Mr. Shy "Super Star" - Juan Belmonte Remix

Here it is, the Mr. Shy, Juan Belmonte remix of "Super Star" video I've been working on for the last month or so. FINITO!

INFO:
http://mr-shy.com

"Super Star" (Juan Belmonte Remix) by Mr. Shy. (c) 2008 New Soul Records & ACuppaJoe Productions. Remix featured on "Olivia Valere's Night & Chill by Juan Belmonte", available on Blanco y Negro Records. *

http://youtube.com/mrshy

The Home Stretch!

Wow, what a long, complicated little Sims 2 music video this is turning out to be! We started production in the last week of July, and here we are, three weeks later, and finally the finish line is in sight.

I am exhausted after Mr. Shy and I pulled YET ANOTHER all-nighter. I have to shoot one more small scene, then the final editing begins, which should take us a couple of days to go over everything. We are both perfectionists, and have been going over every single detail of this video, I've reshot half my stuff, Mr. Shy has had to do a few reshoots...but the video should be out by the end of this week.

And expect a behind-the-scenes look when Mr. Shy and I do a VLog together this September. I've saved a lot of fun stuff, which should embarrass us both. Mwahahahaha.

Stay tuned!

Mr. Shy: Unplugged

Just a quick post to let you guys know that Mr. Shy has put up his Super Star: Unplugged performance, from June, 2008. This is the second upload of this video. For those who caught the first one, there's better audio, this time around. Guest Jahn Bonfliglio on guitar. From the upcoming documentary by Lucy Kostelanetz, "We Don't Wanna Make You Dance".

Thanks for supporting Mr. Shy!

YouTube Link

Superstar Update

Hey, folks!

Just a quick update on the progress of Superstar...

But before I go there, I am having website woes. My site's home page www.acuppajoe.net is showing as a blank, black page. To see my actual page, now you have to go to http://www.acuppajoe.net/index.html.

I don't know what happened, I haven't changed anything, haven't TOUCHED my site in months...so if anyone can help me on this, I'd appreciate it. My site is linked to in many places, and it would be a huge huge pain to have everyone change the link. Anyone know how to get the index page to point to the original link???

As for Superstar:

I've done 45 test renders, and it's looking good, coming along very well. Mr. Shy has done a teaser promo for it on his site (click the banner below!), so you can see that this will be a very...unique...video!

Since my last update, which was August 2, a LOT has been accomplished. It's very much a learning process, as well as an exercise in patience, since I'm used to working on my own, and getting videos done virtually overnight. Not this one, no way!

We've switched to a new approach: I am fleshing out the rest of the video, then will have Mr. Shy do the rest of the shots I need. This will be more effective than the old way, because a.) it will save Shy the trouble of redoing shots because I asked for them before realizing the animation I was going for couldn't be done in the game, or I decided to go a different route altogether, and b.) will keep me and Mr. Shy on speaking terms because of the afore-mentioned reason. KIDDING! Mr. Shy is a good sport about all I'm putting him through.

Right now the video timeline is about 75% finished. Much of it is done with 4-5 video tracks layered on top of each other, so rendering this stuff out for the test renders is taking much longer than a single - or double - video track would!

I officially ran out of harddrive space on my macbook pro, yesterday, and had to transfer all the Superstar files to my external drive - 20+ GB, so far. The convenience of my laptop's portability is rendered null when you take into consideration that you also have to "port" along an external drive, multiple cords, an external mouse, and headphones.

I am compiling some clips and pics for an "outtakes" reel, because some funny stuff has been happening. This will come out after the video's release. Right now, things are still pretty much hush-hush as to the video, itself.

I'm hoping this will be ready for release within the next week, but I have been saying that for about two weeks, now. But I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, finally.

Where, oh, where has VRevis been?

Yes, I'm still alive. I have totally been slacking on updating my website. I don't even have my last two videos up there, yet!

I'm working on a project right now. Actually, taking a break from it for a few hours because I've been staring at this laptop monitor so long my eyes hurt. This is day 4? 5? I'm doing a lot of greenscreening, so, no kidding, I'm seeing red. Everything has a red tint to it. Hopefully this is not permanent! o_o

This is the project I was supposed to have done with Mr. Shy in NYC in June, but, hell, I was in NYC and wanted to see the city. So we didn't get a single thing done on this video. Now Mr. Shy and I are doing this the hard way, over the internet. I'm filming down here in Atlanta, and he's up in NY trying to get his lighting set up for his greenscreen shots. This is definitely the most complicated video I've ever done, the most challenging, and the most fun. AND the most time and space consuming. I have, so far, about 12 GB of avi files (190 clips), .wav files, .mov files, .jpg, .mp3, .flv, .swf ... and this is without the Mr. Shy footage! I have had to move stuff to my external drive once already because I'm running low on disk space, and I'm going to have to do it again. What's frustrating is that I have about 60 GB of free space on my OS X partition, but my game and all my software is on the Windows partition (believe me, if I could afford to buy everything for Mac, I would!!), and I have a whopping 5 GB of free space left. And anyone who works with .avi or .mov files knows that ain't gonna last long...

I'll post a few shots to show what's going on, so far:

The promo pic (Sim Shy's outfit is a recolor I did, myself, to match real Shy's outfit. I also did the Mr. Shy t-shirt, modeled after the one available on his shywear site:



Overhead shot of all the sets as it looks right now (that is a LOT of green!). There is the set I used for the opening sequence, and I had to build an identical set facing the other direction. The way the light was shining on the greenscreen outside the window was messed up in the original. So the second one is purely for greenscreen purposes:



Some trees with a cartoon effect applied:



You'll see what this is all about when the video comes out:



Shep is a very unhappy camper. And this was all for naught, because I realized I had him in the wrong outfit, and had to change him and redo the shot:



A disgruntled sim-actor has the strength of a thousand. No exterior siding can withstand the power of Shep's fist!



Sim Shy, the star of the video (well, he shares top billing with real Shy):



This is a very trippy video. It's a lot of fun, and it's a LOT of work. But I'm in the Zone, so I'm focused. It's coming along pretty quickly, all things considered.

I'm hoping that this will be ready for release in a week or so. If things go well, maybe sooner. But don't hold your breath on that one!