Lewis Pictures

Hey everyone,
I'm working on getting the I am Jedi website up and running. This is made possible by one of the students in my programing class of whom is extremely good at website development. It's awesome, we have a professional making our website. Hopefully he will make a cameo appearance in the pilot episode of I am Jedi. The web address will be www.iamjedi.net because ".com" is already taken. The final trailer should be out sometime by the end of next week, and the website will hopefully be up not too long after that. There has been a major change in the nature of this first internet Star Wars TV series, and that is, it will no longer be a comedy. We shall do our best to make it as serious and star wars esque as possible. Here is a picture of what our website should look like - if not exactly like.



Preordained News: Yesterday we shot a some really good stuff. The actors are great, and I wish we would be shooting the whole movie, but as far as I can tell right now, thats not going to happen. On Saturday and Monday, we will be shooting with a local professional airsoft team (meaning that they don't settle for plastic weapons and running around out of formation. These guys are serious - Which by the way is the only kind of airsoft I like. Years ago I was really really into this tactical sport.) We should be getting several epic scenes. Here are some photo's from the shoot and screen shots.







Right to left: Luke, Andrew and Cameron


Kalen


Cameron holding a Boom Pole (a device used to position the microphone above an actor)


Erik


Luke


Trey


Sincerely,
Jack Simmons

Hey, your back! Great! It's high time that I show you the mighty power of After Effects CS3. These screen shots below are a comparison of filters with and without. These images are about half the size, and because of this you can't see how big of a difference there is between these pictures. So, make sure you click on them to get the full image.















When you watch behind the scenes of movies and see the original film quality, its not that far off from the "pre-filtered" pictures you see here. So, thanks to George Lucas, we have editing software that can redeem even the most botched camera work. So, how would you make your film look better than the original DV footage? For the most part, ever piece of editing software has a brightness and contrast setting. Turn the brightness up, and the contrast. That alone will make your film look 10x better. As for getting the look that you see in these screen shots, your going to need semi-higher quality software. I would recommend Vision Lab studio (http://fxhome.com/) for low budget film makers, but this really can't get nearly the same quality as Adobe After Effects. In comparison, Vision is to paint, as After Effects is to Photoshop. In short, Vision Lab Studio is very limited. AE can do everything and anything the programs they use for movies can do. The Stargate TV series still uses After Effects.

Sincerely,
Jack Simmons

Hi Everyone,
I wanted to post a few screen shots from the Pilot to our new Internet TV Show. The story centers around Andrew Nelson, our main character, who in the process of just trying to gain protection from a gang who would like to see him thrown off a cliff. In the process he accidentally acquires the power of the Force. With his new given gift, he takes it upon himself to rid the city of Domaz of crime. Our Pilot episode will be released within two weeks. We are currently filming the trailer for Preordained, so it's going to be difficult to shoot both at the same time, thus the late release. If Preordained wasn't in line, it would have been on the internet by this Sunday.

**NOTE: These are all in anamorphic format, in the pilot may or may not be this way.









Sincerely,
Jack Simmons

Yesterday, Joe and I made a short lightsaber test film. The ending product came out alright. It took me about four to five hours to rotoscope the blades, but this is good news. Because the last video took me the same time, but for only one blade. This video also was another breakthrough for me, I was able to do this all in one night. Usually, you end up spreading it over the course of a few days, but not this one. There are several mistakes in this test that are completely possible to get rid of, but it all depends on if I wanted to devote another hour to this project. The thing is, special effects isn't hard at all, it's just extremely tedious and time consuming.


Lightsaber Clash I from Jack Simmons on Vimeo.

Tomorrow night, we will be filming the pilot episode for an internet TV show. All I can say right now, is that it will have content such has lightsabers and other star wars related material.

Sincerely,
Jack Simmons

Its done! After four hours of trying to figure out how to do this, I finished.


Lightsaber Test I from Jack Simmons on Vimeo.

Sincerely,
Jack Simmons

Hey everyone,
As far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to make a movie with lasers and lightsabers. In this small video, my dream came true:



Sincerely,
Jack Simmons

I was looking at several videos at Vimeo and I came across this one. What's so great about it is the quality of the footage. One of the things they used to get the great film look, was a lens called the Letus check it out at www.letusdirect.com it's the same idea as the M2 Redrock 35mm DOF adapter.


The Trench from Philip Bloom on Vimeo

The HV20 is a small full High Definition camera for $700, and it is amazing. I have had my eye set on it for quite some time. If you go to this link you can watch some test footage of this camera with the Letus Micro attached, the footage is unbelievable.

http://www.philipbloom.co.uk/Philip_Bloom/HV20__Letus_Mini_test.html

Sincerely,
Jack Simmons

Sincerely,
Jack Simmons

Campaign ad for Andrew Nelson



Sincerely,
Jack Simmons

Hey everyone,

Please vote for Andrew at

Indy Mogul

Its sooo simple, please vote it only takes three seconds:

Step 1: Register (2 seconds)



Step 2: Vote (1 second)


THE POLLS CLOSE SATURDAY AT 12 EST
VOTE TODAY

Thank you for voting,
Jack Simmons

I can't believe it! Our president of Mogulville promo video made it into the top five! Here it is everyone:



Sincerely,
Jack Simmons