Clayman Casting

Another video that I did for my Capstone Film Class at Madonna University. I filmed our casting directors and talked to them about the casting procedure involved with our film. I went with my reoccurring theme of 8-Bit with the music and graphics.

I used b-roll footage from prior in the day when we had actors visit and read for parts. I also had the casting directors "act" during the b-roll to give me the dramatic elements I wanted.

WATCH "CLAYMAN CASTING" ON YOUTUBE

If I could redo this video, I would remove the repeated uses of "uhs" from the interview. I worked on it when I was editing the piece, but I just couldn't take out the words without hurting the pacing of the speech. I used with what I learned from this video, and applied to a future video (The Positive Train) when I went between two cameras to make the speech flow better.

Clayman Storyboards

This is a video that I did for my Capstone Film Class at Madonna University. It is about the storyboard sessions between the director of our student film and our storyboard artist, as well as our production designer. All the students featured in the video were from the Capstone Film Class.

WATCH "CLAYMAN STORYBOARDS" ON YOUTUBE

Trying to make a storyboard video interesting, I strived for creative shots, such as the pencil sharper shot. Unlike my "What does Clayman mean to us?" video, I went for more of a news piece and went for what the Sony AX-2000 camera does best - news pieces.

What Does Clayman Mean to Us?

This is a video that I did for my Capstone Film Class at Madonna University. We started a funding campaign on IndieGoGo, and this was the introduction video to the team from the class.

I wanted to do a theme of "8-bit", so I did a combination of funky camera angles and music to introduce each person of the team.

WATCH "WHAT DOES CLAYMAN MEAN TO US?" ON YOUTUBE

I filmed this video with a Sony AX-2000, and I did extreme closeups during the interviews to get a shallow depth of field with the camera. I love the camera, but a drawback is the camera is primarily for news, and it's hard to achieve a shallow depth of field with the given sensor in the camera.

A Timely Meeting

This was a film that I need for the PAHFest Motown 2011 competition. The purpose of the contest was to create a film that embraced local culture and educated people. My partner, Caitlin, and I decided to make a short film that told the story of a boy who was moving from the historical town of Northville, and couldn't wait to get out. We researched our idea quite heavily, meeting with local historians to gather as much information that we could about Northville. After we got our research, we collaborated on an idea that encompassed education plus a supernatural-like theme to it. Our idea was the boy got visited by another boy who was passing through, and the visiting boy told of the places in Northville and its history - history that would be fun to hear about. The film ended with the reveal that the visiting boy was the grandfather, helping his grandson appreciate where he came from.

We shot and edited the film over the course of five days. We location scouted before, so we knew what areas we wanted to shoot in. For example, the day we were at the Northville Downs racetrack, we asked for permission to shoot there, and the owner was more than willing to allow us on the track.

WATCH "A TIMELY MEETING" ON YOUTUBE

The most creative shot we had in the video was that of the camera following the ball as it rolled down the street. We used gaffer's tape and taped the camera to a scooter and pushed the scooter along the ball, trying our best to keep the ball in frame. After a number of takes, we got a few that worked pretty well.

The major drawback during the week was the equipment given to us. We shot "A Timely Meeting" on a Canon T3i DSLR, and it's a great camera for taking video, but not the best for recording audio. Caitlin and I worked tirelessly in Soundtrack Pro to make the audio sound the best with what was given to us.

Caitlin and I won Most Artistic Achievement Award for this film at the closing ceremonies of PAHFest Motown 2011.

BCA 3750 - News - Next Chapter Bookstore and Bistro (Scream 4)

As one of my last news pieces for this class, I decided to check out a bookstore in nearby downtown Northville that was used as a location in Scream 4. Scream 4 was filmed primarily in Northville and Plymouth, so I was very exciting to watch the movie and pick out locations that I saw in the movie.

I took a camera and tripod inside the bookstore and I told the owner that I was a Madonna student and wanted to shoot footage inside of the store for my news piece. She was more than happy to let me do so. I was thankful the store was decorated with Scream memorabilia because it made getting shots pretty easy! To repay the owner for her kindness, I purchased lunch there. And I must say, they have a delicious grilled cheese and ham sandwich!

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - NEXT CHAPTER BOOKSTORE AND BISTRO (SCREAM 4)" ON YOUTUBE

It was pretty exciting to have such a big Hollywood movie shot right in the neck of the woods. I can't wait to check out Scream 4 again for more moments of landmarks.

BCA 3750 - News - Stiggy's Dogs

Stiggy's Dogs is an organization in Livonia that provides service dogs to veterans who return from war with post traumatic stress disorder and similar disorders. The service dogs help them cope with issues like being in crowded area. The dogs give the veterans a feeling of comfortable, and the dogs can help them plan routes if they want to go around a crowded area.

When I did my interviews there, I did not plan to include my questions or myself on camera. It wasn't needed. So, I prepared my interviewees that I wanted complete answers. I shot with editing in my mind the entire time, and I like how the piece turned out.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - STIGGY'S DOGS" ON YOUTUBE

The dogs were pretty excited when I was there, but they eventually calmed down so I got some pretty good b-roll of them. I came with tripod, which is definitely my new best friend on shoots. Having steady and balanced shots definitely makes a new piece have more of a professional look and feel.

I did shoot more than I had in my news piece. I filmed Donna talking about the dogs being trained to alert their owners when to take their pills. I wasn't completely thrilled with how the footage turned out, and decided to cut it. For the next time I do a piece, I will plan the shot a little better and watch it the playback on the camera to decide if it's good enough, or time for a redo.

BCA 3750 - News - Aflac Duck Spokesperson Audition

This news opportunity just sort-of fell into my lap. I offered to help Bill Garvey, who is the spouse of a Madonna faculty member, with the Aflac duck spokesman audition. Aflac fired their former duck spokesperson, Gilbert Gottfried, after he posted some unappealing comments about Japan after their disaster. Aflac started a contest to find their next duck spokesperson.

At first, Bill wasn't excited about doing it because the job description said they preferred an actor with experience. However, that was not a requirement, so I convinced Bill that we should just go for it.

Bill recorded his duck impersonations with different emotional voices from angry to happy. He definitely impressed me because I really didn't have much of an idea how a person imitating a duck would sound like.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - AFLAC DUCK SPOKESPERSON AUDITION" ON YOUTUBE

What I did was record Bill's duck impersonations in Soundtrack Pro, and export the audio into Final Cut Pro to splice it all together with the good takes. Then, I exported the project into Soundtrack Pro and made a MP3.

I wish Bill luck in the contest!

Assiduous

This is one I did just for fun. After learning how to do the green screen from my Tron Legacy movie review, I wanted to experiment more with it. I also recently learned how to do visual effects in Motion, as well as 3D text in Final Cut. I have used Motion in the past, but did it more for the templates for the slates in my video. I didn't know it had visual effects until a Madonna classmate showed me. Same for the 3D text in Final Cut. It was pretty exciting to dive deeper into these programs to learn more about them.

So, I wanted to make a silly video, that really had no meaning, but just an experiment for fun.

The footage of the train station is from a video that I got from YouTube, but the crowd noise of the station I got from Soundtrack Pro. I combined two visual effects together, being the explosion with the smoke behind it.

WATCH "ASSIDUOUS" ON YOUTUBE

I used a green folder from school, and leaned it up against a wall in my kitchen, to function as the green screen. The "Venom" action figure was given to me out of a cereal box from my Grandma years ago.

BCA 3750 - News - Tron Legacy Movie Review

I love movies so much, that I wanted to do a movie review segment for Campus Closeup, the Madonna news show done for the BCA 3750 class; News Reporting. And, what better new movie to review than Tron Legacy. I knew from the start that I wanted to utilize the green screen that is available at Madonna, as well as borrow the Tron Legacy sweatshirt that a classmate of mine luckily had.

I needed to grab Tron Legacy footage to display on the green scene, as well as B-Roll for cutaways. The Apple website had plenty of trailers and clips from the movie, so I grabbed every single on. I also grabbed footage from the original Tron movie from YouTube for the first segment of the movie review.

After I obtained all the footage I needed, I went ahead and wrote the script. Writing the script wasn't particularly difficult, although I wish I changed up some of the words I used. I compared the city in the Grid to a flying saucer, but I wish I had said spaceship, because the city doesn't fly, it's stationary, and spaceship just would have sounded better.

The day of filming was quite fun. I had the help of another Madonna student, and her and I basically ran everything between the studio and the control room. So, there was a lot of running around. I loaded all the Tron footage onto a server, and had it looping behind me on the green scene. I tried to talk about the subject matter while related footage was shown behind me on the green screen. It worked most of the time, but not completely. Unfortunately, one of the servers had an issue, and I had one clip that had audio out of sync with the video, but I was able to fix that in post. Filming took a little longer than expected, but I got everything I needed, and the audio was good, so I was happy with the day of filming.

I got home, and had a pretty easy time editing it together. Definitely editing a news piece is easier than editing a film piece. What I am most proud with the piece was the intro on the show. I spliced together a few movie trailers along with some rocking music from "Fight Club", and it really helped set up the pace for the review.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - TRON LEGACY MOVIE REVIEW" ON YOUTUBE

After I completed the news piece, I put it on Facebook, and got some feedback. The best feedback I got was from a Madonna instructor that guided me on the road of redoing the green screen. In the original video, I used the control room to display the Tron footage on the green screen. The instructor helped me with adding in the Tron footage in Final Cut Pro instead. We did some experimenting together, and I was amazed at the results. Definitely adding in the footage on the green screen looked a lot better in Final Cut, than it did using the control room at Madonna. With this in mind, I decided to re-edit the piece and add in all the footage on the green screen in Final Cut. Being that I had more control over the green screen now, I was able to pull the right clips to match what I was saying during each segment of the review.

It also had to trim the edges using a crop to remove the ceiling in the studio, as well as the floor.

The only issue I had with the re-edit was I was not able to get footage from one of the segments from a camera. It was the segment that had the issue with the audio and video being out of sync. So, what I had to do was use footage grabbed from another camera, and that is why in one of the segments in the re-edit, I am not talking directly to a camera. But, I think it helps give the piece an artistic look, and I liked it.

After I finished the re-edit, I was more than happy with the end result.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - TRON LEGACY MOVIE REVIEW RE-EDIT" ON YOUTUBE

I am looking forward to reviewing another movie for Campus Closeup, but not sure what movie yet!

Joe Gagnon - The Appliance Doctor

I am in a television class at Madonna University. The class produces a biweekly television show called Celebrate Michigan, that airs at 6:30 AM on channel 20 (MyTV 20) in Metro Detroit. The show focuses on community leaders who give back to their area. A recent guest on the show was the Appliance Doctor, Joe Gagnon. To learn more about Mr. Gagnon, check out his website.

I got a late phone call the Saturday before Wednesday's show, asking if I could film Mr. Gagnon's radio show, that he does Sundays at WTKD 1400 AM from 2 PM to 4 PM. Always wanting more experience, I gladly accepted and went to the studio a mere 14 hours later after getting the phone call.

I had a very enjoyable time watching a radio station operate. I remember how neat and clean everything looked, and looking at all the equipment that is needed to be on air. When I was there, the station was following the snow storm that was coming in to pound Michigan, so that was big news.

My directions for filming were pretty simple. Shoot enough footage to cover a 2 to 3 minute piece to air during Celebrate Michigan. With that in mind, I knew I wanted to shoot about an hour of footage. I made sure I got shots of Mr. Gagnon on air, as while as shots of his producer operating the equipment, and the equipment itself. Looking back on what I shot, I am happy with what I got, although I think my "film mind" got the best of me because I did an awful lot of zooms and pans. I wish I got more longer still shots. I think my steady cam skills worked well, although I wish I had a tripod. Being on such short time to film, I didn't have access to one.

I did three edits of the piece before Wednesday's show, with the final edit happening right before class. I did find an awesome tool in Motion for Final Cut, which allowed me to stabilize some of the shots that I wished I had a tripod for. I was amazed on how well Motion stabilized the shots and it looked great when I imported it into Final Cut.

WATCH "JOE GAGNON - THE APPLIANCE DOCTOR" ON YOUTUBE

The assignment itself had some challenges. Besides not having a tripod, I really wanted to make the piece exciting with what footage I had. I was lucky to obtain a copy of the first hour of Mr. Gagnon's radio show that I imported into Final Cut. On the show, Mr. Gagnon has an opening theme song. To keep the pacing going, I made some adjusts to the theme song, and extended the non-vocal parts of it during the clips of Joe talking with his call in guests. I am happy with how it turned out.

The Celebrate Michigan episode with Joe Gagnon on will air some time in the future, possibly in late Spring 2011. Hope you check out! Fridays at 6:30 AM on channel 20. (My TV20 Detroit)

News Class - International Coffee Time

Madonna University has started a new program called International Friendship Program. The goal behind the program is to partner up an International Madonna student with an American Madonna student so they can learn about each other's cultures and become friends.

The first meeting of the program was referred to as International Coffee Time. The partners met each other, and found out many important things about one another.

For my news assignment, I went down there and filmed the meeting. Everyone involved were very nice and accommodating, even though there was a camera directly in front of the them from time to time. The meeting started with the partners introducing one another. After they had their direct conversations, the entire group introduced their partners to everyone else. The meeting ended with the group learning the Chinese New Year song.

BCA 3750 - NEWS - INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP PROGRAM - EXTENDED

The followup assignment involved a re-edit of the original, but shortened for length. A requirement of the shorter piece was to use new footage as best as I could. That worked out well because my partner, fellow Madonna student Karlyn Eck, and I filmed everything that we possibly could during the meeting.

BCA 3750 - NEWS - INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP PROGRAM - SHORT

One of the biggest challenges shooting the meeting was the amount of light that was in the room. I had to do a lot of color correcting so things didn't appear so blown out. Next time though, I want to plan ahead by adjusting the settings on the camera so I wouldn't need to do a lot of color correcting. The audio came out pretty good, expect I had to raise the audio levels in the shorter piece to hear the partners talk among one another, since they were not individually mic'd.

I am very happy with the turnout of both pieces. I got pretty excited when I found the shot of an Asian student clapping with a big smile on her face at the end of the extended video. It was a great shot to end on.

News Class Interview

It's mock interview time! I wanted to something fun for my next News assignment, but unfortunately, this turned out to be more-or-less a fun side video that didn't quite fit the guidelines of the assignment. My goal behind this interview was to a improv interview, where I interview a video pirate, portrayed by Brett Wheat, a fellow Madonna student. The exciting part of this interview is that it was all one take, and besides perhaps one time, the video pirate and I kept a great composure throughout it.

For interview b-roll, I found some Hardee's training video footage from the 1980s on Youtube, which pertained to the fact that the video pirate steals restaurant training videos.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - CAMPUS CLOSEUP INVESTIGATORS" ON YOUTUBE

A challenge of this interview was shooting outside in the snow. My camerawoman, Karlyn Eck, another Madonna student, had to adjust the aperture of the camera when shooting from the street, and when shooting at the front door. It was a fun challenge of the project to learn more about camera work.

I am still working on my interview skills. Even though I don't envision myself as a news reporter, speaking well is important in any job.

News Class Interview

This is my second interview I conducted for my News class. I interviewed my 12 year old brother, John, is performing very well in a math competition for Catholic schools, placing first after the first two tests among 792 students! I find out about the competition, how he prepares for the tests, and his plans for the future.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - ADAM INTERVIEWS JOHN" ON YOUTUBE

For the interview, I included some b-roll footage, along with a fun sound byte that matched the topic of the discussion.

I was impressed with the quality of answers my brother had.

Capstone Film Class 2011 - Demo Reel

During this year of 2011, I am taking a film class called Capstone, which runs for the complete year. The class works in a film in all three stages; preproduction, production, and postproduction. When December arrives, that is the big month of the premiere!

To get started for preproduction, the class assignment was to make a demo reel of prior work that you are most interested in. For me, I love to run the camera, edit, and write. I did have to do a writeup about why I like those 3 things the most. Basically, it is all art. Whether you are editing or writing a scene, there is an art behind it to make the scene come alive and feel the emotion.

WATCH "ADAM WOLOSZYK DEMO REEL - JANUARY 2011" ON YOUTUBE

I recorded the audio on my iPhone, which surprisely came out very well. There are a few times when it sounds like I am too close to the device, but overall, not too shabby.

It has always been fun to go back and watch the films that I did. It's almost like having a video yearbook. They bring back memories that will remain in my heart forever.

News Class Interview

This is the first video I made in a class during the Winter semester of 2011. For this News class, our first assignment was to conduct an interview with a fellow classmate, and edit it together. So, I shot this video, and the way Cory and I did it, we actually never had a real conversation. I asked the questions while facing a wall, while Cory ran the camera. And, vice versa. But, with the joys of simple editing, it looks real.

WATCH "BCA 3750 - NEWS - ADAM INTERVIEWS CORY" ON YOUTUBE

It was a fun assignment, so some of the facial expressions are a little over the top, but that's the creative part of an enjoyable assignment. Gotta have some fun once in a while!

Also, the opening of "Madonna Madness" is the idea of a student run show, focused on interviews, skits, and short films. So, this was a cold run for the format.

MTVu Oscars Correspondence Videos

Great news! Sara Simnitch and I were selected as a top ten semi-finalists for the MTVu Oscars Correspondence contest!

Through January 28, please vote for our video at:

http://www.mtvu.com/shows/shows-featured-content/oscars-correspondent-contest-top-10/

You can vote once per day, so vote every day until the 28th! The top 3 highest voted videos, those teams will go to the Oscars, grand prize representing MTV on the red carpet as a correspondent!

P.I.G.

Over the summer of 2010, I wrote a short about a couple playing a game of P.I.G. PIG, in case you didn't know, is a basketball game that involves people taking any shot they want, from any distance or angle. If they make it, the next person has to make it, or else they get a P. The first person to collect a PIG, loses. Writing the short wasn't too difficult. I actually did it all in one night. But, the hardest part with this project was the editing. I learned from this project that shooting any type of sport, and having it tell a chronological story, can be difficult. You never know what angle the basketball might come off the rim, or how many takes needed to capture someone making a shot.

Editing took over 6 months, but school work and life caused some delays to complete it in less time. I started editing it with Jake Freeman, who appears in the film, and a student at Madonna, Brian Kearns. We edited from the first point in the script, chronologically. We went through every take, and really did the editing down to a science. But, the process got exhaustive, and PIG got delayed.

Fast forward to the first week of January, the last week off before Winter classes start. I told myself, I will finish PIG during break. So, I buckled down and started editing it again. However, the process that was originally taken on for the editing had to be changed. Doing it that way took too long. So, I looked at the script, and saw which scenes still needed to be edited. I grabbed every take for that scene, found some good in and out points, and threw it down on the timeline. From what appeared at first glance to be a messy timeline, turned into an actually well-structured sequence of clips that made the editing process smoother. I learned a lot about editing a two camera shot production in this week of editing. It wasn't easy, but I liked how it turned out.

PIG was shot during the last week of July. It was a hot, summer day, and Katie Boomgaard, who portrays Barbara in the film, had to wear a sweatshirt since the script called for it. I give a lot of credit because she did it, she sweated in it, but she didn't complain.

WATCH "P.I.G." ON YOUTUBE

Even though I wrote and directed PIG, members of the Madonna University Broadcast and Film Club came out to help. Whether it was holding steady a ladder while someone shoots from on top of it (Thanks Paula Wilson and Chris Nickin!), or grabbing any runaway basketball (Thanks Jenny Hebel!), it was a team effort. We had two cameras for the shoot, which was good and bad. It was good because we got the action twice from different angles, but bad because it made the editing challenging to sync up both shots. But the good outweigh the bad because it also got the audio twice, which can be very helpful when the talent isn't mic'd. I ran camera most of the time, along with another Madonna student, Jodi White.

We shot it all in one day, and we were very lucky because a thunderstorm did come through in the early afternoon, but it quickly left and we started shooting again. The shoot went longer than I expected, and I thank everyone who helped out. It can be a challenge to do a collaboration with a group of people, but it was a challenge that we successfully accomplished.