo doesn't even have my episode on iTunes... Crap.

As of now, I'm waiting on my Dad to try some wizardry with his DVR to see if he can get Repo off of it. Still not sure what I'm gonna do about 1000 WTD.

You know what the funny part is? Once I actually have all the footage, stringing it all together into a rough cut will take fifteen minutes, tops.

52 Sketches in 52 Weeks: Conflict Resolution (Grappling with Green Screens)

Conflict Resolution (#9)

Old ATX fans will recognize the ever-talented Jamie Burke from Melvin Becomes a Man making a triumphant return to our channel, and boy is she a force to be reckoned with. It was good to have her on set with us again. A lot of laughs were had during that shoot, and you can kind of tell in some places of the video where people were trying to keep a straight face. Hopefully we'll be able to trick her into getting into more nonsense with us again soon!

Well, my big triumph in this video is that I figured out how to use green screen effects ALL! BY! MYSELF! Boom. 

I guess our Final Cut's green screen program wasn't working for whatever reason, and Matt had pretty much given up on the idea. So I plopped down in front of my computer with a steadfast heart and a cup of hot cocoa... An hour of Youtube tutorials later and I figured out a way to transfer the completed video onto iMovie and add the green screen effects there. (Side note about iMovie: Not my favorite editing software.) 

I know that the end product probably isn't what one would call professional quality... I probably won't be working at Pixar any time soon, but I still think it's a nice touch that really gives the piece something that it wouldn't have had before.

Mostly, I'm proud of myself for being confronted with a problem that I had absolutely no idea how to fix, and then just grappled with it until I could make it work without any outside help. And as a result, I have one more skill that I can tuck into my back pocket for future videos.