The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 07

Well, everyone, this is the end for this short little movie. I have finished all I'm going to do with it.

Honestly, I'm disappointed at the final result. And I'd like to go on record and state that I really dislike the post stage of filming. Filming the scenes was interesting and kind of fun, despite having a lot of lighting issues. Thinking up all the various ideas (even if I could never actually get them to work) was also really fun. Editing and trying to add sound/music and get the effects to look right.....not so much fun.

I'm kind of upset that half of the scenes I had in my head didn't make it at all (due to editing problems or just being unable to do it). I'm also rather mad that most of the sound I recorded didn't come out either (most of it came out with a high pitch whine that caused headaches and ear-gouging pain). And after spending so much time on it, and wanting to move onto something else, I had to just finally say "that's it, no more" lest I spend months working on the smallest details.

So what you'll probably see is nothing like what I wanted it to look like. But you know, that's okay. It's been a pretty interesting learning experience and I have a new profound respect for those individuals out there that do this stuff for a living.

Will I do another (better) video in the future? It's possible. I'm itching to do a better video to prove to myself that I CAN do a better video. But it won't be for awhile. This has really burned me out. So who knows when it'll be done or what it'll be about.

And that's really all I have to say about that now. I suggest you go watch it and see for yourselves.

CLICK HERE TO GO WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 06

Editing in After Effects is really a lot easier than I thought it would be. Despite saying this, however, I have to say that I'm really frustrated with at how hard some things have turned out to be.

A few of the effects have been extremely painless to add to the video. The one in this photo has eaten away several hours of my life and it's still not done. Ah well. I'll get it eventually.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 05

Filming has finished! WOOHOO!

I'm quite glad that I managed to finish filming. I'm disappointed with how dark the scenes came out though, even with the addition of extra lighting. I'm not able to fix that at this time, however, so everyone is just going to have to deal with it. Sorry. Even if I were to try and reshoot every scene again, I don't think I could make it any lighter. I've already added as many lights as I could find and it's still really dark.

But since it's not a fancy production meant to rival Hollywood, I'm not going to worry too much about it.

Here's a preview image.



Now I'm off to spend a week in post, trying to do the one major special effect and combine all of this mess together into a movie.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 04

Work continues on the movie!

I have filmed the final live action scene to appear in the movie. The acting is so bad that it should be funny to see. I would do takes over and over to try and get the acting better but keep in mind that this movie is not meant to be taken all that seriously. It's supposed to be cheesy. And besides, most gamers aren't actors to begin with.

With that in mind, I can't show any pictures from the final scene. Sorry. Instead I will show a picture of a "place holder" I've been using to hold places in the film until I'm ready for them.



The entire movie has been structured and all of the title cards have been finished. The opening and credits are also both done. I have a little bit of live action left to shoot and then quite a bit of post-production to do with editing and, hopefully, movie layering. The latter scares me as I've never done anything like this before and hope that I CAN do it. If not, I might have to rethink an entire portion of the film.

But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 03

I ran into another snag earlier today. It seems that FRAPs, the software I use to capture the screen, has stopped working. I have yet to figure out WHY it randomly decided to stop. I can't seem to fix it though.

To make matters worse, I've been unable to get any other screen capture software to work, including VirtualDub and Camstudio. Either they record at a weird size that won't work for me or they won't record sound (or both).

THANKFULLY, I had a backup plan. And while it's been a royal pain to make work correctly, I have been able to record the footage of the game that I needed.



With all the game footage recorded I have to now focus on recording the live action stuff and piecing it all together.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 02

It took awhile but I finally beat Vundo and got my machine back to normal. Production has resumed.

I went ahead and filmed the first live action scene.



Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture, it's rather dark. I hope the rest of the live action footage will not turn out so dark.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 01

I'm already having technical difficulties on the first day! Can you believe this?

While getting all the software installed I somehow contracted the trojan Vundo. It has proved incredibly difficult to remove completely from my machine.

To make matters worse, a cleaner I got to remove Vundo has more or less wiped out Windows. I'm in the process of restoring my computer and getting everything back up and running.

Production cannot continue until I get everything back up and running.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden

Time for something a little different. Instead of a computer program I've decided to try my fate at creating a short little movie dealing with Ninja Gaiden. I'm calling it "The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden" and it involves what "stages" a gamer goes through while playing one of the most difficult NES games ever created.



Please stay tuned to this exciting new project!