thestoryofjory.com

My friend Michael Champlin invited me to be on his team for Living Art of Tulsa’s 24-hour Film Fest coming up the first weekend of February.  You can read more about the fest and Michael’s experience here on the Tasha Does Tulsa blog.

Dual monitors: A luxury I won't have during the film fest!

I’m really excited to be participating this year, and I’m looking forward to the challenges this festival presents.  Having a theme, line, and prop requirement in a 24-hour timetable is a huge challenge creatively and logistically.  Coming up with a great idea for a five-minute film will be only half the battle; we’ll have to manage our time well, trouble-shoot the inevitable technical problems, and do it all with limited resources.  As stressful as that may sound, it’s exactly the kind of situation that gets me excited to do video work! Plus, the film fest presents a great opportunity to meet filmmakers and video enthusiasts like me, so hopefully I’ll make a few new friends in addition to hanging out with the old ones :)

Check out Mikey’s winning entry from last year’s 24-hour Film Fest, and if you’re interested, mosey on over to Living Arts and sign yourself up!

I finally watched The Social Network last night, just in time to appreciate its winning 4 Golden Globes.  What took me so long, you ask? I’m not entirely sure, but it had a lot to do with my personal opinions about Facebook, the knowledge that the film was not exactly a true story, and of course my own experience building a social network.

But all my misgivings about the film were completely transformed by one scene:

My heart just about exploded when I saw the tilt-shift. I love the effect in photography,  but there’s just something mesmerizing about seeing it in video.  It’s also sped up just a little bit, which gives the whole scene a model-like effect. There are a few tutorials out there about achieving the tilt-shift effect in post if one can’t afford the $2,000 price tag for a TS lens, but it’s definitely not beginner stuff. Also, I’m relatively certain that at least part of the film was shot on DSLRs, but I can’t find any source to confirm this suspicion just yet.

I’m also a sucker for changes in depth of field.  I agree it can be overdone, and it seems to be the effect du jour of late, but I think it’s totally appropriate in this scene.  I think the difficulty of the sport is emphasized when we see the rowers moving in and out of focus, and we get a feel for the importance of the race when we see the focus placed exactly on the row boats in an extreme wide shot.

The color of this scene is like visual candy.  When going for a dramatic effect like tilt-shift, it’s extremely important that your colors are consistent throughout the frame.  The greens and yellows are appropriately vivid against the muted, dramatic blues and grays of the sky and water.  In this case, the color matched the mood of the scene very well, and no one looked orange! Finally, I loved how the Peer Gynt remix added to the excitement of the race.

This scene changed my overall opinion about the movie. Utimately, I think the story is just okay; but the photography and attention to detail and getting things right technically made me really appreciate the film.

Did you see it? What did you think about the movie and/or its accolades?

I rented a 7D from LensRentals.com to shoot the Rally to Restore Sanity trip in October.  In order to practice with it before the trip, I took the camera to a dog play-date hosted by the group Dog Lovers of Stillwater.  Months later, I decided to edit together a little promo for the group from that test footage.  It’s not particularly great; but it was fun and I think it turned out just fine for my very first attempt at DSLR video. Make sure you’re watching in HD!  Sidenote: I totally get the complaints about FCP and DSLR video – the workflow was kind of a pain!