Some Q&A with Steve Blum

         


         Like the last video, it’s self-explanatory.  Q&A with Steve Blum.  Only with this one the battery to my camera ran out, hence why I didn’t record the whole thing.  Enjoy.

Some Dub Like You Mean It! With Crispin Freeman

            This was some footage I took at Katsu Con of Crispin Freeman, (best known for his role as Alucard in the Hellsing anime series) during his voice acting panel.  Kind of self-explanatory I think.  The reason that the camera was so shaky and why I didn’t record the entire panel was because at this point I was a bit sleep deprived, (that convention was kind of a mixed bag due to some stupid choices of the people I was rooming with), and a little drunk and after a while my arm just got tiered and I was lazy.  If I ever go to another convention with him at it, I’ll try to get more of this but for now this is all I have of it.

C: 299,792 km/s Review

           

           
           So…I’m not going to lie.  This video could have been better.

            I’m too damn quiet, I look bored, the lighting is terrible, and the editing wasn’t as tight as it could have been.  I really don’t have any excuses for this outside of the fact that this was my first time trying this on my own.  Obviously back when I first made it and uploaded it I thought it was decent but after six months it just comes off as kind of mediocre.  In all honestly I just really wanted to get people to watch this short because I thought it was really, really good.  Hell, I would honestly go so far to say that it’s better than most of the movies that I have seen this year. 

            But these really aren’t the reasons it got so may dislikes and angry comments when it first came out.  Remember when I mentioned in The Crow article how Korsgaard and I had complete falling out not long after I decided to stop doing videos for him and he made a video and wrote an article that I claimed was full of half-truths at best?  Well, it turned out that he had enough people who listened to and believed his BS who decided to flood my channel and videos with angry comments and dislikes which accounts for the majority of those that I experienced at the time.

            But even with that in mind I acknowledge that this video could have been better and if I do another video review in this format I intend to.  So on that note, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us here, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and check out this short and enjoy.  

Captain Krionic's Reactions to 2012 Endings Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cKxwlKk_xA

            If there is one video in all of GGP’s uploaded videos that I regretted doing, it was this one.  The first mistake was that I used my brother for the video and…well….it turned out that he hadn’t actually seen or played most of the stuff that appeared on in this video and his acting abilities can be summed up as boring and bland to pissed off and enraged.  He does the latter pretty well, (and I intend to exploit this “talent” in the future), but he really couldn’t sell the wide range of emotions that some of these movies, games, and T.V. shows invoked.  Not to mention these were really my reactions to these endings and not his.  As such, it really should have been me on the camera and not him. 

As far as people’s reaction to the writing…well it really all comes down to a difference of opinions and some people misinterpreting what was said.  Some people confused the reaction to the end of Chronicle as the reaction to the whole movie, believing that I hated it and trust me when I say, that’s the furthest thing from the truth.  I just thought the ending was a little wonky.  As for Mass Effect 3 my reaction was initially one of confusion and to be perfectly honest, I really liked the Extended Cut ending.  With the reaction to the ending of The Avengers…well that’s a difference of opinion.  To put it simply, I’m just sick to death of these movies that were all clearly made just to build up to another movie.  And because Avengers was supposed to be the big movie that it was all building up to and it turned out to be just more build up for some future movie I got really pissed off and I still maintain a simmering distain against that franchise because of it.  And with The Dark Knight Rises, again difference of opinion.

            So yea, this video was kind of a disaster, and to date, it’s the only one that I regret doing.  And I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this and have seen this video you’ll have plenty of crap to give me to.  As for the next video…well…we’ll get to that next time.

The Gangnam Rage Video

         

   Oh boy…this video….just watch….

            This was a video where people completely missed my intentions.  Within a few days of posting this video, I got all kinds of flak and people accusing me of hating PSY and Gangnam Style and calling me all manner of…colorful words.  The actual intent of this video was just to show an exaggerated reaction of someone who was sick of that damn song and making fun of said people who take their hatreds of stuff like this to far.  But in the defense of those who have hated on this video, I guess that wasn’t properly conveyed.  And no, I don’t hate this song, (a convention I went to earlier that year drove any dislike I may have had of it right out of my system).  Truth be told, my original idea was to use a more disliked song like California Gurls or Call Me Maybe but It just happened that Gangnam Style was really damn popular and I figured that using it would draw in more views and thought it had been around just long enough for people to be sick of it but still know what it was.  Well…I was half right and I’m pretty sure that had I used any other song this one probably wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much flak as it did.  But in the end I really don’t regret making it.  I had fun putting it together, got to play with some fake blood and do things that I really couldn’t do with any of the Korsgaard’s Commentary videos.  Now the video that came after this one…is another matter all-together and we‘ll get more into that one next time.  

The Crow Video and What Happened to it and What Happened After

            This one is a little difficult to talk about because…well… for one thing it isn’t available on YouTube anymore; apparently taken down for violating some copyright law that may or may not have fallen under Fair Use, (some companies are a little ignorant as to how that works).  It’s actually a really big shame because nothing about it really went wrong outside of one disagreement concerning how Korsgaard worded one sentence that I took offence at and one odd instance where the picture turned brownish red for some reason, (I believe it may have been a lighting trick that I was attempting that went wrong).  Aside from that, however, everything went great.  The lighting was appropriate, given the subject matter, the writing was good, Korsgaard gave a good performance, the editing went so smoothly thanks to my switching to Adobe Premiere Pro and I say that it was easily the best video of the three and is probably a contender for the best video that I have made period.  And because of this it really is a shame that people can no longer view it.

            However, after it was complete I more or less decided to stop making videos for Korsgaard, mostly due to personal and creative disagreements I was having with the guy and we had a full blown falling out not long after for reasons I don’t care to discuss here.  It is worth noting, however, that he did write an article on his site and made a webcam video explaining why the videos had stopped coming.  His explanation is full of…half-truths at best, (three sides of an argument and all that), and I never dignified it with a response and have no intention to do so outside of what I’m saying here.

            Since then, he has made attempts to make video reviews on his own, and…well…they’re not very good.  In total he came out with two within a couple of weeks of one another, one being kind of mediocre and another that’s just fascinatingly bad and is almost worth watching because of it.  Around the same time he attempted to create what I can only imagine was supposed to be his answer to Griffeth Galaxy Productions; an organization called Sardonic Media Group that he formed back in late March and even made a Facebook page for it and apparently recorded an intro video as well…only not to post said video and the Facebook page has been inactive since late March.  This was apparently due to an issue with YouTube’s copyright policies which has apparently driven him to abandon his venture into the video medium all together.  Still, his website appears to still going strong, he continues to write articles and his intended writing carrier seems to be going forward so more power to him.

            And that’s the story of my video collaborations with Korsgaard.  The whole thing may not have ended well and the ripple effects of our falling out would be felt well into the New Year but on the whole the making of these three videos was an education experience for me and I would take these lessons with me into my making of GGP videos.  Although some of them may have been a bit more…ill-advised then others.  We’ll get more into that next time.  Until then, please follow the site, subscribe to us on YouTube, Like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

Dredd 3D Video

           

            Holy mother of God….this video…so many bad memories….yet so close to being perfect yet so far.

Ok, if you guys bothered to watch it, you may have noticed a huge problem right off the bat; the video quality was terrible.  The first mistake we made was filming this in front of a window during the daylight and because of this the lighting was constantly inconsistent.  But the main reason the quality was poor was something a little more…technical.  Remember in the last post how I mentioned that for some reason the edited movie clips for Expendables 2 kept corrupting on me as I was in the middle of editing?  Well it was even worse here.  When I finally finished editing I couldn’t render the damn thing because the edited movie footage corrupted AS THE VIDEO RENDERED!  As a result I had to go and delete large portions of the video so I could render a smaller part of it, before reloading it and having to do it all over again with a later part of the video and then had to edit the individual parts together and it somehow drastically reduced the video quality.  Don’t ask me how or why because I honestly don’t know.  It also didn’t help that around the same time I was having a lot of personal issues and it ended up delaying the filming and recording of this video by an entire week.  Because of these problems, two new lessons were ground into my head.  The first was to never film in front of a window during the daylight as it messes with the lighting.  And the second was to stop using Windows Live Movie Maker.  Within the next few weeks I switched over to Adobe Premiere Pro and haven’t looked back.

But on a more positive note, this one was a radical improvement over the Expendables 2 video.  For one thing, Korsgaard actually wrote out a script for the review giving me some idea how it would go.  Granted I had to rewrite half the damn thing, (something I almost gave myself a cowriter credit for), but it was a lot more than what I had to work with then the last vid.  And obviously his performance here is a lot better.  It was just a massive shame that technical problems brought it down.

The Expendables 2 Video

            Although technically not part of Griffeth Galaxy Productions, I felt the need to put the Korsgaard’s Commentary videos that I was a part of on this site and to talk about them because in a lot of ways these videos and other failed collaborations we had more or less spawned GGP. 

             As you can see, the first video I had anything to do with that found its way to the web was Korsgaard’s Review of Expendables 2.  I had actually been toying with the idea of doing videos for a while, more or less stopped by a lack of a decent camera and over the course of the 2012 summer the two of us had discussed various ideas concerning it extensively.  Sadly, none of them have, as of yet come to pass and when I finally got a working camera and a basic grasp of Windows Live Movie Maker I somehow got drafted into making this video, (still not sure how it happened).

            To put it kindly, the video is a bit of a mess with more problems than I care to count.  Some of the problems were Korsgaard’s fault.  Some were my fault.  Some were just technical problems I had with the editing equipment.  For example, I clearly had no idea how to frame a shot or how to properly light him, (something that is still a bit of a challenge for me today I am sad to admit), and probably should have made him done more takes as there is a clear lack of energy in his performance.  There was also some problems with Windows Live Movie Maker, (you may have noticed a clear delay in between the live footage and the voiceovers), as a lot of the movie footage kept corrupting before I could finish editing, causing me to make a more rushed second version in order to meet the deadline that Korsgaard wanted.

            But in all honesty, as much blame can be put on Korsgaard.  The guy insisted that we record everything a few hours after seeing the movie, with no script resulting in the vast majority of it being made up on the fly, insisted that the video be out Sunday night of that weekend and only showed up to record the voiceovers needed that afternoon.  And because of all of this, the result was something….less than perfect.  Still, when all was said and done it wasn’t bad for a first effort on either of our parts and I quickly learned what to do and what not to do when approaching these videos.  The ultimate lesson that I took away from this video was that the writing and filming should be done on different days and that I had to have a written script from Korsgaard a day in advance so I could decide what should be live and voiceover and what needed rewriting; something that, believe it or not, would be shockingly hard to do and continued to be a problem up until I decided that I no longer wished to help him with his videos.  But more on that another time.  Until then, thanks for tuning in, reading my ramblings on what I should have done better and please subscribe to us on YouTube, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and follow us here on blogger.

Trey Griffeth

Welcome to Griffeth Galaxy Productions!

            Welcome to Griffeth Galaxy Productions’ main web page, a web based organization intent on bringing its viewers and readers informed reviews of films, videogames, T.V. shows, and comics, as well as producing its own original content such as short films, web series, and fan films and any other random thing that we feel deserves attention .  If you have any desire to be part of this organization, please email us at griffethgalaxyproductions@gmail.com and if you like our content, please subscribe to us at our YouTube channel(s), like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and follow us here on Blogger.

            Now, the YouTube channel has been up for roughly ten months, has seen the publishing of twelve videos and has already seen a number of ups and downs.  As such, over the next couple of weeks, the site will be posting the videos as well as some additional production notes from founder and runner Trey Griffeth.  Please stay tuned for these things and welcome to the site.