Summer goes by quickly in Washington. You're so busy enjoying it with friends & family, then all of a sudden the rain comes & you're left with memories... Screw that. This year I wanted to breathe some life onto those memories & make 'em last, so over the course of Summer 2011 I took my camera around & gathered nearly 100 GB worth of footage (Somewhere in the ballpark of 20 hours). I wanted the final video to be fast pace yet nostalgic, so I chose a song that reflected that: Stay Close by Delorean (RAC remix). After I-don't-know-how-many hours of editing in my spare time, this was the outcome...
(Watch in HD on Vimeo!)
Many of those editing hours were spent experimenting. For example, the tracking text on the animals took a day to learn & another day to implement. Creating the split-screen intro was like assembling a mind bending puzzle! All that's nothing compared to the amount of time spent organizing & cutting clips. Taking 20 hours of footage & squeezing it into 4 minutes & 30 seconds is an achievement in itself.
The film's supposed to make people feel something. The goal was goosebumps. Excitement. Dopamine in the bloodstream. The intro's meant to keep the viewer mildly interested while the music builds to the beat kicking at :58. That's the point at which I wanted them to be drawn in, and if they weren't, the introduction of real audio at 1:57 was meant to hook them. The tracking text on the animals was a set-up for a joke, the punchline for which is at 3:48. I wanted the cuts to be quick so viewer's left with a feeling that they missed so much they have to go back & watch it again, thus making the piece a little more interactive... and making the viewer feel a little more involved.
Inspiration: The title alone was inspired by Marc Webb's mind-bogglingly creative (500) Days of Summer (Written by Neustadter/Weber). Though the title was a bite, the content in (270) was unrelated. The use of real audio was inspired, in part, by Romain Gavras's Adidas, All In video, which gets me amped every time I watch it!
(270) blew up & went viral three days after I posted it on Vimeo. It's gotten a bit of press, being featured as a Curator's Choice on storyful.com and being featured on a nationally syndicated television show called Right This Minute (which I never even got to see). It's all very flattering, really, googling the title & seeing write-ups on hundreds of websites, in so many languages. It's nice to know that my work can transcend borders & cultures, and inspire & touch all of humanity... and for that I'm grateful.
Arbor Shoot
Back in November I was contacted by John of BLEACH, telling me about an opportunity to help with a shoot for Arbor. Arbor was putting on a show displaying the work of artists Blaine Fontana & Zach Johnsen, who do a lot of the work on Arbor snowboards & skate/longboards. So, producer Joel hired myself & my buddy Travis to document the event on camera & a week later, this is what Joel was able to put together to promote the exhibit.
Good times.
BLEACH TACOMA (1 Minute Spot)
While part one was meant to portray a lifestyle or culture, Part two in the BLEACH series was meant to be more informative about how they connect with the community. I was able to take a couple hours to let the owners expound on that & this was the outcome. I made a point to keep this piece concise, so as to keep it at exactly a minute long. The third video will be a bit more lengthy.
(Watch in HD on Vimeo!)
As always, in hindsight, there are aspects of this piece that bother me & others that I'm proud of. However, I'm finding that these posts have ended up being mere critiques of my work & that's only one aspect of what this blog is supposed to be about. So this time, I'm just going to keep all that to myself & let the work speak for itself.
Changes are coming for this blog. I'm either going to change the format entirely or start a separate website & attach this blog to it. No matter what I decide to do, though, it will involve me updating it more often
Good day!
BLEACH TACOMA (30 Second Spot)
This summer provided me with an opportunity to produce some exciting content for one of the tightest clothing stores in the area, Bleach. It was a fun challenge & just the kind of project I needed.
This was the first in a series of videos for promoting Bleach. It was a real test capturing what the store's about & stuffing it into 30 seconds, but I'd say I passed... Not necessarily with flying colors, though...
(Watch in HD on Vimeo!)
Bleach goes by the slogan 'Clothing-Culture-Connect'. This video ended up being more about the 'culture' aspect, in that the clothing wasn't really on display & there wasn't much to show how Bleach connects with the community (which is addressed in the second video).
I'm happy with the results, but if I were to do it over again, I would have spent more time outfitting the on-screen talent to make sure everything they wear reflects well on Bleach. I also would have shot the longboarding footage in a less crowded area or earlier in the day. Lastly, I probably would have chosen a different song, as I can imagine the jarring repetitiveness of this track might be a real turn off for some. Other than that, I think I did a satisfactory job.
Cheers.
Super Climactic Snowboarding Film
In early March, my buddies Mike, Josh & I went to Crystal Mountain for a nice little day of riding. I decided to bring my camera & I asked Josh to bring his Flip camcorder to capture the on-mountain action, since there was no way I was gonna bring my new DSLR riding with us. That'd just be reckless, kids.
SUPER climactic SNOWBOARDING film (March 2011)
'Superclimactic' is a big-time oxymoron here. If you didn't put it together yourself from the ending, Josh's camera died like two minutes after we got off the lift, so we hardly got any riding footage. As such, the only thing for me to do was make a joke of the situation by making the most climactic part of the song the most disappointing moment of the video & somehow explaining the lack of riding shots. I thought my way of explaining it was kind of clever & I think the video is kind of a funny contradiction. Most probably don't catch the humor & likely see it as lame. Oh well, this video was just for kicks & giggles.
From a production standpoint, this was shot mostly on my Canon T3i with the kit 18-55mm lens. I saw the limitations of this lens in some of the darker shots in the car. The kit lens is just too slow & forces you to use ISO, which is the enemy. However, I was happy with some of the footage from the ride up, as well as most of the footage I got once we got out of the car. Once we left the car behind, we switched to Josh's Flip which held it's own in good lighting. It's just a bummer about the battery being shot. At least we were able to get enough footage for me to throw together a coherent story.
One last thing I'm not to thrilled about was the color-correcting job I did. I went a little overboard & some of the footage favors browns a bit too much for my taste. I tried to use Final Cut Pro's 3-Way Color Corrector tool as a substitute for Apple Color, which I don't think I'm gonna do anymore. I just have to spend more time in Color learning how to color grade my footage.
Having said all that, I hope you enjoyed it.
The New Gear
Pardon me, I've been remiss. There's some stuff I should've posted like a month ago, namely the fact that I GOT NEW GEAR! Now, this is a big deal because it means I can produce stuff on my own, which is exactly what I've been doing & part of the reason I haven't posted... I've been busy shooting videos & photos and editing them. How did I get this gear? Well, it pretty much fell in my lap. Seriously, I got obscenely blessed. Along with my tax refund, my father had been wanting to help me kick off a career but hasn't been able to help until recently. He'd been talking about getting me gear to get me started, but nothing ever materialized until one Friday when he called & said "Can you meet me in Tacoma to look at Macs & a camera?" I thought all we were gonna do is look & I was super shocked when we were walking out with the new stuff. I'm still in shock & incredibly grateful (So if I haven't thanked you enough, Thanks Popz!)
Canon T3i
MacBook Pro with Final Cut Studio
Here's an interesting little side story. Initially my dad & I bought a Canon T2i and a 15" MacBook Pro with an i5 processor & 320 GB of hard drive space... The timing was almost perfect though, because a little over a week later, the Canon T3i was released as well as a faster version of the Macbook Pro that has an i7 processor & 500 GB of hard drive space. So I was able to exchange the T2i for a T3i by paying only $2.17 in taxes (Check out this link to see the differences). Also, I was able to exchange the i5 MacBook Pro for the faster i7 Macbook Pro by paying only $4.24 in taxes. I call that a good deal.
Anyways, I've been taking a lot of photos & making a few videos. I shall be posting the videos here soon, but I also have to post some older projects that I'd done before the Samuel-Has-His-Own-Gear era... there are also a few exciting projects to come over the next few months.
Cheerz.
Canon T3i MacBook Pro with Final Cut StudioHere's an interesting little side story. Initially my dad & I bought a Canon T2i and a 15" MacBook Pro with an i5 processor & 320 GB of hard drive space... The timing was almost perfect though, because a little over a week later, the Canon T3i was released as well as a faster version of the Macbook Pro that has an i7 processor & 500 GB of hard drive space. So I was able to exchange the T2i for a T3i by paying only $2.17 in taxes (Check out this link to see the differences). Also, I was able to exchange the i5 MacBook Pro for the faster i7 Macbook Pro by paying only $4.24 in taxes. I call that a good deal.
Anyways, I've been taking a lot of photos & making a few videos. I shall be posting the videos here soon, but I also have to post some older projects that I'd done before the Samuel-Has-His-Own-Gear era... there are also a few exciting projects to come over the next few months.
Cheerz.