#ask pixiepokers

[pixiepokers]

Hi! I hope youre all well! I Just figured I'd pop by and ask you all a question: If you all had to pick 3 favorite movies, which movies would you pick?

Hi there! We are all doing well, aside from not having been able to get together since February 😱 as well as all of us dealing with the last leg of writing our Master’s theses (which is the culprit behind our somewhat slow reply - we’re sorry!) Line: It's so hard to pick just three, but right at this moment, I guess: 1. Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone 2. Black Beauty 3. Coco They are three films that i can see thousands of times without ever tiring of them! :D Anna: It is such a difficult question to answer, but I will try to write what my top 3 are right now (though it often changes) not in any order: - Only Lovers Left Alive - An odd and beautiful film that critiques its cultural context while being an etheral love letter to old vampire film iconography - Le Voyage dans la Lune - Such a creative little film that is so full of creativity and wonder, it feels magical every time I see it - 10 Cloverfield Lane - An awkward (yet incredibly interesting) attempt at merging two types of films. The acting is to die for and the casting very interesting! Benji: As the others have said, it’s so hard to only pick three films, but I think I’d have to go with: - 10 Cloverfield Lane - Super creepy film, and as Anna said, a very interesting mix of two completely different types of films. - Cloverfield - Very interesting found-footage horror. I’ve watched it about a million times by now, and still am not sick of it! - Hachiko / A Dog’s Purpose - It’s gotta be a tie between the two. Hachiko is just a super sweet and super sad movie (both the Japanese and American version) that gets me every time, and so does A Dog’s Purpose. I’m really just a sucker for any type of movie with animals in it! Thank you so much for the ask, even though it’s a super hard one to answer XD

[pixiepokers]

Hello! My name is Megan and I'm in love with your videos, but I was wondering are all of your videos (apart from CMV's) scripted or are they improvised?

Hi Megan!Thank you so much for your kind message - we’re really glad to hear that you like our videos! And thank you for the question! :)All our videos are more or less scripted, but we do often improvise a little as we start filming and get more comfortable with the lines that we’ve written ahead of time :)

[pixiepokers]

Hi, kinda curious, how much time do you guys spend on making videos on like a weekly basis?? seems like a lot of work sometimes! (:

Hi there! Thank you for the question - I’ll try to make the answer as short as possible :)

How much time we spend on videomaking each week differs a lot, depending very much on our studies. During exam seasons, we spend as little time on videos as possible. But on more free weeks, we can spend up to 30-40 hours on videomaking everyone combined (that’s everything from researching, writing skit/CMV ideas, planning/sketching camera angles etc, making props/sets, getting into our cosplays, filming, editing, colorgrading, and thumbnail making). When we get together, we spend many hours on filming every day because we can’t meet up all that often.But how much time every video takes to make differs a lot! A Voldy Vlog takes about 10-15 minutes to write, 10-15 minutes to film and 15-30 minutes to edit. Depending on the skit, these will usually take about 30 minutes to 1 hour to write, 1-2 hours to edit and 30-45 minutes to colorgrade. A CMV, on the other hand, takes hours to write, hours to plan and (occasionally) hours to make props/set design for, before we can get started with filming. Filming can take anywhere between 10-25 hours, perhaps, depending on how far we travel to film some scenes. Editing takes roughly the same amount of time (more if time consuming effects are used). Anna is then usually given a day to colorgrade the whole thing.

I guess the reply got a bit long after all - sorry about that! Hope that answers your question, though! :)Honestly, we don’t usually keep track of how much time we spend on each video, so I’m doing a fair bit of guessing here xD- Benji

[pixiepokers]

What advice would you guys give to a group who’s going to start a cosplay channel?

Thank you very much for the question! I shall try to keep the answer kinda short xD

I suppose it all depends on what kind of videos you want to make :)

You should definitely try out some different kinds of things to find out what you like to make. We actually didn’t think CMV-making was something for us until we decided to give it a proper try in our “We are young” CMV, and then we found out that we really enjoyed it!

A good piece of advice is definitely to not get discouraged if your videos don’t get a whole lot of views. When starting out in 2012, we sure didn’t get a lot of views or subscribers, and we have just properly started growing when we began uploading videos regularly a little over a year ago. So don’t get discouraged if it feels like everything is going a bit slowly! :)

Also, practice makes perfect! If you’re gonna make CMV’s, maybe look up tutorials on camera angles, movements, lighting (all the basics of what makes a video visually interesting), and then go test out all this new found knowledge. If you’re gonna make skits, maybe look up tutorials on acting as well as the basics of how to catch people’s attention with camera angles, framing, etc.- We’ve been doing this for 6 years now, and are still learning what looks and sounds good :)

The most important piece of advice, however, is to remember to have fun with it! We’ve been able to keep going because it’s still fun for us. We make the videos we think will be fun to make, and then we just hope that other people will find them funny as well. And otherwise, who cares? At least we had a blast making the videos xD

I could keep writing for days about pointers when filming a video, as I feel that we’ve learned quite a lot from trial and error these past 6 years, but I should probably try to cut it short xD

- We have been getting a few questions in regards to what to do in when filming videos, so we have actually filmed a “tutorial” to how we generally make our CMV’s! It will be up this Friday (the 15th)! So tune in there if you want a few more pointers :D

- Benji

[pixiepokers]

Keeping with the theme of the last few questions: How do you guys find all your locations for filming?

Hi there!First of all, thank you for the question! As previously mentioned, we are uploading a video about how to make a CMV tomorrow, where we will briefly touch upon the subject. However I don’t think we actually clarify how we find our locations, so I’ll try to explain here:I don’t know where you are from, but as we are located in Denmark, I will usually go onto the website visitdenmark.dk and look up public parks, etc. if they are free to the public you can usually shoot for your videos without trouble. Nature such as forests, national parks and the like are great free areas to make use of. It is usually possible to check up on what the rules in the specific forest is (if you are allowed to stay after sunset, if it is private, etc.)There are a few locations that we use that are private and need an entry fee during the day, but are open to the public in the evening. When it comes to these locations, we will usually go at summer a while after they have closed for the day. You can also write to places and ask permission to film/take pictures. We have had mixed results with this, getting yes sometimes, them having forgotten they gave us a yes, and one place that never wrote back with their final decision. It’s always important to ask when it is not a place that is available to the public, otherwise you could get into a lot of trouble. Generally people are very nice. It’s all about looking at the options you have at hand and making the best of it!I hope that was somewhat helpful!- Anna

[pixiepokers]

Send us your questions!

When the PixiePokers are getting together again in the middle of October, we are gonna make a Q&A video!

So if you have any questions you would like for us to answer, please do send them, and we’ll be sure to reply to them all in the video. We have already received quite a few, but would love to get even more :)

We wanna know what you wanna know! ;)