This is a piece (at the time of this writing, the featured project video) that a colleague and I edited and finished with some graphics for the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center. This project came to me as part of Prof. Larry Engel’s course in advanced documentary production at American University.
Channel G is an interesting organization. In their own words:
Channel G produces short format documentaries, Project Presentations, for distribution on television, the internet, film festivals and other video outlets. Project Presentations showcase environmental, social, and health-related projects from local and international nonprofit organizations.
With Channel G, the American television and web surfing public is educated and informed while getting the opportunity to participate in the success of great projects. Channel G highlights the projects’ scientific and educational value, as well as the personal stories of the people involved.
Advanced documentary production with Prof. Engel was a pretty tough course, but truly rewarding. I think I discovered that I really want to make documentary films more than any other film in that course, and he also taught me new ways of thinking so that I have half a chance of making good documentaries. Thanks, Larry!
If you are blessed enough to have DISH Satellite TV, then you can watch a TV show that I’ve had a small part in. It’s called Whistle Where You Work, it’s been picked up by Free Speech TV, and it’s an interview/panel discussion show that tells the story of people who had the courage to do the right thing – to blow the whistle on wrong-doing and corruption – even though that integrity can come at a great cost. You can read more about it here at GAP’s website:
For my part, I did the intro graphics, an ad for GAP in the middle of the show, and I edit and do post-production for each show. It’s fun, but the heart and brains behind the show live over at GAP, and they are doing great work.
(above are the opening titles, with music donated to the show by Penmachine.)
I have some good news! My short animated documentary, Pac(hyderm) Attack! is one of the 2008 Official Selections at the Anchorage International Film Festival! This is some welcomed affirmation as I struggle with a fiction script I’m writing.
The judges have spoken, and our noble effort garnered us (The Knights of the B) the prize “Best Use of Character”. Sadly, they are not referring to our personal virtue, but to the use of the specific character, Scarlett Johnston. The top honors go to a film I’ve yet to see, called “Of Mares and Men“.
I just stumbled upon an interesting site. If you are of a particular bent, this is the sort of place where you might lose many valuable work hours. It is the International Dialects of English Archive. It might be helpful to listen to this when trying to get a handle a new character! Also, nerds just like absorbing catalogs of stuff.
I’m doing some work this summer for an excellent group called The Government Accountability Project (GAP). They are the people that help men and women of conscience blow the whistle on unethical corporate or governmental practices….which is something that requires courage.
They are producing a television show to air later this summer, and I’ve produced a short ad for them. It was partially shot by me, and was put together in After Effects and Soundtrack Pro. Enjoy!
I recently went up to Baltimore help my friends and colleagues Rob Benica and Brad Lambert in the Baltimore 48 Hour Film Festival. If you’re new to this – it’s a contest where you are given a genre and some mandatory elements (props, character names) to work with. 48 hours from that moment, you must write, shoot, and edit a short film and hand them a tape of it. It’s a fun and potentially grueling endeavor.
For us, the genre was Fable, the character was Scarlett Johnston, and the prop was Earrings. Rob is a great director, Brad is an amazing editor, and both helped immensely with actually putting the story down on paper.
Check it out here:
For an account of how the screening went, please read an email sent by our team’s lead, Rob:
The screening went great!!
The laughter started as soon as they saw Matt prancing through the field and didn’t let up until the credits were over. It was cool watching the laughter build to an overwhelming crescendo. Chuckles towards Matt carried into snickers at Marielle, to guffaws at the leering Rob. Big laugh at breaking the recorder back to snickers at Rosanna and Eleanor (kudos to the crunching as well). Huge – doubled over laughing at the eating of the ant. Back to chuckles during the race and ending with the biggest laugh of all – the reveal. In fact it was so overwhelming that you couldn’t hear anything Matt said while walking away. So for at least that night with that audience the ‘ending’ couldn’t have worked any better. It generated at least 30 seconds of uproarious glee finally settling down when the screen went black. I’m glad Brad inserted the graphic and audio breaks for as long as he did, because it allowed the laughter to die down so that the stories could be heard. We just never thought it would be needed for the ending. After the laughter finally died at the end we got heartfelt applause, cheering and whistles.
[W]e engaged the audience like no other film. We also had the best sound, writing and most importantly acting!
Perhaps the coolest and most edifying thing was how many compliments we got while walking out the theatre. At least two other team leaders told me how good they thought our film was, the lead actor from another team also sought me out. But the truly cool ones where the people from the audience. I ran to my car to get the DVD to hand out and I was stopped by four different couples telling me how much they liked it. Our film definitely created a buzz not only in the theater but also in the lobby after. If the audience votes their hearts we have another winner. No other film came close to involving or moving the audience like ours did. So everyone should be very proud of themselves. Thank you again for all your hard work. See ya’ll for DC in May.
This last weekend, I had the honor of winning the award for Best Animation: Narrative for my short, “Pac(hyderm) Attack!”. It was also a great evening because I was able to provide all the motion graphics for the awards ceremony — all based on the Visions 2008 Bumper. I worked alongside the talented David Laster, who put together the DVD for the awards ceremony, and Prof. Maher, who gave us technical and aesthetic guidance – generally ensuring that the project went well and that the evening was a success.
There were some other excellent winners, and you can view the work at the American University SOC website. Be sure to check out Brad Lambert’s “Rhinos Rock”. It’s really wonderfully done and extremely funny!
This is a variant of the Visions 2008 bumper for our HD monitors around campus. This is, of course, to promote submissions to the film festival. I was given some great guidance on the visuals, but had a perverse glee in doing the audio without any outside input! Of course, I’ll be happy to amend it if there are problems!
I really enjoyed making this. Too bad YouTube really compresses this sort of thing poorly. The shiny textures and lights really sing at the full HDTV resolution!
