TITLE: "Snow Siege"
LENGTH: 2 minutes GENRE: Family/Comedy
SUMMARY: The first video involving cousins Nathan and Eileen, in which the children skip school to build a snow fort, causing their parents to get mad. Involves a fun snowball fight.
PROS: Cute kids. Snowball fight. The whole thing really is from the kids' perspective, it has that feel to it, and has nice Christmas music. Snow cannon impact and miniature snow fort still look surprisingly good.
CONS: Eileen is sort of inaudible. The compositing is poor sometimes. The illusion of a giant snow fort (there was only about 30 lbs. of snow actually there) comes off as fake at times.
TITLE: "House Trek 6"
LENGTH: 2 minutes GENRE: Sci-Fi
SUMMARY: The last House Trek short video was also my first use of Lightwave. Encountering a strange region of space, and regretting the jettisoning of his dog, Matthew faces what may be the final voyage of, uh, his house.
PROS: The 3d surface morphs still look cool even now, the whole spatial-distortion thing was fun to do. That and my first CG creature make this an effects milestone. And my first make-up effect is in this, too.
CONS: Ending leaves little clear resolution to the corny "House Trek" series. My acting is terrible. And the CG bug thing is cartoonish and doesn't move at all convincingly. Also, in terms of action and "scale", it's kind of a letdown after House Trek 5.
TITLE: "Send in the Clones 3"
LENGTH: 13 minutes GENRE: Action-Comedy
SUMMARY: "Clones" threequel set a new personal standard for scale and VFX in 2004, with an ensemble cast, and over 100 VFX shots, including virtual sets and cheapo bullet-time effects.
PROS: The cast. The effects. Bullet-time. The closing sequence. The opening credits. Effects. Comedy. Action. Introduction of characters (Charlie's Retards, Austin, Josh, Ridley Spielbrick) who feature big in the fourth Clones movie.
CONS: How many people actually GOT the stupid Homestarrunner reference? Or anything else for that matter - the Parish hall scenes are thoroughly inaudible, my agent-Smith overacting is horrific, the compositing is bad, and my ripoffs of the Matrix franchise are pathetic. BTW, the opening (and a later bit) use low-quality segments of music from "The Matrix Reloaded".
TITLE: "Star Wars vs. Star Trek"
LENGTH: 2 minutes GENRE: Mash-up
SUMMARY: This little video takes everything in it from officially released online clips and trailers, composites and re-edits them, in order to create a new space battle.
PROS: What Sci Fi fan hasn't wanted to pit Star Wars against Star Trek? The dogfight between the Millenium Falcon and the Enterprise A is a fun concept and decently executed FX-wise.
CONS: Nobody will find the ending entirely satisfying. It's also shorter than it ought to be.
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TITLE: "Tinyville Disaster"
LENGTH: 3 minutes GENRE: Animated Comedy
SUMMARY: Stop-motion clay spoof of fear-mongering, overhyped news media. Involves a bunch of tiny clay-people dealing with a giant human storming through their city.
PROS: Comedy classic. Still very funny and fast-paced. Fun little hidden easter eggs. Great visual style adds so much to the fun of it. Miniature sets, clay characters, miniature cityscape, etc. It's so much fun to watch!
CONS: It's short. The animation is VERY jerky, you don't see much fluidity here in the characters' movements. The countdown is basically just filler. But these are just minor quibbles, really.
TITLE: "Troop 4: Uncensored, pt. 2"
LENGTH: 12 minutes GENRE: Action-Comedy
SUMMARY: Boy scouts camping in the desert, alien invasion, surreal goings-on, wasp stings, rock-throwing, lost scouts, gasoline abuse. It's the second movie making fun of boy scout Troop 4.
PROS: Loads of effects - 90 VFX shots (actually MORE than in Part 3), and some creative humor. Palo Duro and El Rancho Cima provide interesting desert locations. The two inventive battles in the second half are fun to watch.
CONS: There's no plot exactly, and it makes very little sense altogether. (Giant bugs? Aliens? Cub scout army?) Some jokes are in-jokes. The surreal trivialization of the violence towards the end makes me cringe a bit now. Some bad acting and botched scenes, as with any Troop 4 movie.