Last September I made a film comprised of one video shot for each day of the month. It only half-worked. I missed half the days and the other half I ended up shooting more footage than I needed. This month I’m participating in a similar project, through a film event organized by a friend on his company’s facebook page.
I think sci-fi cliches are hilarious, especially when strung together. This video took a lot of careful thought, and I learned a few things. Biggest issue I’m still working on: action axis jumps. Some were just unavoidable here, but next time I’m going to pay more attention.
I like shooting video essays. I learn new things about my equipment, practice new techniques, and end up with a compact, self contained film. Capturing the mundane and showing it for what it really is, the hidden magic of God’s beautiful creation, is one of my greatest passions. It’s what drives me as a filmmaker.
I saw quite a few films in theaters this past holiday season, thanks in part to some awesome friends. Here’s the rundown:
The Muppets
Directed by James Bobin
People have been down on this film for being too nostalgic and too meta, and though I sympathize, I still enjoyed it immensely. As almost everyone has already said, it’s great to see the Muppets on the big screen again. Kermit and Piggy may have slightly different voices, the new characters may be a bit bland, and the musical pieces a little uninspired, but the overall product is a lot of fun. My only real gripe is that the tone of the humor has shifted a tad. The muppets used to be about wide-eyed idealism and corny, innocent jokes, but now it seems they have strayed into the realm of youtube era randomness humor, where the jokes all rely on the unexpected. While this shift in humor was noticeable, it didn’t detract from the film and was actually very well applied. The comedy writing here by co-star Jason Segel is top-notch and I look forward to another Muppet project with him at the helm.
I’ve become addicted to making holiday themed videos for my youtube channel. I realize I have a problem and I am seeking help. Here’s the Christmas season batch.
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. Since January actually. Wow.
The Mothman Prophecies
2002. Directed by Mark Pellington
I’m really loving the new look Youtube just released. It’s so much cleaner and professional looking. I was a bit wary at first, but once I got my channel set up, I was hooked.
I also changed our avatar to a fitting group shot:
I feel this really conveys Probably Okay’s serious side. We are true artists. Also, we made a video about Batman.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
My tribute to the color orange, shot last Fall.
The last few months have been chaotic and exhausting. My goal to put out a new Probably Okay video every week faltered and then completely fell apart. Lately, though, I’ve had some much needed spurts of energy and I think I’m back on track with the schedule. Here are some of my most recent efforts.
Tron: Legacy
2010. Directed by Joseph Kosinski
I’ve never seen the original Tron, but Disney’s revamped sequel told me pretty much everything I needed to know. A young computer programmer named Kevin Flynn created both a popular video game and an alternate reality world in which he had many adventures. Somehow he got lost in this world, and in the process left his traumatized son Sam to run his video game empire. Sam has finally found a way into this alternate reality, but since his father became lost in it, it has become a very dark place.
True Grit
2010. Directed by Ethan and Joel Coen
When talking about this movie with a friend I mistakenly labeled it the first of the Coen’s adaptations. Obviously that’s not true. The Coen brothers’ first adaptation was their 2007 film, No Country For Old Men, which was almost entirely faithful to writer Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same name. And the Coens have been equally faithful with their latest film adaptation, True Grit, based on a novel written in 1968 by Charles Portis.