vatche arabian productions

Winner of Brattle’s Trailer Smackdown 2010!

Vatche — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:53:15 +0000

For this years Brattle Theatre’s Trailer Smackdown (their annual fake trailer competition), the film title was “Labor Day.” I decided to go full force with the Labor theme, and make it a story about a non-union “scab,” whose family has fallen victim to a corrupt union. With a quick intro-story, the trailer dives right into an ordinary man in extraordinary situations, with tons of gun shots and explosions.

The result was a ridiculous action trailer, starring my good friends Ben Swicker, Phil Healy, Brandin Tumeinski, Meredith Calvey, and my brother Razmig. Of course, I can’t fail to mention the stellar voice over work by Jim Jakala for the title and tagline (provided by Mr. Jeff Bartell) at the very end of the trailer.

I’d say the whole project probably took 40 hours from start to finish, including shooting, and Gregg Swiatlowski’s sound work. It was a lot of fun, and our work paid off because we won the contest!

Thank you to everyone who lended a hand in making the trailer, and congrats to all the other submissions! The Brattle’s trailer treats is their annual Summer party, and it is always a lot of fun to go to, and this was my first year participating and I’m glad there are opportunities like this

Latest Product Video

Vatche — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:16:20 +0000

Things have been quite busy over at Extech, and I wanted to post another one of my recent product videos for the company. This video features a lot of movement and animations, all of it created in After Effects. The video also features a brand new logo intro/outro.

In other news, I’m currently finishing work on a new music video I shot, I’m aiming to wrap it up in the next week or so. So check back here once it’s been posted.

Forums Added to LonelyReviewer.com

Vatche — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:36:39 +0000

One of the things I’ve always wanted to implement on Lonelyreviewer.com is a special place for our readers to come chat about the movies we review, movies they see, etc. So, I’ve finally added a forum section to lonelyreviewer.com.

My hope is to eventually build a community for our readers to come talk about whatever they’d like to talk about, whether its related to the content on our site, or even general topics. A forum is what definitely what was missing I hope it’ll be a good home for some good conversations and debates.

Road Trip for Obama – One Year Later

Vatche — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:59:55 +0000

It’s been a year and two weeks since my trip down to inauguration. I stopped in a few cities along the way to D.C. and asked folks what they thought about the President Barack Obama. It was an eye-opening fun project, and it’s definitely going to be interesting to hear what people think these days of the President. Perhaps I can look back at this project a few years from now, and I hope to retrace my steps and see what the consensus is in the communities I stopped in.

But for now, I want to direct your attention to the Vimeo Channel that features all the episodes of the series.

Check them out, and see how people’s hopes turned out in the first year of the Obama administration.

My Resolutions for 2010

Vatche — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:41:39 +0000

So, I’ve been thinking about one thing I never ever do, I never make resolutions. So I decided, maybe putting them out on a public forum such as my personal website, it might make me adhere to them.

In no particular order:

Create minimum 1-2 pieces of original content a month (Video)

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done Hello Simon/Hello the Podcast, and almost a year since the Lonely Reviewer Show & Road Trip for Obama. It’s about time for me to produce one of these many ideas that I’ve been bouncing around in my head. I’ve been posting more frequently to my Youtube page already, so we’re off to a good start, but MORE is coming.

Write

The source of this original content? Of course, my writing. I’ve been lackadaisical as of late, so I want to write for 30-60 minutes at least 5 times a week. If 90% of it never sees fruition, that is fine, at least I’ll have a nice back catalog to turn to in the future.

Produce a New Web Show

I’ve posted in the past about a new show I’m developing and I finally think I’ve got the technical kinks worked out of it. I won’t divulge any details other then I’m currently working on a final visual effects test that will be the final step in pursuing this new show. I’m excited about it, and you should be too.

Some of my other non-project related resolutions include, the obligatory exercise more, and continue to read minimum one book a month.

So there we have it, these are my resolutions for 2010, if you notice me slacking, feel free to call me out on it on here, or on Twitter!

Lonely Reviewer: Relaunched

Vatche — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:31:48 +0000

This January marks the 2-year anniversary of my film blog Lonely Reviewer, and in recognition of that, I’ve finally launched the blogs new format. We’re moving away from the magazine style template of old, and into a template that focuses more on our featured content then the news articles. Though, we will continue to do both!

I’m really happy with the way it looks, and I think this relaunch is a real step forward for the site. A new thing we will be experimenting with in 2010 is introducing video reviews to the site. Not quite the Lonely Reviewer Live show I did over a year ago with Justin, but something a little bit different then what I’ve tried in the past. Look for that in the next few weeks.

Extech Instruments Demo Reel

Vatche — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:49:02 +0000

I recently cut together a little demo reel of my work at Extech Instruments. It just showcases some of my various title composites, visual effects, and other things that I do on a day-to-day basis for the company. Check it out below!

Southwest Spec Commercial

Vatche — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:27:05 +0000

Southwest Airlines recently had a contest to make a video showing what you would do for $100 dollars. Since competing airlines are charging up to $100 to check bags for a round trip. The approach I took was a video showing what I would rather do instead of paying to check my bags.

This short clip took me a few hours on a rainy Saturday to do. I shot it in 1080 with an HVX200, made the lightning effects from scratch in After Effects, as well as the particle explosion. I added the smoke and the fire part of the explosion from a clip library. It was a fun little video, kind of inspired me to think about doing more spec commercials. Really, I just wanted a reason to do something crazy in After Effects.

60 Second Short: Man Walking Into A Dark Room Raising A Gun

Vatche — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:34:58 +0000

A 60 Second Short for One Short Minute.com. I thought it’d be funny if a 60 second short was mostly opening credits, with the “film” part being an after thought. This is what I came up with.

Announcing New Online Venture

Vatche — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:09:54 +0000

I’ve experimented a lot with various online projects, ‘Hello Simon,’ the IPTV Network ‘It’s My Remote,’ my latest project is called ‘One Short Minute.com’

Launching November 1st, One Short Minute is an online community built around 60-second short films. All are invited to participate by submitting short films no longer then 60 seconds, and rating the each others videos.

One Short Minute offers filmmakers, experts, and hobbyists, the opportunity to have their work discussed, and perhaps even find future collaborators, and above all, have fun.

My goal is to set up various contests and festivals based around the community and rating system. More details on that to come in November. Meanwhile, get cracking on some short films!

For fun, here’s a random one minute and fifty second camera test I did earlier today!