Celebrating Valentine's Day in the World of Warcraft

Machinima has become a popular art form on the Internet. Machinima can be anything from a video or a piece of art that uses in-game graphics from a computer game to tell a personal story. Being a huge fan of the World of Warcraft, I made a tie-in from the game for Valentine's Day.

To successfully capture footage from the video, I ran Warcraft on my Macbook which allowed me to record video from the game. It's a feature that is only available to the Mac, not the PC. From the recording, I had to convert the footage to the MOV format, so I could edit it in Final Cut. I used MPEG Streamclip, a shareware program, to do the necessary conversion.

I did not really have a storyboard in mind, I just basically logged into the game and worked on the fly.

Aellae

I made this simple video using my iPhone 4S. I really wanted to try out the video capabilities with the iPhone, and I was really happy with the final results. I was able to play with depth of field, and being how small the iPhone is, it was great at getting some interesting angles.

I filmed the water drain outside of the Broadcast department at Madonna. During post, I did color corrections on each clip, to bring out more Fall colors and add some brown tones, too. The title, Aellae, came from the name of the music piece that accompanies the video.

S.O.U.L. - Source of Universal Love

This was a Pay It Forward project that I did as a group project with two classmates from my Field Production and Editing II class at Madonna. We picked this group to do a video that tells a story about what this nonprofit organization does - helping others. Based in Farmington, S.O.U.L. helps those in need in a number of ways from food and clothing donations, or just being there for those who need support in their lives.



My group and I spent a number of days at the S.O.U.L. cafe doing interviews with their donors, as well as filming a luncheon they had. We also visited their donation shop just down the street, and talked with the kind volunteers there. We filmed some of the interviews in the upstairs area of the cafe, but had to do some rearranging of furniture to accomodate good shooting angles.

We shot the project using a Sony AX-2000. We had a lot of footage from interviews and b-roll, so it took some time to edit the project into a compelling story. We had to watch the entire interviews, and compile the best bites from them. We spent time choosing the right music to give a great pace to the video, and a team member designed the opening credit to the video.

Hillcrest Sod Farm - Crabgrass Pre-Emergent Timing

This is the first video I did for Hillcrest Sod Farm, based in Romulus, Michigan. Seen in the video is the owner of Hillcrest Sod Farm, Mike Thompson. For our first video, Mike wanted to inform the viewers of the importance of preparing your lawn for the Spring, by starting in the Fall, as well as prevention of crabgrass during the summer.



The video was shot outside of Mike's home, and we used locations in the front of his property, as well as the backyard. Surprisingly, air traffic was at a minimum and only a few times we stopped briefly because of usual residential noise.

The video was shot with a Canon T3i, and Mike was mic'd to a Zoom Recorder that he had in his back pocket. I used the internal mic on the Canon for reference, and sync'd it with the Zoom Recorder's audio in Final Cut, and removed the Canon's audio once both were sync'd. The music was from Killer Tracks, entitled "Just Blooming".

The entire video was color corrected to balance the whites, greys, and blacks, and the contrast was boosted slightly to make the colors pop a little more.

The Infatuations "Blame It On You" Music Video

I was the DP on this music video for the Detroit-based band, the Infatuations. We shot this music video in downtown Detroit back in December of 2011, with the primary location at Centaur Bar. The music video was shot all in one day, and it was definitely an achievement in so many areas.

One of the interesting scenes in the music video was the hot rod making its way through traffic to reach the bar. When we were shooting the music video, the Detroit Lions football game ended, so the streets of Detroit were very crowded. We were stopped at a crosswalk outside the Fox Theater, waiting for people to cross, when I decided to do a rack focus from the Fox Theater sign to the driver inside the car. It was a spur of the moment shot that the editor decided made the cut!

I shot the primary part of the music video with the Canon 7D. It was a fantastic camera, which provided an extreme shallow depth of field, along with a vibrant picture. My fellow camera ops used cameras that ranged from a Canon 5D to a Canon T3i. Towards the end of the music video, we had at least four cameras going when the Infatuations were playing at the bar.

The Positive Train

I did a documentary piece on the Madonna University Women's basketball as my final project for my Field Production and Editing II class, and it was the most fun I had ever had working on a project.

I knew the assistant coach personally on the team, and he was more than thrilled about me pursuing the project. He mentioned the theme of the team was the "positive train", and making a video about it could be inspirational. After the coach was on board, I knew I wanted a talented announcer to introduce the piece. I spoke with a fellow Madonna student, Kyle, and he was also happy to come on board and do the open and close for the video.



One of my early goals was to be creative with my shot selection. I wanted to use two cameras during the interview, one a safe shot and one a "risky" shot. I wanted to go outside the box and try something new. What little did I know that during the editing process I found out, I could cut between the two cameras during any "uhs" or "ums" that may be said, and it would look seamless.

The head coach of the team gave me footage of the team at various vacation spots that they went on, and I used as the closing segment in the documentary. It really gave the piece a heartfelt moment, and I loved how it turned out.

I shot the documentary with three cameras. I used a Canon 7D, Canon T3i, and a Sony AX-2000. When it came to editing, I had to do quite the data conversion between the Canons shot in H.264, while the Sony shot in AVCHD, so I had to render all my footage to Apple ProRes to make the editing a smooth process. It took some time, but it was time well-spent.

Livonia Bakery and Cafe

I directed and edited this commercial for the Livonia Bakery and Cafe. The bakery donated food to our student film shoot earlier in the season, so we gave back to them a commercial.

After an initial meeting with the client, I sat down and storyboarded a concept on how the commercial should flow. The time limit of the commercial was 30 seconds, so I wanted to convey a quick but powerful message in the time allotted.

The commercial was shot all in one day, and it was about a 5 hour shoot. It was filmed with a Canon T3i, and some of the shots were achieved with a tripod on a track. I had a great crew for the shoot, and it went extremely well. The client was very helpful, and my storyboard helped him understand the concept of the commercial and how he had to prepare for the shots I wanted.