eliot - dewberry . blogspot . com

Bang Bang

2010-11-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

I worked on this video for my friends at Slick Gigolo back in July/August, doing the blood and smoke effects and also a tiny bit of acting.

The Road to Albuquerque

2010-05-11T03:31:00.000-07:00

Either a camera malfunction or somehow I accidentally photographed a UFO.

All traffic on I-40 heading east was stopped for an hour because of a rockslide.

Last Chance Garage Band shirts

2010-04-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

I'm getting back into silkscreen design and printing. My dad's band played a show in San Diego recently and he commissioned me to make some shirts to give to their guests in the audience. I spent a lot of time over at dafont.com and eventually settled on a font called "Kiss Kiss from Paris". A great font aside from some letters, like B, not having "holes". So I had to add those myself. I have a thing for simple block letters so I tried that.

I had not printed in over a year. Silkscreen is a complicated and meticulous process, and I made a number of amateur mistakes throughout, especially in the photographic exposure process. Somehow I improvised my way past the setbacks and everything actually ended up all right. I had a lot of fun getting back into the groove with printing. I need a color printer, though, because the colors I ended up printing on the shirts weren't too close to what I designed.

Anyway, I now have a few print projects lined up, and it's good to be back.

Shooting Film

2010-04-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

My mother recently generously handed over her old Nikon FM series SLR to me, and I've been enjoying messing with it. Had to go to a few stores to find the right batteries and picked up some cheap CVS 400 ISO film. I shot a full roll to test the camera's exposure meter (which turned out to be accurate), and a couple came out looking all right.

Playing with dutch angles.

Roommate doing a little Ikea shopping.

Sipping Perrier while assembling a vintage pool table (now completed!).

Yes, I sleep with an electric drill.

Shooting animals in low light situations is tricky...

...Unless they're lazy and/or tired.

It was a pleasant surprise that the last photo I took while walking into Rite Aid to get the roll developed ended up being my favorite

Germany

2010-03-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

This past fall I worked in Bonn as a teaching assistant for LMU's film program abroad. I mostly kept track of equipment and assisted professors with lessons, but I also had a chance to do some After Effects work on two student documentaries.

The Girl and the Golden Bear, directed by Ella Weger, was about Hans Riegel Jr., owner of the Haribo candy company. She wanted it to have a whimsical Willy Wonka feel to it and asked me to create an animated intro sequence.

I also created this title card for it. For both of these videos there were literally hundreds of layers.

I did these titles for Spieleplatz Stadt, Sam Shimizu-Jones' documentary about a parkour/freerunning group in Cologne.

Layout Update

2010-03-03T02:05:00.000-08:00

After making that last graphic for my other blog I decided this one was looking pretty hideous, so I created a new header and profile image, got rid of the header border, and changed the background color to match. Looks much cleaner, I think. Last year I set out to make a website and created all sorts of buttons and graphics in that style, but just got way too bogged down in the html and css. Even with Dreamweaver I had no clue what I was doing. Next time I think I'll just do all the graphics and hand it off to an actual web designer.

Knowledge and Beauty

2010-03-02T17:05:00.000-08:00

I recently started up another blog I'm calling Knowledge and Beauty, where I aim to post art, design, and videos I find on the internet that strike me as particularly cool. A few days ago I blogged about the DVD art for Berlin Alexanderplatz by Eric Skillman. Finding it particularly striking, I decided to design a header for the blog in the same style. I started in pencil, went over it with sharpie, photographed it (my old point and shoot is officially dead so I used my iMac's camera, rough but okay for my purposes), and then used the pen tool in photoshop to trace the shapes and fill in the color, adding a slight texture and watercolor filter. I think I'll try this periodically when I come across text I really enjoy.

More Selling Out

2010-02-25T14:48:00.000-08:00

Editing while sick isn't very fun, especially when your attention to detail suffers and literally half the work is just a series of revisions to fix things you didn't notice the first time.

Anyway here's 5 more Machinima.com videos I edited this week.

Selling Out

2010-02-19T18:24:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been doing some editing work for my old employer, Machinima.com. It's quick, easy, fun, allows me to work from home, and it pays nicely. The following are a few interviews I edited from the MacWorld Convention last week showing off some fun new toys. In other news, Jesus it's been a long time since I updated this thing.

More Dancersize - "Workout #1" and "Freestyle"

2009-10-28T04:04:00.000-07:00

Two more Dancersize vids.

I edited both videos and worked one of the cameras on "Freestyle"

Enjoy, and be sure to visit DOdancersize.com for the full experience.

Dancersize has launched

2009-10-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

After many long months Kate and Nathalie have finished "Dancersize" and have posted the first of several webisodes. I worked 1 of the 2 cameras on this ep and really hope this goes somewhere.

Also, be sure to visit DOdancersize.com for more goodies and future episodes. And also because I designed a lot of the graphics. Enjoy.

no time left for you

2009-06-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

my lack of updates and creativity can be traced to the fact that i've been working 70-80 hours a week and spend the rest of my time sleeping and driving to and from work. will have time for creative stuff in a couple weeks.

"The 14th" DVD Cover

2009-05-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

I did this about a year ago for Kate Gill's thesis film.

"Danger Beach" Intro

2009-05-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

I did a lot of editing for my friend Tommy's thesis film recently, including this intro. More to come.

Cookin' Time!

2009-04-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

Cookin' Time! - watch more funny videos

I worked the camera on this. Go to funnyordie.com/videos/6172dc5aa2/cookin-time and vote "FUNNY" while it's still fresh.

aging myself

2009-03-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

I'm acting in my friend's thesis film this weekend, playing a police lieutenant recovering from alcholism and full of racist bitterness about Viet Nam. And the year is 1986. And he's in his late 40's. Thus my first experiment with liquid latex. Not bad for a first try, I think. It could pass on SD video, but I need to get better at this for it to be semi-believable on 16mm. The movie is called "Danger Beach" and it's about beach cops trying to take down a drug ring, with some Texas oil men thrown in for good measure. I get to say some very racist things. I also get shot up real bad. Should be a lot of fun. It's a comedy, by the way.

Motion Graphics Reel, take 1

2009-03-11T01:13:00.000-07:00

Tonight I hastily put together a motion graphics reel for a promising job lead. I'm not very satisfied with it, but at least I have something to improve upon instead of no reel at all. To be continued.

"I Just Might" by Grover

2009-03-04T19:00:00.001-08:00

"I Just Might"
Recorded 3/1/09

Eliot Dewberry - electric rhythm and lead guitars, vocals, maraca

Nick Pierotti - acoustic rhythm and lead guitars

Nick Teramura - Drums, Congas

Music by Nick Pierotti, Lyrics by Eliot Dewberry and Nick Pierotti

Having just discovered GrooveShark.com, I now have a way to post individual songs on this blog as an embedded player. So expect plenty more music-related postings to come.

This track is called "I Just Might". I recorded it this past weekend with my Grover bandmates Nick Pierotti and Nick Teramura. The funny story behind this song is that we wrote it about four years ago while slightly inebriated, and the lyrics were lost until a few weeks ago, when I found them in one of the many journal/sketchbook things I've acquired over the years.

We recorded using Garageband '08 and a PreSonus Firepod interface.

Killing Rasputin Scene 2

2009-02-28T19:56:00.000-08:00

Each time I work on a scene it gives me a chance to further fine-tune the look I'm going for. I'm pretty happy with how this one has turned out. For some reason it took FOREVER (lots of weird technical crap). One addition you might notice is that on the close up shots I've made the actors' eyes brighter with more contrast, making them "pop" a lot more in the images, and letting the nuances of their acting shine through the effects a bit more. For the temp music I've used a Debussy track (it's listed only as "track 1" in my itunes, I should probably find out the actual title). It syncs up pretty damn well if I do say so myself.

"Stubbing Your Toe" (2006)

2009-02-25T15:14:00.000-08:00

One of our editing projects in Dusseldorf was to convey an emotion or feeling through editing. My group was assigned "physical pain", and this is the result. For a lot of our class projects over there we were given only a few hours to complete, with very little planning and editing time, which was challenging but a lot of fun. Featuring Mike Litzenberg as the stubbing victim. I shot on a DVX-100.

"Killing Voltaire" (2006), Dir. Mike Litzenberg

2009-02-15T18:23:00.000-08:00

Another of my old roommate Mike's films I shot. This was his 300 project in the study abroad program we were both in over in Duesseldorf, Germany. We had to do documentaries, and Mike decided to interview various Germans and discuss free speech rights as they relate to Holocaust denial. This is a sticky subject for them, so we got a lot of interesting perspectives. The most engaging interview we conducted was with a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor living in a local retirement home. She got pretty ruffled by the subject and kind of got in Mike's face about it before we ensured her that our motives weren't sinister. I shot using a Panasonic DVX-100, in my opinion the best standard def handheld digital video camera in existence. I really miss being over in Germany, but I'm sure it's cold as hell there right now.

"Trash" (2008), Dir. Mike Litzenberg

2009-02-15T17:58:00.000-08:00

This is my former roommate Mike's LMU thesis, "Trash", which I worked on as director of photography. We encountered a number of obstacles in shooting, including bad/constantly changing weather, street noise, LAX landings every 2 minutes, not enough sandbags, and having a small crew. It's definitely not the most polished-looking thing in the world, but the plot and acting still make me laugh every time I watch it. I shot using a Panasonic SDX-900. It's a great standard def camera, but it weighs a ton and isn't ideal for handheld shooting unless you've got it rigged to a steadicam. I remember the handheld stuff on this shoot being a real bitch. Watch and enjoy, and if you're squeamish, consider yourself warned.

"Dancersize"

2009-02-06T02:37:00.000-08:00

I just designed this fake fitness magazine cover tonight for my girlfriend's web series, "Dancersize", which is currently in production. I don't want to give too much away, but it's a mockumentary series that follows a larger-than-life fitness celebrity named Jesse Mansfield, pictured here on the cover of "Tight Bod" magazine.

The source image:

"Cougar Security" (2007)

2009-02-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

This was a project for a motion graphics class I took at the beginning of my senior year at LMU. I had almost forgotten about it until I stumbled across it on my hard drive. Featuring my former roommate, Michael P. Litzenberg.

Yusupov Palace in Motion

2009-02-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

This is the palace I was working on way back when. I eventually got around to finishing the sides, then moved the whole Photoshop doc into After Effects, where I realized 30 layers rendering simultaneously at print-quality scale would be a slight problem. So I went back into Photoshop and made a lower-res copy and consolidated and combined layers.

Back in After Effects, I set all of the layers as 3D and set about painstakingly arranging the layers along the z-axis and positioning the camera in a way that created the illusion of 3D as it moved in closer.

For the sky, I first tried using some time-lapse footage left over from my 300-level film, but the effect was a little too intensely surreal. So instead I found a high-res sky image on google image search and placed it in the After Effects composition, made it 3D, made it HUGE, tilted it forward at a 45 degree angle, and moved it quite a ways back behind the other 3D layers. I had it move a few dozen pixels to one side to simulate movement of clouds, and I'm actually very impressed at how well the illusion comes across.

The river water also surprised me with how believable it ended up looking. I don't have any footage of running water, so I found a high-res image of an ocean, cropped it, stretched it, and played with the levels until the contrast was ideal. Then I took it into After Effects, in a separate composition, and duplicated it twice. The second one I flipped horizontally and the third I flipped vertically. I offset them by a few dozen pixels, gave them all a right to left motion path, gave each motion path some "wiggle" (randomized movement) between their start and finish, and played with their opacity along the timeline so that only one layer was fully opaque at any given point.

(I'm not sure any of this explanation makes sense without pictures, so that might be a future update.)

Anyway this was my first time messing with 3D in over a year, and I forgot how fun it can be.

Scene 15

2009-02-03T11:34:00.000-08:00

Another short scene from my thesis, reworked slightly. It may be slightly too dark, it seems some detail went missing. Once again, the Nutcracker seems to work with these scenes in a fun way.

Scene 11

2009-01-13T18:37:00.001-08:00

Here's the first of many new and improved scenes from Killing Rasputin. I've decided to ditch the melodramatic soundtrack motif I had before and mess around more with mood juxtaposition. Plus I'm on a little bit of a Tchaikovsky kick right now.

And I've figured out how to embed youtube videos that play in their new high-quality mode without having to be told to. This is great, since youtube videos are hideous in their standard mode.

Portrait of Robert H. Dewberry - 24x36

2009-01-11T14:51:00.000-08:00

I painted this about 2 years ago for Father Tang's Painting I class. I realized I hadn't ever photographed it so I took a picture the last time I was home. It's based on a photo of my dad on vacation somewhere eating what looks like breakfast, but might be afternoon tea.

Rasputin Comparison in Motion #1

2009-01-06T21:11:00.000-08:00

Yusupov Palace

2008-10-29T19:33:00.001-07:00

11/5/08 - Updated version with shadows and side buildings added:

Original Post:

I've been working on this for quite a while and would like it to be finished. It's an "exterior shot" of Yusupov Palace, the main location of "Killing Rasputin". I still need to add buildings on the sides, add shading to the whole thing, and figure out some way to have a river flow in the foreground. These clouds are temporary, I'm gonna have to draw some of those as well. So time-consuming. The actual building is below.

"Welcome to the Deuce" (2007)

2008-10-29T17:50:00.000-07:00

I went to Dusseldorf, Germany in Fall 2006 for my school's third-year study abroad program in film. I had a great time over there, and really fell in love with northern Europe. After returning, I was asked by the program head to edit together a promotional video for the program to attract more students. I was provided with footage of interviews with my fellow students and several hundred photographs. Because the interview footage wasn't that pretty, and was the only footage provided (other than the students' semester projects), I had to make the still images come alive somewhat, and so I started messing around with motion graphics, something I was unfamiliar with. The end result is something I could definitely have done much better with gift of hindsight, but I'm still proud of it. Unfortunately, the Dusseldorf program has been relocated to Bonn starting next year, so this video is no longer the advertising tool that it once was.

More Rasputin Improvements

2008-10-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

A few more comparison shots between the unfinished screenings cut of Killing Rasputin and the more polished and stylized version I'm hoping to send to festivals soon.I may have cleaned up that vase a little too much.

This shot of the eavesdropping air vent was fun because I wasn't restricted by footage. I'm hoping to make some exterior establishing shots of buildings and locations from scratch as well.

This still needs a cartoon chair to replace that green sheet. I now regret not renting fancy furniture.

I don't know what I did with the original green still of this one, but just picture the actors in color and surrounded by blinding neon green. This background was a lot of fun to texturize. I use Transform Perspective more than any other tool these days, and I've only known about it for a few months.

Hope for America

2008-10-15T00:25:00.000-07:00

I'll preface this by admitting that I am most definitely voting for Barack Obama on election day. I have always admired him, but after reading (listening to the audiobook of) The Audacity of Hope, I trust his judgment and his understanding of the United States, and think he'd make a very good leader. I'm a registered Republican but only out of my strong admiration for the libertarian views of Ron Paul and Barry Goldwater. I think the current Republican party has overstayed its welcome and needs to regroup, hopefully rising out of this mess with more concern about actual fiscal conservatism and less concern about divisive social issues that should be left to the states anyway. John McCain could have made a good president if he were elected back in 2000. He certainly would have handled 9/11 a little better. And he might have made a good president this time around, if not for his old age and his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Even if his health is as sound as he claims it is, the risk of Palin somehow becoming president is too dangerous. Anyway, so yeah, I'm voting Obama on November 4th. And I'm actually feeling optimistic about it.

But moving on, here's a picture I designed of Grover Cleveland in the style of Shepard Fairey's Obama posters. I am in a band called Grover and President Cleveland's likeness is our "logo". This was pretty time consuming but it was fun trying to copy the look faithfully.

Here's the original designs by Shepard Fairey:

And here's Grover's 2008 campaign poster:

Shepard Fairy made a damn good political poster, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Killing Rasputin Improvements

2008-10-14T20:26:00.000-07:00

"Killing Rasputin" was my thesis film project at LMU. It is a 15-minute narrative about the assassination of Rasputin in Russia in 1916 just before the communist revolution. I shot the whole thing on green screen, so it's very effects-intensive. The cut I screened for school was incomplete visually and rushed. After letting it sit for a while, I've come back to it and plan to have it ready to screen at festivals soon. Below are some comparison images showing the original footage, the shot as it was screened in May, and what the shot now looks like for the newer cut. I'm using Photoshop filters like watercolor by converting the footage into image sequences and performing Photoshop batch operations on them, then turning them back into footage. It's a time-consuming process that involves creating a full-quality jpeg of every single frame of footage. For the background images, I originally sketched out roughly what I wanted, then sent those over to my friend Nick, who created the lines and shading. Now I'm going back and adding texture and additional shading to the images, as well as tweaking the opacity and blending modes of the individual layers.

I've gotta fix (draw) the desk and chair for these to be finished.

Paintings I did while at LMU

2008-10-12T17:17:00.000-07:00

Old Shirt Designs

2008-10-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

I thought I would share some of my old shirt designs with the internet community. These are all projects from a semester course I took in silkscreening my final semester at LMU. I'd taken two other printmaking classes going into it, but I'd worked mainly in linoleum and woodcut printing. Silkscreening was the next logical step. We had to come up with a "brand" that we would remain consistent with for all of our projects. I had a few political-minded design ideas, so I thought I'd stick to that. I printed all of these at least once, but only the Castro and Mao shirts and the Grover shirts have ever been sold/distributed amongst friends.

"Wargyle" sneak peek

2008-10-07T12:37:00.000-07:00

So I'm just about ready to start on what will be my first real "series" of screen-printed shirts. The designs are made up of high-contrast images of weapons and military equipment arranged in argyle patterns, hence "Wargyle". I think it's kind of clever wordage. Anyway, I'm still not set on the specific arrangement and scaling of the patterns just yet. I'm going to print no more than 50 of each, all probably on American Apparel shirts, and price them at $25-30 a piece (still not sure about that - there may be a friend price and a stranger price), and they'll all be signed and numbered.

This business with the Orphan Works Bill has me a little paranoid, so for now I'll show you one of the three designs in a low resolution. Look closely, that's hand grenades and AK-47's, with a high-caliber bullet "stitching" that you can't really see.

"I Heart Milk" (2006)

2008-10-03T01:03:00.000-07:00

This was so long ago now that I think about it.

I was a sophomore in college at LMU's film school taking the FILM 260 course (now known as PROD 200 under the new catalog I believe), which was the first class where we actually got to shoot, direct, and edit shorts for credit. We finally got access, however limited, to LMU's production equipment. We got to use the Sony HC-85, not a great camera by any stretch, but a pretty solid basic production camera nonetheless. We also had access to a really basic lighting kit, but I was nowhere near confident (or competent) enough to mess with that.

I'd already shot the first two of three films for the class. The first was five minutes of in-camera footage, not to be edited, only to be played against music for screening. I shot my mother in the process of painting (she's become a dilligent and talented painter and pastel artist in the past few years) and set it to "All Tomorrow's Parties" by The Velvet Underground. It was all right but nothing to rave about. Nevertheless it was pretty valuable in learning how to shoot for editing without actually editing. My second project was about a small-time garage band that joins together and then falls apart. I was allowed to edit this one and I took full advantage, writing a cheesy classic rock soundtrack in Garageband that timed up pretty perfectly with the footage. I used my friends/actual bandmates as actors and felt all right about it.

For my third project I hit massive writer's block, unable to come up with an idea. It's funny, I think most anyone can come up with an idea for a five-minute silent short fairly easily, but when you're under pressure it somehow becomes much harder. Anyway, my due date not only snuck up me, but also turned out to be a week earlier than I had estimated. Unable to put together a script/actors/crew in just a matter of days, I did what any sane person does...

I wrote it, shot it, starred in it, did everything in it. I shot it at my parents' house, giving only the sun authority over scheduling. And somehow I did it all in one day. It was slightly awkward setting up shots with no actor, pulling focus on pillows and other placeholders, then pressing record and running into place to pull off five or six consecutive takes. But I have to admit it was pretty fun.

Anyway, why lactose intolerance? Why now? Well, like a good college entrance essay, when you have no ideas you must turn to personal suffering. I'm lactose intolerant and deal with it, but I'm not a big fan of sweets anyway. However, there's always moments of temptation where I crave that bowl of ice cream, and I've fallen victim to a few of them. I'll just say it's never worth it and always ends in someone's bathroom. This film, if it represents anything, represents the lactose intolerant person's frustration with living in a lactose-friendly society.

Correction: My dad pulled the zoom on the last shot. The HC-85 isn't that clever.

PS: I have no clue where hard copy of my first two films might be. My professor might still have them but who knows. I've had so many hard drives crash without warning it's sad.