THE BREACH IS OPEN, THINK I'LL JUST JUMP IN: FAN EXPO DOCUMENTARY

It's been haunting me. Taunting me, really

It sits there, taking up space on my exterior Hard Drive. I try to ignore it, I tell myself that I've moved on, but it's difficult to ignore. There is just so damn much of it. 383 Gigs, over 900 clips, over 3 and half hours of raw footage. It's the fucking elephant in my hard drive

My original plans for a documentary on Fan Expo Toronto and fandom in general of course did not quite work out. I wanted to "shadow" a fan in costume at the expo but that person did not quite, well, she was a fetish queen in a totally awesome costume who was done with the experience as soon as it was over

So no follow up interviews, no further participation, no context

So that original concept is thrown on my scrap heap of unfulfilled creative ideas. Damn thing rivals Everest at this point

And yet, there it is; hours of footage from four days at Fan Expo last summer. And much of it is good footage. Mostly cutaways but a few interviews too. My shoot with Nadia was on the last day of the show and I filled up those first three days pretty well. Of course I did, I'm full of it we all know that

Ahem

The problem is, this is all B roll, the footage that goes around and under the principle clips. But as we all know, I ain't gots no principles

Ahem

But I began to wonder if I could put all this footage together to define something else, something new. What that would be, I was not sure. I did know that I did not want to do a Fan Expo promo "Fan Expo is a convention of all things fantastical that happens over four days in late summer in Toronto Ontario"

Yeh, been there down that. Like, a hundred times. My promotional videos rucksack is full. I took on this project to do something new, something I've never before done. A documentary. I've never created a documentary, never even worked on a crew And I wanted an opportunity to expand my knowledge of visual tricks and techniques Take advantage of the fact that for once I have no client and have no need to design the project to their needs and taste

Well, I have a client you could say but he works for beer. A lot of beer

So here I am with all this footage in search of a premise. And I think I have one. Or enough of one to begin the creative process.

That process always begins with a script. In most cases I'd write the script, go take the shots, edit it all together, throw some pixie dust in the air, make a sacrifice to August Lumber and hope that it all works out

With docs, of course, the process is a bit different. A doc starts with a concept, instead of writing a script per se, you assemble interviews, B roll, research etc to help you build your story. You shoot, you shoot a lot and let the shooting write the story

My problem is, all the shooting I've done was towards a perspective, that of a fan expiring the expo for the first time, that is no longer relevant. So what do I do with all this B roll. First thing is to start going through all the clips and seeing if there is some kind of new story in there

That required some organization. When I shot the footage I organized them into folders, what Final Cut calls Bins, in my project by the day of the shoot; Thurs, Fri, Sat Sun and Interviews.

Normally what I would do is generate a shot list, listing every shot, it's duration and some comment about it, Good Take, Bad Take etc. Well, I wasn't about to do that with over 900 shots. Hey, I have a life, there are reruns of Archer to watch for the 5th time.

Instead I decided to make Bins that would help me identify shots in categories as I began to work on the script. So, a Comics bin that would contain all clips related to comic books, guys on the convention floor drawing, shots of the comic dealing booths etc. Of course I have a Cosplay bin, shots of people in costumes. Star Wars got its own bin because the 501 Legion, a massive Star Wars cosplay group did their annual photo shoot, featuring literally hundreds of storm troopers, Princess Leia's, Darth Vaders and Emperors ... yeh, more than one, scary. All the interviews I did got their own bin

That will make it a little easier for me to find shots as I do the script. Normally I would create a couple of kinds of script. A master script that would have the Narration (VO) matched with the corresponding shots. With any project I like to match the VO to the clips and especially with this one, I ain't doing any retakes, the price of the Expo has elevated to Donal Trump status.

On projects where I was using a Narrator I would make him/her their own VO script. I use an old style that was taught to me years ago. All caps and spelling phonetically when necessary. At this point I'm not sure if I will do the VO or con, I mean coerce (no I mean con) someone into doing for me

At this point I will do a "scratch track". I will record the VO myself and use it to assemble a rough cut, I really won't know how everything will work until I start plugging in shots. The script may need to be adjusted for the shots, as in, gosh Vic that was a beautiful bit of narrated poetry but you totally do not have shots of Unicorns in Kevlar armour making out with a Valkyrie on the subway. Rewrite that scene

Once I get the narration hammered out then I will decide if I need someone who can actually enunciate to do the VO

So that's where I am at this moment.  This project is dead but I'm gunna hammer on its chest to see if there is any life in there

CLEAR!!

FAN EXPO DOC: NOW WHAT DO I DO

At this point my Fan Expo Doc project is stalled. I have not been able to get any response from Nadia since our shoot in August. This could mean that she is busy, that she is out of town or that she just has no more interest in continuing with the project. Or at any rate, no interest in going on cam and providing narration for the footage of her which I shot

Without her input there is no context to that footage. It's just me following around a couple of cosplayers. Certainly not enough to be the heart of a documentary

I've not totally given up on Nadia but I need to answer the question What do I do if she no longer wants to participate

I have to go through the footage to see what is there. Unfortunately, because Nadia was the last day of the shoot, I geared the previous footage towards her being the heart of the video, as in mostly what I have is B roll. The good thing is, this B roll is fairly generic, the bad thing is, it's fairly generic

I do have some interviews. The interviews with the cosplayers are short and really just like introductions, "I am ... I am playing this character ..." A few of them talked about why they were there and what they liked about the show. Again, fairly generic

I did a few other interviews with people who were at the Expo to promote a group and/or raised money in its behalf. The Toronto Steampunk Society, a Ghostbusters group, a LARP (Live Action Roleplaying) group, an X Men group that raises money for charity

There could be something there, it's actually fairly interesting stuff. These are fans who have taken their love of a certain genre and turned it into something beyond a simple hobby. If I chose to explore that avenue though, I would need more. I would have to contact one of all of these groups and get interviews with them, follow them to other events, get the history of their groups etc.

That could be interesting but it's not what I intended in the first place. I wanted something more from an individual's personal perspective rather than that of a polished and practised group. I wanted more documentary, less promo vid .. I've done those thank you very much

Another option is to try to execute my original concept, find a cosplayer and follow them through the expo and have them comment on the experience in VO. Fan Expo is over but Comic Con will be up in March; it's a different event though, usually much smaller and instead of taking up both halls of the convention centre, using only one. So I don't know how much of this current footage I'd be able to use

So what I'm left with is logging the footage and seeing if I can make something out of it. It won't be the first time

FAN EXPO DOC: POST PRODUCTION ONE

It would be nice if you could shoot a bunch of footage and just dive into the editing

Well, sometimes you can. When Collette and I are at some festival and I want to cut the footage into a music video, I can do just that, pull the footage into Final Cut, lay down my music track and start cutting

That will not work for this new project. There is no script for this video, not formally. I have a pretty solid idea of where I want things to go but I have yet to finish shooting. I'm still waiting to do my final shoot with Nadia, where I will have her narrate her footage from our day at the Expo

Still, I want to start organizing things. Post production is a lot more than just editing and music and graphics.

Right now, while I'm waiting for my final shoot, I'm concerned with two areas: Logging footage and Legal.

I'll deal with Legal first. I have no intentions of the finished video ever going to broadcast. But I will be posting it on social media (and perhaps some unsocial media) and I will be sending it to whatever "film" festivals I can get away with. That is a different level of legal concern than broadcast but it's still a concern.

Film festivals, amateur or not, like everything neat and tidy. You have to prove rights to your footage, your music, locations and to all principles involved in the production.

I will of course have Nadia and Brandon (her Spiderman) sign a release form that I've worked up. They were not the only people that I have on cam. The interviews I did at the Ex break down into two categories: Fan streeters and Organization Interviews

The streeters were just fans I corralled and had give me a minute or two on cam. I am not terribly concerned with these. I made of point to record them as they gave me consent to film them and that should cover it.

Besides talking to fans, I talked to a few orgainizations/groups who were at the Expo to promote themselves. Groups like The Toronto Steampunk Society and Superheroes for Charity were at the Ex to raise awareness of their group and to raise money for charity. I also talked to a non profit LARP group (Live Action Role Playing) who where there to drum up new members

For these people I'm going to need release forms, not just for the person but for the group. And I'm going to want proper contact info so I can credit them. They of course gave me consent to film but because they represent a group of people, I want to make sure I'm covered and beyond that, I support their causes and want to credit them. No matter how organized they are, they are fans and they are not looking for a profit

The other legal concern is locations. Very often film fests want to make sure you have permission to shoot in any venues in your film. Fan Expo itself is very liberal in its allowances for video. It's really a fantastic thing. You see camera crews all over the Ex and not just from TV and online stations. I felt very comfortable shooting there and never had an issue from the event staff .. except when I was standing in the wrong place. Hey, welcome to my world

Still, I will probably send them an email, let them know what I'm doing and get a response. And, again, I definitely want to properly credit them. After all, the Expo itself may emerge as the "star" of the video

The other location concern is the venue that hosted the Expo, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This is just as important, perhaps more so, than the Expo. This is the physical venue in which I was shooting and what film festivals are concerned with. Again, I'm hoping I'm covered because of the event itself. And I also want to credit them

I want to start this process now. I am a long ways from a finished product but while I'm waiting for my shoot with Nadia and before I get lost in the editing, I want to make sure I have this covered.

Now we come to logging footage. I began this process when I took the shots off the cam and put them on my computer. My cam can shoot in a variety of formats. For this shoot I chose HD 1080p at 60 frames per second. This gives me the best possible quality and because most web hosting sites want to compress your video (usually to 720 sometimes 1080) I feel that shooting at double the normal frame rate of 30 frames per second gives me the best chance of keeping my footage as clean as possible Plus, the slo mo is awesome

My Sony records the footage to its own internal hard drive. It compresses, or wraps,  the footage to MTS files that can not be edited, not by Final Cut, not by any editing system. So I have to unwrap the files in order to be able to edit them. I use a program called Clirpwrap and unwrap the files to Apple's ProRes 422 standard, which keeps the files at their original resolution and makes for easy editing in Final Cut

After each day of shooting I downloaded the files to my computer, unwrapping them in the process. This cleared off the cam's hard drive and allowed me to do my initial orgainiztion: I targeted the unwrapped clips to a folder for each day of the Expo. Labelled them Thursday, Friday etc.

In traditional edits, like for a drama, I would log all the shots, pen and paper or with a computer logging program, describing each shot and it's location so that later, in the edit suite, I can quickly assemble these shots to match the script. In this case, at this point, I don't have a script. Eventually I will write some narration and if Nadia does her VO, that will constitute the script. What I need to do now is figure out what I have to make that latter process easier. In a sense, logging the clips is like writing a rough draft of a script

Some of the how I want to organize is obvious; for instance I want to put all the interviews into one location. That way, not matter how the video goes, I can easily find those clips. Now, you can do this kind of organization right in Final Cut. I can bring in folders from the computer, like the folders of clips organized by day and then create new folders, what FC calls Bins. I would rather do this work in my Mac's Finder. I created a folder called Interviews and dragged all of those clips over from the Day folders. It's easier to do in the Finder because I can expand the clips in the graphic interface so that they are easily identifiable.

This will be a rinse and repeat process. I can sub-folder this (yes, I just made up a verb, deal with it) as much as I desire. Folders for all cosplay, a folder for all footage from the North Building, a folder for all footage from the South building, a folder each for Celebs, Comics, Horror, etc Hopefully this will make it easier later on as I'm assembling the video

OK, this was probably a boring post and it deals with some of the less exciting aspects of video creation but it's all essential stuff and honestly, I enjoy this process. It gives me a chance to review all the footage, I can organize it, mark it and in some cases just trash the clips that will never be used

In the meantime, I did cut a little music video/trailer video that can be viewed here on my other blog

FINAL FAN EXPO SHOOT

So Sunday was the last day of Toronto Fan Expo and thereby (duh) the last day of my shoot. It was the day I was supposed to meet up with Nadia and follow her through her Fan Expo experience

When I first envisioned this project I was thinking I would follow around some ardent fan as they interacted with the rest of Nerdom. Well, that is not what I got. Nadia is not a fan nor a nerd nor a geek. She came in costume as Black Cat but she is not really a cosplayer either. She is a roleplayer but not the sort you would find at a family friendly event.

Nadia showed up complete with her Spiderman, her own photographer and a couple of other superheroes. Not to mention a backback filled with handcuffs, riding crops and caution tape she later used to bind poor old Spidey up.

Yeh, not your average fan.

She was very much in "play" mode and was not very interested in stopping and talking to me. Some of that had to do with her entourage, they quickly became lost and disorganized without her. Most of the day was spent me following Nadia as she was stopped every four feet to have her picture taken, being asked for interviews etc

It did not take long for the play bag to get opened and soon Spidey was handcuffed, wrapped in caution tape, collared and led around by Nadia on a leash. I was curious to see what the reactions from the giant crowd would be and they were overwhelmingly positive. There were a lot of giggles, many "holy shit look at that" and from one little boy "Daddy, what did Spiderman do???"

It was interesting how some of the dedicated comic nerds seemed to totally disregard the fetish aspect of the scene and concentrate on the nuances of the costumes "That's the Black Cat from Issue 20" "Oh no, I would say it was from earlier than that" etc etc

Although mainstream comics probably do not dabble much in fetish it certainly is a large component in the fan scene. Nadia was attracted to some of the cosplay elements like corsets and waspies of course but there was also a lot of art on display that almost mirrored her play.

I know that that fan fiction, stories written purely by fans, often veer into the erotic and two of the most popular areas are LGBT and fetish. Fifty Shades of Grey, after all, started out as fan fiction based on the Twilight vampire books

An interesting moment happened when Spiderman (real name Brandon) asked Nadia to reverse the roles. So he collared her and led her on the leash. Miss Nadia was clearly unamused. More interestingly, there was very little reaction from the crowd. They seemed much more interested when Nadia was in control

As I followed them around I began to wonder how all of this would fit into my video. As I stated in an earlier post it's counter intuitive to shoot all the B roll before you do the principle shoot. How am I going to bring all this together; hours of convention footage and interviews with eager fans and Nadia playing our her fetish games on the convention floor

What I need is context.

My first instinct was to gather some shots of Nadia as she encountered certain events on the floor, showing her the footage and getting her reaction on cam. Then I could cut that into the video, perhaps mostly as voice over. Then I could contrast that with the other interviews I have, showing the diversity of experiences people are seeking when they go to the expo

Or, I could further explore the fetish elements of fandom, from costplay and art (which is ripe with stilettos and corsets and chicks getting tied up) to the fan fiction to roleplaying. That would require more info, back ground research and really, more interviews with people into the fan-comic-fetish scene, not just Nadia's perspective. That sounds like a whole other video to me, and perhaps I will go there but that would be a larger project with much more work ahead

At this point I need to touch base with Nadia, get some interviews from her, try to get that context before I can even determine if I have an actual video here

FAN EXPO SHOOT DAY THREE

Two full days shooting at the Fan Expo. Sore feet, massively sore ankle, sore back and I'm actually kind of tired of seeing nubile female bodies in Spandex. I'm sure I'll get over that last part

It's been going well. My equipment choices have worked out well. Unfortunately, right at the end of today's shoot, I had an issue with my Rode shotgun mic. The base plat that slides on to the camera's hotshoe snapped. Which means for the moment that I can't easily fit it to the camera. What is really odd is that I was warned about that very thing by a total stranger less than three hours before it happened.

It was a clean break down the middle, one half of the base plate is still on the cam so I hope I can fix it. In the meantime I can use the Sony's shotgun for the shoot tomorrow

Tomorrow, the last day of the Expo, I will be shooting with Nadia. Up to this point I've been shooting a tone of B Roll and doing interviews with fans and exhibitors alike. Pretty generic stuff, really. I sort of fell back on my  old habit of making a promo video .. it would be a really really go promo video but that isn't what I'm going for here

I'm hoping that by following Nadia the video will go in a different direction. What I am looking for here is focus or, if you will, a focal point. I have a feeling that following Nadia and recording her and the reactions she will likely receive will make the video anything but generic

I have been shooting my interviews in various locations around the Expo in natural light. Mostly that has been working with me. The Sony has a big image sensor for the size of the cam and the 1080p 60fps is really getting everything it can out of the light. Fleshtones is where you begin to have problem with ambient light, particularly the various kinds of indoor lights.

Tomorrow I may bring my Lumahawk, a battery powered multi LED light. It is dimmable and I can adjust the colour temp, that is adjusting it from blue and yellow. I intend to use it with a diffuser and set to not quite full, I want to use it as "fill" adding warmth and tone to the skin. Nadia is quite pale, with bleach blond hair and her Black Cat costume is ... well .. black. So I don't want her face to ghost out and I don't want to lose the detail in her black outfit. That's when you need a light. Normally I would prefer indirect lighting, bouncing the light off a wall for instance but that won't be possible tomorrow, I will have to camera mount it. It will be worth a try though. The light is very .... well .. light so if it doesn't work out I can just throw it back into my pack

I've been packing my GoPro, it's so small I almost always do. I have yet to use it but perhaps I will find a way tomorrow. I like to set it up with it's wide angle and shoot long shots for time lapses. In the chaos of the Fan Expo I was leery about setting it up but I'll have people with me tomorrow

The way I'm shooting right now is entirely opposite how I would shoot a promo video. If it was based on an interview or central subject I would shoot that first then go out to shoot B Roll to match the interview. B Roll is cutaways, used to illustrate what the subject was talk about. What I did this time was shoot the B Roll first then shoot the subject.

But then, what I'm doing with Nadia is not really an inteview. It is true cinema verite, just letting things happen as they happen and recording that. A lot of my B Roll will work, if nothing else, as establishing shots: Here is the Expo, here are people other than Nadia at the expo etc. The interviews I've done, I'm not sure how they will fit in. Complimenting Nadia's experience? Contrasting it?

I'm letting Fate write this script. God, I better go talk to her agent

FAN EXPO SHOOT DAY ONE

Yesterday, Thurs Aug 28 was my first day at Fan Expo. It was the opening day, a half day really, from 4 pm to 8 pm

It's always big but this year it's even bigger, taking up both halls of the Metro Convention Centre. I have two purposes for attending the Expo, making my documentary and attending panels and networking to promote my graphic novel concept, The Howl. There were no panels in which I was interested yesterday so I went with film making in mind

I had to put some thought into what gear I would taking. I'm a one man band as it were (and we are glad that that is only a euphemism, me in any kind of band would be beyond nightmare) so I have to bring gear that will get me what I want but that will also allow me to travel light.

There was not doubt that I was going to bring my Soney NX cam. It is tiny, it is tough and I love the image quality. It allows me to shoot in a variety of HD formats, from 20 fps (frames per second) to 14 to 60. I knew I wasn't going to shoot in 24 fps, the oh so beloved "film look". The quality of that speed on the Sony is pretty good but it is most suited to exterior shots, particularly night or fall type lighting. Inside, in artificial lighting I actually prefer to shoot at 60 fps 1080p.

It does not look like a film. Well I am not shooting a film, I am shooting a video. The images are bright, clean, sharp and vibrant. The film look has its place but I like shooting video. And I think for this project, this clear sharp video is exactly what I want.

The NX is a remarkably stable little cam. It has a floating lens and very good image stabilization but nothing replaces a tripod for steadiness, especially if you plan to do interviews and "streeters" which I certainly wanted to do. There are many stabilization options out there. I have several of them.

Fan Expo attracts a lot of video crews, both official and unofficial. The trend these days is to use a DSLR just so you can get that film look. I like the image quality of these cameras but for me, they are not EFP (electronic field production) cameras, that is cameras that you can use on the fly, on the run, in fluid situations

DSLRs are, after all, still cameras. And although most of them have image stabilization is a common feature it is stabilization for still photography. The rigs that these DSLR shooters use make me giggle, not only is the cam in a big cage (with a video return monitor, mics) it seems the operator is as well

For yesterday's shoot I decided to bring my trusty Monfrotto monopod. This thing is old. At least twenty five years. It's a bit bit up but it's a beast, you may be able to kill it but you can't wound it. It is made from high quality aluminum, it is light but tough as hell, I have put some very heavy cameras on it without hesitation. It has three sections with quick release tabs so I can extend it and retract it very quickly. It does not have a quick release head, which sometimes is a problem, but generally I screw it on to the cam and leave it there; fully retracted it's a little under two feet long and makes a nice handle.

The one thing the Monfrotto lacks that I would love to have is a pan and tilt head but I'm working on that.

My next concern was audio. Like all camcorders the Sony has a built in cam and it's not bad. Far better than any built in cam of any DSLR. But I wanted to do interviews and in a big noisy environment of the Expo, the little condensor mic would not cut it. My old Sony handycam was a consumer cam and id not have mic inputs. The NX, for all it's diminutive size, is a pro cam. It comes with an audio deck with XLR (big boy audio) inputs and a shotgun mic. It's a good shotgun mic but I have a Rode mic that really is full on pro and and I can clamp that to the Sony.

I shot a couple of interviews last night in very noisy areas were I could barely hear the person but the mic did a remarkable job, overall very clear and with a bit of filtering in post, I will be very happy with the results.

One of the days of the Expo I will probably bring my new stabilizer, a wierd looking thing with counterbalances that allows graceful, smooth tracking shots. It's a bit cumbersome to pack but the monopod works well in its retracted position, giving me extra stability.

I'm off to the Expo today. I will take my gear of course and shoot as much as I can (the Sony has a 90 gig HD that allows for, at highest quality, about 9 straight hrs of shooting which should do very well) but today will be more about panels and networking and trying to sell the graphic novel script.

But yeh, I will definitely still be in my annoying-old-guy-with-a-cam mode. Beware, nerds, beware

THE NEW PROJECT: THE FAN EXPO DOC

I've been lucky in my video career to have worked in a variety of environments.

I worked as part of a production crew for Seneca College Media Productions where we produced video training tapes (yes, tape as in video tape Google it) and promotional material for the college. It was a great first job; my principle duties were as a VTR op doing everything from logging tapes to operating the decks in the A/B Roll edit bay .. don't google that, I suspect you won't find out what the hell that means. But I was also able to go on shoots, getting valuable hands on experience in lighting, audio and some camera work

I have had brief forays into TV .. and we should all be glad they were brief. I worked for YTV as a VTR op and quickly learned that the control room of a TV enterprise was not for me.

My other TV gig was as the on-air promotions writer at the Shopping Channel. This suited me much better, drawing on my skills as a writer and my background in Promotions. Alas, all good things come to an end as it did one Black Friday for about 40 of us

For a year I ran a training program sponsored by the Bramption Youth Initiative and the John Howard Society .. don't ask me why, it just was. I loved that job, spreading my bullshit .. er .. knowledge to people learning the basics of video production and creating some very good videos for community public service organizations

Then I entered the longest phase of my career, working as an editor and writer for Videopulse Productions, creating a wide variety of non broadcast video: Promo, corporate, training and live event. Lots and lots and lots of live event, principally weddings.

After about 10 yrs that company folded and I went freelance. Mostly I earned my living as a live event editor with the odd promo video  thrown in. For these videos I was able to do everything, writing, camera as well as the post production.

Add to that my college "movies" I consider myself very lucky to have worked in and create a wide variety of videos. I have also created several videos for film festivals, some of which brought me some success. The video below won third place at the Amplify Me Video Festival in Florida



Are You There from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.
The one area in which I have no experience is the documentary/reality field. Well, let's change that.
I have been attending comic cons and the massive Fan Expo in Toronto for many years now. I usually go for a day, buy some comics, some games, some art and shoot video which I turn into music style videos for my own amusement

Here's one that I did for Comic Con last year


Toronto Comic Con 2014 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

This year, the 20th anniversary of the Fan Expo, I decided to change things up a bit. I'm going for all four days of the Expo (well three and a half) with the intent of shooting not a promo/trailer style vid but a documentary

My new Sony NX handycam is proving to be a pretty amazing cam for such a small package, I have some solid audio and stabilizing gear and I think this will be a great opportunity to really see what the package can do

Documentaries tend to be made as they are made, that is as you shoot and collect footage, the story is written. But I still like to have a direction.  I will have a lot of access, with this time available to me, so I can shoot stuff I never have before, telling the story of the expo in a general sense. I hope to encounter people who may be willing to quickly jump on cam and talk to me, what we call "streeters" or "man on the street"

But as Oliver said: "But I want more" And that is Oliver Twist, by the way, but it could equally be Oliver North

I wanted to go beyond the sound bites you get from streeters. I wanted to find someone who was coming to the Expo, get their permission to "follow" them and document their experience. I would mix it in with interview footage that would give some background on the person, why they went there, what their interests are etc

But where would I find someone who would agree to this? Hello Craigslist my old friend. I put an ad on the site basically outlining what I was looking for. I guess I was envisioning some young person, an avid fan of comics/anime/sci fi/cosplay who was going to the expo to show off their costume and hang out with their friends

What I got, was Nadia

She is a young woman attending the expo for the first time. She is going with a guy who has been around the comicon scene for a while, she will be Black Cat to his Spiderman. Nadia has very little background in comics or fandom but comes from the fetish cosplay world.

We met and I found a very bright, very excited, very cute girl who was happy to enter into what, for her, is a new world and was very happy to have me follow her and record her reactions, her thoughts etc.

Not what I expected but I think it may give me a new perspective on the situation. So we are going to meet up Sunday and spend the day at the Expo together. I predict that it will not be dull.

One thing I know about documentaries, the post is important and it can take a while. I do intend to shoot a lot of footage (really Vic? No shit) so the process will take a while. But I intend to document, as much as I can, on this blog.

So, stay tuned, same Bat time, same Black Cat With a Whip channel

A VISION OF CAMERAS GONE BY

There are guys who are car guys. Car guys may make their living off or with their cars or they are just guys who love cars. These kinds of guys will go through cars in their life, sometimes lots of cars. Sometimes they may have multiple cars at the same time. Other times, they may have cars that no longer run but they can't bear to be parted from them.

These kinds of guys may write posts about their cars, old and new

Well, I once posted about my new car but I am not a car guy. I am, however, a camera guy, a video camera guy. I used them to make a living and I use em just for fun. And over the years I have owned several of them

This past week I began to own a new one

The first camera I owned was a Hitachi VHS camcorder. You remember VHS don't you, video tapes that produced an image that was oversaturated, fuzzy and carried the audio mixed in with the video .. wait, you don't even know what "tape" is  .. Um, move on. That cam was a huge clunky thing that recorded to tapes the size of a dictionary but at least it used CCDs (chips) instead of tubes, as did the cameras that learned to shoot with.

I went a lot of places with that big old camera, including Collette and mine's first vacation together, to Quebec City

Quebec City 1992 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.
VHS was a consumer format, both to watch and to record on. Pros in those days where using 1" tape for broadcast and cams that shot on 3/4" tapes for field recording. The first "prosumer" format was probably S-VHS. This was a format used by wedding guys, corporate producers, even cable stations and some smaller TV stations. My second cam was a Panasonic SVHS-C cam. It was considerably smaller than the Hitachi, not quite a palmcorder but very manageable. It had a great lens on it and three CCDs to the Hitachi's one. It also had a superior mic

I liked that Panasonic but the problem was with the format. SVHS-C was a smaller tape which led to that smaller cam. A full size SVHS tape was capable of recording two hours .. the SVHS-C tapes were around 30 minutes. And the image, although better than VHS could produce a decent image in well lighted exterior conditions but pretty much sucked everywhere else. Still, the smaller size of thing opened up a lot of possibilities. I took that cam on our trip to Belize.

Mayan Cities of Belize from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

That camera eventually went the way of the dinosaurs as did its format. Mini-DV would my next flavour in video formats. These were little tapes that could hold up to an hour of footage and although still compressed, were definitely superior to S VHS

I bought a little consumer mini DV Sanyo from a local guy off of eBay. This was a true palmcorder, much smaller than the Panasonic, and I could literally carry it in my pocket. I began to take that cam everywhere with me, including out with the dogs. This was never a camera with professional ambitions but it had a wicked long optical zoom, a flip out LCD monitor and was surprisingly rugged. It was this cam that got me into the habit of chronicling everything .. er .. blame that guy from eBay


The Nautical Festival from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

That little cam was fun but it was far from being professional. Mini DV was a decent tape format but the little Sanyo could not use it to its full potential. Enter my next eBay purchase: The Canon XL1. This was another large camera, almost the size of that hold VHS. But it was a true professional camera: A great lens (that was interchangeable), a solid shotgun mic, the ability to input audio on two channels, XLR audio jacks and a full range of manual options. I loved that cam, I still have it, this format has passed us by but I hung on to the cam because it was a truly pro camera .. maybe not broadcast (though it was certainly used for that) but pro.

I shot a lot of video with that camera, there are a lot to choose from so I pretty much picked this one at random


Nuit Blanche Toronto from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

When Collette and I were planning our trip to Iceland I was thinking of taking the XL1 with me. But the thing is damn big and I knew lugging it around lava fields and glacial run offs may not be practical. The Sanyo handycam showed me the advantage of something small that you can take anywhere, but I was spoiled by the Canon's image quality and its pro features.

Collette knew she wanted to buy some camera gear for the trip so I accompanied her to Henry's and I met the Sony HDR, a palm sized cam that boasted two important features that I had never before used: HD video and an internal hard drive. In fact, the HDR has a massive hard drive, 120 gigs, you can fit around 15 hrs of full quality footage on it, and I've never come close to filling it up.

When I bought the cam I envisioned taking it as a backup to the XL1. Luckily I bought the cam advance enough of the trip that I had a lot of time to shoot with it. I was blown away. The Zeiss lens, the CMoss image sensor and the HD format produced images much better than I expected. It did not have the features of the Canon; I can't plug a mic into it, the manual controls are very limited but the image quality is superior the mini DV format in most ways

Needless to say, that little Sony was the one only camcorder I took to Iceland


ICELAND EDITED: DAY THREE from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

That cam has come with us on many trips and many adventures. As I said, over the last two years the HDR has shot most of the the videos on this blog, including those I've entered into film festivals. I love the image quality but it is a consumer cam. I've been planning projects where this cam may not be enough. I miss the pro features of my Canon.

DSLRs have come into the video way in a big way. It's not surprising. Their high quality lenses and huge image sensors and full range of manual and automatic controls allows these "still" cams to shoot very high quality HD video images. The lenses and the image sensors allow DSLRs to give you more control over your depth of field, creating sharp foreground images and soft background images, even inside in tight confines, giving a normally flat video image a sense of depth

Collette bought a Nikon D7000 for its improved photographic capabilities but it also shoots video. I do like the quality of the video but for me, it's not a video camera. For one thing, we don't have what Nikon terms VR lenses, or vibration reduction lenses, handholding the thing is a nightmare. I've noticed guys shooting with VR lenses though and they have to use steadicams or huge elaborate rigs just to get a clean shot. That does not suit my cam-in-pocket run n gun style of shooting. And although you can plug a decent mic into the Nikon, the audio capabilities fail in comparison to my Canon.

DSLRs are used by people making TV commercials, even series and small movies, situations where you have lots of time and lots of control over your shots. DSLRS can shoot at 24 frames per second (opposed to the TV standard of 30) and it gives the video a rich, dynamic range that people thinks approximates film. This footage is heavily processed in post. Some day I may make a little movie but I don't stay up at night worrying about it. The Nikon is Collette's cam, she has no problem with letting me use it but I have not been inspired to buy one for myself


St Lawrence Market Neighbourhood from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

So what's a boy to do? I wanted more pro features, I wanted the ability to shoot in other formats but I need something small and steady and easy to use on the move .. well a boy finds a deal on a new cam and he goes and snares it.

Last week I bought myself another Sony palmcorder. The HVR-NX30U is a small HD cam with a hard drive but unlike the HVR it is not a consumer cam.

As you can see from the pic above, the NX is not your average consumer palmcorder. Much like my old Canon it has an audio deck that allows you to record on each channel and set the recording level on each channel. It also used XLR jacks which allows you to use very high end mics and other audio gear. The whole deck, along with the shotgun mic can be removed if weight and space is a concern. Under that deck is another mic, the built in zoom mic, which is pretty good and you can plug in a mic that uses a mini plug, like the nice Rode shotgun I bought for the Nikon

This cam can record a variety of HD video formats, including at 24 fps. One of the things I'm most interested in is the stability you can get with this cam. Besides electronic image stabilization, the Sony features a floating lens; it should give you the ability to shoot very steady shots even when hand held

It has a lot of manual settings. Like the HDR most of its options are electronic and accessed through the touch screen, the problem I found with that cam was going through the long and somewhat clunky menus. The NX allows you to assign three functions (for instance exposure, iris and shutter) to three buttons that live right on the LCD screen, making them easy to access. Even better you can assign another function, like focus, to a physical knob on the body of the cam; I'm an old video guy and I love the feel or an actual dial you can actually turn to bring things in and out of focus .. or whatever you need

It has all the other pro functions that I was trained on: Color bars, audio levels, zebra stripes (to indicate "hot" spots in the shot), time code and much more. Very much like the XLR but in a tiny package and with the advantage of HD and digital recording

I can definitely do pro work with this cam, promo vids to web for instance and more film festival work. It's also small and light and steady and great for taking on trips with Collette .. or rambles in the park with Terra

So here is the first of many adventures to come

G Ross Lord Park: Sony HXR-NX30U First Shoot from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THE LAZY PERSON'S GUIDE TO SUBMITTING TO FILM FESTIVALS

Film festival season is once again upon us. All over the world wannabe movie makers are grabbing their DSLRs and homemade steadicam rigs and shooting oblique angles of their friends with lots of focus pulls .. you have to have focus pulls.

Or, you could be like me, old and cranky and lazy. And go through footage you shot a year ago and pull that into something that closely resembles the brief of the festival. Or be even lazier and just re-edit an existing video

Case in point, two videos I've recently submitted to two different festivals. These are 69 second film festivals, which is fairly self explainatory. I like the 60 second format, I actually like anything that puts restrictions on my film making, my professional career made me deadline oriented and I tend to work better when someone provides me with parameter to work within.

Freedom .. scary.

The 60 Second or Less Film Festival comes out of Washington College in the US and was open to both students and non students. By the time I found the festival, the entry deadline was just a few days away,  so to wiggle myself off the hook, there really wasn't time to create a new video. There is a special award in the festival for films with some kind of social awareness. I decided to recycle the video I made last year for the Amplify Me festival in Florida, that festival's brief was to create a video that addressed interpersonal communications in modern society. My original video won third place at that festival so I thought, what the hell, let's see what I could do.

The original video had a running length of two minutes and forty three seconds, a short video but still far too long for a 60 second film fest. So it had to be recut. Yay. I like editing things. Comes with being an editor. I especially like to edit my own stuff, I am definitely a less is more kind of guy.

Are You There, the name of the original film, was a lot of shots of people on the street, original music, information screens, layers of sound effects and voice over segments. I built the video step by step, and as is my way, worked very hard to pare off any "fat" but now I would have to just hack the thing to pieces. Here's the original video


My original thought was to was to cut out a lot of the people shots and maintain the data screens. As I worked, it was clear that that would not be possible. So then I had to decide which info screens had to go in order for the film still to work. I had to go through them and decide: Which of these screens point the viewer to the message I'm trying to convey; in this case, which screens (and which shots for that matter) told the story of how cell phone technology may actually be pulling us apart rather than bringing us together. Here's the 60 version that I submitted, I think  it was successful


The second film festival that I cannibalized a video for was one that I had entered before. Matt Lawrence runs an annual film festival out in Vashon Washington. I submitted a film to the festival last year and Matt invited me to do another one.

The deadline for this one was tight but not impossible. Last year I had submitted a kind of creepy little video and I wanted to do something different this year, something more fun. I had just thrown together a little video for fun, just for the heck of it and I thought it may fit the bill. It was, of course, too long for the festival.


So once again I had to go through the video and cut out the fat. Not from Terra, she's lean and mean .. but you know what I mean. Again, I had a video with images and info screens .. are we getting the hint that I perhaps disdain dialogue or voice over? Anyway, the challenge was to take this 3 minute video, cut it down to one minute and still get my point across. First step was to cut out some of the pics for each "section", so instead of having three shots of Terra for each info screen have one or two.

That still left me way over the target length. After some time of wasting my time (and let's be honest, if you're going to waste your time, you'd rather do it yourself) a lightbulb flickered on over my head. OK it's a dim light bulb, coated in dust but it still goes on .. for a while. It became obvious: Instead of having the "dialogue" screens on black, as separate shots, super them over the pics. And of course just tighten up the pics, trimming a couple seconds off each. This pretty easily got me to my target length; each one of this white on black screens was 3 to 4 seconds, but superimposing them, I cut out a lot of time without much altering the nature of the video. Here is the final product.


There is another 60 film festival on the horizon but for this one, I may actually have to get off my lazy ass and create something original.

No wait, by re editing or recycling existing videos I'm not being lazy, I'm being environmentally aware.

TORONTO URBAN FILM FESTIVAL: A CANNIBAL VIDEO

If you've ridden the Toronto subway system in the last few years you have probably noticed the large monitors that hang from the ceiling on every platform. The screens display train info as well as news headlines etc. They also serve as the venue for the Toronto Urban Film Festival.

TUFF is an open call festival for videos. It has only two restrictions: A 60 second length limit and due to the venue (a subway platform) they have to be silent.

I enjoy the 60 second time frame; I tend to be more creative when I have restrictions. Sixty seconds is actually a long time, most TV commercials are 15 or 30 seconds and pay attention to the amount of information packed into one of those.

The silent thing intrigued me as well. I've never made a silent video. So much of my personal style is tied into using music as an important expressive element in my videos. I enjoyed the challenge and it also bypassed the issue I often have of needing to create music to which I have licensing rights.

Content wise the festival really didn't have any restrictions, the only guideline was to create a video that would "appeal to an urban audience" Um, right.

I quickly realized that I had a work in progress that may be suitable for this festival. I've been working on a video, ostensibly for an architectural film festival in Argentina with an emphasis on the city. That deadline is still a couple of months away so I've been taking my time with the video, basically creating a love song to Toronto. That seemed to work for the TUFF; the original video currently has a running time of just over five minutes but I thought I could probably use it as the basis for a one minute silent video.

So I cannibalized that longer video for this one. The original video has many layers of audio; voice overs, ambient sound, sound effects, music. It also has a lot of keys, that being titles superimposed over images. I knew I had to ditch the audio of course and I knew I had to be careful with titles as well. People standing on a platform waiting for a train aren't going to be inclined to do a lot of reading so I knew I had to keep any titles short and to the point.

A lot of my work is cut to a beat or more precisely, cut to a rhythm. You don't need music to appreciate a rhythm. Or at least that's my theory. This video has a rhythm or perhaps it creates a rhythm, without music, at leas that's the intent.

Now for the purpose of this viewing I have striped in some music, part of the soundtrack from the cannibalized video. There is a part of me that just needs to do that I guess. If so inclined it may be interesting to watch the video once with the audio then watch it again with the audio off, as it would be shown on the subway, if it gets that far

NEW YORK CITY: ALIVE AT NIGHT

When we went to New York City I brought the handycam to record out holiday there. Now that I've posted those videos as a series that begins with this one I'm looking at the footage with a different perspective in mind.

I like having stock footage of New York City that I of course have total license to and I'm sure I'll be using it in ways I never anticipated in videos that I never knew I'd make ... if that's confusing think about how I feel. That came out of my head

I love cities at night. I have a lot of night time footage of Toronto but nothing specifically shot to be turned into a video. Let's put that on the list .. damn, that's a long list

The footage I shot in New York wasn't really what I would have chosen to shoot for a video that reflects that city's incredible night life. Well some of it is but I would have shot more, and different angles, and would have brought an tripod; I would have shot more detail shots, more extreme close ups that I like to use to contrast against wider shots

Still, I was happy with the footage I got. Most of it was shot at ground level in Times Square, 42nd Street and the Broadway area. Then we were up on the Empire State Building after the sun went down, some pretty strong shots I think

So I decided to cut together a little video of night time in New York City. I don't have specific plans for this video, I was at one point going to enter it into the National Geo Traveller Storyteller contest so license free music was a necessity. I chose another video for that competition but I decided to stick with my own music, just to have something on the shelf I could enter into contests

As I tend to do I layer a lot of audio here. Ambient audio is the sound associated with a shot, so when I put in a clip of people in Times Square I kept its audio. But I also have wild audio here to; wild audio being sound recorded on site but not necessarily belonging to the shot. So I have sounds of sirens and traffic from another clip that I stripe under the Times Square footage. I use pre recorded sound effects too; I have some open license studio sound effects of generic traffic etc that like to bed under the ambient and wild sound, keeping the volume low but using it as a deep background

I definitely need some new original music. I'm continuing to try to build songs in Garageband and Soundtrack Pro; they are great tools but I'm no musician. And I'm spoiled. I'm used to using songs from the best musicians in the world to cut to and use as background. May be time soon to start begging

At any rate, here is New York City: Alive at Night. Feedback is always welcome

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC STORYTELLERS COMPETITION

This is a competition hosted by National Geographic Travellers magazine and their corresponding online presence. Obviously the emphasis is to be on travel and "telling a story" The competition has several categories including Video, Photo and Blog. Naturally I decided to submit a video

For an earlier competition I had created a video that contrasted the stone and water environment of Georgian Bay Ontario with that of Iceland. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the outcome, partly because I had to tailor the video to the specifications of that competition

But I liked the original idea. Both areas are defined by the interaction of stone and water; the Canadian Shield of the Georgian Bay and volcanic rock of Iceland. In both cases one is impressed by the power of water that has carved and shaped the stone of thousands of years. This is the story I wanted to tell

I already had the shots I wanted so I fiddled around with the structure of the video. At first I was thinking of traditional travel videos that use narration to tell their story. I wrote and self recorded some voice over but was not satisfied with the result.

I have always been about, when possible, letting the visuals tell the story and use music as the structure. For a competition like this one must have the rights to the music you use; and although I think Moby is a terrific guy and he was generous to permit some of his music to be used for the Vimeo competition last year, I didn't want to test said generosity. So I created my own soundtrack in Garage band

Music bed goes down, video gets edited to it; nothing terribly complex here, just contrasting the two locations. But it still needed a little something. So instead of using narration I just created a few simple title cards: White lettering on a black screen. I decided to work with a black screen instead of superimposing or "supering" the titles over video. I wanted to keep a good pace to the video, I wanted to keep it moving, and white on black is less distracting, the titles can be quickly and easily read without disturbing the rhythm of the music.

The soundtrack is more than just music. When not using a voice over, I always feel you have an opportunity to layer the audio, to use that soundtrack as a kind of narration. So along with the music I have ambient audio, that being the sound associated with a clip, like the sound of the waterfall. I also striped in (an old old video editing term that means inserting sound under a clip) audio not tied to a clip; there are boat sounds and general water sounds recorded elsewhere that I blended in with the song itself

I was not satisfied with my first interpretation of this concept but I'm happy with this one (as happy as I ever am with a video) I have no idea if this video will be successful in the competition. I know they will be receiving thousands of entries and frankly I find the brief of "tell us a story" to be incredibly vague. So when I enter something like this, I just try to make the best video I can by my own standards within my interpretation of the brief.

Officially entered now, we'll see what happens.

ONE MINUTE FILM FESTIVAL

My little video Forever was selected as one of 60 films shown at the festival du film minute de lille in France on Dec 3

I don't know the total number of entries but I do know that the 60 were paired down from something ...

No idea how the video has fared, but it was shown at the festival live in front of hundreds of people and for a panel of judges

I'll keep you tuned

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO MY OWN VIDEO

Thursday, pretty much on a whim, I decided to do a video for the One Minute Film Festival. No, it was not the video that will feature various version of me, that's still waiting on logistics.

I was mulling over a concept and realized I could do it using stock footage from my Moby video and some shots I could do right here at the house.

I wanted to do a video addressing the idea that you can capture and preserve memories or images or ideas ... like a video maker may do. We can record something and preserve it but that very act aren't we already altering? It's an old concept, about the very fact of observing something already removes it from that moment.

So I decided to use some of my footage of Moniquea, record a little voice over of an obsessed video maker and lead up to a shot or two expressing the futility of making something unique.

That was the idea but when I was done, I think I came up with something different. Now, I could have considered this a failure and gone back to the drawing board, so to speak, but I kind of liked what I had. The one minute time constraint is very interesting. I imagined that it would require a great deal of discipline but at least in this instance, it became something organic.

This particular video festival allows you to enter five different films so I thought What the Hell, let's go with it. I would appreciate feed back on this one; after all, it surprised me as much as it may you.

"Forever"

60 SECOND FILM FESTIVAL: 2 CONCEPTS

So I have ideas for a couple of ideas for the Sixty Second Film Festival which closes around the middle of next month. Don't get excited, we all know what can happen to my original ideas.

The first idea is just a little humorous idea where I get play around with a few video concepts in which I've dabbled before, but I want to take it a bit further. The idea is perfectly me ... I mean, really me. As in there will be five characters in the video and I will be all of them. At the same time. You've all seen this, it's a very old idea in both film and TV. The basic idea is to have me on the left side of the screen and me on the right side of the screen at the same time.

It's not a very complex technique to pull off. Basically what you need to do is set your shot of whatever set you intend to use, take a long shot of the set as its empty, then film the two shots; me on the right side then me on the left. In Final Cut I will lay the shot of the empty set on my bottom, or base layer. Then stack the two shots of me, so that I have three shots on top of each other. With just a two shot I can use the Crop tool, wiping away half the empty shot, to reveal both aspects of me. With five me's, it becomes a bit trickier, I will have to use the Crop in accordance with a garbage matte. basically drawing an invisible frame around each character so that all the backgrounds blend in seamlessly.

The post aspect is rather simple. But for this to work, it's the shooting that is the key. If you don't shoot it properly, you can't "fix it in post"

There are a few keys to properly shooting this:

1) Tripod. You have to shoot this on a tripod. Your camera cannot move at all, in any of the shots or the illusion will be shattered. That background is like your canvas, it cannot move or change a bit.

2) Framing. This goes very much with the first point. You have to frame the shot working out where all the instances of you are going to be then lock that shot down. Once it's framed you can't changed it so you really need to be sure you have it right.

3) Blocking. This follows the point number two. You have to think what your characters ... all of the "you's" are going to be doing. You need to be careful that one shot of you doesn't overlap the other. I am no matting wizard and I am no After Affects pro and that's the kind of digital firepower you would need to get as complex as having me shake hands with me .. that ain't happening for this project. But I do want to be able to have conversations with me so I have to know where each instance of me will be in the shot so I can turn as if I'm talking to Victor ..... damn, I could never do this drunk

4) Location. This is important as well. Firstly I need a set large enough to be able to accomadate 4 or 5 of me moving around without overlapping too much. I also need something that I can evenly light, you want to avoid flickering shadows etc. I won't be doing this outside. Besides moving light situations there is too much that can move in the frame, interior is easier.

So I'm seeing if I can shoot in one of Collette's schools, like a corridor , that will give me space and allow me to enter and exit the shot off screen. Stay tuned.

The second concept is still very much nascent. It hinges on Pirandello, a theatrical conceipt of which I am extremely fond. It's a kind of illusion; I am about to fool you, what you are about to see is dramatic, it's not real, but by the time I'm finished, you'll forget that.

The concept involves memory, images, and our attempt to capture the former in the latter. It's becoming what, for me, is a pretty typical production; I will need an actress but she won't really have a character and she really won't be doing anything. Gosh, they line up at my door for these parts.

Anyway, those are the plans. Let's see if any of it pans out

SIREN

So, one has a plan but we all know about plans ... especially with me.

Time and personal circumstances curtailed me from making the video for the song Siren, for the Kmag Video Competition, that I had originally conceived.

So it became a challenge to get the video done in just a few days, without onscreen talent, and of course with no budget. My interpretation of the song remained the same: A woman pushed to the breaking point by indifference and making a sudden break and would she be missed at all.

In this version of the video, my camera became the actress, as did dozens of unknowing women in the streets of Toronto. Once again, my city was essentially a character in one of my videos.

This competition had no restrictions on with what format the video had to be in. My original idea was to use the Canon XL1 and shoot it in standard def, mostly because with that camera I have a lot more control over exposure, focus, contrast etc. But when this became another run and gun production, the Sony Handycam became my weapon of choice. As did Collette's Nikon D-80 SLR.

I'm happy with the final product; it's shot at 30 fps (frames per second) instead of 25 fps so it looks like video, not film. Some of the interior shots could have used some colour grading but I was not going for the "film effect". To the contrary, I played with some of the shots to make them more "video like" with almost the colour saturation of old VHS.

Many of the shots in the video have been affected and I'm hoping that these affects/filters add to the language of the video. With the exterior shots, the crowd shots specifically I wanted to create a sort of unsure, unreal, confused impression ... the camerawork should add to this inpression as well.

For the interior shots I built filter effects that (hopefully) give a sense of nostalgia, or things left behind, perhaps even a dream like effect.

Watching the video myself I began to wonder if I have some kind of fetish for ladies shoes ... but the intent with these shots was to give the story a more universally female skew.

I'm not completely happy with this finished product but the deadline is fast approaching and I could have fiddled with it forever. But I am also happy with it, I think it conveys the emotion of the song.

You tell me







HD version here

SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION PART TWO

A few months ago I decided to create a video for the Are We Connected film competition sponsored by Amplify Me in the US

It was one of my typical on the fly productions and I had fun making it

I was just informed that the video won third place in the festival. That finishes just outside the money but very exciting nonetheless. At this point I have no idea how many videos were entered in the competition, there could have been three for all I know.

I don't care. Don't mess with my bliss

My little video, or a segment from it, will be included as part of the film festival Amplify Me is hosting in Florida on Sept 22. So that's good news

Bad news is, this only encourages me to keep cranking out these videos. Speaking of which, I better get back to it

If you haven't seen Are You There, here is the low rez version, for the hi rez version, please click on this link

Are You There

OK SIREN, SHUDDUP, I HEARD YA ALREADY

OK, I've never claimed to be bright ... all right, I have claimed to be bright. But not sensible.

I kept thinking of the song Siren from the Bungle Music Video challenge and I can't get it out of my head. I pretty much talked myself out of my original concept for the video and with only a week to go, it really be impossible now to execute.

But perhaps there was a reason why I backed away from that idea. (Yes I'm trying to justify my own procastination, it's pretty much what I do here) That original concept took the literal interpretation of the song, of a woman breaking away, discarding her past and needing to be alone, and expanding on it slightly by using several actresses portraying the same roll ... but still keeping things pretty literal.

As I began to consider actually cranking out a video I thought: How can I do this without actresses, without locales and keep true to the essence of the song. And it struck me: I didn't want to do this literally, it was what I was rebelling against. I want the same feel of the song, make the singer's plight more universal and what better way to do that than without any characters at all ...

Stop. Put the phone down. Don't call the looney bin. I'm alright. Well, as alright as I've ever been.

I was thinking too big before. I was thinking in terms of a real production, one that would be produced by a real production company. I ain't none of that. I'm just me, the Idiot with A Camera. I want to do things gonzo, I want the challenge of being shoestring, that's what I like about these challenges.

So here I go. Four days to go. My Sony HD cam, Collette's Nikon, some props at the house, shooting in the city ...

Buckle up.

SIREN SANG BUT I COULDN'T HEAR

Siren is the title of the song in the Bungle Music Video Contest. I had developed a strong concept for the video; I heard it a song of female enpowerment, of a woman "letting go" of all the baggage from a bad relationship, a woman who had given her all and gotten nothing in return. They lyrics and Ayah's powerful vocals could not let me interpret it any other way.

So I thought of taking an illustrative, rather than an interpretive approach to the song, basically telling the story through images. So following the woman on her journey of not only leaving her man, but leaving behind all those things that were holding her back. So I would need an actress and several locations to track her journey. OK, so that was doable, I cold contact Moniquea, the actress I used for After and get things going; but I had only a week for shooting.

But as I thought more and more about it a new concept came to mind. I wanted to make the song more universal. Not just about one woman but about all women. So what if I storyboarded the shots for that one actress ... and had several actresses play them out. So if Girl One got out of bed, looked at the empty spot where he should be and then exit the room, other girls would do the exact same shot. The women would be going on a journey, "letting go" as the song saids and at the end, they would all meet up.

Yes, I liked this concept very much. I even began to block out the shots. But of course this created a new set of issues: Now I needed to find more actresses, and to do it properly, have them all together on one day so I could correctly match the shots. I would have to coordinate these actresses to get together on one or two days.

And I had less than two weeks to get the whole thing done, production and post production. I have to leave a good solid 10 hours or so at the end to upload the HD video. The logistics began to eat me up. I was already conceding defeat.

Then Hayley passed. And I just find myself now, about a week away from the deadline, out of time and perhaps too emotionally beat up to properly attack this project. It's too bad, I liked the song and I liked my concept but I don't think I can make this deadline.

I still intend to contribute to the 60 Second Film Festival. I have a few concepts for that so stay tuned.

TWO NEW CHALLENGES

That's right, two new film making challenges .. shut up, sleep is over rated anyway.

The first one is an international film challenge, out of France, The One Minute Film Challenge. That's pretty much it, create a film that is exactly 60 seconds long, including credits. The deadline is Oct 13, they except any high quality video format and you can enter up to 5 videos.

It's an interesting challenge in a few ways; on one hand you have the time restriction but on the other hand the challenge is wide open, as long as you keep the video to a minute, you can make any kind of video you desire. I have a few ideas at this stage and I could see doing more than one video

The second challenge is another music video. The Bungle Music Video Challenge is to create a music video to a track created by drum/bass musician Bungle and featuring the voice of Ayah. That is the only brief, just make a video to the track. It's a very fast paced song, the kind that normally to which I would do a lot of edits; it would require an actress I think, locations, maybe costume changes .. yes, I already have ideas.

The deadline for this challenge is Sept 18 ... did I mention not really wanting to sleep for a while? The One Minute Challenge is certainly doable, the music challenge is going to be tight, it's going to take organization, pre production and some very methodical shooting.

Hang on