Every once in a while a well-produced video comes our way that we want to share with our readers. The Super List is one such project – it’s a great video and all the more fascinating because it is the producer’s first feature.

Will Gallego attended a Videomaker workshop a few years ago, and has been an avid reader of Videomaker, and recently sent us this video for a look-see. You HAVE to check it out, it’s pretty amazing:

THE SUPER LIST from Will Gallego on Vimeo

About the Producer
Gallego began shooting at 9-years-old on Super 8 film, but went on to make a career in other ventures after college. He returned to his movie creating passion six years ago when he had a brand new subject to follow: a baby girl.

He moved on to be the event videographer for a couple of theater companies, and eventually created his own company, Gamma Ray Productions with Raymond Vargas to produce “the Super List”, as a way to ‘prove’ the up-and-coming Gamma Ray Productions could deliver a quality movie, gain some valuable film experience and give everyone involved a chance to showcase their talent, which he hopes to enter into a short film contest someday.

About the Cast and Crew
It took eight months to complete, and was done in everyone’s spare time – no one was paid, including the actors but a few had some materials or travel expenses covered. 36 people in all worked on different parts of the production.

Writer Adam Winston and his partner and 3rd producer Frank Gallego (Will’s brother) were looking for a CGI story to pitch to Dreamworks. They knew of Will Gallego’s wedding video and music video work, and asked him to assist. Gallego writes, “I envisioned this as a live-action movie the instant I read the short screenplay.  From a practical standpoint, this was not a monumental task as far as logistics, cost and location. Once Dreamworks passed on the story, I let them know if they wanted to collaborate on a project, this story was just right.”

Based on Winston’s script concept, Frank Gallego hired a Hollywood artist to deliver the well-done and professional looking comic-book and ‘super list’.

Will Gallego’s role was as one of three producers, and also as Director of Photography and 2nd Unit Director. They shot in the autumn, to take advantage of the east coast’s amazing Fall colors, and shot in several locations from Eastern Pennsylvania to New Jersey. the soundtrack was composed by Will Gallego’s brother, William Gallego, and the two main actors, Derek and Ryan, are neighbors of Gallego, and Sarah is the director’s daughter. Each had some stage experience, but this was their first time on a movie set.

About the Gear
Gallego’s gear list for the shoot include:
Camera: Canon 5D Mark II.
Canon Lenses: 50mm 1.4, 24-70L 2.8 and 70-200L 2.8.
Soundtrack: Original music score by composer William Gallego was created with Apple Logic.
Audio/Sound Effects: Zoom H4n.
Entire Audio was mixed with Nuendo software.
Anders Johansson/Sound Editor took care of all the Foley and sound effects.
Cranes/Dollies: Losmandy Porta-Jib, Glidetrack
I rent whenever possible, such as the jib and some lighting equipment(flags, extra c-stands, follow focus, matte box. )
Editing: Final Cut Pro 7.  Trained in Apple One to One. Final Cut Pro 7, Motion and Photoshop Extended.
Other:  Marshall LCD70XP – 7 inch monitor, Zacuto follow focus kit, Petroff Matte Box with ND filters(a must for out door shooting if you want to open up the iris. [and he adds, "And of course, a lot of Videomaker reading and attending their 2 day workshop in Newark, NJ around 4 years ago. " How nice to be credited with helping him find his muse!]

Words from the Producer
“I owe theater director, Ted Concepcion and Jesse Gallego a lot of credit for giving me the first video job opportunity.

“Videomaker has been a great resource for me as a filmmaker.  I studied film theory in Rutgers University, but other than being a NYC film studio production assistant during my college years, I did not have much other film experience or any contacts to work with in NJ for 10 years as I chose a different career path. Luckily, I came across Videomaker magazine and subscribed. VM is a source of inspiration, especially, Mathew York’s Viewfinder section each month.

“There is an important message in this movie [that] Ray Vargas/Gamma Ray Productions values, and is forging forward with, mainly about the choices and decisions that kids/young people make at this point in their lives.  Ray feels in an anti-bullying campaign, the decision our main protagonist makes, which we don’t know for sure, is critical.  Just Be Me Organization is interested in this movie as a vehicle for discussion in anti-bullying campaign.  Kudos to Ray.

“If I could give any advice to new filmmakers, go and shoot something, but know what you are getting in to, know the end game. Everyone has to commit to the project no matter how small a role.  A movie is a complete production package: story, sounds, score, and cinematography.  If anyone tells you otherwise, tell them to write a book. Filming is like a muscle the more you exercise it the stronger you get.  No matter your role is in the movie, give it 110%.  Value your crew’s time and efforts by rewarding them with a finished project they can showcase.  This is their reel as much as the rest of the producers.  Don’t wait.  Set deadlines, deliver and move forward on your path.  Your crew will respect you for it and will be read to go make another one.  I am grateful I have a dependable crew that gives it 110%.

“In closing, I love one of your moderators’ feedback on your forum for the film.  He gave excellent constructive feedback, but on top of that, he says: “now go make another one…”  That is the true spirit of Videomaker: great advice and encouragement.  Thank you Videomaker.”

You’re welcome, Will, keep up the good work, and keep us informed.

Besides our well-known monthly magazine and website, Videomaker has many resources for learning for different types of needs from our face-to-face workshops like the one Will attended, to our training DVDs, books, eDocs and webinars. Our mission to to teach and encourage video producers to make their dreams come true – kudos to Will and his gang for keeping their focus strong and their dream alive, good luck to all of our readers who strive to make a project as entertaining and compelling as “The Super List.”

I want my MTV

Anyone over the age of 40 can probably still recall that moment when they saw a music video on TV for the first time – it was magical, mesmerizing and enthralling. I remember walking into a friend’s house that had that new-fangled “Cable TV” hooked up and she said, “Check this out, it’s called MTV”. It was hypnotic – and we sat for what felt like hours watching without talking.

MTV,  the music video channel that literally changed the “look” of music, was launched 30 years ago this month with, appropriately enough, the music video, “Video Killed the Radio Star”, by the British New-Wave band, The Buggles.

When MTV first went on the air on August 1, 1981, it’s main purpose was to bring music videos to an eager audience. Previously, one couldn’t see a recording artist play except in live concerts, or on TV specials. Most musicians didn’t have, (or need or want) a “Music Video” and opponents to the show suggested that the music videos would kill the viewers’ desires to see the bands play in person. Being a new channel, and the fact that Cable TV was just a fiber-optic gleam in many a programmer’s eye, MTV wouldn’t catch on for a few years and only a small number of viewers in New Jersey actually saw that first video play. But as soon as “specialized” cable TV shows were available regionally, MTV’s “message” spread across the country like the proverbial wildfire – a new generation of musicologists was born.

Around that same time, as a college student at California State University, Fresno, I was enthralled at the idea of creating music videos. I was enrolled in the “brand new” major: Radio-TV Production, but there weren’t a lot of classes, choices or subjects to study at the time. One class I had, called “Careers in Media Arts and Entertainment”,  was supposed to expose us to all the different areas of study, but, in reality, all we did was research books on our own at the library and write essays every week on a different focus. Eager to learn more about making Music Videos, I devoured every periodical I could about MTV and music videos, (there were no making music videos books yet published, so my major reference “library” was Rolling Stone Magazine.)

I wanted to make Music Videos and I wrote in my essay: “A video editor has the chance to be creative beyond the norm and break the rules as an artist, not just as a cut-n-splice editor.” Dr. “M”, the instructor who lectured to us about “the Golden Days of Hollywood” but knew nothing about the current trends or popular culture, gave me a “D” for my essay – the only “D” I ever received at college level. He wrote: “MTV is just a fad, as is cable TV. No one is going to spend longer than 20 minutes watching that slop. You’re wasting your time and you missed the point of the assignment: to research a valid career that will sustain you in a worthy occupation.” I still have that essay – and I love to laugh at his words from time to time.

MTV DID sustain itself, for a very long time, despite being “a music video channel”, and a new business in the entertainment world came into being. The business of creating music videos became a lucrative career for many film and video producers including  John Landis who produced Michael Jackson’s famous “Thriller” video and Spike Jonze.

Music video became big business after MTV’s launch. There’s not a band today that hasn’t made (or attempted to make) a music video. And in many ways, yes, the music video DID kill the radio star. Looks, eventually, along with dance routines and catchy videos and effects were just as important to a band’s success as the lyrics and tunes they played. If a VJ loved your video, you were gold. VJ – for Video Jockey, a play off the DJ-Disc Jockey phrase, was another career launched with music videos. The old joke about “a face for radio” wouldn’t hold anymore.

The beginnings of music videos actually goes back to the beginnings of “talkies” – movies that had sound, but the Music Video by itself for a recording artist didn’t become popular until the 1960s with choreographed videos for the Beatles 1964 movie “A Hard Days Night”. Music videos evolved in the 1970s into programs such as PopClips, a TV show developed by Mike Mesmith, of The Monkees fame.

According to a report on wikipedia, MTV’s original music video taglines were “You’ll never look at music the same way again,” and “On cable. In stereo.” The early days of MTV were so “raw” that programming would often go black while a tape-op switched tapes in a VCR!

In 1996 MTV 2 was launched, an all music videos all the time channel. By then, MTV had changed a lot, music videos had become much more polished and had a purpose that supported the lyrics, rather than random “60’s-ish” floating spots and effects. MTV was now airing  “Real Life” shows with “The Real World”, credited with starting the “Reality TV” genre, and “Road Rules”, along with a half-hour news segment. By then I was working for network TV and I remember a poll taken by our network sometime in the 1990s that found that a huge majority of young people reported that they got their news only from MTV’s “newsertainment” show.

courtesy: www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/february/mtv-refreshes-logo

MTV’s logo has also evolved over time, going from: “Music  Television” to just “MTV” since it eventually aired more than just music videos.  As an interesting fact, the original MTV man-on-the-moon image with the MTV logo pasted over the American flag  was created with dual purpose: to state that the channel was universal, but to also use Creative Commons and Public Domain images so they didn’t have to spend money creating or buying images for a show that might not make money.

Many former viewers of MTV lament the days of “all music all the time”, MTVs original mission, but for better or worse, the channel still thrives – and is doing well. Ironically, I have a friend in Hollywood who is my age who was up for a job editing a video for a pilot for a new soon-to-launch show. He was turned down with a sleazy excuse that they were looking for an “edgy funky non-traditional” type of editor, “you know, MTV-ish”. His frustrated reply: “Man, my generation INVENTED MTV!”

As for me, I did make a few music videos for local bands back then, I know of one band still using my video for their promotional website, and I created many “Video Essays” using popular songs wrapped around video of local festivities for the news stations I worked at that ran in the weather segments. My dream to actually work for MTV ended when a friend of mine, who worked for the network and was trying to get me a job there, died in one of the 9-11 planes that hit the Twin Towers in New York.

I cut my editing chops watching music videos, and learned about pacing, precise timing, and “how to break the rules” and I think the MTV of old helped me be a better video editor today. I want my MTV – still.

A thriller of a different flavor, “Inside Experience” offers social media participants to help move the plot of the story and decide the outcome of events. “Inside,” starring Emmy Rosseum, is an online thriller funded by Toshiba and Intel that debuted July 25th.

Have you ever wanted to get inside the head of a filmmaker or look behind the scenes as a movie unfolds? Have you ever wanted to decide a movie’s plot or a character’s fate while watching that movie develop? Here’s your chance to participate in a fully immersive movie experience.

Rosseum plays “Christina Perasso,” a young woman whose life takes a turn when she leaves a Seattle coffee shop and ends up in an unknown room with no outside contact. She has no idea how she got in this room – or why – but when she discovers her kidnappers left her a Toshiba Satellite P775 laptop, powered by an Intel second generation chip, she sets up Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other accounts and starts trying to reach the outside.

Directed by D.J. Caruso, the laptop is a perfect idea as a tool for Rosseum’s character because it can also serve as her social media webcam, she uses it to show her viewers her surroundings and to also find clues and ask viewers to assist her to unravel these puzzles, in hopes of finding out more about her capture, surroundings, and (hopefully!) eventual escape.

Caruso says, “We wanted to make this an addictive experience for the viewer, … whether they’re watching the film segments or participating in the social media segments, the whole experience makes an entirely different film, so viewers or participants can help steer the film in a different direction.

Social Media Director Ben Tricklebank says, “it takes a traditional storytelling narrative, but tries to allow it to unfold through social media… and creating a story through those platforms.” Caruso adds, “it’s a little bit unnerving, but I mean that in an exciting way as a filmmaker.”

Fans can participate in several ways, through the site’s own blog, through the project’s Facebook page or through Twitter, by following @theinsideexp and the hashtag #theinsideexperience

Fans can post clues, offer poor Christina advice and support and some clues and ideas will be worked into the series episodes.

Definitely a different kind of thriller – one in which the viewer isn’t a passive watcher but an interactive participant. The new wave of movie going future or not, it’s a cool concept and – warning! Very addictive!

One of my favorite things about getting my hands on a new Hollywood release is the chance to check out the DVD Extras that some movies now come with. Especially now that many movies are released on Blu-ray, which can hold a lot more information and space than an ordinary DVD.

I love watching the Behind the Scenes footage (BTS), where they show the setup of some scenes. And the Director’s Commentary on most movies is very enlightening. After I’ve watched a movie from Open to End Credits, I watch it again with the commentary audio on.

If the comments are done by the director, sound person, director of photography or screenwriter, then there’s some good tidbits you can learn.

For instance, I was watching the original Star Wars trilogy, [yeah, we've had a lot of rain lately, so boredom does sink in!] but the “Bonus Disc” was stock full of BTS footage, setup, greenscreen, modeling, and comments on how they did it. The sound guys told a great story about getting the “right” sound for Darth Vadar’s footsteps from an old abandoned military bunker in San Francisco. You can read about some of it in our just uploaded Audio Column “Sound FX: Think Outside the Source”

Besides the bunkers, they talked about using ordinary dumpsters to get great “outer space” noise – jumping inside a dumpster and banging on the walls. The level of “Junk” in the bin changes the feeling of the sound. (Hum – I just got an image of Luke, Han, and Leia falling down that garbage shoot!)

In the Back to the Future movies, (again with the trilogies!) the director talks about how they got  Michael J. Fox’s character in the third movie as an old time 1880s frontier man to hand over a baby to the 1980s Michael J. Fox character – both in a split scene at the same time – and the director used a quick “natural wipe” of Fox’s “mom” character passing through to bridge the gap. Really cool stuff.

Sometimes you learn how simple and easy a fix is, other times you realize how complex a problem solving issue was. In our recent Inspiring Directors feature, Director Ron Howard talks about how he had to work around location difficulties when filming Angels and Demons, his sequel to The da Vinci Code.  Yup – even big time directors have to fight City Hall sometimes.

I’ve found that some audio commentaries are lacking in any substance, for instance recently I was watching a movie with the main actor doing the commentary, and he invited the head chef of the catering department to assist. Most of the talk was about the food or silliness on the set. I’ve found that usually if the commentary is done by an actor, there’s not a lot of “learning” , they’re somewhat narcissistic and mostly talk about themselves.

I recently bought the HUGE 6-disc Blu-ray collection of the making of Avatar and it looks like yet another late spring storm might be headed our way, so I’m planning to hunker in and watch more “how to make a movie” tips on some DVD extras. Have a nice 3-day weekend, everyone!