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We Do Our Makeup Artist’s Makeup

Blog by Michael J. Vanderveen

Recently we convinced our good friend and local makeup artist, Claire Nobles to allow us to do her makeup on camera. We thought the idea of two guys who have never done makeup in their lives doing makeup on a professional (and frankly extremely talented) makeup artist would be pretty funny. Turns out we were totally right. 

Zach & I experienced emotions ranging from fear to wonder to confusion. We touched eyes which as you’ll see Zach loved. We went with bold color choices like gold sparkly eye shadow and multi toned lips. We... we... we made Claire look like The Joker. 

Claire gave us a list of requirements, we had to do everything from foundation to blush to eyeliner and even fake eyelashes which totally freaked me out. In turn she put up with our silliness and our over the top sense of humor to help create this video. The whole thing took about two and a half hours to film so obviously we rewarded ourselves and Claire with pizza at the end of the shoot. As you’ll see, she deserved it.

Enjoy the video below!

Now I think it would only be fair to include a few pictures after the fact to show the wonderful work Claire has done for us (you should check her out at Clairenobles.com).

First an engagement shoot at Reinstein Ranch

Then a fitness shoot with Nicole in her hoodie.

Yoga at Reinstein Ranch.

A dance shoot at Ohlone College with Bliss Dance Company.

A shoot with the beautiful Jenna at Oak Hill Park in Danville, CA.

And of course, last but not least, she modeled and did her own makeup in this final photo. :)

Until next time!

-Mike

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Oh my, look at how we’ve grown.

By Michael J. Vanderveen

Recently one evening Zach & I were celebrating the completion of a project that has spanned several years in the making (you’ll learn more about that soon enough), and the way we celebrated was by opening a special beer Zach has been aging since 2012, and watching through all our old reels. We started coincidently enough with a reel which came out the same year as the beer we’d opened, 2012.

As you will see moving forward we’ve improved on how we use titles in our reels quite a bit, and our music selection. I take full responsibility for both those issues. What was I thinking? Haha, but otherwise the issues with this reel are simple. We had a very small amount of footage to choose from, we had only taken on a couple paid jobs, and a few more unpaid ones. The thought process was that we had to have a reel to show what we can do; the problem was we didn’t have enough to fill one. If variety is the spice of life, it’s the backbone of a good reel.

The 2013 reel is non-existent due to that being a year of personal losses for us and big changes here in the company. We changed personnel, we lost some equipment in unfortunate ways, and we struggled. So this next reel was our triumphant return to pursuing our dreams and passions, meet our 2014 reel. 

New logo, new company name, new cameras, new everything. I think the jump from 2012 to 2014 represents our largest growth in between any two reels we’ve released. The changes we made as team were huge. Beyond that as you can see having variety in your work is so extremely beneficial to improving your reel. You just have more to choose from. I will also say I did a much better job choosing the music this time around.

That reel helped us hit the ground sprinting in 2014, one of the most magical years of my life. The year of our greatest growth as a company. We began partnering with local charities to give back our time including Make-A-Wish, Seneca Family of Agencies, & City of Hope. Our work started to offer opportunities to travel more and more. Most importantly though we were working with tons of new amazing people. Clients to us always become like old friends, we get so attached to them and learn from each of them. This year we made a lot of great friends, which led us to release our 2015 reel.

This was the first reel we released where I really sat back and said “Whoa” as I watched it. I was shocked at how far we’d come. The reel had such a variety and moments with real punch to them. Then we saw another year of huge growth, more traveling, and more new friends. We left our day jobs, and became full time videographers. We were doing our dream jobs, and no longer was it part time. Everything was changing, everything was growing. We invested in equipment we never dreamed we’d own, and we shared memories with clients I’ll never forget.

Now I’m very thrilled to present to you our latest reel. Before we watch it I want to take this opportunity to thank you all. Working with you, sharing our work with you, learning from you, and befriending you has been the greatest journey I could have ever dreamed of. I’m posting this today because I want you to see how we’ve grown, and how it’s all because of the people who follow us, work with us, and believe in us. I am already thrilled to say 2016 has been an incredible year, and I do not doubt our 2017 reel will be even better than the last. Now I leave you with our latest reel so that you can see how far we’ve come, and I will continue to imagine how far we can keep going.

Thank you,

Michael

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How We Made an Award-Winning Short Film in 48 Hours

By Zach Schmidt

48 hours...  48 hours to conceive, write, shoot, and edit an entire short film.  That was our challenge entering the Livermore Valley Film Festival’s 48 Hour Crush Competition (http://www.livermorefilm.org).  To win something like this, you have to be willing to push the limits of your creativity and caffeine tolerance.  

On a Friday night, the competition kicked off with having entrants draw random film genres and find out four elements to include.  We drew comedy and had to include: “where science meets art,” Pluto, a food item being crushed, and a foreign phrase.  48 hours later, we had to deliver a short film, using only footage shot within that time.

Coming up with a narrative with this criteria was not exactly easy.  My initial ideas required building epic spaceship sets, which we obviously did not have time for.  Mike and I came up with some decent skit ideas, but I wanted to focus on something story driven.  A few beers later, we came up with this idea of a man building a cardboard rocket ship to go to Pluto.  Throw in an incredulous daughter, some classic sci-fi movie parody, and a poop joke, and we suddenly had a story, or something vaguely resembling a story.  All we had left to do was write a script, buy props, find alphabet cereal, build a rocket ship, plan an entire shoot, dress the sets, shoot an entire shoot, and edit for about 20 straight hours.

Good planning is key

So, Saturday morning, I wrote the script and we gathered all our props before our cast joined us at noon.  Our actors, Aleks and Mark, both ended up outstanding in their roles, receiving very high praise from the judges.  Mike’s casting process (i.e. accepting whoever responded to a Facebook post) proved infallible.  The film crew included only Mike, our assistant Hannah, and me.  

Preparing to shoot, I knew we would have to forgo much of our regular process to get through the script in just six hours.  For comparison, I’ve had 16 to 20 hour shoots for five minute films, and that still wasn’t enough time.  So, forget actually planning shots and story-boarding.  Forget make up.  Forget lighting everything right.  I knew we couldn’t take the time to get every shot perfect.  My lighting setup involved throwing an LED panel in the corner and forgetting about it.

Note the light in top left.  That’s high-level cinematography.

Filming comedy, I wanted a buoyant, tracking camera, punctuated by a few stable shots representing the Dad’s perspective.  I think a floating camera like this adds levity to the situation, and I tried to use the more dramatic effect of anchored, steady shots to satirize how the Dad thinks.  

Though the filming looks simple, the process was far from it.  Flying a 100mm(equivalent) lens at wide apertures introduces a slew of difficulties.  It’s very easy to go from fun and whimsical to downright nauseating.  Even though nausea is now an accepted standard for blockbuster action movies, that’s not the look I wanted.  I ended up making the actors do countless takes of each shot, just to ensure we had smooth, in focus, coverage of every part.  The most complex shot of the entire shoot was revealing the Dad staring down into his cereal bowl.  My camera is more than two inches long, so I had to cheat perspective.  We found matching small and giant bowls, so we could start with an average sized cereal bowl and switch to the larger one to get this angle.  Then, we replaced the table with a much shorter stand to put the giant bowl on, and I tilted the camera up from the floor.  This idea resulted in one of my favorite shots I’ve ever taken.

Since we purposefully shot without the need for any effects work, we spent most of our editing time on audio.  We needed the perfect sound effects and music to sell the visual comedy.  Not wanting to spend any money licensing music, we resigned ourselves to using whatever we could find for free.  I immediately thought of classical music swells for certain key moments.  I had Mike look for “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (aka the 2001: A Space Odyssey song), and “O Fortuna- Carmina Burana” (pretty much the most epic thing ever).  Fortunately, we found a great version of “Zarathrustra” and an even more fitting piece than “O Fortuna” from Kevin MacLeod of http://incompetech.com.  Mike then asked what to look for to score the rest of the film.  I turned to him and replied something like, “Beep... beep... be-boop bop bop.”  Mike raised an eyebrow, then nodded and said, “Ok.”  (This is how you know you’re working with the right person.)  Once we laid the music, we discovered we made the most hilarious short film of all time!  It was 5AM though, and apparently everything is hysterical after working for 22 hours.  

Needing fresh eyes, I slept a whole two hours before getting up to continue editing.  We kept working on the film until we basically ran out of time.  I didn’t have time to finish fine tuning, but, just like a college essay, we had to turn it in and hope for the best.

In summation, here was our basic 4 step process to winning:

Drink coffee

Skip everything

Don’t sleep

Repeat step 1

Thank you to everyone involved and the competition organizers!  Hope to see you next year!

Pro tip: Get the title of your film right when you submit it

Credits:

Rachel- Aleks Eydelman

Dad- Mark Vanderveen

Camera- Zach Schmidt

Sound- Mike Vanderveen

Assistant- Hannah Eugster

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Whoa! This is really cool! Would love to learn how this edit was done!

PixelScape 

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-xkFlXKU2s) - Get pumped up with this video we created for Diablo Crossfit!!

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CYRxja598M) - Check out the video tour we created for TPC Stonebrae!

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Flex by Imaginem Productions Via Flickr: Getting in the zone.

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Punch by Imaginem Productions Via Flickr: Punching the bag.

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Tilt by Imaginem Productions Via Flickr: Photos of Claire Nobles for a hair competition.

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Flowers by Imaginem Productions Via Flickr: Photos of Claire Nobles for a hair competition.

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Happy by Imaginem Productions Via Flickr: Photo from our shoot with Curtis Instruments

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Enjoys His Work by Imaginem Productions Via Flickr: Photo from our shoot with Curtis Instruments

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Look Away by Imaginem Productions Via Flickr: Photos of Claire Nobles for a hair competition.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3buMikhyX9Y) - I’m a little biased because I love these two dearly, but this wedding highlight always makes me smile!

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USZqlNlwShI) - Anis & Chris - Wedding Highlight Film. This wedding was wonderful - it had everything! Tacos, wildflowers, love, amazing sunset, dancing, and joy. Check it out! :)

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Body SAMantix - Boxing Photos & Behind The Scenes

Hello everyone!

Welcome to another edition of the Friday Blog from us here at Imaginem. Recently we started working on a project for personal trainer and owner of Body SAMantix - Samantha Rodgers. While planning out this project it came up that Zach had been wanting to do some boxing photos with a lighting setup he had imagined in his head, and Samantha graciously agreed to oblige. Below are the photos Zach took, and below them is a behind the scenes video I put together while we were shooting. Don’t forget to follow us, we put out new blogs every Friday! Next week you get to join us behind the scenes of our recent adventure in competing in a local film competition. 

Thanks for joining us again this week! See you again next week!

Blog by Michael Vanderveen

Imaginemproductions.com

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Early Birds