Showreel 2010

New showreel, edited on the plane over to Australia. I'd like to thank Apple for making me pay 15,000 yen for a new battery for my Macbook. A battery that in no way, shape or form was going to last even close to long enough. Also would like to thank Jetstar for providing me with elbow space that had me doing an impression of a T-Rex.

Showreel 2010 from Michael Condon on Vimeo.

Guerillas in the midst

Okay, I'm sure that headline has been used before but I'm claiming it.

I shot another video recently and as my brilliant title suggests it was undertaken as a guerilla shoot. Due to one mind-numblingly low budget and an overly-ambitious idea, I did some location scouting at some haikyo (derelict buildings) spots around Tokyo and came up with a plan to shoot a video in two days at three locations.

Armed with a Canon 7D, some money for trains and food, the artist and with a little help from some generous friends we got the thing done.

The video was for LA-based artist, MYSELF. A rock guy from New Orleans via NY and LA.
He recorded his new album "Punk Floyd" with the drummer from Fishbone and one of the members of Big Audio Dynamite and was in Tokyo for the launch of the album.

I actually ended up shooting two low-budget videos for him, the second of which I'll detail in another post.

The first and probably main location was at a spot, I'm not going to actually name due to fear of reprisal - possibly something including death. Anyway, we had to jump barbwire fence and dodge some security patrols and keep an eye out for Buddhist cultists but we escaped without getting caught. And it was well worth it too.

Originally I was planning to shoot on a RED ONE camera but due to budgetary constraints this idea was scrapped. I ended up renting the Canon 7D and, in the end,
this was the only way we could have shot in the main location.



The second day was a bit less illegal but a hell of a lot longer. We shot around the business district around Marunouchi from first train to get a feeling of a deserted city before heading out to Chiba to shoot the car scene. The ever-generous Darrell Nelson lent us his car, let us use his room for the make up and even cooked us sausage sandwiches for lunch. Brilliant. He also drove us right across Tokyo so that we could make it to the last location (almost) on time. Oh yeah, he's an extra in the video as well. Nothing the man can't do.

Make-up artist Mayu Ozaki did a great job at short notice (as usual - sorry Mayu).





Then, the last location, an old abandoned amusement park. We were racing to get everything shot and then finally got busted by security. Luckily, after a bit of persuasion (and a bribe in the form of a couple of CDs), he gave us 30 minutes to finish up.

This video was a pretty straight-forward narrative based video. A sci-fi "Last-Man-on-Earth" concept. I managed to get some good shots from the 7D and took full advantage of the 60fps that it can do. Used a lot of that in the end.

The video is out now, and now I'm on to editing the second video, but more about that later.

Oh yeah, and thanks to the flying Frenchman, Robin Rossigneux, for his X-treme 4-hour storyboard session.


















Here's the video:

MYSELF - Do The Zombiewalk from Michael Condon on Vimeo.

Trailer prep

It's been a long time... we shouldn't have left you...

Over the past couple of months preproduction for Walton has been moving along. Writing of the short film/promo trailer script is almost complete. Now casting will get underway as we begin in earnest. A lot of the image testing is still to be done but I thought I'd throw up a couple of quick night shots that our cinematographer Paul from Visceral Psyche took. He was really just showing off what his 50mm Canon lense on his RED ONE could do with a bit of natural lighting. Also Paul did a couple of quick grades to show a bit of the variation you can get.



Raw file



Grade 1



Grade 2

Trailer for new Yokohama Coyote Short

Here's the latest trailer for Yokohama Coyote's new short - it's a kind of music video I guess. Shot in Kimihiro Shida's particular style up on the north side of Tokyo (I think) where the horrible things happen (ie. where Hiro and I both live). If you're watching on Facebook check it out here.

Walton teaser trailer animatic

We started prepartion for the promotional trailer for Walton a while back and part of this work included a teaser animatic created by pre-vis artist Morgan Denton. The promotional trailer will be longer, probably 3 or 4 scenes plus a kind of money-shot teaser at the end. If you're reading this on Facebook click here to see the trailer.

Walton teaser animatic from Michael Condon on Vimeo.

Looking for a beginning

Headed up into the mountains with Darrell Nelson recently to scout out some potential locations for the first scene from Walton. This scene will also be the first scene of the promo trailer that we're going to shoot in February.

The day was characterized by a total lack of prepartion that was only matched by a ridiculous amount of luck in being able to find exactly what we were looking for.

Check out the Sound of Music pics followed by the ones with adjusted colour, probably a bit closer to the look we'll be going for...

「樹齢」予告編

Here's the trailer for Yokohama Coyote's latest short film. Can't wait to see the film.
Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/user/YokohamaCoyote or watch the trailer embedded below...