My First Short-Film

I've had half this post written for two weeks. Probably time to finish it. Ready. Go.

I never really did anything film related until I was a Junior in college. Sure, I made a few slideshows on iMovie and I considered myself a bit of a powerpoint wiz in high school, but doesn't everyone?  Somewhere between being bored in my religion classes and longing to do something I was passionate about, I felt God pushing me to switch my major to Film and Digital Media. For the past two years I have really enjoyed learning and growing as a film student. I have aspirations to be a filmmaker. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I'd like to go beyond being "the video guy" and move into, "this guy is a respected filmmaker."

I recently finished my last ever film project as student. The assignment was to write and direct a 5-10 minute short-film for my directing class.  For months I prayed about an idea that would somehow glorify or shed light on the Lord without being too preachy.  Two weeks before the assignment was due I had nothing. I grabbed a sheet of paper from my idea book that Jillian (my biggest fan) bought me for a place to record my creativity.  On it I listed important themes:, death, life, mortality, purpose, love, redemption, that sort of stuff. Jillian also gave me a bulletin board to post all these sheets of paper, and I had a bunch of ideas for short films written all over it. I spread all these sheets of "idea paper" across my desk and just started writing. The script grew into a mix of all my previous short-film ideas combined into one.

The first idea was a modern interpretation of Matthew 13:44, or the parable of the treasure hidden in a field. That became kind of the central theme for the story.  The second, more plot-driven idea, was about a guy who finds out he is terminally ill and has one day to live. What would your emotions be like on that day? How would you view your life, your purpose, your decisions? I thought it was an interesting idea to play with, and it provided good conflict, so I slipped it into the video.

After I had the script written I really struggled to find actors. So much so that, yes, I play one of the characters. Comedy is so much easier than being serious, even when I was saying words that I myself had written. Luckily I had just shot a music video with my good friend, and talented musician Clark Jones.  He told me he would love to be my lead actor, and he did a phenomenal job.  There is very little dialogue in the short, and it is amazing how much he conveys, and how much of the story is told with his subtle looks.  He embraced the character, made it his own, and did more than I could have thought of. If you need an actor, call this dude up.

We ended up shooting the whole thing in two, half-days.  When it came time to editing, my footage was absolutely beautiful.  I was very pleased with the way it looked, but of course, it had some flaws. Post-production in all took about 60 hours, including four straight nights past 5 am.  It was wildly fun. Most of the work was done on audio, which was pretty terrible at times due to my lack of preplanning. As I cut the whole thing together, I was pretty discouraged as some of it just didn't work, and the audio wasn't helping. Here is where I feel entirely blessed by Clark, as he agreed to score the short for me. We were hanging out one night and he tells me he has some ideas and is gonna head home around midnight to record some stuff.  By 12:30 he sent me three unbelievable tracks. You'll see, the music practically makes the short.  I was blown away. I also have to thank Will Meier for helping me with audio, some video, equipment, and pretty much just everything. Could not have done it without ya bud.

While the short-film is not my masterpiece by any standard, I think I have come a long way in only a year and a half as a film student.  I wish I'd had more time in my major, but I think I did the best with what I had.

For comparison reasons, I have posted the very first video I ever made in my entire life. It's a silly comedy from my intro production class, the first one in my major. Below that is the very last student video I will have ever shot, my final short-film.

My first video

My final short-film

Yes, I do believe I have come a long way.  Given time, and a lot of prayer, the masterpiece will come.

I would love comments and criticism on the short-film, if you have any. I am always trying to grow, and the opinions of those close to me really matter to me. So, please, don't hold back.

Also, if you have any questions about technical stuff or production process, I love talking about it, so shoot.

Stay tuned

I recently finished a music video project I was working on and am in the process of shooting a short film that will be done before next Wednesday. My next two posts in this next week will cover the shooting of those two projects and will post them. Stay tuned. In the mean time, here is a screenshot from my short film.

In other news I finished my last class of college ever yesterday. Hey Ma I made it.

My first timelapse

So I have been researching how to do timelapse photography for some time now. I have written out and figured out the exact settings for my camera, and how to assemble it in post production. The only thing left to do was make time and go do it. I just kept putting it off, though, even though it was something I really wanted to do. I felt like I needed to make my first timelapse absolutely epic and mindblowing. Then one night at 2 am, in the midst of a storm, I realized that my first time doing something isn't always going to be perfect or turn out amazing.

As my screenwriting teacher once taught me, "the genius comes with time."

You don't get that great shot unless you practice getting a bunch of okay shots before the one. So that stormy night, I decided to shoot my first timelapse. While my roommate Kevin slept on the couch in our living room, I set my camera up on a tripod, placed it on the front porch just barely out of the pouring rain, set the camera to take one shot every 5 seconds and waited. It was short, maybe only 30 minutes in total, but a timelapse none the less.  After I shot it, I threw the 400 or so pictures onto my computer and used Quicktime player 7 to turn them into a 1080p HD movie at 24 frames per second.

Being that it was my frist time, I made some pretty bad errors. I put the video in the wrong resolution, which caused the video to stretch out and look all fat. I also did not take advantage of the high quality picture resolution I got from my camera. A timelapse is always a nicer quality image than an HD video because it is made of stills, which are always better looking than video frames. (If this is hard to understand, pause a video and compare it to a picture you took with your point and shoot camera or iPhone or something. The iPhone pic will look way nicer because it is such a higher resolution) So yea, the timelapse is not great, but that's why it was my first one. It doesn't have to be good, but it is a stepping stone in which I learned a lot.

There are some things that I do like about my first timelapse. I like how you can see the red taillights from passing cars flash across the screen. I like that you can tell when there is an occasional flash of lighting. I also like that it is of good ol 8th street and what I experience everyday looking out onto it. Here is the finished product: Feeling a bit more confident I took my shot (pun intended) at another timelapse. This one is for a behind the scenes video documentary I shot for a short film competition I helped crew (I was lighting supervisor woo hoo).  I thought it would be cool to show our whole crew unloading all the equipment out of beautiful Elsie (my car). I avoided some of the mistakes I made the first time around, changed up the settings for the situation, added a little pan in final cut pro and I am pretty pleased with the results. Check it out here: Next up, star timelapse. Epicness probable.