Ok, ya’ll…the long-awaited Florida anti-smoking campaign video coming ‘atcha!

There are so many cool things I discovered while making this production.

My whole filming-against-a-black-sheet thing worked! I was able to hang it over the door to my kitchen and then effectively use that as my backdrop so that I could add the overlay images without a prob! (My cat was probably the only obstacle in getting this filmed easily – she had to get as close as possible to the sheet and ruined my first few takes.)

With the black backdrop I could place my overlay images (popsicles, lollipop, cool car, altoids and more!) exactly where I wanted them (you can literally go into the piece of video footage and find the precise place within the segment that you want to drop the graphic; better yet, you can have it spin into the scene, tumble, creep, blink, fade in, fade out – you name it!).

The whole smoke-filled room thing totally worked – I used the footage of the smoke and dropped it in over my head so that it looked like I was in a "lounge" of sorts – I was quite pleased with the results!

So far I’ve had quite a bit of positive feedback….I’ve had a couple of thumbs down but that surely had to come from the "addicted" living in said state. Poor, poor delusional smokers.

All by way of saying, every time I use Creator I learn something new. And, I recently entered some of my music videos into the Alice 3-minute film festival (the SF-based radio station for those not familiar). I thought the best way to submit would be to use MyDVD to burn the disc - but I couldn’t figure out how to create a file that could be easily downloaded. One of my co-workers showed me that if I go into Creator and pick the “Data and Backup” tab I can create a data disc that way. Then, when someone launches the disc they aren’t automatically launching a player, but instead a list of files that they can “open”, “play”, "download", etc.

So I think I’m officially getting to the “Creator Pro” status. I’m feeling that way anyway. ;)

Then, just for kicks, I entered my bf into the GillettePhenom contest – a contest restricted to males only (what the heck???) and they have to be doing something “phenomenal” with a ball. Oh man…the paths I could go down here….anyhoo, I used some golf footage that we’d taken back in January and married it with the Gillette theme music. It looks/sounds pretty good – though I have had one comment so far that said something to the effect of “can’t anyone do this??”. Well, Mr. Bummer Bird, I suppose anyone could – but anyone (read: you) hasn’t!

I’m so naughty.

Anyway, that’s all I've got at the moment….Oh, and I didn't win the Nature Valley contest - Joel can go live in Maine and eat blueberries till he bursts for all I care. Buh. I hate losing.