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Obi Best - Swedish Boy (video contest entry by Tom 7)

2009-02-15

[public] 2.82K views, 94.0 likes, 2.00 dislikes audio only

(!! Youtube's video quality is poor! I recommend that you watch this video in lifestyle-changing 1080p High Definition, at http://vimeo.com/3225164 !!)

This is my entry for Obi Best's Swedish Boy video contest. I started it over winter break on a whim and didn't mean for it to take so long (about 50 hours!) to finish, but it got out of hand. Mostly it was fun, and I am happy with the result. I hope that you enjoy it too.

All the real-life footage was shot with a Canon 5D mark II, with the 50mm f/1.4 and 17-40mm f/4L lenses, mostly the former. I am pretty new to video. I just got this camera and this was the first video project I started with it. A big snowstorm in Pittsburgh provided the Sweden-like atmosphere. I decided to capitalize on the handheld aesthetic, so the video is deliberately shaky; the overlayed animations are hand motion-tracked to follow the shakiness. The motion tracking and animation are what took 90% of the time, aside from fighting with software problems. I edited the video in Sony Vegas and drew all the illustrations in Flash.

- Tom 7

http://tom7.org/

(Legal: According to the contest rules, I have permission to use and distribute the audio as part of the video made for the contest.)