~ Film and Video ~

Do you have any desire whatsoever to watch old short films I made when I was in college? Well, you're in luck, because this page serves up that very delight 24/7.

This is the new and improved film page. The old one had the files actually hosted on my own webspace, but that was a bad idea. I figured out how to upload things to Google video (very handy and much easier than I had assumed), so I'm using that to host all of my things. Because of that, I'll be able to give you access to more than I had originally intended. Just click on each link and you'll be taken to the proper page and all. The quality of the videos isn't perfect, but what do you expect? Free hosting and bandwidth is free hosting and bandwidth.

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Bread III: The Title - This is just a little (very short) graphics test I did for a movie my friends and I were going to work on. We never actually wound up filming the thing (or at least we haven't done it yet), but I still think the test is pretty cool. The song in the background is "Crazy and Wild" by Gunther. This just shows the kind of effects I like to do with...well, After Effects...only it stopped working, so I can't make any effects for a while.

Statue / Museum Test - I made this back when I was taking a course in 3D animation. I never really liked trying to make things move naturally, but making the environments was pretty enjoyable. This museum test shows a statue with a book for a head knocking over a pedestal. The walking animation is horrendus and the video quality is poor, but I like the museum itself (and that's why the file is up here). The music was added after the fact by me (I had to re-render the files and had lost the original audio).

Caprice - I took a course in video editing and had to use video footage to create rhythm. I filmed a lot of stuff, but the thing I made was pretty bad (way too long and pointless). I went back and chose a single scene to use for the assignment, and this video is what I came up with. The soundtrack is a collage of recorded sounds (things from around my room). I really like the way the image from the camera seems to smear on the spinning shots; I got that effect by shooting with a cheap camera with the aperture all the way open, then converting to black and white...it's been a while though, so I could be wrong about that.

Empty Like Machiavelli - This weird little video is something I made for a class a long time ago. The footage of the guy's face was gleaned from camera raw I had left over from another project. The red bits were created by rendering out video to filmstrip segments using AfterEffects, then importing them into Photoshop to completely destroy them, then re-importing them back into AfterEffects again. The result was strange, so I used it. The voice is my own, as are the words I'm speaking. The music is mine too (it's Memory, a track that used to be on my audio page). This piece is weird and a little too long, but people seem to like it (and I kind of like it myself), so up it goes.

Project Blue Light: Nuts - The film class that I've taken four times is a little odd. The professor likes to assign weird projects that don't really make any sense. For this one, he gave us a script (title "Project Blue Light") and made us film something to fit what he'd written. We decided to make it about a group of crazy guys who eat imaginary pizza. No one in class seemed to understand what we were trying to do, but that doesn't matter. It looks kind of nice, and the title sequence always makes me smile. That's good enough for me. The script is terrible, by the way.

Robot Walk - I made this for the same class as the statue test movie. The video quality is better, but the sound quality is worse (I think it was rendered in After Effects, which always gives me pops and crackles for some reason), I got tired of 3D modeling and animation (because it was so tedious and taxing on my computer...but I might get back into it now that I have a new machine). Either way, it looks kind of cool. I like the lighting, even if the bump-mapping on the stairs is really bad.

Run N' Gun: Beatdown - This video was created for a class project. The name of the game was in-camera editing. Basically, we had to shoot everything exactly as we wanted the finished piece to look. If we wanted a three second shot of one thing and then a four second shot of another, we had to record three seconds, stop the camera, then record four seconds. Because of this, the piece isn't perfect, but it's pretty funny. I liked it even when the professor didn't.

Grey - Another class project. The idea was to shoot a film about a loney guy with a girl doing the voiceover. The catch was that the girl was in every shot the guy was in, and the film was actually about her. Well, it didn't quite turn out as planned. A lot of footage had to be cut just to bring it down to the length you see now, and it lost a lot in the process. Consider it a failed experiment. This was edited back when I had the old computer, so it took absolutely forever to do anything. That alone contributed to the way it turned out. But anyway, it's here for you to look at. Oh, and Google screwed up the audio levels, but I'm too impatient to fix that.

Project Blue Light: Dead Guy - This was an earlier class project that turned out way too long. It's up here for nostalgia more than anything. The raw files and all sat on a DVD in a binder for a couple of years before I finally got around to recompressing them. Nothing special. Oh, and it's really blue.

Psycho: Redux - My group had to reshoot and re-envision the shower scene from Psycho. I honestly don't like Psycho at all, so we did it as a mellow piece with some music by FAKE?. It's really difficult to shoot scenes with suspense or action involved...basically impossible without real actors and sets that allow you to place cameras wherever you like.

Honor the Sabbath - We all play a little too much World of Warcraft. Maybe, just maybe, it could ruin a few relationships. This was a class project, but we made it about World of Warcraft and a missed anniversary. I know it has to have happened before. That sort of thing is pretty commonplace in gaming circles. The premise was to recreate one of the Ten Commandments. This is our sabbath.

Making a New Media Project - My friend Seth and I like to make fun of New Media because of some of the ridiculous stuff that goes on in the program. This video was something we made for one of his classes. It completely broke the mold for the project, but I'll bet he still gets an A on it (New Media is very easy to fool and even easier to fake). Anyway, it's pretty funny...even funnier if you're in the major.