Best Music Video of 2007

check out the top music videos of 2007 list from the blog "Music for Kids Who Can't Read Good"

http://musicforants.com/blog/?p=590

The Forbidden Kingdom

Okay, I know this has nothing to do with our projects, but I just had to post it. I wasn't too sure about this movie when I read about it's development. But the first trailer makes this really look promising! Jackie Chan and Jet Li together at last!!

Here it is

long time no blog

Sorry guys for the lack of posts lately...
Ben's pretty busy with his new job and moving back to Salt lake (this is his 7th time moving this year) and I've been just busy doing christmas things here and there.

Well here's an update.

We've been talking about the final story for 2 loons for tea and I think we're going to start filming this weekend. Maybe the weekend after, depending on how bad christmas bites us in the ass.

Also I want to the Colbie Caillat one and the pepto, not sure if Ben is in on them, but I think they are easy wins and I think we can easily do something pretty simple and awesome in the time frame.

We'll see, hopefully I'm gonna start working on a test for the pepto one friday-ish? It'll be cool, I hope.

More contests!?!?!

So here are some more contests we can do:

Dove commercial, Colbie Caillat Music Vid

I've got a really sweet idea for the colbie Caillat music video contest. So I'm thinking about it... ^_^

Good news!

Hey everyone,

Sorry for not making that second post, and not posting much on the weekend, but believe it or not, Ben and I have been working hard on the project.

Friday night Ben, Dalin and I talked a lot about the "Monkey" project. What we've come down to trying to mix all of our ideas into a bag. Just to recap, our main ideas for the music video are the photo album or memories and journey of the monkey.

So how I think we should do this is by doing the following:
The base story is a girl moving out of the house to go to college and she has to only take what she really needs. So her mom asks her if she wants to take her beloved monkey, and she pauses for a moment and then decides "no, I'm too old him now." She leaves him behind and drives away. The song starts and the monkey comes to life. It grabs somethings packs a bag, and tries to find the girl.

Side stories:
The mother can start looking at an old photo albums and see pictures of the two together. The pictures come to life for a bit, or a little stop motion with the pictures.

SKKKRRRRR.... I really want to know what you guys think about this idea...

Make the whole thing the photo album, so omit the journey and have the photo album be a base for the story. So this is how it should go:
Girl's moving out, leaves monkey behind (same as the old one). She leaves, monkey comes to life. Monkey runs to the window and see that she's going away. The monkey then goes back to the almost empty room and sees a photo album. He goes over to it and opens it up. Inside he sees various photos of them together doing things. The photo comes to life and then we watch the two play together.

I the 3 big memories they have are sledding, having a tea party, and playing in the park.

Transitions will be going into/coming out of the picture from the photo album (andrew Kramer's video tutorial), and going into and coming out of a day dream from the girl (similar to one of Ben's dreaming I was dreaming video.)

eh? eh?

Ben tell me what ya think! and I want to hear everyone else's opinion too!

Oh also the votes are in on what we should do for the video contest and the winner is.... Monkey Music video!

Thanks for everyone who voted, more polls are coming.

Here he comes!

ok this doesn't have anything to do with the contests, but i thought i'd have to share.

new movie from the Wachowski's (the guys who did the matrix trilogy) are making the Speed Racer movie:

No posts yesterday?

Wow! I must have been A) pretty busy, or B) ran outta ideas. Anyway my goal today is to do two post to make up not putting one up yesterday. So today I think I'll work on a POM idea and a Pepto idea:

So Dalin and I really like this style of animation, where everything is pretty much cuts outs and stuff:



So what if we did something where it was cut out animation and transitions were done by crumbling the paper and opening it up into something new.
I can see this working pretty well for the pepto commercial.
A guy walking around with a stomach ache, paper crumbles to represent the pain, maybe the paper blows up to show bloating, and shredding into pieces for Diarrhea, then a peptol bottle comes in and pours over the paper to make it pink and then the guy is back in relief. *wink thumbs up*

Adding even more to memories

So here's another idea for the two loons for tea contest.
Dalin and I were watching "Flight of the Conchords" (a show that I love btw)
and there's an episode where they sing the song "Cheer up Murray" and in the music video they do a simple photo album showing all of their memories with Murray. I was all like oh yea... that would be perfect:


And I was thinking of other music videos that use pictures like Regina Spektor's Us:


And Sia's - Breathe Me:


Both are out there, but I think both demostrate a good style that we should aim for. Hell we can do the photo album one just like we did the "HP frame test" video:

Same technique, you know what I mean ^_^

Adding to "memories"

Here's an idea. not taking away from the "memories" idea (which i think is the better of the two) but after she puts the plush doll in the trash, we see the monkey go on his own little journey in between shots of the girl thinking about the monkey. We could show how the monkey gets taken out by the garbage man but maybe it falls out of the garbage. Some dog picks it up and another girl takes it or whatever. But in the end, after the she sees it again somewhere by sheer coincidence and then picks it up again. Whadja think?

A message from Jake

I just got a message from my old roommate's brother Jake. Here's what he said:

Hey dan, how are things in Utah? It has been a while since we drunk sprinted mount bellevue. Anyway, i read about your new movie making escapades and i am interested to see the outcomes, your past expeditions have been entertaining. I like the Pom idea about gaining a heart, and have a few ideas for thought, take them or leave them. One is elaborating on the idea of losing a heart and gaining it through a new relationship, which you and/or ben have already spoke of, but my extension is that the character of interest is shown in frame behaving in "heartless" acts, until he meets the catalyst to "regain" his/her heart. Like i said, just throwing it out there as an idea. Also, if you have any interest in creating story boards i would be willing to throw my hat into the ring for that task. Let me know what you think and as always i am looking forward to seeing the final project/s. Best of luck.

---

It's always good to hear from all of you guys and your comments. So keep giving us your input, because we love hearing it!

POM contest idea

I need to at least one idea for the POM commercial. So last night for inspiration I went to Alberson's and picked up a bottle. That shit's expensive!! For one bottle of tea it was 2.99! I would hate to get just the regular POM, it's 6.99 a bottle!

Anyway Ben's post below got me thinking of an idea:

A broken hearted boy, get's a new heart by drinking POM.

*wink wink* *nudge nudge* get it? cuz their logo has a heart for an O? oh man genius I tell you genius.

Getting back into movie mode (or mood)

So yeah, I figure these blogs are one's that I'll look at years from now and be like, "Wow, what was on my mind when I said that?!" I've been dying to doing another movie project, but right now I feel like I'm still stumbling to find my footing. Truth is, a lot of what gets me into doing these projects is the mood I'm in. Normally I wouldn't post anything to personal on a blog about my projects but at this point I think it's appropriate because it's affecting me and my ability to function as a creative thinker, and this has become a very pivotal point in my life. I get all giddy and excited when I get into doing these projects, but it's not how i'm feeling right now. Right now life is feeling really gloomy. :'( Yeah, it's because of a girl who left me. Funny how life can throw sucha curve ball at you when all seems to be going well.

Sorry to depress everyone reading this, but I thought it was relevant because it's important to know my mindset when I do a project. I remember my mindset when doing "Weightlessness" and I thought of my cousin through every minute of it. I even had the American Beauty song in my head that I played over and over in my car stereo just imagining my film scene by scene.

I'm trying to think of funny ideas for POM, but it just ain't happening right now. I'm in the mindset of being "frustrated with life!!!" and I make drastic and impulsive changes in my life when I'm like this. Therefore, I just cleared Youtube account and made it strictly for our projects. I'm currently using it to reference my works in my resumes but there will be more of our works on there soon. Check it out; http://www.youtube.com/unverted.

I'm stoked that Two Loons for Tea found our blog! If you're reading this, thanks for giving us a chance to do your music video. I've been listening to that "Monkey" song over and over for the project, and it's been helping me clear my head of gloominess.

Anyways, I'm just going through a really tough time right now, but I wanna let the team know that I'm not gonna anyone down, and I look forward to getting these projects looking as good (or better) as our last few.

Pepto-Bismal Commercial

Hey so here's my idea for the pepto commercial.

It's pretty simple.

A woman with an apron comes into the frame with a huge smile on her face.

"How was everything thing?"

It cuts to the table and all 5 of them have gloom faces (or fake smiles). Then the camera pans to each person and each one in their head says:
"Nausea,"
"heartburn,"
"indigestion,"
"upset stomach,"
"diarrhea."

The camera cuts out to everyone at the table again and they all say some form of "yea it was good"

I imagine it shot very "flat" similar to the style Wes Anderson's movies.

Two Loons for Tea MV Ideas

So I was thinking about an idea for this music video. I immediately thought of the music video "No Rain" by Blind Melon:

I like the idea of a journey of a little girl to find her place in life.

So i was tinkering with a few ideas.

The first pitch, "Memories":
A girl looks at a dirty plush monkey. After making an indecisive face she throws it into the trash. The trash can lid closes as the twenty something girl walks out of the door and into the city. We follow her to various locations as she thinks about the decision she just made. She has flashbacks to when she was a little girl and sees how happy and how much fun she had the plush monkey. They go to the park, play on the play ground, feed the birds, and (since it is the season) play in the snow. They do everything together. She gets back home and she realizes that there are too many good memories she had with the monkey that she can't get rid of it. So she pulls it out of the trash and puts it into the washer.

The second pitch, "Homeless":
A homeless lady plays music on the street with her symbol monkey (the wind up one) and it's part of her 'band'. She's playing the guitar and the monkey's playing the cymbals. Tragically, someone steals the monkey. She goes out and tries to find it, days go by and she puts up posters about the missing monkey. She plays in the streets only to find less people give her money without the monkey. The robber sees that she's so depressed about losing her monkey that he ends up giving the monkey back and everyone is happy again.

I would love to hear what everyone things about the pitches!

You can listen to the song by clicking here!

Getting started

So I've been itching to make another movie. So I contacted Ben up and said let's get started on something. We searched the internet for contests to enter and we found 3 good ones:

POM Tea Commercial, Pepto Star, Too Loons for Tea MV

All 3 are due by January 15th, 2008. We have a month to finish one (or maybe all 3.) For the next week or so we'll start pre-production, which means that me and ben will post ideas onto the blog and give our feedback. Feel free to leave your feedback also. Anyway wish us good luck!