Comedy - Martial Arts vs. Van

DESCRIPTION:

In an attempt to kill our Karate hero "Sensei Bob", an invisible mystery driver tries to run him down with a van. Bob doesn't go down without a fight. Are you ready?!?! Cause Bob is! He's always prepared to unleash blazing kicks of fury and destruction. Prepare for ultimate explosions and fire delivered to you by Karate.

Original Title - Expert Martial Artist vs Van

Production Date - June 2009.

CREDITS:

Shot, Cut And Directed By Ryan Golding
Music By Jason Fyfe
Produced By Kyle Strohack, Ryan Dhanraj, Ryan Golding & Sarvan Singh
Special Thanks To Dalewood Productions

This video is uploaded in Ninjavision "High Definition" "HD".

Video filmed with the Canon 5D Mark II camera.

Jay's Channel: http://www.youtube.com/crazycat1984

BLOG NOTES:

This was the follow up episode to the first post on our Youtube channel featuring the "Sensei Bob - Expert Martial Artist" comedy series. It was Bob's third day filming with us, so by this point we were all quite comfortable with the character and ready to go in ridiculous directions with it. In the same location as the previous, on a country road in the middle of nowhere, Bob encounters yet another vehicle that is attempting to mow him down.

While driving to location one of our cars got stuck in a deep country ditch. Being in the middle of nowhere, this could easily have been a disaster for all of us. However Bob himself stepped in and guided the car to safety. Truly amazing. We then got set up, and with exception to other cars getting in the way of some shots, all went well.

After finishing the first episode, we quickly jumped into filming the second. This was a bit more difficult a task as we had to have both Bob and the van in the middle of the road the entire time. Unfortunately more and more cars started driving by while filming, due to it not being so early in the morning at that point. It was a challenge but we got through it. Some shots had to go hand held as a result of the rush, and didn't look as nice as the locked tripod shots, but  it all worked out.

We filmed Bob walking along the road when he senses a presence. An evil van shows up over a slope in the road and stops, revving its engine, ready to charge the Karate expert. While filming Bob letting out his super charge chi-up screams in preparation of battle, he was clearly embarrassed. Thankfully no one was around watching aside from the small crew. During one groan he let out a huge glob of spit, causing us all to break out laughing, and allowing time for a distant car to get closer, meaning we had to move off the road once again.

The kick ass ghost wheel turning and gas pedal pushing were done by filming closeups as Bob, actor and onscreen special effects guru, was moving them around. Originally we were going to do a shot of the van buckling up its own seat belt, but forgot all about it in the rush (Keeping in mind that most of our videos are shot within an hour once getting ready and out on location is out of the way). We filmed the van, driven once again by Ophion Digital member Ryan Dhanraj, speeding by in a locked shot, and then filmed Bob running up and throwing an ultimate flying side kick within the same frame.

In post production we simply masked the two shots together, making a very convincing special effect! Most people watching will clearly believe Master Sensei Bob used his superior Karate skills and ran right into a speeding van head on. We added explosion effects with the compositing of fire along with some smoke and a bad still frame van wheel falling by the final shot. It quickly became the current favorite amongst our friends who checked it out when we decided to post it. Once again the buildup and ultimate techno Karate music were the work of Jason Fyfe.

The hard cut style editing with film damage filtering is used in some of our videos to add a cheap and slightly vintage offbeat feel, often the result of quick cutting with an old film splicer - human error, poor handling and aging of the film, commonly seen in low budget Martial Arts/Ninja films of the 60's and 70's. We look to perfect this style in time, however sometimes opt to go clean.

Continuity Errors - None that we can find as of yet, aside from Bob's skin tone changing every now and again due to flare from the bright sky in low angle shots. It wasn't worth going through the effort trying to match it up too much as we were purposely going for the grindhouse Martial Arts film look.

Ophion Digital
http://www.youtube.com/ophiondigital