Habitat Promo ’09 from KX0101CreativeArts on Vimeo.

Project: Habitat Promo ’09
Artist: Habitat
Dir. Karlo X. Ramos
www.kx0101.com

Recently finished editing this promo video for Puerto Rican rock band Habitat . Shot during one of their live gigs last week using the d90 and a 50mm f1.8 lens. Footage was edited in Premiere and color corrected using Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Looks plugin inside After Effects. The audio track was done using Ableton live. to mix the 3 songs used in the promo.

One lesson i learned during this project was that you can’t color correct every clip in Premiere’s timeline because it will make your project chunkier (it will add a filter to every clip!). I found the best way is to color correct using an adjustment layer inside after effects and start adding toggle hold keyframes from shot to shot to make the color variations change accordingly within your composition. This will save rendering times, cpu and would help you work leaner and meaner with big file sizes.

Regarding the audio it was really simple. I started with 3 songs from the artist in mp3 format. I load them on Ableton and chopped until i got the power intro from the first song and the choruses form the last 2 songs. Then i sequence the clips in the order i wanted (power intro-laidback chorus-outro chorus) overlap them a bit crossfade beween tracks and export as aiff.

Photos here

Aurasonico, originally uploaded by kx0101.

Single page presskit for Aurasonico a Puerto Rican powerpop band from Mayaguez and Cabo Rojo

Recently I finished editing the pictures i took for Icaro Azul a puerto rican band from the western part of the island. It was a very special project because for me the pictures took a very special and mystical look in a way reminiscent of our history, heritage and nostalgia as puerto ricans. Those blurry years in our history that are not really documented in books but live in the collective memory of our elders. I have to say it was really amazing to work with a band that is not ashamed to show their heritage in the open and accept that deep down inside we are all “jibaros” in one way or the other.