Our final this semester in my film class was a 3 day film challenge, and had to create an ~ 3 min short film with the concept of love/lost, forgotten/remembered stuff like that (watch it here). Ive never been too good at these sort of film challenges, sure I did a 24 hour short film festival and won 2 awards but we had more specific guidelines (here). This challenge was very open ended which allowed for a lot of creative choices which is very nice of our teacher, but my group consisted of the 3 most indecisive people in the whole class so this was a very big struggle.
We finally decided that we could make a movie trailer for a longer short film so that we didn't have to think of all the plot points and it didn't have to make much sense as far as structure goes.
We then came up with the idea to do a sort of witchy video, ya know kinda sinister, kinda creepy, with a lot of room to get super nice shots, we also had to figure out what song we where going to make this trailer to because if it doesn't have music then it gets very boring and no one wants to watch that, and after a long search we picked 'Night time' by the xx.
With no time to lose we grabbed the equipment we needed (Cannon 70D, L..E.D. light kit, tripods, extra batteries, glide track) and we went shopping. The first thing that we bought were candles because you cant to creepy witchy stuff without candles can you? (We got up to the check out counter and I swear the cashier thought we were going to do some satanic stuff because she gave us the weirdest look). Then we headed to our first location.
Our first location was just behind a suburban neighborhood pool on a running trail. There are plenty of trees and coverage there to defuse the natural light so that we could incorporate it in along with light from our light kit. So by the time we get there its like 8:30 so not too late but it was about 30 degrees out so our crew was bundled up, but the thing we were more concerned with would be the fact that we could be seen by the inhabitants of the houses around us and a group of teenagers in the middle of the "woods" setting up lights and making a bunch of noise. So the threat of the cops loomed over us, but it would be the first time we have had the cops called on us while filming. Anyway we wrapped up at our first location at around 11:00 and everyone went home, because we would continue filming tomorrow morning.
The next day we all assemble at one of the crew members houses and prepare to head off. Our second location was at a local park in a clearing we had found earlier this year (we do love our nature shots here at Olathe Northwest). Anyway we had to hurry because we had a pretty strict time schedule. For our film class, e-Communnication aka e-Comm, we could be called out of the class to film outside of school during school hours, so we only had about 2 hours before we had to get back to school and it was a pretty long drive so we had even less time. At this point we had figured out that we really wanted a desaturated look to the film so we had to adjust the camera settings from the previous night to match the over casted daylight that we had. Although I was the actor I also acted as Director and Cinematographer, so I would set up the shot with a crew member filling in for me and once I got the shot perfect we would switch and roll the camera. This made thee filming process a lot longer because I had to recheck the shot to make sure that the camera movement (if there was any) was at the pace we needed.
Our last location was at a crew members house on there patio. We had our candles but also a special piece of equipment, a ring light. I had bought this light a while ago but never found a use for it yet and I thought this would be a very good opportunity to try it out. So at the end of the video you can see a very nice close up of me with the ring light in my pupil as it cuts back and forth to me in the same position with yet another candle in my hand.
If you enjoy my post about my shenanigans as a high school film maker be sure to leave a comment telling me what you think and be sure to follow me on all my social media:
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Thursday, December 31, 2015
Sunday, December 6, 2015
"Fools" is the 2nd video in the Blue Neighborhood trilogy created by Youtuber, Singer Troye Sivan.
This video is showing the lust for human connection in a world that doesn't truly accept people for who they are. We start in the same dimly lit room from the first video as we interrupt a passionate scene between Troye and or other actor (lets call him Cody). This scene is broken up by footage of, what we assume takes place after, Cody's life and the verbal and physical abuse that he has to endure from his drunk of father who does not support him for who he is. The main story is that the dad finds out that Cody has a boyfriend and is very angry about this. He goes into Cody's room (the same room the rest of the video takes place) and throws him around and shouts at him. We see a lot of similarity juxtaposition between the dad and Troye; when Troye throws Cody down on the bed he has a since of relief and pleasure but when the dad throws him down onto the same bed we see that he is very scared.
We cut to a new scene where Cody and his dad are working on a boat in a location we (the audience) saw the younger versions of Troye and Cody playing in when they were young in the first video. Cody and his dad seem to be getting a long for now, but Troye enters the scene and the dad sees him and is about to go confront him. Fearing for Troye, Cody stops his dad and goes to talk to Troye himself and we see Cody basically telling Troye to go away and to leace him alone. All the while Troye is singing about how "only fools fall for [him]" meaning he feels betrayed by Cody even though he saw the black eye his father gave him. Cody goes back to his dad and assures him that Troye isn't coming back. His father seems very proud of him as where Cody looks very sad and conflicted. His dad puts his arm around him and we get our first good look at the two side by side.
In this scene they are dresses very similarly to show that Cody in his innocence or need for acceptance has taken his fathers words and views on homosexuality to heart and has tried to renounce that part of himself to become just like his father. Although we can see very clearly that he knows deep down that who he is trying to become is never who he was meant to be.
As we cut to the next scene this transformation becomes much more apparent as we see Cody walking down the street holding hands with who we assume is his new girlfriend. Troye happens to be walking down the same sidewalk and sees them together. Which of course breaks his heart... as it should.
That's it for this video! Ill post about the third video later on! Hope you enjoyed this post if you did please share it around and comment on what you would like me to talk about next!
This video is showing the lust for human connection in a world that doesn't truly accept people for who they are. We start in the same dimly lit room from the first video as we interrupt a passionate scene between Troye and or other actor (lets call him Cody). This scene is broken up by footage of, what we assume takes place after, Cody's life and the verbal and physical abuse that he has to endure from his drunk of father who does not support him for who he is. The main story is that the dad finds out that Cody has a boyfriend and is very angry about this. He goes into Cody's room (the same room the rest of the video takes place) and throws him around and shouts at him. We see a lot of similarity juxtaposition between the dad and Troye; when Troye throws Cody down on the bed he has a since of relief and pleasure but when the dad throws him down onto the same bed we see that he is very scared.
We cut to a new scene where Cody and his dad are working on a boat in a location we (the audience) saw the younger versions of Troye and Cody playing in when they were young in the first video. Cody and his dad seem to be getting a long for now, but Troye enters the scene and the dad sees him and is about to go confront him. Fearing for Troye, Cody stops his dad and goes to talk to Troye himself and we see Cody basically telling Troye to go away and to leace him alone. All the while Troye is singing about how "only fools fall for [him]" meaning he feels betrayed by Cody even though he saw the black eye his father gave him. Cody goes back to his dad and assures him that Troye isn't coming back. His father seems very proud of him as where Cody looks very sad and conflicted. His dad puts his arm around him and we get our first good look at the two side by side.
In this scene they are dresses very similarly to show that Cody in his innocence or need for acceptance has taken his fathers words and views on homosexuality to heart and has tried to renounce that part of himself to become just like his father. Although we can see very clearly that he knows deep down that who he is trying to become is never who he was meant to be.
As we cut to the next scene this transformation becomes much more apparent as we see Cody walking down the street holding hands with who we assume is his new girlfriend. Troye happens to be walking down the same sidewalk and sees them together. Which of course breaks his heart... as it should.
That's it for this video! Ill post about the third video later on! Hope you enjoyed this post if you did please share it around and comment on what you would like me to talk about next!
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Troye Sivan is a British Youtube creator and singer. Recently he has just released his new album 'Blue Neighborhood' and a music video trilogy to go along with it. The first video is to the song "Wild" and introduces the main story line for the trilogy.
We start the video in a dimly lit room with a close up on Troye's face seeing him clutching something that later on we find out is a person. The video is made up of flashbacks to, what we are shown, Troye's childhood and the adventures he had with his best friend. The video is filmed in a very artistic way with sun flares, very saturated shots when in the flashbacks and in the present we are presented with grudge shots in a dimly lit room. This is saying that the position he is in now is a dark or hard time for him and he longs for the days when everything was simpler.
We start the video in a dimly lit room with a close up on Troye's face seeing him clutching something that later on we find out is a person. The video is made up of flashbacks to, what we are shown, Troye's childhood and the adventures he had with his best friend. The video is filmed in a very artistic way with sun flares, very saturated shots when in the flashbacks and in the present we are presented with grudge shots in a dimly lit room. This is saying that the position he is in now is a dark or hard time for him and he longs for the days when everything was simpler.
Sunday, October 18, 2015
I got the amazing opportunity to compete in the Kansas high school 24 hour film festival, and it was an amazing experience for everyone.
We started on Friday October 16th at 3:00pm. They gave us a whole long list of prompts, lines, camera shots & angles and props that we had to choose from to make our video. There were only three of us so we had to use our time pretty efficiently at this point in time because we only had about an hour to come up with our story so that we could still film in the day light. As we drove to pick up our actress for the video we wrote everything down on paper and started to plan because with so many things to choose from we couldn't decide (prompts). By the time we got to our actresses house we had chosen the third prompt of 'obstacles to love'. We came up with the basic plot line of: A teenage lesbian with strict parents realizes the only way she can be with the person she loves is to tell her parents who she truly is... So we talked this over with our actress and she was okay with acting lesbian but we ran into the problem that she was our only actress, and so came the challenge of finding another actress in a short amount of time that is able to stay up with us late into the night.
After a waiting a long time to hear back from our friends on that topic we decided to ditch that idea and find another one and landed back in square one which incidentally is the prompt we chose to pursue next. After talking and talking for what seemed like ages we all kind of agreed on ' the pursuit of happiness' and we hashed out this plot line: An orphaned teenager in a abusive foster home has enough and decides she needs to get a way. She reaches to a friend in order to go visit her parents grave... We had our idea and we went with it. We got amazing shots of the sun, the car trip and loads of other stuff and we got what we needed around 12:00pm. We got home and imported the footage and as we were looking through all of it we all agreed on one thing: we hated it.
So yet again we scraped the idea and tried again. We stuck with the same prompt of 'pursuit' but this time cam at the idea much, much differently. Because our team is extremely good at music videos that's how we treated this. Being the month of Halloween we went and picked out some ominous/ creepy copy write free music and then asked our selves " What kind of music video would we make for this?" and we took inspiration from a video called 'The Smiling Man' (here) and from a project we had to do in film class freshman year called 'The Chase' which is exactly what it sounds like: a basic chase scene. So in the middle of the night we grabbed all of the necessary equipment and hit the streets. Filming all though out a neighborhood is pretty difficult because cars would drive through the shot when we were going for a "dead of night" theme. We filmed at the near by elementary school and the road leading to it using the street lights as our source of lighting in the movie and unfortunately we got a lot of really grainy shots but the composition still looked good.
Once filming was all said and done we went back to the house and imported our new footage. We edited through the night not getting any sleep what so ever and emerged from the basement with a finished video that we where all proud of. Then we hoped on our bus with the other teams from our school and set off to Wichita, KS for judging and awards. We ended up winning 2 awards for our video: Best Cinematography & Best Editing. Which is funny because as we were filming we realized we didn't really have a story and decided to try and win either Cinematography or Editing and we got both so that's cool! Click here to watch the finished video!
We started on Friday October 16th at 3:00pm. They gave us a whole long list of prompts, lines, camera shots & angles and props that we had to choose from to make our video. There were only three of us so we had to use our time pretty efficiently at this point in time because we only had about an hour to come up with our story so that we could still film in the day light. As we drove to pick up our actress for the video we wrote everything down on paper and started to plan because with so many things to choose from we couldn't decide (prompts). By the time we got to our actresses house we had chosen the third prompt of 'obstacles to love'. We came up with the basic plot line of: A teenage lesbian with strict parents realizes the only way she can be with the person she loves is to tell her parents who she truly is... So we talked this over with our actress and she was okay with acting lesbian but we ran into the problem that she was our only actress, and so came the challenge of finding another actress in a short amount of time that is able to stay up with us late into the night.
After a waiting a long time to hear back from our friends on that topic we decided to ditch that idea and find another one and landed back in square one which incidentally is the prompt we chose to pursue next. After talking and talking for what seemed like ages we all kind of agreed on ' the pursuit of happiness' and we hashed out this plot line: An orphaned teenager in a abusive foster home has enough and decides she needs to get a way. She reaches to a friend in order to go visit her parents grave... We had our idea and we went with it. We got amazing shots of the sun, the car trip and loads of other stuff and we got what we needed around 12:00pm. We got home and imported the footage and as we were looking through all of it we all agreed on one thing: we hated it.
So yet again we scraped the idea and tried again. We stuck with the same prompt of 'pursuit' but this time cam at the idea much, much differently. Because our team is extremely good at music videos that's how we treated this. Being the month of Halloween we went and picked out some ominous/ creepy copy write free music and then asked our selves " What kind of music video would we make for this?" and we took inspiration from a video called 'The Smiling Man' (here) and from a project we had to do in film class freshman year called 'The Chase' which is exactly what it sounds like: a basic chase scene. So in the middle of the night we grabbed all of the necessary equipment and hit the streets. Filming all though out a neighborhood is pretty difficult because cars would drive through the shot when we were going for a "dead of night" theme. We filmed at the near by elementary school and the road leading to it using the street lights as our source of lighting in the movie and unfortunately we got a lot of really grainy shots but the composition still looked good.
Once filming was all said and done we went back to the house and imported our new footage. We edited through the night not getting any sleep what so ever and emerged from the basement with a finished video that we where all proud of. Then we hoped on our bus with the other teams from our school and set off to Wichita, KS for judging and awards. We ended up winning 2 awards for our video: Best Cinematography & Best Editing. Which is funny because as we were filming we realized we didn't really have a story and decided to try and win either Cinematography or Editing and we got both so that's cool! Click here to watch the finished video!
Friday, August 28, 2015
Recently I have been watching literally HUNDREDS of music videos in order to find new or cool filming/ editing techniques. The most recent video I watched was a music video of Pentatonix's mash up called "La La Latch".
The thing about this video is that it has a lot of motion. It is filmed in a "round about" way, circling the group multiple times, showing a group member center frame and passing by another member who ends up very large in the foreground which ends up giving the video a lot of depth. I love this because with all that is going on in the frame there is so much to take in that to get the full effect you need to watch it over and over again. The video is filmed in what appears to be a wear house of a sorts and as the video goes and the song picks up momentum they open the doors to let in slivers of light in which is very visually pleasing. Another this I liked about this video is that they showed what each person was doing at different parts in the song. If there is an awesome bass part they switched to Avi. Really cool sounding dubbing sound in the background? Kevin is there. Showing everyone's part is very important because even in a small group sometimes peoples position can be over looked. The use of shadows and darkness in the beginning shot was a very nice lead in because it gave a "what does she think she is doing?" feel which immediately hooks a lot of people because they want to know what will happen next. For the most part they were all dressed very nicely for this video; they dressed like they were going out for the night or something, but none the less they all looked good in the video. Also they all seemed to match really well!
Most, if not all, of the main aspects of video production were done very well in this video and in the rest of their videos. If you want to check them out: Pentatonix there you go! Please be sure to check out my YouTube channel here, because I am currently in the middle of producing a couple music videos with a good friend of mine who does acapella!
The thing about this video is that it has a lot of motion. It is filmed in a "round about" way, circling the group multiple times, showing a group member center frame and passing by another member who ends up very large in the foreground which ends up giving the video a lot of depth. I love this because with all that is going on in the frame there is so much to take in that to get the full effect you need to watch it over and over again. The video is filmed in what appears to be a wear house of a sorts and as the video goes and the song picks up momentum they open the doors to let in slivers of light in which is very visually pleasing. Another this I liked about this video is that they showed what each person was doing at different parts in the song. If there is an awesome bass part they switched to Avi. Really cool sounding dubbing sound in the background? Kevin is there. Showing everyone's part is very important because even in a small group sometimes peoples position can be over looked. The use of shadows and darkness in the beginning shot was a very nice lead in because it gave a "what does she think she is doing?" feel which immediately hooks a lot of people because they want to know what will happen next. For the most part they were all dressed very nicely for this video; they dressed like they were going out for the night or something, but none the less they all looked good in the video. Also they all seemed to match really well!
Most, if not all, of the main aspects of video production were done very well in this video and in the rest of their videos. If you want to check them out: Pentatonix there you go! Please be sure to check out my YouTube channel here, because I am currently in the middle of producing a couple music videos with a good friend of mine who does acapella!
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
So once upon a time in my video class I got the chance to work on amazing project. That amazing project is a future feature length documentary called Girl. The title may seem general and straight forward, but thats because the movie is the same way. It follows at risk girls through a summer camp in the Kansas City/ St. Joe areas that teaches them all about film production. All the steps. Every. Single. One. From preproduction (storyboarding, location scouting, casting) into production and through post production. They focus on storytelling, editing and shot composition. My part in all of this awesomeness was to log all of the footage into a spread sheet so that the Director, Producer, and Editor could easily find the clip they wanted and be able to read what specifically happens in the duration of that clip.
When our group got the footage it was all neatly tucked away in a 4tb hard drive and the clips separated by the days they were filmed. In total there were 15 days of footage and the amount of clips varied, so in one day there could be 9 clips and in others there could be more than 25. This made the logging process very long and tedious. We started working on this project it was just after our winter break, so around January 3rd, and couldnt have been more excited. Here we are just 4 regular high school film students WORKING ON A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE and getting to talk to the Director; asking her questions about the film itself and about her career as a director, which is very cool because out in Kansas you really dont get to meet or even talk to actual Hollywood/ L.A. style anybody, and as we talked to the director we found out that she had contacted our school district, wondering if there were any girls here that we thought would qualify as "at risk"; and living in Olathe, Kansas we obviously said no because compared to others most people out here have a pretty good life. All the girls in the film had some sort of back story, whether it was abusive parents or drugs there was always something. If you put 2 and 2 together you can probably figure out really quickly that if you put alot of teenage girls together in a classroom for a long period of time, there is bound to be a little bit of drama. Which we got to see when logging all of the footage, and it was interesting to listen to these girls tell their side of the story in an interview and then the next clip be the other girls side of the story and compare them side by side. The team and I definitely got emotionally attached to these girls stories for sure, because after hearing all of their backstories you really cant help but feel bad for them and want to give them a hug. But there were times when our arguably favorite girl started some stuff and the team was just like "Girl? What was that? Come on, get with it". Even though all the footage was captured like 8 years ago the universality of these girls stories transcend time and are something that everyone can relate to in one way or another.
I personally can connect to one girl in particular because to the way her parents act and the way they are treated at home. I dont think I have it as bad as that girl in any sense of the word but there are instances that, in my life, are completely similar to what that girl has been going through; and this is coming from a 17- year old guy, so if you say you cant connect to their stories at all I challenge you to think back to your teenage years or even look closer at your present and then say that you did not have struggles then or now.
The film is still in its early editing phases now and will hopefully premier in the next few years but, STORY TIME, one day when the team was talking to the director she kept asking us questions, more and more after the last was answered. After we had answered all of her questions she announced to us that she wanted to fly out to Olathe to personally INTERVIEW US FOR THE MOVIE!!!! Like I will be in this movie and be put in the credits as an assistant editor! Anyway so the film is called Girl, premiers in a year or two? And has great stories and sub-plots.
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions about the film please leave a comment and check my social media:
Youtube
Twitter
Blog
And dont forget to tell all of your friends about me! I will try to start reviewing short films on here as well as music videos! More posts to come! See you next time.
When our group got the footage it was all neatly tucked away in a 4tb hard drive and the clips separated by the days they were filmed. In total there were 15 days of footage and the amount of clips varied, so in one day there could be 9 clips and in others there could be more than 25. This made the logging process very long and tedious. We started working on this project it was just after our winter break, so around January 3rd, and couldnt have been more excited. Here we are just 4 regular high school film students WORKING ON A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE and getting to talk to the Director; asking her questions about the film itself and about her career as a director, which is very cool because out in Kansas you really dont get to meet or even talk to actual Hollywood/ L.A. style anybody, and as we talked to the director we found out that she had contacted our school district, wondering if there were any girls here that we thought would qualify as "at risk"; and living in Olathe, Kansas we obviously said no because compared to others most people out here have a pretty good life. All the girls in the film had some sort of back story, whether it was abusive parents or drugs there was always something. If you put 2 and 2 together you can probably figure out really quickly that if you put alot of teenage girls together in a classroom for a long period of time, there is bound to be a little bit of drama. Which we got to see when logging all of the footage, and it was interesting to listen to these girls tell their side of the story in an interview and then the next clip be the other girls side of the story and compare them side by side. The team and I definitely got emotionally attached to these girls stories for sure, because after hearing all of their backstories you really cant help but feel bad for them and want to give them a hug. But there were times when our arguably favorite girl started some stuff and the team was just like "Girl? What was that? Come on, get with it". Even though all the footage was captured like 8 years ago the universality of these girls stories transcend time and are something that everyone can relate to in one way or another.
I personally can connect to one girl in particular because to the way her parents act and the way they are treated at home. I dont think I have it as bad as that girl in any sense of the word but there are instances that, in my life, are completely similar to what that girl has been going through; and this is coming from a 17- year old guy, so if you say you cant connect to their stories at all I challenge you to think back to your teenage years or even look closer at your present and then say that you did not have struggles then or now.
The film is still in its early editing phases now and will hopefully premier in the next few years but, STORY TIME, one day when the team was talking to the director she kept asking us questions, more and more after the last was answered. After we had answered all of her questions she announced to us that she wanted to fly out to Olathe to personally INTERVIEW US FOR THE MOVIE!!!! Like I will be in this movie and be put in the credits as an assistant editor! Anyway so the film is called Girl, premiers in a year or two? And has great stories and sub-plots.
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions about the film please leave a comment and check my social media:
Youtube
Blog
And dont forget to tell all of your friends about me! I will try to start reviewing short films on here as well as music videos! More posts to come! See you next time.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
So our school hosts a contest every year called e-Magine. Its a combination of the technical arts: Graphic Design, Webdesign, 2D/ 3D Animation and Video Production ( Music videos, Short films, Documentaries, and PSA's).
The contest is open to everyone in our school district and we always get a lot submissions that get passed on to judges to be evaluated and scored. I worked with two of my closest friends to make a video to the song My House by Pvris.
We took a few weeks to look at the lyrics in hopes of finding a deeper meaning to the words and watched the official music video to get a better understanding of the lighting and video components that we may want to add or incorporate into our own. In the end we decided to tell the story of a girl leaving an abusive relationship.
The official video:
The contest is open to everyone in our school district and we always get a lot submissions that get passed on to judges to be evaluated and scored. I worked with two of my closest friends to make a video to the song My House by Pvris.
We took a few weeks to look at the lyrics in hopes of finding a deeper meaning to the words and watched the official music video to get a better understanding of the lighting and video components that we may want to add or incorporate into our own. In the end we decided to tell the story of a girl leaving an abusive relationship.
The official video:
Our video:
The actors that we used were from a different school than my group so we had to get together over the weekend after a week of filming a short film that our whole department took part of (details to come). So needless to say we were already tired but took on this task anyway! The shots outside on the street were actually filmed from a moving car, my car to be exact. I gave my friend my keys, opened the trunk and sat there holding the camera where I wanted it to be all the while telling the driver to speed up or slow down. But that was just for the eye ish level shots. To get the above angle shots, we switched cars and I was in the sun roof of my other friends car. All the while we were doing this my friends neighbors were watching us very intently, one of them came up to us and told us what we were doing was "super cool" and that he " liked our style". So that was a nice way to end day one.
Day two on the other hand was a bit more challenging. We wanted our actress to break glass to symbolize her shattered relationship and to mock how the boyfriend threw around such a fragile thing. So we went into our schools studio, got a 1 ft x l ft L.E.D panel to light the scene and turned out the lights. Unlike the first day, when she looked more innocent, we wanted her to look very punk rock/ hard core. In the what I like to call the "Empty Room" shots, we put handcuff s on her left wrist while the other cuff swung free to show the freedom she felt leaving that God awful relationship. We lit her from an above angle and took the camera and placed it in the positions we wanted it. In the background one of my friends played the song on her phone so our actress could lip sync more accurately.
I hope to make more music videos soon and post them here! Leave me comments with songs you think I should make videos for. Please subscribe to my channel here and check out my friends channels in my Featured Channels list.
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