Comixology: Library and Annotations | Fan Made Commercials

Recording my guest appearance on Superhero Cinephiles was a fun, wonderful experience. The host was incredible, and the conversation was excellent. Preparing for it, balancing the comic, a notebook, and a pen was a lot more frustrating than expected. What's worse is that it was completely unnecessary. I remembered not just all the regular features using a Kindle affords, but I also remembered manually drawing underlines and highlights, and putting notes in the margins of unformatted PDFs that professors occasionally sent us. It wasn't perfect, but it was still all on a single tablet and required one hand. 

This is impossible with large comics because trying to convert one into a PDF crashes PDF readers. So Amazon really should step in and do something. They clearly have the capabilities, with everything the Kindle and ComiXology apps already can do, but they are more concerned with slashing what ComiXology can do in the interest of cost-saving. Nerdsync and other YouTubers have covered that really well. 

 

So, the above videos are my new project. The additional commercial focused on the library was my way of learning Figma. It was simpler to make and it throws around some more useful ideas that ComiXology is lacking. And the commercial framing was the best way to give these things some additional life and not just make it a slideshow. It just also meant I needed some additional help.

A ton of people contributed to this, and I highly encourage people to check out their work. For example, Julia Yorks is a professional screenwriter. Before I went to the VA, Kiyana, with my script, I wanted to make sure dialogue flowed from feature-to-feature just right, and she was able to help me do that and make the whole thing less wordy.

I don't know if this will actually show up on Amazon's radar, but with all the ComiXology criticism they've been facing lately, at least they might find a potential way out...if they even care or it starts to actually affect the bottom line.

Finally, while note-taking was frustrating, I'd consider the library video a strong endorsement of getting your books from your local comic shop. Once they're home, it's just so much easier to enjoy them. Please support your local comic book shops, and enjoy the non-hassle of not having to re-download a large trade or omnibus. Just grab-and-go.

Credits
Voice Acting
Kiyana Morgan

Music
Christophe Beck's Ant-Man Theme
Owned by Marvel/Disney

Photos
Adobe Stock & Shutterstock

Script Consulting
Julia Yorks – The Baby Writers Podcast

Software
Figma for UI & Final Cut Pro for editing
Play with the Figma files however you’d like
Annotation & Library

Keyboard
Denis Rojčyk

Icons by Iconduck

It's a plug-in in Figma

Inspiration
Superhero Cinephiles & Nerdsync

ComiXology & Kindle by Amazon
Comics owned by their respective creators or publishers
Purchased through ComiXology or, more likely, Humble Bundle
I’m affiliated with neither

Special Thanks
SUNY New Paltz Comic Books United! 
My school’s comic club showed me the wide world of comics outside of the movies

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Vudu: Disc to Digital Service | Fan Made Commercial

I did an update to that radio commercial from a few months back. The odd challenge for this one was picking out the movies to feature. Luckily, Vudu has multiple communities dedicated to this service and other stuff like it, so it was easy to find a list to start off with. 

As always, this stuff wouldn't get off the ground without the help of a handful of people. The living room model from Fluza was also featured in two of the logo animations my friend Dylan Hirsh created for me recently. Logo, by the way, by Casey Morris. Speaking of logos, everything featured here came from a site called Fanart.tv, and TheMarvelStark pointed them out to me. Without it, picture-to-picture may look pretty inconsistent. This site mandates everything be the same size, so that was a huge help. Zane Sexton had a certain Bruce Campbell quality to his voice, and, while I couldn't sync that with "In the Hall of the Mountain King," he was a pleasure to work with. Finally, this, like the last Vudu video, is thanks to script made in Professor Gregg Bray's Writing For Digital Media class. Please check out his movie Liner Notes. It's been on my watchlist for a while.

So, if you like the video, or any of the puzzle pieces of it, please follow those links and spread the love. 

Finally, for anyone in an editing funk, this was a quick project to put together, but it's got me wanting to get back into some of the crazier stuff I was trying during lockdown. Small videos are always a great place to start, and they can be exercises you just keep to yourself, although someone will probably get a real kick out of them. 

Update: This is a tiny project that I did in an afternoon, so I'm mentioning it here. Months later, I recut an older Snickers ad for TikTok.

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Vudu: Disc to Digital Service | Fan Made Car/Radio Commercial

I'm a big fan of Vudu and this service, but the main reason I made this was to try to experiment and expand a little bit. It was my first time directing actors, and it was my first time putting captions in a video, so that's what made it something worth working on.

Just trying out different things with the channel, as I continue through a bit of a slump with trailers, reviews, and stuff like that.

Credits are inside the video. Please check out the work of the other people who helped put this together. It just would've stayed on the page without them.

A very special shoutout goes to Dylan Hirsh for putting the ending logo animation together. This is one of three pieces that he did for me. 

They all came out wonderfully, and we feel that they perfectly capture the themes and ideas of Why We Watch, as something more than just me blogging and having fun every once in a while. This is supposed to be a place of ideas. It doesn't always have to be critical thinking, but there should be something cooking in there while watching just the right movie or show. More info on these animations can be found in their individual YouTube videos.

And I did a very different one for myself after, to experiment with concepts and prep for a possible re-branding. Luckily, the Dylan's videos won't need much alteration once Casey is done. 

Update: This is a tiny project that I did in an afternoon, so I'm mentioning it here. Months later, I recut an older Snickers ad for TikTok.

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Iron Man 3 | Mambo No 5 TV Spot (Fan Made)

Original start to this post: Similar to re-doing Hitman: Agent 47, this is just a bit of fun editing practice.  I'm not going to go into how the Mandarin was handled because it's been done to death, from both viewpoints. What I can say now, that I couldn't in my initial review, is that Kingsley's accent did seem slightly off in that first trailer. Clearly, it was intentional, and his performance was excellent from every angle. 

And the tone, post-Avengers, is perfect and drew us in, but I wanted to try something more in-line with the director. Shane Black's movies are silly, and he reminds me of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino, so that's definitely something to play with. 

Another great trailer without the big ticket villain is by Split Second Media. It's in the style of Logan, and that is super fitting.

New start: The FanTrailer subreddit had a Spot Contest in February. Hearing Mambo No. 5 in Iron Man 3 created a backup plan. It became the best option because the movie isn't as comedy heavy as Ant-Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp (reviewed here), and Thor Ragnarok. A solid fifteen seconds of jokes, and plot without mentioning Mandarin, was either non-existent, or I would've had to really squeeze material out of the movie. 

So, I went humorless and plotless. The first idea was to do Tony getting into a new suit with each name, but there was a surprising lack of moments like that. So, lone suits being used and incorporating Tony's friend's into the Iron Legion became the way to go. Tony himself kinda bookends things. Hopefully, it runs smooth moment-to-moment.

My family and a few friends looked this one over for me. Also Drw.17, Onomatopoeic Pictures, and  Joshnitt, all from the community (on Reddit and Discord), helped out tremendously, too. They suggested, among a couple other things,  ducking the music volume as needed to bring out the sound effects more, adding studio logos to the beginning, and adding extra dialogue, to break things up a little toward the end. 

Additionally, I'd like to give a special shoutout to Ntenis Kapanidis. He was very hands-on with assisting me. He gave me tips on spot making in general, and he recently found and shared a podcast all about teasers and trailers. It's called Trailer Geeks and Teaser Gods, it appears to be on all major podcast platforms, and I look forward to listening to it.

As always, please check out the community, and if anything you see sparks an idea, run with it and put together your own videos. Tons of free resources are available, like Blender 3D's video editor, GIMP (free Photoshop), and other tools you may need. 

It's not the most complex edit, but just getting back into the MCU and watching Robert Downey Jr. work his magic were just wonderful by themselves. Speaking of getting back into it, WandaVision is pitch-perfect. And I'm proud to say that J.A.R.V.I.S is in this spot!

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

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Agent 47: The Silent Assassin | Fan Trailer for Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)

Last post, I said "I'm definitely taking a break from videos after this. I need to get back to basics" and reviews. And then...

If Hollywood can crank out remakes, why can't we? For reference, please go here to watch my fan trailer for the 2007 Hitman movie. And reviews for both movies are here (2007) and here (2015). If you'd like to know more about this rehash, and the personal value I felt in putting it together, please keep reading. 

In all honesty, I'm out of fresh trailer ideas for the time being. What I figured instead was that I could give Hitman: Agent 47 the same treatment I gave the original movie, but with some technical and visual upgrades thanks to switching from Blender to Final Cut Pro and additional editing experience since the summer. However, that also made me a bit conflicted, as someone who always says that everyone should at least try free and open-source software first, and not shell out money unless it's absolutely necessary. So, Blender was used for the text, that Fox logo is someone else's (beautiful) Blender model, and that scramble effect on the text is not something I would've figured out in Final Cut. Unless it wasn't allowed for some reason, I'm really surprised 20th Century didn't do something special with the searchlights in the movie's actual opening. It felt like a missed opportunity. 

For a ridiculous concept, as far as copying something I did earlier in the year, I ended up going all out and getting good editing practice in with this project. I did a lot more sound work than usual, and I have my main process/pipeline pretty much down at this point. As someone who's mostly self-taught and regularly flailing through these, feeling like I was successfully following some kind of checklist for this one flattened the uphill battle of getting this movie to pretend it's faithful to its source material. One day stealth will be its own tv and film genre...but today, unfortunately, is not that day. My first complete draft of a trailer is usually much rougher, but what I initially showed people really felt like 80 or 90% there. So, I'm getting better at this, and it's a nice thing to celebrate. Still, I'm really glad they got a first glance at the video before it went public. 

Like I always say, these wouldn't come out as well as they do without the screen tests with the FanTrailer community. TheMarvelStark and Will Wallberg gave me some great notes on finishing touches. Sound design was improved further under their direction, and they found an area where one more mechanic of the games could be shown, disguises! Please check out their wonderful work and other projects that people are doing, too.

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

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The Emancipation of Harley Quinn | Birds of Prey Horror Style Trailer

Update: Winners of the Halloween/Horror contest can be seen here. Sadly, I didn't place, but there's always next time. These guys, really all of us, did fantastic work. The whole community, on and off reddit, always does. 

I'm definitely taking a break from videos after this. I need to get back to basics. 

At the end of my Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) review, I said there was "a depth given to Harley Quinn that hasn't been seen since her beginnings on Batman The Animated Series." What made me think of that was her abuse by The Joker and the fear that a breakup in this movie would lead her to replacing him with Roman Sionis. It's definitely a viable option for the character and film, and the filmmakers demonstrate that it could literally be triggered by a slap. At least, that's where my mind immediately went in the theatre. Please read more for a bit more info on how this was cut together and a "Thank You" section.

Thanks, once again, to the FanTrailer community, I got to explore that for their Halloween/Horror contest. And thanks to the Blender community on reddit and their contests, 3d models I made of Harley's weapons were thrown in for good measure. Animation was added just for this though. If you're curious about Blender or 3d art, please leave a comment or message if you'd like help getting started. Same goes with editing, of course, especially since Blender is one of many free editors out there...although this was done with Final Cut Pro. 

Speaking of the theatre, I'm so glad this was one of the last ones I got to see before all hell broke loose. If Hollywood immediately halted all production and releases in March, this would probably be in the Top 5 of 2020.

While it worked for me, the movie and actual marketing for it were both a bit all over the place. So, besides creating this "romantic" abusive relationship between Harley and Roman, I also wanted to try to re-focus everything a bit. The diamond weirdly wasn't mentioned in the official trailers, so it became a trailer plot point, and this largely replaced the focus on The Birds of Prey. That's why the title change happened, too. Probably not the right move for WB to make, but that's why this community exists, to play with fun ideas. 

Joining in for the fun this time are Harrison and, once again, TheMarvelStark. Harrison made sure the music, which I really just put down and didn't edit to this time (thank goodness) had a huge impact on the overall video. Based on his work, incorporating music well appears to be his specialty. TheMarvelStark gave me a full workup of technical improvements and suggestions. They're both great editors, please check out their channels!

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

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Booksmart | Teenage Dirtbag TV Spot (Fan Made)

Update: Please check out Riptide Fugitive's work. They saw this and decided to use the song for their own Alita: Battle Angel video. They're also just an awesome person!

I ended my review of Booksmart saying "One more thing, before or after seeing it, I recommend listening to this cover of Teenage Dirtbag [by Jax]. They match up together pretty well." To put that to the test, I made a short ad powered by the song. Read more for a tiny bit more background and a "Thank You" section.

Two of the greatest gifts of college (SUNY New Paltz) were swing dance lessons and a re-introduction to music. Specifically swing covers of non-swing songs, like this. Before that, it was mainly the soundtrack to The Mask. It just opened up a whole new world, and not just instrument-wise. Whenever a song went from a male singer to a female singer, or vice-versa, they usually wouldn't adjust the lyrics. So gay relationships were finally being "talked" about the same way straight ones have been forever. That's what Booksmart does, too, with Amy (Kaitlyn Dever). Something about that, mixed with the universal relatability of surviving high school, and the personal relatability of not partying until college, struck a chord, made me actually tear up a little, and made the idea more than worth pursuing. Adding onto that, I wanted to replace the raunchiness and wackiness in the real marketing with sweetness that's also more relatable to all of us. And it may have helped lessen the Superbad comparisons.

Plus, while this has been in my head for over a year, I really wanted a quick bounce back after being told about the issues in The Devil's Advocate trailer. You shouldn't sweat the small stuff, but sometimes you just can't help yourself.

Again, the FanTrailer community on Discord and Reddit was a huge help. This time, William Eklöf took the lead and gave me fantastic advice about how to add some more shots and give the spot more life. His work can be found here. Additional feedback from TheMarvelStark and, again, Will Walberg.

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

Another Update: A couple years later, I made a little something for Wilde's second movie, Don't Worry Darling, starting from a Reddit Photoshop Battle.

  

The second one is an update, but I like both

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The Devil's Advocate Fan Trailer | Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Style

First, it's hard to believe Theron is misspelled in the cast listing. I thought for sure I'd screw up Nielsen or Matarazzo. A lesson learned for next time, run through everything again and again. Sound off/on and video off/on. Lessons to lookup, how to handle audio popping. Most importantly, check the FPS of the project and videos. Changed project settings afterwards, and each one after this was perfectly synched from start to finish. No more adjusting and matching dialogue manually!

  

Read more for additional info on how I made this, the benefits of the errors mentioned above, and a "Thank You" section.

To continue getting this out of the way, for myself more than anyone, a reason I'm not fixing the errors I made is because Why We Watch should be a bit unpolished. I told my brother and professor medium-quality/semi-professional was the brand. The purpose of that was so that others who came across videos like this would feel encouraged to at least give content creation, whatever the medium, a shot. If the creativity and fun of making stuff like this is clear, everything else people see is just a bonus. This'll hopefully show that there's nowhere to go but up

So, Al Pacino being in both movies is what made the idea come up and be worth trying. Once I really got into editing,  it was not as hard as it could've been. Thank goodness for that. The Devil's Advocate, if you don't look at the actual marketing beyond the DVD cover, initially appears to be a conventional courtroom drama. It's not, for a lot of reasons, and one of those reasons is the already bouncy editing and visuals I had to work with. Another is the eccentricity of Pacino's John Milton. So, the goal was to put that fun into a more modern trailer, avoid spoilers (even if the movie is over 20 years old), and, above all, put together a concept people haven't tried yet. Of course, that last part can only go so far when you're also inspired by a Revenge of the Sith trailer in the same style. The creator of that also helped me out and made sure I had the song names I needed and placed them in the right order.

This is my first big project with Final Cut Pro, and the workflow was incredible. Blender has better A/V sync, in that you can instantly tell if it's off or not, but it runs very slow as an editor and also needs a magnetic timeline. Hopefully, that happens in the next 5-10 years. 

Also, a little funny part of this whole project is the pickup shot that had to be grabbed from somewhere else. The subway is from The Amazing Spider-Man. Putting that movie into an editor is always a treat.

A big thanks the FanTrailer community on Discord and Reddit for early feedback. Thank you especially to one of the mods (Will Walberg), whose YouTube channel is here, for offering a lot of support. 

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

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The Babysitter (2017) | Video Review

The Babysitter absolutely called for me to go on-camera, and it was a lot of fun to script out and edit. Not so much fun to film, but that goes for all of these, and that part is getting better. So, what did you think of the movie?

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

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Hitman: Silent Assassin | Fan Trailer For the 2007 Movie

Update: To see similar treatment of the remake, Hitman: Agent 47, please go here.

First, I want to thank the editing/fan trailer communities on Reddit and Discord, and my friends for early feedback.

A couple of years I reviewed the original Hitman movie and the remake, and I cut together my first fan-made trailer. This one should've gone up shortly after those reviews. In fact, those typing parts had been done for a while, but the rest of the video wasn't coming together well. Besides technical difficulties (my own ineptitude), I was going back to school, or work, or both, and it was easy to justify the procrastination.

Recently turning this blog into something a little more helped a lot though because I hope to encourage others to try doing this too. So, where's the best place to start with that...

It's really going to vary for everybody, depending on what they like to watch and play. As far as narrative for one of these videos, I still don't know how to come up with that from scratch. The Spider-Man one used the same style of a different trailer, and this one used the game's Silent Assassin ranking system for missions. There are a lot of books and tutorials on editing, but I got lucky and learned the basics in school, so I'm not sure where to actually start with those other resources. 

On the technical side, Blender is a good editor. So far, it and an editor called Olive are the only free resources I know that allow mkv files. Blender lacks audio control though, so another program like Audacity is necessary too.

Anyway, I hope people give editing a shot. It's like another form of fan fiction that can spark more and more creative ideas. 

Also, what is your favorite fan trailer and/or editing resource? Please mention it in the comments.

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

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Bad Education (2020) | Video Review

I'm still figuring out video reviews, but it's definitely nice to get back into them. I've been using the free time to write more on here, learn 3d modeling & animation, and there are still non-review videos on the horizon. Plus, this site now has its own social media.

Bad Education has incredible acting from the entire cast, with Jackman being the standout, sharp writing, and also a great score (which I talk about a little more in the written version of this review). I hope you enjoy the movie and this video.

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

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Joker (2019) | Spoiler-Free Video Review

So, the written review about Joker was born out of this initial video I shot and then took a little time to cut together. It's my first official video for the Why We Watch channel! While it's a little rough, I am pretty happy with it, and they can only get better from here.

Please check it out, and let me know what you think about the video and the movie itself. Also, I hope you take my closing comments to heart and try to create something like this yourself on your own platform.

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

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The Amazing Spider-Man | Homecoming Style (Fan Made Trailer)

I reviewed The Amazing Spider-Man the day it came out, and I really liked it. The review is full of grammatical errors, but I wouldn't change a thing about the original post. I've thought a lot about expanding that review and writing about the sequel and Homecoming, but the bias is...strong.

The objectivity is there, and I can talk about it all day, but I couldn't write the scathing review Amazing Spider-Man 2 earned or the 4/5 Homecoming gets simply because the filmmakers were burdened by not repeating what audiences have seen before and ties to the MCU. We kicked and screamed for this, but it had drawbacks. It's acknowledged, but then everything else about this latest iteration is given an extra boost.

So, what should be done when there's more to say, but movie magic must be maintained?

Fan trailers are a way to go, and Homecoming paved the way for me to (re)learn editing, after one course on it in college.

The editing process was rough, especially audio, but it's a learning curve and future projects should come out better

The same goes for this post and Spider-Man reviews as well. There's just always something to revisit with this franchise, whether it's requested or not.

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

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