Music Videos
Copyright note: All source video & audio belongs to the original owners of the material, be it sounds, visuals, textures, 3d models, game engines, film footage, music, and so forth. Dark & Moody Productions (and its founder, Chris Jayawardena) does not take credit or copyright of ANY of these things. They are merely experiments designed to practice techniques of video editing and for entertainment purposes only. No money is made from these and they are purely unofficial.
TV SHOWS or MOVIES
Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons - Old Series Music Video
Still my most popular video at YouTube, a medley using footage from the first 10 episodes of Gerry Anderson’s Captain Scarlet. A tribute to a childhood favorite.
THE SOURCE ENGINE
Thanks to Valve Software’s handy-dandy “Demo Smoother” technology, Machinima and Music Videos have become far easier to pull off and a great past-time to keep editing muscles strengthened. It also makes for fantastic cinematography practice.
Counter-Strike Source - Los Campiones del Justicio! by The Ghastly Ones
One of the early experiments with the Source engine, a short video, not really meant as a full music video itself, that used the Zombie Mod for CSS. I got on, saw a guy beating the crap out of the zombies (after I would die so easily), and decided to film him. It became my first major experiment in the engine. And what better way to pay tribute to undead slaughter than setting it to horror surf-rock band The Ghastly Ones?
Counter-Strike Source - Roll It Up by Crystal Method
This particular video was done to help get over a friendship falling out in 2007. It took around 3 weeks to gather the footage and edit it together, etc. The intent was to do as much in one single camera shot as possible. Glitches are prevalent as this was done all on public game servers and without rehearsals.
Team Fortress 2 - On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (cover) by Propellerheads
An epic feat, taking 3 months and change to complete, dealing with issues that the new Orange Box engine added to the Demo Smoother (slow motion doesn’t work properly - which has cancelled the planned Day of Defeat projects), and a LOT of editing. But the goal was noble, take TF2 and make a video just as fun as the game itself. It was, despite its visual flaws (thanks to the engine problems, some of which are still not fixed), something of a success.
OTHER GAME ENGINES
Like most people who decide to become artistic, I am a fan. And like many fans, I pay tribute to things I like with music videos. Although non-PC game engine videos are rare for me, I like to take opportunities where I can. Thus, the following.
Driver - King’s Last Ride
The video editor in Reflection Studios’ DRIVER is probably what inspired me to really look into video game movies as a medium. (I didn’t find Machinima for another year) After some time, I decided to muck around and make one car chase as an experiment. Set to a track from the Coffy soundtrack.
Resident Evil - Sleep Now by Hughes Hall
In 2001/2002, when the Resident Evil/BIO-HAZARD remake was coming for the GameCube, I threw together a music video from the footage being released on the official site. It was amateurish and one of my early projects, but I had a lot of fun doing it. A couple of years ago, I finally got around to remaking the video (har har) again and put it up on YouTube. Boredom has its good side, I guess.
LIVE ACTION
Yes, despite the above examples, there are occasions that Dark & Moody Productions goes outside once in a while.
Snow Day - Dec 14th, 2008
In December, 2008; Oregon got hit by a serious snowfall that lasted for around 2 and a half weeks. It wasn’t until around New Year’s that we finally started to thaw out. My father (the infamous Akanaj) and myself filmed much of the snowfall in various locations. This was my first test with the footage, using a piece from Shadow Hearts - From The New World.
More to come…
Although narrative shorts and features are the main goal of Dark & Moody, music videos are an enjoyable aside and have proven themselves to be great practice. So expect more vids to come up on this space in time!
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