June 2013 - Not up to date but we're still here!

We're back!
As per usual, we've been quite busy! Hopefully now we'll be back on track to update our blog every month. So, what have we been doing? We've managed to keep up weekly uploads, for a start. Plus, we've got a couple of videos from 2011 that we've taken and redone.

Wasteland
Wasteland is our new web series produced by Sam Isaacs and starring Ross Arrowsmith. There will be six episodes in total, and so far, two episodes have been released. The series is based around a surviving MoD officer after North Korea left the UK having been fought off by rebel militia groups - with a vital piece of intel on North Korea's military, the militia are now out for this surviving officer, but there is more at stake - he must call for military assistance from any other survivors, as warriors even worse than the local militia start to arrive.

Episode One - quite dramatic and eerie. We were very happy with the locations and camera angles.

Episode Two follows with a little more action and a massive improvement on our muzzle flashes, colour grading and special effects.

Wasteland Episode Three is soon to be filmed, and plans are in the works to make it some of our best work yet. But that's not all. We took "A Battle With no Tomorrow from 2011 and redid it as a war film with a more seriousness. It features the "Red Ops" arriving behind Russian lines to steal intel off a weaponry gang - intel on one of Russia's biggest criminals who actually planned the whole thing on purpose to lure the Red Ops into Russia in order to destroy them.

As you can see by the above photo, Sam made a comparison to A Battle with no Tomorrow and our newer 2013 version. Ross is personally very happy with the Call of Duty film opening and thinks it is the best opening yet - even though Wasteland will be the greatest (and only) overall series to date. 

Aside from our war films however, we've been getting on with the usual few comedy-spoofs. Dr. Sunday came back after a couple of years and we tried something new in the form of a, erm, Western...

So that's it for comedy. Now I know we announced a lego animation series soon - which is still true! But it will now be done with Star Wars, based on a small unit known as the "Ice Ops". It will be done in stop-motion and all lasers and special effects will be done in Adobe Photoshop. Promotional shot below! 

And not only this! Your Top Three Gerry Anderson Shows - our fan made documentary is quite popular on YouTube amongst Gerry Anderson fans. We are pleased to announce that we will be making more - little ten minute documentaries that go into more detail on each show - Supercar, Thunderbirds, Stingray and so on. 

Otherwise, we're in for a productive summer with plenty more film-making! And we'll be back with more updates next month and more videos! A great help to us would be to subscribe to us on YouTube. Please?
http://www.youtube.com/sparemomentstudios
Until next month!

March 2013 - Words Into Action & Lego Series Announced!

March has shown yet another leap in our progress as we continue to work on everything ranging from comedy, documentaries, radio shows and our website. Our main website (www.sparemomentstudios.com) is being converted to HTML-5 by the end of April, which means that it will look vast amounts better on an iPad or mobile device. As we work on "Your Top Three Gerry Anderson Shows", Jack Knoll from J3P Films has gotten involved as he sits down in front of his camera and talks about his favourite moments from Gerry, on Thunderbirds, Stingray and other aspects of his productions.
Our regular stream of uploads has resumed after a brief hiatus in February, and we believe the quality of our videos is gradually fine-tuning to be more understandable to the general public and much easier to connect with, rather than Spare Moment Studios insider jokes about team members. Along with this, we are proud to announce some new stop-motion lego videos coming up!

Our first video uploaded this month was a Teleshopping spoof - you may get the gist, but give us a few weeks before we start getting better things out!

Starring Sam Isaacs, Daron Coaker and Ross Arrowsmith - all made in front of a Green-Screen - at least this is done technically well!

Again, even we don't quite understand this video! A crazy guy with sunglasses infront of a green screen announcing a guy that's supposed to sing followed by a comedian who just gets laughed at?

And now here is something we are proud of. A video to showcase two years of Spare Moment Studios productions, right back from our beginning in March 2011, across a range of war, comedy, horror, science fiction and animation. With Ross Arrowsmith, Daron Coaker, Sam Isaacs, Neil Cole, Steven Fulford, Charlotte Golder, Alex Cook, Liam Duggan and many more!

We filmed all of these Green-screen "comedies" in one day! Give us a break, that's why they're all such nonsense and plain silly! (Again, we're happy with the way it green screened though!)

That's it, now we're starting to vaguely talk! This movie kind of resembles ASDF but in lego - this was basically just to practice our stop-motion techniques, which after some more offline practice are starting to get better!

We are quite pleased with this trailer. We feel the first part is very unnerving and suspenseful, and the second half is more action packed and thrilling - a great trailer to show an upcoming film that will doubtless have proper scripts and a production crew. Filmed April 1st 2013.

Lego Animation Series Announced!
Following Lego Lols and a lot of pondering, as well as thinking back on conversations with Shifty Potatoes's Alex Wilson, Ross decided it would be a good idea to divulge back into the world of animation, where this basically all starting. There will be a five episode series based around Lego City, and a three part series based around Star Wars : The Clone Wars, thanks to Liam Duggan's custom clones!
The reason we have decided to do this is simple. Sixth Form and College!
Because we don't make much income, we simply cannot afford to have all of the team go to Spare Moment Studios full/more/part time. The director is split from most of the team at college, and thus with saturday jobs and work, it becomes very difficult to organise filming dates, and this is made worse by the fact that around now is the time that our content should be improving.
Animation means that we don't have to worry so much about actors - yes, there are other, possibly more difficult challenges in other areas, (like the picture taking process!) But this venture could end up with potentially a new audience and more high quality, enjoyable content, with some live action stuff still mixed in on the side.

Over April, over on Radio Bicester, live shows on our schedule will be up and ready, but more information will be available on the Radio Bicester blog. See you again next month with our next reel of videos which will be considerably better, with some more news from us. Our target for April is simply just to keep building our audience up!

February 2013 - Progress Continues!

February came and as usual we had all sorts of interesting things going on. It was Ross's birthday on the 13th (Now 17 years old!) and we were unable to keep up our weekly upload stream, as Ross's iMac had to go into repair, and being a very intelligent person, leaving all of our filmed content on it. Nevertheless, he got it back before the months end and were able to catch our YouTube channel up. First off this month, we started with something we filmed well over a year ago - an extremely cheesy, horribly edited horror film!

We even used our old tape camera for that video! Anyway, moving on to more recent times...During our green screen session (the same day we filmed the Newsnight Spoof) we made a Teleshopping spoof,  with the same actors (Ross, Sam and Daron), basically of Daron selling a half eaten packet of crisps and Ross selling a vase with holes in it!

We think the green-screening chroma works fairly well in this - a few mistakes naturally, but usually the backgrounds look okay! Though in terms of content we may not have been completely up to speed, but we have had rather a lot of luck lately.

YouTube Partnership
That's right folks! Just before Spare Moment Studios 2nd Birthday, we got offered partnership with a company called AdRev. Over the next couple of weeks we'll be getting our banner sorted and using the resources provided to drive more viewers and hopefully get more subscribers, and thus allow us to make, more higher quality content.

Projects
Team Idiot is on the agenda - but this time properly - six episodes, each 20-25 minutes in length are in the planning, all professionally scripted and scheduled, rather than just Ross and Sam rambling on to Daron whilst holding a bunch of hand guns. Uploads will continue every other Tuesday.
With some recent trials completed, we may also be producing some kind of lego video at some point - we figured out our problems with stop motion (shaky camera, poor lighting mainly) and have decided to do something either Lego Star Wars type or perhaps Lego City.

We also now have a discussion forum! If you sign up to our website and visit the videos page (http://www.sparemomentstudios.com/videos) and scroll down, you will have access to discuss films/media/radio in our forum!

In the world of business, some new areas of opportunities has led us to try and be a little more artistic with our motion graphics and text. Here's a short/brief advertisement clip Ross did in Final Cut Pro. (Better, 3D ones will be done in Motion and Blender at some point too.)

Continuing On
Over the next couple of weeks we will be continuing to develop our online radio station "Radio Bicester", building relationships with local clients and starting some real advertising packages, which will also in some areas cross over into the Spare Moment Studios video production department.

Our videos next month include more spoofs, stop motion and all kinds of new things, as well as live radio shows up on Radio Bicester. Un-till next time, feel free to contact us!

Info@SpareMomentStudios.com

January 2013 - Announcements & Exciting News!

Welcome to our first blog for the new year - 2013! We hope all of our readers have gotten the year off to a great start. This year we're really going to town with our social media, keeping it qualitative and regular, both on Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and most importantly, YouTube. For this year, we've got some great new stuff planned - series four of Team Idiot, another Call of Duty spoof, a series of OASIS, Safari as a stop-motion plasticine animation, the Encounter version 3, the Lock down horror movie and plenty more!

The World of Business Videos
In 2012, we spent a lot of time connecting with people and starting possible video threads, producing promotional films for local business's and local events. We are happy to say that we will be re-producing the "Bicester Voices" video by the Bicester Chamber of Commerce, thanks to Ben Jackson. Chamber events will also be covered by us, and we have some possibilities for work up in Banbury!




As part of our re-branding, Sam has produced a low-resolution version of our new logo!
Still the typical blue circle, but we think the simplicity is so much better, and the shape is far more recognisable. 





Our blog will be updated on the 25th of every month, and we will now start embedding the videos we have produced in here so that you can view them 'at a glance'. This month, as we make some finishing touches to our website (www.sparemomentstudios.com)  we have produced some new chroma key green screen videos. Videos will be uploaded every week on a Tuesday. The first video we uploaded this year however, is the "New UK Health Clinic Parody". We made this last year, and thus we hope to produce content a little stronger than this.

Starring Neil Cole, Daron Coaker and Ross Arrowsmith (A spoof without Sam? How can this be! This is not right!) Neil is a northerner with his own private medical clinic, and he serves two very ill patients, showing us his daily routine. The following video we made was the sequel to 'The Care Home Parody Part I', about a man with memory loss and the comical problems he encounters. 

Neil, or Brian Fartstrom has a soft spot for Carol Vordamen (Ha Ha!) Moving on, we decided to return to our initially popular 'Toast, Coast Parody' video and did a sequel, but this time in-studio with a toast eating competition between Sam and Daron. Ross, or Meal Oliver judged the competition, and the two battled it out to see who could make and eat Toast the fastest, and with the cleanest plate. 

This was with Ross Arrowsmith, Sam Isaacs and Daron Coaker. The latest spoof we did before updating this blog entry was our News Night Spoof! Ross took the place of Jeremy Paxman to bring you the latest news on the Afghanistan Conflicts, the weather and Ian Rankin's new novel. Again, these videos were all filmed in 2012, before we got our minds into gear about 2013 and we started to improve our comedy ideas. 

With the usual trio that turn up to filming days! So what videos to we have planned for next week and the next coming months? Next week, we give comedy a break and have a short lego stop-motion animation in store - a little warm up for a bigger lego animation project we'll be working on later in the year. We'll be giving you a few more rounds of comedy before our first series production - the Lockdown - comes into play, which will be released around the spring time of 2013. Remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel or follow this blog for regular updates on our activity!