Sheep vs Man - Get a Good Camera!

In the month of August, man ALIVE Studios had a visit from the wise and mighty Justyn Rowe (of MediaJR in Florida). He became our very own Yoda, dispensing production wisdom with every utterance. We learned a great deal from working with Justyn, but one of the first things he spoke to us about was the importance of getting a really good camera.

Most of our work up to that point had been with the Sony HDR-SR1, which is not a bad little piece of hardware, but Justyn showed us some of the work he'd been doing with his own camera and it blew our minds. Take a look at this daft video we did below to see what we mean - it's just us running around in a field being idiots, while Justyn takes some footage without putting any real effort in...



Look how beautiful the image is!

Anyway, Justyn pointed us in the direction of the Sony EX1. More on that later!

L.

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"We are on a journey..."

Good day!

Here is our latest adventure. It has everything, from cops with automatic weapons, to secret government filming, to giant bugs lurking in public toilets.



And here's the news story which came next!



Keep your eyes freshly peeled and your ears pushed groundwards.

man ALIVE are comin' at ya. Like cleopatra.

L.

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"Glad to finally put a face to the name..."

Good News!

Our vid, "Matt, Ben and Buscemi" has made it into the final shortlist for Paramount Comedy/The Smalls' competition! This means we'll be aired on Paramount Comedy and will be in with a chance of winning the award!

We've also just completed this entry for the Virgin Media Shorts competition. It's called "Mr. Alice", and is a little darker than our usual stuff...



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Available for parties, social occasions, weekends away and conferences....

Good day to you.

It's been a while since our last blog, but here's what's happening right now at man ALIVE; we're bored! We've recently finished a couple of big jobs and are at the moment in a dry period of pursuing our next clients. These times are always great for the creative juices though, so we've also been working on competition entries.

Here's our entry to the Paramount Comedy Smalls competition:



If you like it, leave a comment! Or you could leave one on our YOUTUBE CHANNEL or our MYSPACE.

We also completed a promo for our Pocket Shorts project, which you can view on our website's NEWS PAGE.

That's all for now peeps.

L.

"Can I have one?"

Hello all you thousands of man ALIVE blog readers!

This week I just want to tell you about another competition we've entered. Doritos have announced a competition where you have to complete a new ad for them. If you win you get a load of cash and your ad goes on TV.

We're going to enter a couple, but this was our first attempt;



We need YOUR help to win though! To do your part, please go to www.doritos.co.uk, click on "gallery", search for "not too cheesy", and give us a 5-star rating!

Thanks!

P.S. The idea for the video was a spin-off from these vids we've started doing on youtube;





'Later!

L.

www.manalivestudios.co.uk

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Ah'm Gonna Get The Prum-o-shen!

So!

It's been a while since the last blog, and we've been busy bunnies in the meantime.

Last month we had a host of things going on! Nosferatu made it onto the "Empire" Awards on ITV2, which means a load of peeps, including Matt Damon, Euan MacGregor and new Bond girl Gemma Arterton, got to see Phil wearing what looked like a giant condom on his head!

We also remembered last minute about a competition run by the Scottish Institute of Enterprise. Again you had to make a short film in 60 seconds. The day before it was due we grabbed a camera, which only had 25 mins of battery on it, came up with the following random idea and filmed it (as there were only two of us, we had to take turns playing the corpse!);



It got into the top 5 finalists!

You can see some of the other entries on the SIE website. Some of them are well rough, but my absolute favourite is ADAM CORMIE's entry - ADAM'S WAY TO THE TOP.

Please click here and watch it! Seriously, you'll thank me later.

L.

Check out our official website at www.manalivestudios.co.uk

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Alec Guinness Turns Up At Some Point....

Last week saw us doing all kinds of things from jumping onto the bonnet of a moving car, to talking on the phone with endemol about "Nosferatu"!

A particular highlight though, was when we saw this video on youtube;



The little girl is already a youtube icon and has inspired a great number of spin-off youtube vids. I showed it to my girlfriend, Sophie, who then told me what little she remembered of Star Wars. Not wanting to miss out on the youtube bandwagon I grabbed my phone camera and made this;



It had over 600 hits by lunchtime of the next day!

If you're out there and you read this, leave comments!

L.

www.manalivestudios.co.uk

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Long Way Home

Last week, "man, ALIVE Studios" went to Glasgow to film some contemporary dance antics.

The filming went fine and we were all set to head home. Little did we know that Glasgow was very like the thunderdome in "MAD MAX 3", but even more sinister;

"Two men enter, no man leaves."

This is the story of those two men...

Long Way Home

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Good times? I'm not so sure...

L.

Leave a comment or email us at blog@manalivestudios.co.uk

Check out our myspace for more fun blogs and vids, or go to our official website.

"That's my wife!"

I was just looking back over our blogs and realised that I never actually got round to posting our first entry to the "Done in 60 Seconds" competition!

So here it is, a re-make of the 1920s classic, "NOSFERATU".

NOSFERATU

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If you've never seen or heard of "NOSFERATU", then I can't honestly say you've missed out (even though it was groundbreaking at the time and still succeeds in giving people the creeps), but here's a weird video from youtube that contains some clips of the original set to a track by the band "Mogwai".

That's all from me today!

L.

Leave us a comment or email blog@manalivestudios.co.uk.

Alternatively, check out our myspace for more fun blogs and vids, or go to our official website.

The president just asked us to save the world...

Well, we had a busy week last week. We had so much going on we didn't even have time to blog, so consider this last week's contribution! As well as putting in a lot of work to update our website, we also managed to finish off our last entry to Empire magazine's "Done in 60 seconds" competition (which closed on Monday).

Below you can see a couple of mobile phone clips taken as we were filming for one of the scenes, followed by the final thing in all it's 60 seconds of glory!

BLOGGING - Suiting Up!

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BLOGGING - Aftermath...

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ARMAGEDDON

We got a message from someone on youtube saying this was the best Ben Affleck impersonation they'd ever seen. Considering I've never seen the film and look nothing like Ben Affleck we found that hilarious!

In other news, I was very saddened this week to hear about the death of Roy Scheider. For anyone who doesn't know who he was, he's best known for his awesome performance as "Chief Brody" in "Jaws". This is one of my favourite films, and one of the main reasons for that is Roy Scheider's portrayal of this character. In memory of Mr. Scheider and this great film, and in keeping with the 60-second theme, I've posted this little vid from youtube. Hope you enjoy it...

L.

Check out our freshly updated official website at www.manalivestudios.co.uk, or go to www.myspace.com/manalivestudios, make yourself a friend and leave some comments!

Wanna know how smart I am?

Well folks, it's been a strange week here at "man ALIVE Studios".

Some sad (but also happy) news as James, our EXCELLENT animator, has taken up a full-time job as a concept artist elsewhere and as a result is unable to commit the same time to the business as Stu and myself. Fortunately James has resolved to keep as involved as he can, but the grief of loss has caused us to come out with some weird ideas this week! As an example, have a look at this video we used to promote our profile on myspace:

cup of blogs!

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Took us 15 minutes to make that little gem.

We also continued work on our entries for Empire's "done in 60 seconds" competition, but without our animator we had to do the best we could for the CGI in "KING KONG"!

KING KONG

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Finally, I thought I should throw in this clip of Phil playing the part of Steve Buscemi in "Armageddon", Stu's entry to the competition;

Phil is Steve Buscemi!

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Haha! I love that guy. Er... in a purely platonic way of course...

L.

Check out our myspace for more fun blogs and vids or go to our official website.

Duh-nuh-nuh-nuuuuuh!!

^

That, dear readers, is the victorious 'item acquire' jingle from the incredible Legend of Zelda series. And why would man, alive be needing such victory noises?

Why only because we've won a place on Pocket Short's funding winners for 2008.
Better than a gold rupee any day.

This is obviously exciting and exhilarating news, as it means we can commence production on an episodic, hilarious mini series that will *highly* involve yer mobile phone. So stay tuned for more!

As the man, ALIVE resident artist, one of the things that really excites me is games. Videogames, specifically, and before you stop reading, hear me out: games, when crafted properly, can be as beautiful, powerful and memorable as any book or movie, and moreso, can grip you in a way those former media cannot.

Over the next wee while I'm going to use this opportunity to highlight and explain some of my faves, but for now I'm going to give you a smidgen of screenies from ones I really love.


Thanks for reading and keep checking back (and our main site) for new projects, updates and hijinks aplenty.

Your Precious Blood!

Last week was a good 'un for the "man alive" gang!

It was competitions galore as James headed to an interview for this year's "Pocket Shorts" (we got short-listed, woohoo!), we brainstormed three entries for the "done in 60 seconds" competition in Empire magazine, and another for the SIE 60 second shorts competition. We also completed work on a DVD of last year's panto for the Social Work department of Dundee Council, lined up a couple of other things and filmed one of the entries for "done in 60 seconds".

The idea for "done in 60 seconds" is to re-make a well-known film in (you guessed it) 60 seconds. We're gonna do one each. This week we filmed my one, "Nosferatu". Below you can see the magical moment when Phil (man alive's good friend and whipping boy) dons the strangely condom-like bald cap to become Count Orlock.

Phil Becomes Orlock!

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In other news, I re-watched Aliens vs Predator last night! I know it's a terrible film but some part of me just can't help enjoying seeing an Alien and a Predator go head to head! It's awesome! Maybe the new one will be good? Okay, it won't. But I'm gonna go see it anyway!

I've added this video below for the banter. It's a really amazing Batman fan-film. Anyone who knows me knows I'm disturbingly into Batman, so I might've put this on for that reason alone, but you'll see how it ties in by the end. Enjoy!

L.

To contact us email blog@manalivestudios.co.uk

Check out our official website at www.manalivestudios.co.uk

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Happy New Year

Welcome back to the man, ALIVE team's online blog. James, Liam and myself (Stuart) want to wish you a very happy new year, and we hope that you conquer everything this year has to throw at you!

A few tips for the new year:

Drink tea, it speeds up your metabolism
Whenever you've eaten, chew Wrigley's
Read more
Some birds dance to attract a mate
Learn to dance
Open up a youtube account and subscribe to the manalivestudios
channel.
Watch Lost
Wii Boxing is dangerous
Wii Boxing is fun
oh and one last thing...enjoy our very short seasonal film

Have fun back at work. Hope this brings you some light relief. We look forward to all your replies so get posting on our blog!

Peace and love

man, ALIVE

To contact us email blog@manalivestudios.co.uk

Check out our official website at www.manalivestudios.co.uk

Check out our myspace at www.myspace.com/manalivestudios