An incredibly thoughtful video. There are certain historical moments in our history that deserve to be remembered and reiterated, so I was honored and cautious when the UT professors decided to incorporate September 11th, 2001 into this video about understanding the context of any given work. They found it important to teach on multiple levels, not only furthering their students’ English education but also finding a way to respectfully inform them of such a recent national tragedy that has become ingrained in our national identity.

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Working with the English professors at the University of Texas was a great joy that resulted in some work that we’re all very proud to have our names on. The first of which started with The Oxford English Dictionary, what it is and how to use it. No better way to test our creativity than making a video about the dictionary! I often like to challenge myself, by setting an idea that I have no idea how to execute and then figuring it out. During the scripting phase I got a transition in my head to move from a dictionary page to an interview by way of some kind of Matrix-like animation, and I loved how it turned out. This video was our collective starting point and think our work only got better from here!

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There is no quick or certain path to creating a documentary video for a public university on a topic as sensitive as race. A great deal of deliberation, rewriting, and editing took place as we (the professors and myself) tried to hone the message and the best images/animations to accompany the voiceover. My favorite moment came as I was struggling to figure out a good animation regarding the emphasized word “Power”, and after some suggestions from the professors I grabbed onto their idea of referencing the WWII Japanese internment camps that the USA implemented which led me to a treasure trove of Ansel Adams photos he took of some camps. I had so much fun tearing apart the image to create some depth, and giving it a vintage film style.

I got to sit inside of a lecture and film some of the students (who all signed waivers) which was an interesting experience. One of my favorite aspects of making a documentary is the lack of control you have to deal with. Sometimes, you get to set up an interview and take your time setting up lights and crafting a great shot, but quite often you have to work with the light that’s available in the room, and you can’t stage the actors or props to create the perfect composition. I really enjoy the challenge of having to create on the fly!

In this documentary I had to shoot two interviews and a classroom of students without any lighting or staging. Due to budget & time constraints I had to work fast. No tripods, no sliders, no lights, just my camera and my creative eye. I loved the challenge and think we created some beautiful shots that really helped compel the story forward. For the interviews I advised crafting the questions beforehand and coordinating with the professors to help us dial in our message which would give us more time to capture the dialog we needed. Not all things go as planned, however, and the end result was that the interviews were more off the cuff which meant a bit more editing and refining, but the benefit was that the tone was much more natural and personal.

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This is part of a series of documentary videos I filmed for the University of Texas’ Department of English. This video tackled annotating in a book (the why, the how, etc). I had a great time working on this because it largely was a physical production and I was excited to incorporate these animations into a real world setting instead of doing everything purely in After Effects. I had a small but great team to help with the shoot, and brought on Erick Bolyard to assist with a couple of the VFX shots.

I brought in Ricky Holm to be my director of photography and operate the camera. I normally prefer lighting and camera operating myself, but we had a short day to accomplish a whole lot of setups. So, having Ricky and a couple of other hands on set really helped me focus on directing instead of worrying about gear and getting critical focus and the physical tolls that it all takes. Being able to just watch the composition & performances on a monitor and give notes makes the entire documentary more efficient, and cuts down on wasted takes and surprises in the editing room.

Let’s talk briefly about the animations! Working through the documentary script with the professors we arrived on the idea that it made a lot of sense to mix in animations with real footage as it symbolizes in video form what we’re instructing students to do on their own. That is to say we wanted to mark up the video since the students would be marking up their books. This added a great dynamic quality to the documentary, because sometimes an educational documentary can be rather dull, so anything that not only assists clarifying a point but creates visual interest for the video’s viewer is double-plus good.

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I directed a video for Demand Media as part of their video R&D testing out new formats. This one was aimed at taking more of an Alton Brown tone, but with a bit more visual flourish. The 3D egg diagram section at the beginning was done by Joe Howes at FolderingRain.com, he’s great to work with and quite talented!

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Had fun making this animation for Livestrong.com’s Apple Watch app. The Livestrong team scripted/recorded the dialog and allowed me to kinda go with the flow and create the animation, and the result is below!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhb9wW2-U4I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8xJ43pG97c&list=UU3KSaQi0jbOj8GRbvNhq_mg

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I’ve been working with The University of Texas’ English Department to create some videos as curriculum aids. This first video illustrates a 6-step process to help students critically read literature. It runs longer than I’d certainly wish, but it still manages to flow rather well. To help maintain engagement we put most of the budget towards animating each step in the process, which I animated using After Effects. The fun part about working with this team is that they write the script but leave a lot of room for me to operate creatively, so if I begin working and see that there’s improvement by making changes then I generally have that greenlight. Now, this is an English department for a major university, so obviously the dialog is heavily scrutinized and modified with express approval from the group, but the visual side has a lot of leeway to my own taste, which is why they chose me to begin with.

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“I respect the audience’s intelligence a lot, and that’s why I don’t try to go for the lowest common denominator.” – Spike Lee

I’ve been wanting to do a video utilizing photos for a while now. I wanted to experiment with breaking the images apart and manipulating them for dramatic effect, so once it looked like Language Room was going to be successful in funding their next album I reached out to them and wrote up a little script and asked for some pictures that I could use. I was shocked by how slow the render was, I used After Effects and a lot of blurs and motion blur and the render for such a short video ended up being well over an hour. Crazy!

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“I prefer that animation reach into places where live action doesn’t go, and it seems like all of animation nowadays is trying to go where live action is.” – Don Bluth

This was an unexpected project that came at the last minute and was ultimately executed from script & storyboard to final render in roughly a week. Receiving the storyboard piecemeal as it was created from my contact with the Designs team I was able to work out sections at a time while the rest of the script was being finalized. We made a temporary voiceover track to work to while going through voices.com and listening to roughly 200 demos in order to find the one we felt most comfortable with. Overall, I had a lot of fun creating the opening shot and playing with the matrix of websites, and most of all creating the two websites that kind of formulate out of nothing which is where a really big chunk of my time was ultimately spent. For a week’s worth of work, I think it turned out alright.

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“Currently computer graphics are used a great deal, but it can be excessive.” – Hayao Miyazaki

 

I did the post-production work on this for Demand Media’s new division that is based out of Ireland and geared towards a developing online market. Working with their marketing department’s point-man, he handed me footage to  edit based on his script & storyboard, but then asked me to also find additional ways to edit it down to a more manageable 3 minutes of content from the roughly 5 or 6 minutes of content the script called for.

Once I whittled down the interview footage we went to work coming up with animation ideas, a lot of which I was given tons of freedom to create to my own taste and then made revisions and fine tuning according to notes and back ‘n forth discussion. It was a great collaborative process and I’m very pleased with the final product.

Editing & Background Keying: Adobe Premiere CS6
Animation: Adobe After Effects CS6

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“I love bringing the inanimate object to life.” – John Lasseter

An animation created from scratch using Illustrator to create the assets and importing them into After Effects to animate them. One of the things I’ve picked up from doing animations is that the best way to begin is with the actual voiceover. It will reveal all the pauses, moments to emphasize and the pacing. Starting to animate without the voiceover probably means having to redo a ton of work once you get the final voice recording locked in order to sync it all together. So, assuming the storyboard and dialog is all scripted out then begin with the voiceover before the animation, life is so much easier for it.

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“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

This is an animation for political blog Dawn of the Weak, lots of kinetic typography and whizzing sound effects. Keeping engagement for a topic like politics can be challenging, so as with most online video it’s best to follow the practice of keeping the video short, but also to keep it moving.

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“The fact is, you don’t know what directing is until the sun is setting and you’ve got to get five shots and you’re only going to get two.” – David Fincher

I directed this fan-based political ad for political blog Dawn of the Weak. This was my very first time wielding a camera and directing people and I was rather nervous to do it, but was really happy to be doing it alongside my producer and friend Todd Sapio who put the legs on the project in the first place. For my first time shooting, editing and publishing a video I was happy it managed to garner over 9,000 views and numerous embeds on political websites. In addition to the video side, it was fun to add in some typography effects to enhance the message. I also used my YouTube knowledge to use best practices for maximum impact on the YouTube community.

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This one is a little embarrassing to post, it’s like showing your first drawing that mom put on the fridge door. This represents the very first time I ever touched Adobe After Effects. This alo represents another collaboration with Elissa at snaggletoothstudios.com where we were contracted to make a video explaining BunchMonkey’s business model to prospective partners. The workload was very evenly split, she provided the assets and we shared the animating 50/50 while I did all of the sound effects in Adobe Soundbooth and recorded her voiceover narration in my home studio using a Blue Blueberry microphone (plugging into a Digi003) and Pro Tools.

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“Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.” – Tim Burton

“Brewhaha” is a short I produced alongside Elissa, whom I frequently collaborate with since she is awesome with makeup, painting and other crafty things such as creating all of these tiny props for the film! She directed this project and can be found at http://snaggletoothstudios.com. My contribution was as Producer, photography, and co-video editor. This was entered into the Dogfish Head annual film festival where we finished just short of the top 3. We had a blast making it!

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