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Entries in Video (15)

Saturday
Sep172011

Controlled Fires Presents

Above is the music video for Love & Politics by Controlled Fires. The video was directed and shot by myself and partner-in-crime, Jon Armstrong... working with pretty much free reign. It happened like this: Sam from Controlled Fires tweeted one morning that he was looking for a filmmaker interested in creating an artistic interpretation of one of their songs... knowing literally nothing about what I was getting into, I replied... because I was intrigued. Who knows why.

As it turned out, the guys in the band were not only super cool, but they were already vaguely familiar with Jon and myself, as well as some of our previous work, so the game was afoot. They gave us plenty of rope to hang ourselves with, but beyond requesting a frame rate (they wanted a 24p film look) and declining to appear in the video themselves, they left everything up to us... and I'm thrilled to say that the end result was well-received. 

From the start, we made the decision to shoot on two distinctly different cameras: the Canon 7D, and the iPhone. Jon and I had discussed numerous times how we felt like the iPhone would turn out to be the 8mm film of our generation, and since we were going for a vintage vibe on this, we figured it was worth a try. We decided to aim for a final resolution of 720p, which gave us a good point to meet in the middle with quality... the iPhone stuff still needed to be blown up, but not as much as if we had been working at 1080p, and we also could feel free to shoot in slow motion plenty, using the 7D's 60p mode (slowed down to 24p in After Effects later).

Still, we had our concerns as to how well the iPhone footage would bump up against the lovely HD stuff... so we eventually came up with the approach of never using one without the other. This meant that every single shot got crazy processed in After Effects, layering anywhere from 2 to 10 pieces of footage using blend modes or keys. Of course, this style requires smart shooting... you can't layer 5 shots of super detailed stuff without thinking about what you're doing... it'll end up a mess. We spent several days shooting texture plates, and also took several train and airplane rides to get the stuff we needed... and then we spent a few more days shooting the filler material and cutaways.

The cool thing about relying on the iPhone was that wherever we went, we had those with us, and when we saw something that fit the concept, we would shoot it. The other unexpected result was that While I was editing on the road and decided I needed several shots we never got, I just pulled out my phone and shot them. After a little After Effects magic, I had shots that not only worked as placeholders, but are still in the finished video. You couldn't shoot everything this way — it would never work — but for this project, it was a perfect fit.

Anyway, once the edit was well underway, my love of models worked its way in... and we ended up adding some late-in-the-game shots of model trains (every shot you see of a train is a model) as well as the burning breakfast table bit, which I shot on my stove in the middle of the night. Honestly, when I shot that segment, I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I knew it was cool... of course, once I tried it in the bridge section, there was no other alternative. It was an absolute perfect fit, and it didn't deviate from the story we were telling at all. Yay.

If you wanna Facebook 'em, here you go. Catch 'em on the Twitter right here.

Monday
Jul182011

From The Farm To The Bag

This has got to be, hands down, one of my favorite projects in a while. The short story here is that Innova is a brand of all natural, real-good-for-your-pet food, and they've just started stocking the food at Petco... so they wanted a fun little video to promote this idea of "from the farm to the bag", so I worked with Brighton Agency to create this animation: 

Working with a few of the cool kids over at Brighton, we came up with the general concept, wrote and recorded the song, scripted and storyboarded the visuals, and then I animated for a few weeks. With a super short deadline, we cranked hard on this to get it to come together, but even still it was a great time. It kept me up late at night and had me up early to start working on it again each day, but even at the end, I was still laughing at how the carrot dances. He's a pretty bad dancer, since I used myself as the basis for his movement.

I'm going to be putting together an epic tutorial (let's hope epic wasn't too big of a word to use there... we'll see) on how all of this was put together, as it's a great example of how the Adobe Creative Suite can work pristinely with itself in the right circumstances. This stuff started in Photoshop or Illustrator, went to Flash, and then was smooshed together in After Effects... and later edited in Final Cut Pro... although I would probably opt for Premiere to edit now. Oh well, the chain is broken. Still, I learned a ton of cool tricks and would love to share them.

Anyway, more to come on this later. For now, enjoy the video.

Wednesday
Jan122011

The Illustrious Todd Hammer

Kevin Larry Throws A Day Away With Todd Hammer. What can I say about this video? Well... we came up with this great idea, and then proceeded to not write anything (aside from backstory) before shooting. We spent days creating the character of Todd Hammer, and planning out every little detail of his strange life... and then we left everything to improv. We shot for one whole day, and beyond that, there was nothing besides editing tricks to save us.

In the end, I think that Jon (Armstrong, Co-Director) and I would both say that this was a fun project to make, and I believe that Kevin and Billy play their characters incredibly well... but the humor is just so dry and specific that, as my wife puts it, she "didn't laugh once." You had better believe that review is going on the back of the DVD case!

And that's my big sell. This is basically a grown-up version of the kind of videos my friends and I used to make back in high school... so I love it. Regardless of my admission that this may not be an utter homerun, I still recommend giving it a watch. I'm definitely proud of the editing. I mean, it's improv, so a lot of the pacing is based on the actors' deliveries, but there's also plenty of conversations that had to be constructed from mismatched, random clips. Also, it's worth watching just to see two of the funniest guys I know trying to out-awkward the other one. There's definitely some real pleasure in watching the subtleties of these two... I guess you could say it's a character piece. Maybe?

It was a fun project to work on... and hey, it's definitely watchable. Actually, I don't care if you like it or not.

Friday
Oct292010

SteadyRain: More Than Just Web Design

To celebrate my last day as Creative Director at SteadyRain, I want to share the video I recently created to show the people and the place that is SteadyRain. I'm not going anywhere important, but I'm branching out to do some work on my own, and honestly to see what happens. It's a little scary, but it's even more exciting to be staring the unknown in the face.

This video celebrates everything I have come to know and love about this company and these people, plus I think it's a great piece regardless. I did all the dirty work on this one... concepting, shooting/directing, editing, music, etc... so it really feels like my baby.

Enjoy. Here's to taking a chance on creativity... and to the future.

Thursday
Sep302010

Award-Winning Award Winners

I'm pleased to share that one of my portfolio pieces is the winner of two TAM awards at last night's ceremony... the Rohan Woods website (a project I directed at SteadyRain) brought a win for both the website and the video.

View in my portfolio here, or check out www.rohanwoods.org.