49 hour race

Who knew 48ish hours could fly by so fast? Overall, my favorite project, the 49-hr film race proved to be the most fun and spawned some really cool videos. Going into this project last Monday, I was very anxious to find out what the mystery prop would be. I knew it would’ve had to be small and cheap because all of us were receiving one(or three in the end) but I also was thinking that it could’ve been a line of dialogue.
Before the race officially began, I was pretty set on using my digital still cam on video mode because I knew that it took pretty good quality when it was stabilized by tripod. I started thinking of ideas that could be good to use and came across some old PSAs on youtube. That’s when I decided that I wanted to go with an anti-drug PSA angle, but I also knew that the mystery prop could ruin all of that.
Then came 4pm last Monday, the big unveiling day, where I was surprised (and pleased) to see the alphabet blocks and not a line of dialogue. After that, I went home and wrote up a short script and shot list of what I needed to shoot. I was trying to think of cheesy, cliché PSA shots and dialogue, but figured I’d just improvise while shooting anyways.
Tuesday came along and I called around to see who might want to be a shady blockdealer in an alley. Jamie was available and pretty much in costume and character went we met up. We found the first shady alley and 40 minutes of improve later, I had the footage. Knowing I could make some trippy effects by plugging my camera into the TV and recording, I fooled around some and got some colorful shots to use for the block trip. The other shots were made by shining a laser pointer into an upside-down “caution wet floor” cone.
Editing was pretty simple. I already had the sound effects planned out and on a disc and I just inserted them with the videos. The hardest part of the edit was learning how to freeze frame and make titles appear separately. Other than that, it was pretty simple yet fun and I plan on making some more shorts using only a still cam on video mode.
Here’s the final product if you need a recap.

rhythm + editing

Going into the rhythmic edit, I didn’t really know what to expect. After viewing some of last year’s projects, I had a better idea but still had no idea what to film and how I was going to edit it all. Luckily, Colin is quite the skateboarder and mentioned that he wanted me to film him skating at various locations around town. What/where to film was not a problem anymore. We were able to meet up twice and get enough footage to edit and not be bored with using the same shots.
Editing this monstrosity was a completely different experience. I had never really broke clips down frame by frame, but, believe me, I got my share with this project. Using the footage I’d filmed along with some Super8 Colin already had, I broke down basically all the good movement shots into bins of 5, 10, and 15 frames(this was the most tedious part of the assignment). From there, I looked at the frame shots and tried to get some sort of pattern out of them. I ended up going with an old-to-new theme and used the Super8 shots first then the newer footage kinda creeped in. When the cycles started rolling, I realized that I should maybe repeat every cycle twice so people could soak in the images a little better without getting too bored. Once I had about a 30 sec. sequence, I realized that the shots got old with the repeats, so I applied some filters and speed effects to select shots, just to change it up.
When the sequence was finalized, I started thinking soundwise. I had made a song that had a mellow, skate-video feel to it and tried it out. With the fast editing pace though, it did not work so I tried another one that was more repetitive and masked the edits a little.
All in all, this was one of my favorite projects and I’m completely satisfied with the final product and hope Colin is too. Skate on, bro.

Yes to the Yes Men

After finally screening the Yes Men, in class of all places, I was ashamed that I hadn’t seen it or really even heard about it other than a poster in the library. It was under my radar and usually I know all about these types of films before they even get released. But in my defense, the film came out before I was in film school or even thinking about college majors.
The film (or what we viewed in class) was awesome, plain and simple. Much like Borat, the film is a documentary following two pranksters, as well as their friends whom help out, as they pose as the WTO. The premise itself is brilliant and reminds me of similar stuff I did in high school (mock speeches, etc.) but with more guts and cameras rolling the whole time. I really was into the actual speech performances and the lead-up to them as it added suspense, rather than the after-thoughts of what they had just done. The elaborate work put into the pranks is certainly commendable as they were able to pull off their pranks without people calling them out. The speech in Plattsburg(I believe?) in front of college students was especially awesome with their response. I notice in most classes, its tough to get a rise out of college-aged people, but the Yes Men executed their starvation speech(complete with McDonald’s for all!) perfectly to get kids throwing inflatable globes at them and walking out.
This film really gave me hope that hidden camera pranks can be more than TV, or Youtube nowadays, humor and actually be a great premise for a successful documentary. If I wouldn’t have seen Borat before this, I think I would’ve appreciated it more knowing that there was really no predecessor to this other than TV shows basically. In the future or even now, I want to see more films like these being made. Reality TV is only reality because the characters are actual people, when their goals/situations are not. (7 strangers living in a house with cameras, when does this happen in real life?) With cameras hidden, the viewer gets a better sense of reality and how people actually react when they don’t know that cameras are on them. Either way, The Yes Men was a sweet film and I’ve already recommended it to friends.