Friday, September 5, 2008

The Early Days of Safe Driver Productions

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The Early Days of Safe Driver Productions.
A short summary of the first productions in those first moments and the list of one of a kind cheezy animations.
A project board that was filled with literally 100's of ideas and barely enough room to add anything else. The horizons were so broad. I had just learned a couple of tricks or so with using some new software I purchased. "Movie making software that is. A whole world has just opened up like a sink hole in the earth.
Only have owned a computer maybe a year before that. A magical world has just been unlocked and ideas went into overload. As a little time went by, I had been incorporating these wild ideas into the driving badly format which is still the main premise today.
It really didn't click with the audiences as much as I thought it would. They were being presented as sarcastic melodramatic spoofs, but the way the audience absorbed it was about 180 degrees opposite of my intents. The majority of the audience commented on how fake they looked or poor effects. Huh? Go figure.
When I discovered chroma key, that's when the over drive kicked in. Suddenly my videos had a little sole in my opinion. PIP inlays were the bomb! Chroma key was the catalyst in the Animation period. Bogus Driver, She Blows, Rocket Chick, where slapped together like a cheeseburger in Disneyland. All of the sudden overlays were dominating the storyboard.
The creations were actually still frames created by using Adobe Photoshop, manipulating still shots from video recordings. Adding the vehicles to color backgrounds to later be keyed out. I think Bogus driver had about 200 still photos. Rocket chick had over 300 blue background stills! Old fashion animation at its best. Oh course they took a little more time than usual but time fly's when you are learning stuff.
I had a bunch of replies on the animation videos not related to forum. I guess it distracted the message enough to suppress any outrage from opposition.

The story board is still full and my mind is still on fire with so many new ideas and thoughts of how to change this, move that. Move on... NEXT!
The Mannerless Zone was a favorite of mine and still is. It still speaks the truth today. I have been a Twilight Zone fan forever. So when I came across the musical score, the rest was natural.
Turn Signals for Dummies was a split second decision and was thought of, recorded and edited, and uploaded to youtube in less than 2 hours! That was a fun project. No script, no nothing. just clowning around.

The Ocala's Worst Drivers Series, this was supposed to be a 10 part semi documentary that was going to be my trademark at the time of conception.
The only problem with these was that I was featured thoughout the series, as the narrator, on camera. I would do cameos and talk to the camera/audience with each episode and basically act as the Host... Mr. Speed Limit.
When this series was conceived, the threats weren't as often. as the threats increased, the series ended with no explanation. I could not very well go on camera anymore because of the increasing amount of hate my videos were producing. Who ya gunna call and Hurry up and wait were my personal favorites. School Days was the final installment. The series made it 5 episodes strong then nothing. Today, these features can only be viewed by friends of safe driver pro and only at the birth channel....

cell phone3 safedriverpro

Cell Phone drivers was a blast to make. I really didn't know much about proper lighting for green screen productions but what the heck? I was still learning. This feature was created behind the wheel of an abandoned automobile we came across, just a few miles from our home. Spreading a green bed sheet over the windows of the car on a sunny day is the perfect back drop for action inside of an automobile. It was actually my best friends kid who was the driver. I randomly gave direction and commands to the actor as he acted to be actually driving the car in the final production. we placed a green pillowcase over he head to hide his identity. The video production came out very poor as far as the graphics are concerned but in my opinion, the message came out strong. Displaying to habits of most American Drivers.

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The oompa loompa feature was the most fun to create. Rewriting the original song was something that didn't take anytime at all. The project started after watching the classic Gene Wilder Movie with my family one night. Later that night when I was fooling around with the videos, I couldn't get the song out of my head. So after hearing it repeating over and over, bouncing around in my head, I changed a couple of the versus and tada!
Another chezzy overlay video is born. The message was still the same.
As time went by I slowly got away from the animations and started to pursue different interest and exploring other ideas. But never the less, I will never forget that particular learning experience. There is a time and a place for everything. I believe they had their time and place in history.

http://www.youtube.com/OcalaFlorida

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