Wow, its been a few months since my last post. For starters, I hope all of you had a great Summer! I decided to take some time away from the blog and the website to work on some other projects, but also just to take some time and relax, the first half of this year was very busy and I needed the break. As I mentioned in my last post, I was going to start digging into The Getaway, which I have. I've also made some more progress on the "Ghost Hunt" project, and I hope to have something to share from that soon. Aside from that, I've been keeping busy at work - I recently wrote a blog post on their website about one of the bigger projects I was a part of over the Summer - you can check that out here. Over the summer is Clear Creek Community Theatre's summer program, as well as their annual production of a Shakespeare play. This year it was Macbeth, again directed by my brother Robert Meek. The show was fantastic, and I recorded a few key/popular scenes that I plan to edit soon and be able to share with everyone. I also made an awesome teaser trailer for that show - check it out below: I made that entirely within After Effects, using a combination of free plugins - including Video Copilot's Saber - and some stock elements (the fire) that I'd collected over the last few years. And basically built the rest of it up from scratch. The music is, as usual, sourced from Killer Tracks, which always has a fantastic selection to work from. I recently made another teaser video for the theatre that allowed me to play with a more "infographic" style that I'd been wanting to play with for a while - check it out: I built all the fly in animations by hand, I wish I could take credit for the artwork, but I can't - that was (thankfully) provided by the publisher, as was the music bed. If you'd like me to write a more in-depth blog post (similar to what I did for Beauty and the Beast) about either of these teaser trailers, be sure to let me know in the comments below.
I'm really happy with how this video turned out - even though I had to trim the show content down to 30 seconds to comply with the theatre's publishing contract. The Movi gave me the ability to do really smooth, but complex moves all in a simple hand-held rig. And with the "X" able to shoot 4K, the footage is all really sharp and allows me room to recomp a shot, or smooth out a move in post if needed. (though I didn't even need the smoothing option on this one). The only thing I wish I'd thought more about while shooting this was audio - I recorded all the audio with my rode videomicro, which sounded great all things considered, but it didn't allow me to mix the vocals vs. music at all in post - I should have recorded an aux from the theatre's board for this piece, using my Zoom perhaps. Finally, those who've been to this site before may notice a couple new buttons across the top bar. I've been slowly putting together a portfolio of some of my past work. The web content is still a work in progress, but you can check that out here. Anyway, I think that just about covers my summer as video work/filmmaking is concerned. I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to jump right back into weekly blog posts right away, this week especially is busy both for work and the theatre, not to mention my own projects. But I am going to start posting with more regularity again. So stay tuned. And as always, if there's anything I've mentioned in this post that you'd like me to go into in further detail be sure to let me know in the comments below! For more behind-the-scenes tidbits and to keep up with my work, please be sure to follow me on Twitter and Instagram: @tomameek Until next time - thank you for reading and I hope you found it interesting. -Thomas PS: I got my copy of the script in and have already started pre-production on the production of The 39 Steps that I'll be directing at CCCT at the end of the season. You will definitely hear more about that as we get closer.
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AuthorThomas Meek is an independent filmmaker living and working in Houston, TX Archives
March 2021
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