Senior Film: Lycanthropy

Posted by sean

Here, finally public, is my Senior film, which I shot in the Fall of 2009 and finished editing in Spring 2010. I shot it on 16 mm, a format I loved working with, and edited it on an Avid suite. It’s not my favorite film, and it has some major flaws, but all in all it was an incredibly delightful and educational experience and I’m indebted to my teachers for all their help and encouragement during its production. My next short, which I hope will far surpass this one in every way, is still in the works, but I hope to be shooting soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Photo Reel: Chicago In February

Posted by sean

This is my first attempt at putting my photography into a video format. I’ve been shooting with vintage and plastic lo-fi cameras for a few years now, and last February I took my Holga 35 into the city for a little adventure. I think this is the only time I’ve ever shot so many strong images on one roll of film. Usually I only get a few good shots per roll, but there was just something magical about that day, and the fact that the diffusion was so strong and I was shooting with Kodak T-Max 400, which has a really nice rough grain to it, helped a ton. I’m working on a new demo reel and I’m going to attempt to put some of my photography into it, so this was good practice.

Road Films

Posted by sean

I love traveling. Driving long distances through corn fields and mountains, crossing rivers and state lines from morning to night, seeing new places and familiar landmarks from well-trodden routes, eating fast food and sampling local sodas at gas stations––It’s just a blast for me. Lately I’ve been trying to capture the essence of those trips on video. Last winter I shot my families exodus from Detroit to Chicago, and this spring I tried to capture a trip from Michigan to South Carolina. Both sequences use similar editing and pacing, something I didn’t realize until later while watching them back-to-back. I guess you could call the first a rough draft and the second a revision.

7 Days of Halloween Madness

Posted by sean

I’m not quite sure why I did it. Last week I decided to promise my Youtube channel viewers seven videos for the seven days leading up to Halloween. Thus began an insane video-making sprint that I’m still recovering from. It was actually a great time, and even though not every video made the midnight upload deadline, I feel like my crew and I met expectations. Not every video was brilliant, they run the gamut from “art film” to camera phone quality, but I learned a lot about my new Canon T2i and it’s workflow, and I’m just happy to be finished!

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New Music Video

Posted by sean

I’ve always enjoyed editing video to music and I actually start a lot of my video projects with the music first. I love making music videos, but I’ve never really had the chance to make one for a serious group of musicians.

Some of my good friends started a band a few years back and I recently got the chance to make a video for them. We shot it in just a few hours with a large cast, so it was mostly improvised. For future music videos I plan to spend more pre-production time planning shots and to schedule longer shoots, but I feel that my improv approach worked well for this project.

Check out my friends’ band at their Myspace here.

Lycanthropy Trailer

Posted by sean

I’m getting ready to start entering my senior film Lycanthropy into festivals, so I can’t post it online, but you can watch this trailer I made as a promotional tool for it. It’s more a teaser that relies on images rather than dialog. Mike’s music really sets the mood well.