this is absolutely amazing – i really wanted to know how you did the diamond shape on the residential high rise! the technical parts of this video tweeked the info junkie in me and i loved the video. I also blogged a review of it, you might be interested in what i said about your video 
Collective Soul Welcome All Again
Music: Welcome All Again by Collective Soul
Making the Lights Dance
No, I didn’t strike a deal with each building to program their windows to go on and off. What I did was use a combination of masking, Apple’s Motion program and Photoshop. The concept is quite simple. I took a regular time lapse of a cityscape. Then, afterwards I took one of the photos in the sequence and brought it into Photoshop. Here, I blacked out the windows on a new layer, then made a layer with all the windows illuminated. This part was actually pretty time consuming because I had to go in and paint each window to make it look believable with the lights off and on.
What this allowed me to do was animate between this still frame and the time lapse video. Now all I had to do was take the image into Motion, lay it over the video and make some keyframes that correspond to the music. Sounds simple, but I probably spent 100 or so hours working on all the shots.
Filming
We shot this entire music video with a Canon 5D Mark II, but I wasn’t able to do this all by myself. I enlisted the help of my friend from college, Drew Dorsey (http://drewdorseycine.com). He helped me out with the setup of every shot except for the live action shots since the tight budget couldn’t get him out to Atlanta (where Collective Soul lives). We did have a good time during some of the downtime.
Live Action Shots
This video had a pretty tight budget. So, as usual, I had to think of some really unique ideas that could wow people without breaking the bank. What I did was instead of lighting them with a series of lights, I brought a projector out to Atlanta in my bag. I picked out where I wanted the band to appear and created all the lighting effects in Final Cut Pro on my laptop on the plane ride over there. Then it was just a matter of attaching my computer to the projector.
Continuing the Evolution
A lot of people ask me where I get my ideas. And I always give the same answer. The Internet. I’m a technology fiend. Anything that involves a circuit board absolutely fascinates me. If you ever visit me at my house, my life revolves around my imac. I’m on instant messenger probably 12 hours a day. And when I’m away from my computer, I have my iphone and check it every 30 minutes.
The point that I’m getting at is that we’re living in the information age. It’s no longer about restricting ideas. It’s all about the sharing of information. I could care less if you love this video and try and replicate it. So whenever I see something cool online, I bookmark it. Then when I need an idea I just refer back to my bookmarks. What happens is that I see some kind of inspirational picture or video and it gets my mind going. Naturally one’s own style makes it so it’s not a blatant copy, but more of an homage. An evolving style of filmmaking. Lastly, I’d like to recommend a really great site to find inspiration: http://stumbleupon.com. You pick out your favorite categories, then it gives you a random website that it thinks you will like.
Locations
View Collective Soul “Welcome” in a larger map
Pictures
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