Been doing this a while now. I’m on my fourth server and second domain name.
I discovered the Magic Wand and Lasso tools in Fireworks 3 and with that I was away. The pictures have to have some degree of difficulty and I enjoy adding realism by ‘interacting’ with the set and actors – it makes for a more realistic image. Lighting and shadows are everything – get those right and the rest falls in to place. Camera angle is also important (I can take my picture 15 times before I get it right), but lighting is key. Yes, I use a green screen – it’s a fabric one that came with video editing software. As of June 2013 I ordered a photographer’s backdrop frame and 20′ x 10′ green screen to suspend it from. That should prove incredibly ueseful.* *Not really! (this update from January 2015). I now have a green painted wall – much better than trying to pull the muslin cloth evenly over the wall. I don’t have a train for feet shots – but I can live with that.
I have severely culled this site. It used to feature I don’t know how many cinema pictures. 200 maybe. Other stuff too but it’s all gone – I’m only interested in the fakes now.
Within no time the cinema pages were out of date and I would get the occasional e-mail asking me to update the info of a particular page. Also, folk would sign my guest book saying they had a nice time at a cinema – believing they were signing the guest book of the cinema’s official site and not this site’s guest book. Frustrating and tedious. But mostly, the gathering of cinema pictures became extremely tiresome and so I don’t do it anymore! I realize my hit rate will plummet as a result but so be it.
Looking at some of the older fakes I see how poor they are now – but at the time I thought they were good. I’m leaving them on the site to show my progression – I’ve gotten better at the doctoring and hopefully folk will see that as they click through old to new – although you’re ‘better off’ starting with the new! I’ve commented on all the pictures and that makes me feel better about leaving the rubbish ones in. I’m not linking the old pictures from the home page but folk can navigate to them by viewing a newer fake first. As I say, even though I now dislike some of the older efforts they are left in because I want to show the start to present ‘journey’ and how the pictures have improved over time.
The pictures come in various sizes – I wish they were all the same size but I made them with an average monitor size of the time in mind. Some are way too small and that bugs me now. Oh well – I don’t know how to do perfection, I don’t possess the ability of hindsight and it seemed the right size at the time. This latest design is 1,000 pixels wide and I’ll make all new fakes that size. Why 1,000? I’ve merely copied the width of the BBC site! I figure their web design team know the skinny regarding an appropriate page size. *Well, I’ve started to publish pictures at 1200 wide now. Larger just seems more effective – it showcases the work better in my opinion.
I don’t know how to work Flash so I realise this site isn’t exactly state-of-the-art. At the same time though, I haven’t paid anyone to design it for me or used one of those templates where you just fill in the blanks – and that is truly cheating when talking about web design. This site may not be slick, but it’s all my own work.
I use old, OLD software! You won’t believe how old! FrontPage 2000! Fireworks 3! PhotoShop CS3! Actually – I used FrontPage 2000 from Day One but as of 2013 I’m using Expression Web 4 (2010).
Any road up. I hope you like the site. Any questions just hit the e-mail button and fire off a message.
Here’s the thing – This site is of course non profit making and I use the screen grabs out of a love for movies and image doctoring only – so any stern messages pertaining to copyright infringement whilst officially true, will feel a little harsh and disappointing. Threats to remove an image or ‘We’ll send the boys round’ will smack of overkill even though yes, I did not first obtain permission to use an image not owned by myself. Said images are used in good faith and in innocence.
From 2018 I am uploading videos to this site. I dabble with visual effects and I’m thoroughly enjoying doing so. The main reason though is, I have entirely had enough of YouTube’s quality destroying compression. I’m sick of uploading a video I’ve spent hundreds of hours on, only for YouTube to ruin the image quality. So, I’ve found the perfect solution – I upload to this site in 100% quality. Sorted.
Chris.