Recharged.

My next project has been put into motion.  As I planned, I attended that band party this past Saturday.  Fun times were had.  Whole thing lasted until nearly 2 AM (and this was in Pennington, NJ, nearly an hour from home).  My cousin Lauren did a lot of work and provided some good food, including two platters of macaroni and cheese everyone was raving about.  The area these bands were playing in was a sweat box of a basement, and I was stuck down there losing a couple of pounds in liquid as I filmed the bands.  Regardless of comfort levels, the bands were a lot of fun and I was getting good vibes from filming.  I think the footage came out better than the first band party I shot and edited back in April; lighting was better, my aperture was wide open, and I got some good closeups to make for more dynamic footage than before.  The best part was that some patrons were taking notice; some band members thanked me for shooting them and asked about the project, and a pair of young women asked if I'll be selling DVDs.  It felt good to know other people were interested.

The first band party was set up so that each band's set could be viewed individually.  With this one, I plan to keep them all together in one movie file (north of two hours), with each set leading into the other through titles and transitions to tell a semblance of a story of the night.  It'll likely require two discs.  The first step, of course, is dumping the three tapes' worth of footage into my computer and taking it from there.  Considering the party was held in honor of my cousin's boyfriend's band releasing their first record - a split 7" vinyl with another band from Chicago, I'm tentatively titling this project Release the 7"!  Why yes, I had Liam Neeson as Zeus in my mind, why do you ask?  The bands included on the release will be:

A F***ing Elephant, the hosting band celebrating their first record

Zevious

So Is The Tongue
Dead Planet
East Of The Wall

'Cause it's my cousin.

I plan to go to another band party this week and film it again, but I'm debating on the format.  The last one was simply a mini-concert on video, simply the performances.  This one is a little more special in that one of the bands from the last time and this time - A F***ing Elephant - will finally release an album.  This two-piece band essentially hosts these parties as both members live there, plus one of them is my cousin's boyfriend who will be going off to Europe for two months after this and a couple other shows this weekend.  All of the performances will be taped, but I think I'll present them in a more narrative fashion, with smoother editing and titles.  I could try for some talking head footage as well, but then again, this is a somewhat informal party, not a wedding reception or anything.  People would likely rather socialize than have a camera in their face, plus I'd rather socialize myself. 

Also, I want to make mention of my cousin herself, Lauren Smith.  She's become quite the artist and will be showing off her work personally next weekend at the New York City studio she's been a resident at.  A lot of her work involves architecture and is worth checking out at the links below.  The eventual plan is to do a video project with her and other artists she associates with to promote their work, but the whens, wheres, and what-nots still need to be hammered out.

Lauren's own page

ARTcamp 2010

At the Feet of the Rabbit Hole.

Finding the right project can be pretty hard.  It's not just the responsibility of the subject to hold an audience's interest, but mine as well as to make it enticing.  Look at any number of documentaries.  Ninety minutes of an elderly gentleman talking about the war can get pretty boring.  If the interview is interspersed with photos of him during wartime, some well-timed music, and other footage (medals, family, home), you get the sense of a more fully realized story, and in turn a better movie.  I was given some advice back in June by a vastly more experienced editor that a project that can tell a story, and tell it in an entertaining fashion through editing, would draw people in and open the doors to new projects.  Simple enough, but now I needed to find the project in which to utilize this formula, and I've already been searching for months and months with little luck.  Then I just looked next door.  It was the kick in the butt I needed.

14-year-old Lauren Morrill and her family has lived next door to me all my life.  I had remembered hearing from my dad that she raised rabbits through the local 4H club.  What I didn't know until I started doing the project on her was that Lauren and her mother Colleen have essentially built a rabbit dynasty right in their back porch and back yard.  They raise and breed a few different breeds, have shown them off at shows in a third of the country, won numerous awards, and have even sold them to other people.  Their back porch is lined with dozens of floppy-eared beings of which I had no knowledge, and their living room is littered with rabbit show accolades.  There was a lot of great fodder here. 

So in the middle of July, I went next door with my camera for two afternoons.  One spent getting footage of the majority of their rabbits, the other for a sit-down interview Lauren, footage of her prizes and magazines she's been in, and more rabbit B-roll.  Over an hour of footage in all that, in the finished project, amounted to a little over ten minutes.

I decided to shoot it in 4:3 aspect ratio.  I always prefer widescreen, but because my version of Final Cut Pro is a little outdated, the exporting codec that would offer the widescreen format still lead to black bars on the top and bottom and stretches the picture just a little.  I wanted this footage to be in the best possible condition when exported into a Quicktime movie, plus I was playing around with some new editing tricks and didn't want them screwed up by the aspect ratio.  Such editing tricks included using new kinds of titles (the ones I've done in the past have been really basic) and cutting to still shots with some motion to them.  It all went really well and led to some nice montages within the project.  These tricks combined with the usual transitions and B-roll played over the main interview definitely spiced things up.

My one big self-criticism is the sound quality.  Lauren is very soft-spoken, so I used my camera's regular mic so I could pick up her voice in full two-channel audio.  Unfortunately, I did not take into account how loud the air conditioning would be picked up.  Live and learn, so I worked with the sound enough to make Lauren's voice much more audible.  The other option would have been to use my XLR shotgun mic, which would only pick up one channel of sound, and then fill the other channel with the background music.  The other drawback, related to the sound in general, was that I was interviewing Lauren on my own while the camera, positioned in front of her while she faced me at an angle, just ran on its own, so I wouldn't be able to check the sound while in the middle of talking to her.  Plus it just felt a little better to rely on the built-in mic as opposed to a battery-powered mic I need to keep an eye on.  Nevertheless, the sound is passible and Lauren is easy to understand in the finished project.  The music I used was a mix version of Train's "Hey Soul Sister," chosen because it was one of Lauren's favorite songs and had purely instrumental sections I could isolate and repeat in the track.

I'm very happy with the finished short and feel I can hang my hat on it.  It can lead to some good word-of-mouth as more people see it.  I've already received extremely positive feedback on it from Lauren and her family as well as my own.  The full project is available upon request - for a good price (to make up for used resources) - but for now I put the opening moments of it on YouTube.  Just a note that I imported the finished Quicktime movie into iMovie for the benefit of that program's easy YouTube sharing capability, but iMovie enhanced its 4:3 ratio to 16:9.  It still looks fine but isn't reflective of the finished project.  Check it out HERE and let me know what you think.

More information on Lauren and her rabbits can be found at her own web site.

The Water's Warm: An Introduction

Hello everybody kind enough to visit my site.  My name is Brian.  I was born, raised, and currently reside in southern New Jersey (around 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia, PA).  I've had a strong interest in film and television production and wanted to get involved.  I graduated from Rowan University in 2006 (which has a very good communication college), and - among other things after graduation - interned at the Philadelphia-based production company Backseat Conceptions in 2007.  It was around this time I decided that I would get the most opportunities by honing specific skills as opposed to trying to be a jack of all trades and toiling as a production assistant nobody wanted.  What better skill to hone than working with a camera?  So I received a professional grade camera as a gift, hooked up with fine gentleman - through my dad - responsible for his own production company, and I took to it quite quickly.  For the past two years, I've been shooting and sometimes editing what have largely been cheerleading events and dance recitals up and down from New Jersey to Virginia.  Now I'm looking to break out on my own.  

So now, I've joined the blogging ranks for the sake of publicly detailing my work and making contacts for the sake of creative and artistic collaborations.  The infinite quest for an unbelievable reel, artistic achievement, and the almighty dollar.  I won't be using this site to talk about this person or that show - that's what I have Facebook for - unless it ties into a project, be it related to subject or is inspiration for it.  I'm pretty much open to anything outside of the obscene and pornographic.  The types of projects I'm looking to do more of include:

Fictional Narratives:  It's hard enough to come up with an idea, but it gets even harder to put it to paper in detail and bring it to life in front of a camera.  This kind of thing is a group effort, and I'm always open to contributing to such a group, from the idea stage to the practicalities.

Non-Fictional Narratives: Documentaries on what a real person does, telling a story about a portion of his/her life.  A good example of this would be the project I recently finished.  I'll share details on it sooner than later, as it shows what I'm capable of, and myself and others are very happy with it.

Sports: Capturing a good athletic performance for posterity and/or a recruitment video.

Parties/Special Events: The two other personal projects I've completed fall under this category: my cousin's wedding in Ocean City, NJ last year (a thankfully simple affair), and a party showcasing independent bands at the residence of one of my other cousins.  The editing on these was very basic, with simple transitions from one moment to the other, but each capture the moods well and greatly pleased the subjects.  The wedding could have used flashier editing in spots had I found more footage, while the band party speaks for itself going from song to song. 

This leads to the fact that, while I'm very pleased with what I'm capable of now, I'm still in a few feet off the coast as I explore the vast open waters of video production.  My camera is a Sony DCR-VX2100, standard definition and capable of shooting in 4:3 and 16:9.  I edit on a MacBook Pro using Final Cut Pro.  Sure, my equipment could be better; my camera isn't HD and my Final Cut program is only at Version 5.  My equipment has still done very well by me, and it can always change in the future... just like anything in life.