First some deeper information:
There is big kind of lan party here at Finland at July. Length of the event is 4 days and people take their own computer with them and they stay over night at the arena. There is about 6000 people and the idea of the event is competitions. I have been there three times and now 05 is my fourth time. There is one compo named Short Video Competition and here are the rules

The new short film competition is a replacement for the old wild and animation compos. The productions can be anything from computer generated animations, demos on ancient or exotic computers to plain video art. The only requirement is that the productions are visually interesting and/or story-wise compelling.
# Maximum length of the production is 5 minutes.
# CG pieces of art are preferred over plain home video types of entries.


And I think like you already guessed I was thinking video of magic / somekind of card manipulation or maybe street magic.
I have great editor + cameraman who is good friend of mine and very talented. He is also very interested in this competition and we are going to win it!. The magic idea should be new to this contest though I haven't see any entries wich includes magic.

Do you have any ideas what could be in video or maybe some story. If you can help me a lot I promise your name is going to be in credits I was thinking of some card manipulation, of course, but I think there should be story and the video should fly! not just moves after moves. I have Jeff McBride's art of card manipulation DVDs also Daryl's Expert Rope Magic DVD and Ellusionist crash course videos.

The video should be fun, amazing and it should fly. They get winners by audiences vote which is big thing that I should notice.

Bennie.

Bennie,

Sounds like an incredible 4 days. Regardless of the competition, have a great time there!

The competition sounds like a lot of fun (like you, I consider those types of challeges fun, too!) From the visual end of it, I can see a lot of possibilities. I'm not sure how much CG / 3D modeling experience you guys have, but you could really do a lot with that.

One idea that comes to mind is a card manipulator doing split fans, snap productions, etc, standing in front of a green screen. Then have the CG cards floating in space moving to the music. (Think Pink Floyd's "The Wall").

Or using "Bullet Time" during levitations, juggling, ball/card manipulations. Bullet time is the effect used in The Matrix. Imagine rotating around a 3D scene with cards falling to the ground as they remain suspended in mid-air. Technically, it's not too hard (you just need a ton of cameras, which you could rent/borrow). Or if you're up to it, do it in CG (way beyond my abilities!).

Another interesting idea as far as pure visual eye candy, maybe a bit easier to do as well: Have a street scene similar to Las Vegas or Times Square or someplace in Finland that people would recognize with lots of billboards. Have all sorts of magic billboards and one by one, they come to life. For example, a magician jumps out of the billboard, then "pulls" a car out of another billboard and makes it levitate or something.

You could also do this with a magazine and make up some fake ads. The magic ad guy comes out of the page and then flips through the page. Finds a model, pulls her into the "real" world with him, then they pick some clothes or something. Incorporate the card manip by "plucking cards" from a gambling page. Finally they see a beach scene and they jump in, camera pans down to the ad and you see them in a still frame running (backs to the camera) on the beach towards the ocean. As an added "gotcha", right after than, as the camera holds on that shot, have a bit of water 'leak' out from under the magazine (like the gory shots of blood oozing out from under a dead body - okay, morbid, but it illustrates the idea!).

Now that I think of this entire last idea with the magazine, I might have to reshoot my own promo video with that theme. Hmmmm.

Hope some of these ideas might jumpstart some other ideas. I'm excited about this whole concept!

Warm regards,
Scott

That was a great post and so good ideas.
Yep the event is fun and amzing. http://www.telepartikkeli.net/blog/media......ssyt.jpg here is one picture of the event. If you look closely you can see that in the screan reads Short Video comp o is about to start everytime when compo starts everybody have to shut down their monitors and all kind of voice

I copy paste your post to my editor/cameraman. Though he isn't familiar with 3d effects I think. But I know couple people who is !

I think this post has already been discusseD.
Nick

Manipulations would be the thing for this - or would it be possible to just have a street magic segment?

I like Scott's explosive ideas

Honestly, Scott-- those ideas ARE amazing! For the longest time I've wanted to have access to Avid Studio or Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition... Meanwhile I'm stuck here wrestling with my Pinnacle software. So I can't really create most of the effects you described, although I would love to. Oh well, I guess that's what I get for choosing medicine over art. If I had gone to art school, I would have had all that software right at my fingertips!

Always on the lookout for something original, last year I was hoping to do a short film segment for a stage show, I tried out a few "test shots" and technically can do it, but haven't got around to actually producing the thing.

Basically, it's a bit of street magic, filmed in front of a famous landmark, you stop people in the street, show them a trick if you wish, and eventually ask them if they have noticed anyhing odd recently, - they answer no, "well if you look over there what can you see" - Spectator giggles and replys "Half the eifel Tower is missing!" or whatever...

You need an obvious location, Mine was for a local show and the dissapearance of a Castle would have been obvious to everyone present, furthermeore, other landmarks around the place made it obvious that it was filmed AT the location and not somewhere else.

Basically, the spectators are filmed (on location) in front of a blue screen (or in my case in front of a large green painted wall.) You can talk to them, ask them to verify where they are etc. etc.

Eventually you indicate a small picture stuck on the wall behing them, and ask them if anything is wrong with it. It's a picture, edited to remove (or distort) the landmark). They will look behind them (at the picture) and tell you what is wrong.

The whole thing is then edited together, a background shot of the landmark (with appropriate editing to remove / distort it, with the spectator overlayed. I'm sure you get the idea. As I said, the quick test shots I did worked quite well - but this was intended for a very small show (and not one that concentrated on video!)

By getting the spector to say what is wrong with the picture, is intended to "sell" the idea that the background is aparant to them. How you convince the audience watching the video that spectator isn't a stooge, I'm not sure (I was proposing to use well known people about town if possible.)

(Franz Harrary watch out!!)

Thanks for the comments Angela and Orbit! I appreciate that a lot. I love coming up with creative solutions to different problems. There are always ways around the software to create the effects. For example, many effects can be accomplished without any fancy software and just creativity.

For example, the speeder bike scene from Star Wars (boy am I dating myself here!) was shot with a stop motion camera and models. The Death Star blowing up was done by placing the camera below a model of the Death Star and blowing up the model. This way, the parts would all fall out equally and towards the camera, making it look like it blew up in space.

John, thought of an easier (hahaha) way of doing it. No chromakey needed! Have the actual landmark in the background (we'll say, oh, Mount Rushmore). You could have several people looking at it, in frame. Next Washington starts to move a little and wakes up and answers questions! How?

Have a three dimensional model just off camera, but placed upstage (I know this would be outside, just bear with me). A puppet dude would hide in the model and move the model (I'm thinking it would be 4-6 feet wide and just happens to be on a thin base). Next, they react to questions.

Later, have an actor made up with make up (say that five times fast!) reply to the same questions. Then just mask it out and drop it into the frame. Conan does something like this with photos of famous people where the lips move because they are someone else's lips.

Because the camera is stationary (on a tripod) and the actor would be as well, it would be super simple to drop his face overtop of the original image. Also, the reactions would be legit because they are witnessing something cool. It's just that the tv audience wouldn't see quite the same thing.

Am I making sense? If not let me know, I can try again.

Warm regards,
Scott

By the way, medicine is a great career! (I've got two RNs in my immediate family).

Thanks Scott, I get it! Unfortunately the landmarks that I was thinking of were more of the building/geographical features type. We don't have an equivalent of Mount Rushmore nearby! (Does anybody!?)

Well, you could do an Eiffel Tower that bends, or levitates or vanishes. Use a model of the tower and have do it's thing (model bends or levitates or vanishes). This idea could be used with different locations or objects.

Warm regards,
Scott