Featured Trailers & Teasers
Agatha Christie's Black Coffee
|
A Christmas Carol |
Titus Andronicus |
For inquiries, please use the contact form here.
All Trailers & Teasers:
Below I have compiled a collection of the teasers and trailers I've shot and edited to promote various projects, along with some background information on each one.
SHOUT! The Mod MusicalI created two teaser trailers for SHOUT! The first one here I shot on iPhone X with a Movi stabilizer - partially to play with the new gear and see how far I could push the phone, but it also made it a really simple and fast shoot while still giving me good video. I really wished I could have included longer clips of the songs, but contractually the theatre was only allowed to publish 30 seconds of content from the show total.
The second teaser here is actually the first one I made for this show, I took the supplied graphic elements and music bed and animated them in After Effects with some promotional copy written in. This is my first attempt at the "infographic" approach to video, and it was fun and not terribly time consuming to create. SHOUT! The Mod Musical ran from September 7 - 23, 2018 |
|
Beauty and the BeastI made this teaser trailer completely within After Effects using stock models and Element 3D. I wanted to emulate some of the teaser imagery that Disney used to promote the recent live action film so that it would resonate well with the audience. The music is from the Killer Tracks library.
Beauty and the Beast ran May 18th to June 3rd, 2018 I wrote a blog post that went behind the scenes and explored this one a little further - click here to read it. |
|
Agatha Christie's "Black Coffee"I shot this trailer in 4K using Slog-2 on my A7s, edited it in Adobe Premiere Pro, and did the color grade in Davinci Resolve. We chose single lines to have each of the different cast members read in a way to cast suspicion on themselves, and build excitement for the mystery. We also wanted to highlight Christie's "world famous" detective, Hercule Poirot as this was the only play of her's that he's present in.
I wrote a blog post that went into more of the behind the scenes detail on this one - click here to read it. Black Coffee ran from January 12th to 28th, 2018 |
|
A Christmas CarolThis one was shot in 4K using my A7s and my Ronin-M - because the original Charles Dickens tale is public domain, I came up with the idea of using Dickens' actual words from the short story (rather than the play itself) to set the tone of this production and help get their audience excited about seeing a show that has been performed in one way or another many times.
I had come up with the imagery of the candle flickering in the darkness early on as we were discussing this, and once we found the right copy to pair it with, it all just fell together. I wrote a blog post with more information on this one - click here to read that. A Christmas Carol ran December 1-17, 2017 |
|
Laughter on the 23rd FloorWe actually shot this promo as a Live video to facebook (with all the effects, graphics, and music added live in Wirecast) - this version is slightly cleaned up from the live recording, but at the end of the day, this is basically what the audience saw live that night.
Brian was reading from my iPad, set up as a teleprompter just under the lens, and after just 1 rehearsal we jumped in and went live. The graphics were made in photoshop and the music was from the Killer Tracks library. I went into a little more detail about this one in a blog post - click here to read it (its about halfway down the page) |
|
Titus AndronicusI made two different videos as a part of the publicity campaign for Titus Andronicus at Clear Creek Community Theatre, the first was a teaser (bottom) was an all "CG" teaser made entirely using Adobe After Effects using a combination of Video Copilot's Element 3D plugin, and stock effects and plugins. It was a simple approach - the (Almost) New York City without contemporary buildings and the storm set the tone and setting and then the title reveal with the blood dripping in front was the hook at the end. The idea was to get the audience's attention, since Titus is a slightly lesser known show.
The second video was a longer teaser trailer that we shot kind of like a music video. It introduced key cast members and gave the audience a good idea of what they were getting themselves into on it. I played off of the existing cityscape I'd made for the first video. We shot this all in Galveston, 4K with my A7s off the Ronin-M. Robert (the director) and I chose the music track and rough storyboarded out the shots before we shot anything, so the shoot went very smoothly. We also used the great setting of Galveston's historic strand to shoot publicity stills as part of that campaign. The music for both was from the Killer Tracks library. Titus Andronicus ran July 14th - 30th 2017. |
|
HamletThis teaser video was almost an afterthought to a still-photo publicity shoot I was doing for Clear Creek Community Theatre's production of Hamlet in 2015. For the video itself, I basically took some of the poses we were looking at for the stills and added a little motion to them, either with the camera or by having the actor move, and then grabbed some inserts of the prop weapons we were using.
The graphics and title treatment were all made in After Effects, and the stills and video were shot with my A7s - the music was from the Killer Tracks library. Hamlet ran July 23rd to August 2nd, 2015. All in all I was very happy with how this came together. |
|
Crossing DarknessCrossing Darkness is a science fiction drama set onboard the first colony ship being sent to Mars. The story will be told through the eyes of the ship's AI, HR/LE, and was to be distributed as a web series.
In the summer of 2016, I made this teaser trailer within After Effects using Element 3D, and pushed my personal machine to its absolute limits exporting it in 4K. The purpose of this teaser was to announce the crowdfunding campaign and start generating serious interest in the project. Unfortunately, we hit some snags in producing the proof of concept piece that forced us to re-evaluate the budget and the financial viability of the project and put development on hold. Learn more about Crossing Darkness here. |
|
The Haunting of Hill HouseThe idea for this teaser trailer was to set the tone and show off some of the spooky moments of the show, without spoiling anything. What was really fun about this was everything was done practically, in camera - there were no post visual effects added and what the audience saw in this teaser was very true to what they would experience in the live show.
This was all shot on my A7s, and the moves were done with a slider. The Haunting of Hill House ran October 23rd to November 8th 2015. |
|
Agatha Christie's
|
|
Agatha Christie's
|
|
Zombie for CharlieI was the DP on this teaser trailer for a short film that my friend Jose Guzman was directing, this was going to be used as part of the crowdfunding campaign, and to generate interest in the project.
I shot this all on my 7D, and the "dolly" was actually a pickup truck slowly backing toward the action. Jose then did the edit and post VFX on his own. In the second video, Jose wanted to create a "one take" shot that introduces the characters as they fight off zombies. Again, with the main idea being to promote the project for crowdfunding. This was also shot with my 7D, and if memory serves, we got "the take" on the 3rd or 4th try. The biggest challenged, as with all long take videos, was blocking the action and the camera in a way that kept things moving without being too jumpy, which is easier said than done when its all hand-held. Even though the film was never finished, I'm very happy with how what we got shot turned out. |
|
Veronica's Room - Director's TeaserWe shot this the same day we shot the behind-the-scenes interviews for Veronica's Room - the idea was simple: have the director introduce some information about the show and invite the audience to come see it.
I made the title treatment in Adobe After Effects using Element 3D for the eyeball, and the music came from the Killer Tracks library. Veronica's Room ran from October 21st to November 6th, 2016. |
|
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeI made this simple teaser on a fast turnaround because we didn't have any content out yet to promote the show (because of the chaos surrounding Hurricane Harvey).
Basically, I took the stock photo we were using for promotion, dropped some stock smoke elements I had on hand on top of it, set it to music and faded everything in one piece at a time. it worked, and took me about two hours to make once I had the concept nailed down. You can read more about this one in my blog post about it - click here. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ran October 20th through November 5th 2017. |
|