Irrevocable

This was the last video I made for my Field Production and Editing I class. The final project assignment was to make a 6 to 12 minute video, based on anything that we wanted to do.

I looked back on the past videos I made for class, and I wanted to try something different. I hardly had any dialogue, if any, in my videos because I went more for the emotion, silent side. So, I knew right off the bat I was doing to do dialogue. But, I didn't want scripted dialogue, I wanted real dialogue. Keeping this in mind, I also though about the subject matter of my videos. They all had some key element, whether it was a clock getting fixed or milk being poured. Thinking on a humor side of that, and wanting the real dialogue, I went back to the first actress I casted for my first video, Hannah Welch. Her and her boyfriend, Mark Pikula, knowing them for awhile, they together have great dialogue that I wanted. Their normal conversations can be so animated, I knew they were the perfect fit. I invited them over for a game of UNO and just recorded them. I did tell him some dialogue that I wanted to be said, as far as viewing my video, but other than that, it was all real dialogue.

I always wanted to do a horror element in a video, and I looked no further than another Madonna student, Brett Wheat. I have seen his work, and I knew I needed his mind to make my horror idea work. I first had the idea of him knocking at my apartment's front door, wearing a clown mask. I would get frightened when I see this, and I would run away. But only have him follow me and approach as his new neighbor asking for food. Luckily, and I do mean luckily, I couldn't find the clown mask that was needed so I knew I had to change the idea.

Again, looking back on my videos, I wanted to pay homage to them and use similar camera shots for my final video. I invited Brett over, and when he came, we talked about what we could do with this idea. My apartment has a pretty creepy basement, and when I first moved in, I knew I wanted to make a movie down there. Him and I headed into the basement, and our minds connected very well, and the basement footage turned out great. Brett gave me an idea of using a moving crop effect in Final Cut Pro that was needed to make one of our camera shots work.

After we finished the basement scene, we shot the similar camera work to my prior videos in my apartment. That part went pretty easy. I had my MacBook out, and we looked at the older videos, and just set up the new shots as needed.

The following day, I shot the laundry room scene. In the laundry room, I was going to do my first shot thinking. I started off on a light being turned on, and I panned to my laundry basket. I tried the shot several times, both handheld and with my tripod. After viewing the footage, I settled on a tripod shot.

WATCH "IRREVOCABLE" ON YOUTUBE

I had an awesome time editing this video, probably my favorite. I included bloopers, I edited the opening music with Hannah and Mark's dialogue, and just overall, had an real enjoyable time. The video doesn't follow one pace, which I loved. It starts with a Back to the Future parody, to an UNO game, to a stalker in a red ski mask, and finally to blooper filled credits. It has to be funniest video I made, I always enjoy watching it.

A Motorcycle Christmas Story

This was one of the most fun I ever had working on a video. This was another assignment from my Field Production and Editing I class. The assignment was to make a music video. To be honest, I am not sure how I entirely came with the idea behind the video, but it started off with me wanting to do something with wanting a toy for Christmas. I thought about the toy idea behind the video, and knew it had to be a Lego of some sorts. For a short while, I had an idea to only have Legos in the video, but that proved to be too difficult because I didn't want to do stop motion animation for the video. So, only a part was going to be Lego, so that helped shape my idea. When I was in Indiana with my Mom's family, I borrowed a Lego Batman and motorcycle that was going to be the toy in the video.

When I got back home, I started shooting right away. When I think about my videos, I want to start off the video with a great opening shot. Something that really catches the eye. Because this video was Christmas-themed, I figured to start off with a Christmas shot. My Mom gave me a lighted church and it was a perfect fit for the opening shot. I started on the church with the camera, zoomed out slowly, did a rack focus on a glass, and with my free hand, I poured milk into the glass. It was great! I loved how it turned out.

Being that the assignment was a music video, I had to choose the best possible tracks to match the theme. I was able to get the two Christmas songs in the video no problem from a website called Incompetech. I did want to use lyric music as well, and I knew exactly whom to go to. A friend of mine, Ryan Brake, did some music over the years and I had his CD. I sent him a request on Facebook to use his music, and he agreed right away and couldn't wait to see the finished video.

WATCH "A MOTORCYCLE CHRISTMAS STORY" ON YOUTUBE

I enjoyed shooting the Lego Batman scenes. I used a Sony AX2000 which has an incredible zoom, and when I altered the scaling in Final Cut Pro 7 to avoid seeing my finger holding up the Lego Batman, the image was still great.

Without really thinking about it, the title comes from my favorite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. The music used when I am dreaming about the motorcycle is the same as when Ralphie is dreaming about his Red Ryder BB gun. I loved how it turned out this way, and the title was born.

MTVu Oscars Correspondence Videos

MTV and the Oscars have teamed up for a third year to allow college students the honor of being a MTV correspondence on the red carpet for the Academy Awards held in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Two college students (one being on-air personality, and the other camera man) can submit a two minute video as a pitch to MTV and the Oscars that they deserve to be on the red carpet representing MTV.

I found out about this contest during the week of PAH in October, and fellow Madonna student Sara Simnitch and I teamed up to make a video for the competition. Sara is a graduating Madonna student in the Broadcast and Cinema Arts program in December 2010, and has a lot of experience being on camera, so her and I were a good fit. We brainstormed over the idea for the video for a couple weeks, and with what started out in search of good movie quotes, turned finding "I don't think we are in Kansas anymore" to "I don't think we are in Detroit anymore" to a Wizard of Oz-themed video. Sara was going to be the Dorothy-like character and Detroit will be the Land of Oscar. Sara got her wardrobe and makeup all set, and we embarked on a cold day to shoot in downtown Detroit. There were only a couple obstacles that stood in our way the day of the shoot. A couple were getting their engagement pictures taken, so they were in a couple of our shots. And, a lot of people liked to come by Comerica Park to get their picture taken in front of the huge Tigers statue, but we were able to work around that.

The following week, Sara and I drove around the outskits of Plymouth to find a dirt road that would fit "Kansas" in our video. Things got a little grim for the perfect setting, until we found a backroad that had a farm in the background with horses! It was a perfect find.

The editing of the video proved to be challenging with the final scene in the video. We wanted to only see Sara's microphone and her lips red in the color, and the rest in an old film look. After great advice from a Madonna graduate student, we dived into eight-point matte cropping and it worked like a charm!

WATCH "SARA AND ADAM'S LAND OF OSCAR" ON YOUTUBE

We were done and set out on a comfortable Thanksgivings with our families. I drove 8 hours to Indiana to spend time with my Mom's family, and within 30 minutes of arriving, Sara called me and dropped a convincing bombshell: we have to do a different video.

Sara spent some time watching the prior year's winning entries and they did not fit the story-based video that ours did, and her and I agreed that, even though our video was great, we had to do a video that was what MTV and the Academy Awards were looking for. It was a tough decision to make with starting over, but we wanted to succeed in the competition and we had to do it.

Luckily, Sara kept all of her on-camera work she did at Madonna and her internship at a Flint news network and we used a lot of that in the video. We shot several scenes around the campus of Madonna to tie in with the video. We had a great time shooting around campus, especially in one of the edit suites using Photo Booth on a school's Mac.

The day before the video was due, we decided to grid out the edit and submit it in order to give ourselves enough time in case there were any issues.. and just so happened, there were! We finished editing the video, gave each other high fives, and hit submit. But, there was no Internet connection! Comcast's network in Metro Detroit went down. But we didn't let it bother us, so we took my MacBook and went to Madonna to upload the video.

WATCH "MTVU ACADEMY AWARDS STUDENT JOURNALISM CONTEST" ON YOUTUBE

MTV announces the top ten finalists on January 10, 2011, so we have our fingers crossed in anticipation.

It's A Wonder.. Anything Gets Done

During the last week of October 2010, I had the privilege to travel to Hollywood with several of my Madonna University classmates and help with Christopher Coppola's PAH Fest.

Among the many film categories a young filmmaker can enter at PAH Fest, one of the categories is Cell Phone Art. Cell Phone Art is a 60 second film unedited film that fits with the theme of that year's topic. During the week of PAH, Christopher announced this year's theme was "It's A Wonder".

The beginning week of PAH, things were pretty quiet for us students. Most of us were in the backroom of PAH HQ and just doing our own thing, whether it was reading a book or browsing Facebook. I thought the situation was humorous, so I took a quick video with my cell phone of all the "action". When I showed the video, the joke was made that it's a wonder anything gets done. Well, it made sense! So, I gathered everyone that I could and made a somewhat organized portrayal of the original video.

WATCH "IT'S A WONDER.. ANYTHING GETS DONE" ON YOUTUBE

Unfortunately, the video didn't win the category of Cell Phone Art, but it was a fun experience caught on video of our PAH experience as a whole that all of us could enjoy.

A Morning With Dad

This video is one of my proudest ones that I have made so far. I really wanted to try for something different with the assignment, and I was very happy with how it turned out.

The assignment was to shoot an instructional video, like how to bake a cake, for example. Being on the emotional level for my videos, I wanted to do something different. I been experimenting with the crop effect in Final Cut Pro 7, and found out I could layer two videos on top of each other. I figured, with this effect, I wanted to have myself appear twice in the video. The best way to do that would be, be myself, and be an older person of myself. And, with being the older person of myself, the 3D glasses I got when I saw Jackass 3D would come in very handy.

I still had to maintain the instructional video part of the assignment. It seems like older people have trouble setting the "VCR clock", so that was the central idea of my video, but involving a microwave. A big inspiration for my older self was my stepmom's father. He dresses very nice in the home, but always wear slippers, so that was what I was going to follow.

Shooting this video entirely myself wasn't much trouble, and doing the crop effect was fun. I dressed like myself, and shot my scene. I kept the camera in the same spot, and went to get changed into my older self. With the camera still in the same spot, I was able to record my older self and when edited, it turned out great.

A scene I threw in worked out wonderful. I recorded my older self putting on a tie, and edited at high speed. With the showing the entire tie getting tied, that also footed the bill of the assignment.

WATCH "A MORNING WITH DAD" ON YOUTUBE

The music was perfect for the video. In the opening scene of my feet walking into the kitchen, and the music matched the feel for the scene, I knew the music was perfect.

There are a couple issues with the video, though. The shot of myself fixing the clock on the wall is out of focus, and the hands are wrong between shots. I do plan to go back and reshoot those two scenes.

Railroad Tracks

Now the Field Production and Editing I assignments are becoming more involved. This assignment was entitled "Favorite Place". Between three to four minutes in length, and using Final Cut Pro 7 to edit, we had to shoot our favorite place. I wanted to go a step beyond and try for an emotion level with this video. I thought for weeks on this video, of where to shot. Many ideas flowed through my head. My very first idea was a car wash, but that would have been too silly for the emotional level. Finally, one Sunday afternoon, railroad tracks popped in my head and I took my camera and tripod out to the nearby tracks here in Plymouth and Northville.

Shooting on a Sunday, trains were not an issue, which helped the central theme of my video - railroad tracks are life, they come from one place, stop here, and then go somewhere else. They might come from a bad or good place, and then head to somewhere totally different.

Shooting this video was some work, and a little scary at times. Most of the places where I got close to the tracks were restricted, but that didn't stop me. But, one overpass in Northville was a little scary because I wanted to shoot in this tunnel, and it was somewhat of a hike through weeds and over a fence to get there. Once I got there, there was a lot of graffiti down there that I wasn't sure if it was safe enough to be there. So, I shot quickly, and then left.

I did this video entirely myself. I set up the camera on the tripod, positioned the shot, hit record, ran to wherever I had to be, then ran back to stop the camera. It was a good exercise.

WATCH "RAILROAD TRACKS" ON YOUTUBE

Overall, I liked this video, but it isn't my proudest work. Music, which is near and dear to my heart in my videos, just weren't the best choices for the shots I used. And the voiceover could have been recorded on a better quality microphone.

This was the first video that I used Motion, and I did like how that turned out. I did more of the "disappearing" dissolves, like in my Ghost of Mackinac Island video.

Tools

This was another in-camera assignment. The assignment was to shot anything we wanted, as long as it was an in-camera edit, meaning that the editing was just using the stop and record buttons on the camera.

As what I love to do with my assignments, I wanted to tell a story. The basic premise is that my car breaks down, and I can't find the tools I need to repair my car. I had the help of two other classmates, Brian Kearns and Katie Boomgaard, with the camera. The favorite shot was the camera inside my oven when I opened the oven door to see some tools inside.

WATCH "TOOLS" ON YOUTUBE

If you watch closely, there are a couple continuity problems that I have learned from. If this wasn't an in-camera edit assignment, I would have just gone back and reshot :)

The Ghost of Mackinac Island

To get a feel for editing, my Field Production and Editing I teacher gave us some footage of Mackinac Island he shot years earlier. It was a basic assignment to learn how to log and capture, snap clips together, and play around with transitions in Final Cut Pro 7.

WATCH "THE GHOST OF MACKINAC ISLAND" ON YOUTUBE

I went a step beyond and made a fun little story from the footage. I had a fun time with effects to make some of the footage look "old and dated" to symbolize the part of the video that refers to a certain time period. This video was the first time I experimented with the dissolve transition to have a person "disappear" from the scene.

Elevator

In Fall 2010, I was in class called Field Production and Editing I at Madonna University. For this class, we were given very nice Sony 1080i HD camcorders that we used to shoot our assignments.

For our first assignment, we worked in teams of 4 and had to make an in-camera edit on campus during class time. It was four of us in a group with the camera, and we had to decide what we were going to shoot as our in-camera edit. There was an elevator right outside out classroom, so I figured let's use it to our advantage. I really wanted to do a story with the assignment, and after some brainstorming, we had a good idea of what we were going to do.

WATCH "ELEVATOR" ON YOUTUBE

We all took turns using the camera, so it was a team effort. If you look closely, well it is obvious, my cell phone was in front of the camera lens in the first "elevator" scene.

We went a little longer than the time was allotted for the assignment, but we all loved the end product. I went home that same day with the footage and added credits to it. So technically, it wasn't a true in-camera edit as shown in the Youtube because I did make some minor changes to it with Final Cut.

Unforgotten Love

PAH Fest Motown is an annual film festival that comes to Madonna University every summer. The festival runs for a week, and during this week, many wonderful films are created by talented students and creative people. There are different categories that students can submit their films in, such as Cell Phone Art, DigiPortrait, and Mobiflick. For more information about PAH itself, check out their website at http://www.pahnation.org.

For PAH Fest Motown 2010, I decided to focus in the Mobiflick category. For a Mobiflick, teams have to write, cast, shoot, and edit their entire six minute film within the week of PAH. There are many challenges which can come from this, but my team was ready and willingly to meet those challenges.

I wrote my six minute film treatment and submitted it to PAH's website before the deadline ended was for submissions. My film treatment was accepted, and I was ready to assembly my team. I reached out to a fellow student named Walid Jaward, whom is a great and creative person to have behind the camera. I recruited a couple more students to help me produce the film. My film only needed 3 actors, and I knew right away I wanted another student, Hannah Welch, to appear in the film. With my team assembled, we were ready for PAH to start.

The first day of PAH thankfully was the only stressful day. Since my film needed 3 actors, and I already had Hannah, I needed to cast the two male leads. I needed a young male actor and an older male actor. I was outside the TV Studio at Madonna eyeing the different actors that were there, wishing to be in someone's film. But, no one was catching my eye for my vision. I knew I had to act fast because time was an issue and I really wanted to get started on shooting. I separated myself from the crowd and started to make phone calls to relatives, seeing if they would be available. While I was on the phone, I noticed a young male came in, and I motioned to Walid to grab him right away. Walid and this young male named Stephen Douglas Wright, approached me and with only talking to him for mere seconds, I knew this was my guy. 3 roles, 2 down. 1 more actor needed.

I knew the older male actor would be obstacle. I made some more phone calls to relatives, but no one was answering. I didn't realize that was a blessing in disguise because minutes after speaking with Stephen, an older actor came through Madonna's doors right where I was standing. His name was Warren Timothy Beam, and I made sure I grabbed him quickly. The cast was complete.

My completed went out and shot the next 3 days, which were truly the hottest days in the Michigan July 2010 sun. Unfortunately, due to the extreme heat, Hannah got sick and had to miss one of the days we were shooting. My team was ready to counter this minor obstacle, and shot around Hannah's scenes, and shot Hannah's scenes the following day. I couldn't have asked for a more confident team.

After the shoot was done, Walid and I returned to Madonna on a Friday at 3 PM. Walid, along with being my director of photography, was my editor because I did not have any experience with Final Cut Pro. But Walid taught me the program very well and both him and I were editing together within mere hours. We edited throughout the rest of Friday, and finally finished editing at 8 AM the following Saturday. I remember sitting in the chair that felt like a second home for all those straight hours of editing, and after finishing the final viewing of the film, I smiled so big because the film hit home on so many levels for me. From my initial vision, to Walid's camera work, to Hannah/Stephen/Warren's acting, I couldn't have had a better film than what I envisioned when I wrote the first word for the treatment.

On Sunday, the awards event was held. There were 3 other Mobiflick teams that were competing with my team for first place. When the night ended, we won first place. Our hardwork, dedication, and overall teamwork were all factors in making us winner.