My Blog Has Moved to ZombieSquid.com

I have moved my blog to the website for my production company, ZombieSquid Pictures.

Visit the new blog at

zombiesquid.com/blog-posts/

He Buries My Mistakes - TCF201 Short Film... Finished!

I'm taking TCF201 (Intro to Video Production) this semester. For our final projects, we were split up into teams, assigned roles, and left to our own devices to produce a finished film. The screening for our films was yesterday and I was impressed with the films the other teams produced. They honestly weren't nearly as bad as I expected.

I ended up Director of Photography on William Mason's He Buries My Mistakes. I shot with 2 Canon Rebel T2i cameras using the 18-55mm kit lens along with a 24mm and a sweet 50mm.

I ended up editing the film, as well, after we had some issues with the cut that our assigned editor delivered.

Here's the film we ended up with in the end. It's the story of a father and son who experience a life altering and unexpected event during a long drive at night. 

The Paul Jones Art Gallery Dedication Video

I recently edited this video for the University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences.


The music is an original composition written for this piece by Rae Marshall of Rae Marshall Photography.

You can find more info about the gallery here:

http://art.ua.edu/site/galleries/paul-r-jones-collection/

He Buries My Mistakes - TCF Short Film in Progress

Last Saturday, I acted as Director of Photography on a shoot for the short film He Buries My Mistakes with Director William Mason.  This film is our final project for our TCF201 class. It was a long, hard day but the actors were great to work with and they never complained once. I'd be happy to work with any of them again.

Check out these stills from the raw footage.

The Carvening Short Film - Drama "Work" Music Video

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Lindsey and I put together a fun little short film for Halloween titled "The Carvening." You can watch it right here:



Also, I recently edited a music video for award winning filmmaker Xavier Burgin. The artist is Alabama rapper Drama and the track is titled "Work."



You can check out Xavier Burgin's company, Que The Lights, here:

http://www.qtlimages.com
http://www.quethelights.com

I've been tied up with my day job and lots of school projects lately, but there are some new ZombieSquid projects in the works and I'll be talking about those as they develop.

I Scored! Gundarr - Pink as Night

This is the season 1 finale of Gundarr on Mondo Mini Shows. Gundarr is an animated series from Vancouver animators Corey McDaniel and Ted Williams. I wrote the tavern music for this one, everything up to around the 1:10 mark.

CUPCAKE FURY!

The "I Haven't Blogged Anything in Months" Update

I've been busy to say the least. Recently I've...

Directed/Shot/Edited a series of instructional videos for the weight room at the UA Aquatic Center and built an interactive map graphic that shows the location of each machine:

http://urec.sa.ua.edu/aquatics_weightroom.cfm

I created the map using a combination of Google SketchUp (which is totally awesome) and Photoshop.

Put together a couple of videos for UA Outdoor Recreation:

How to Change a Flat Bicycle Tire

Kayak Rescue Techniques

And I've put together a ton of posters, brochures, etc. for UA Recreation:

UREC Graphic Design Gallery

I've also recently started a new job as a Video Editor for the eTech department at UA.

I'm taking a video production class and have started an assignment blog where I review short films:

http://shortshortfilmreviews.blogspot.com/

And I'm sure I'm forgetting to mention a lot of things but that's about all I've got time for today...

BACK TO WORK!

Intramural Battleship at the University of Alabama UREC

This is a promo that I put together for the new Battleship canoe game from University of Alabama Recreation. The goal is to sink your opponents by hurling buckets of water into their canoes.

Record Breaking Alabama Heat Wave - A.K.A. IT'S TOO FREAKING HOT!!!!

We're stuck in a record breaking heat wave here in Alabama. The heat index in Tuscaloosa today was 104 and the high was a smothering 101 with humidity that you could hack through with a machete. The forecast is showing at least another few days of this wretched, oppressive heat. Our air conditioning has been kicking hard for the last couple of days but it can barely keep up with this kind of onslaught.

In case I haven't made it clear, I'm not a fan of obscenely hot weather. Hey, look at southern California! It's only 72 degrees right now...

The Known Universe by the American Museum of Natural History

This is an astounding rendering of the entirety of the known universe. It really gives you a sense of perspective. Our planet is just one infinitesimally tiny spec of dust in relation to the rest of the cosmos. The span of one human life, even the amount of time that life has existed on this planet, is nothing in relation to the billions of years that have come before us. The expanse of space that we haven't yet even begun to observe and explore is staggering in its own right.

I've been waiting for visualizations based on scientific data like this since I was a just a kid. I've got to start hanging out with more scientists...

I Found a Photo That I Took in an Article on Cracked.com

I was reading an article today at Cracked.com about 6 Mental Illness Myths Hollywood Wants You to Believe wherein a mention of child molesters was illustrated with a photo of a creepy van.

Not just any photo of a creepy van, but the very photo of a creepy van that I shot with my phone while sitting at my desk at work exactly two years ago today. The very same creepy van photo that I posted to this very blog, as seen here:

Douglas Dillingham - Filmmaker: I Love Creepy Vans

I also posted that van on the site CreepyVans.info, which is probably where they got the image.

This just goes to confirm my theory that all of reality, and by extension the internet, is just one big screwy Möbius strip... full of creepy vans. Maybe I could somehow leverage this into a job at Cracked?

Tuscaloosa Tornado 4-27-2011

A massive tornado, some sources categorizing it as an EF5, passed no more than 4 miles south of our home about 3 hours ago. It got very dark and windy for a while but there's no damage in my immediate area. Tuscaloosa has suffered terrible destruction. I've gathered together a few videos and links below:

Image gallery of damage and aftermath around McFarland Blvd and 15th St. from the Tuscaloosa News

Tuscaloosa Tornados 4-27-2011

This is Why I Love Craigslist

Click the image for full size so you can read it.

American Adaptations of British TV Shows

Here's a video that I threw together for a group presentation on the topic of "American Adaptations of British TV Shows" for a Telecommunications & Film class project.

So Far, So Good

College has been great so far! I haven't had much trouble getting into the swing of things and I'm doing fairly well with my grades this first semester. I'm coming up on the end of this term and between meetings with advisors, job interviews, and projects for finals, I've been extremely busy. I don't have any serious video projects on the immediate horizon, which is good since it means I get to work on whatever I choose!

Speaking of class projects, here's a blog that I contributed to for a group assignment for my Intro to Telecommunication & Film class:

American Adaptations of British TV Shows

I did the graphic design and layout and have contributed one post so far. I'm working on editing together a video for our group presentation, which is Monday the 18th. I've had a lot of fun with the title sequence so far, finding humorous ways to visually illustrate the "Americanization" of overt English national stereotypes. I'll post it up here when I finish it in a few days.

As a final note, I'm considering taking on a double major with the second being in music, possibly composition. I'm still looking into the particulars of it, but so far I'm thinking I'm going to go through with it...

Ship VFX Lightwave Test

I found this on an old drive. It's a VFX test that I did around 2004. I modeled and rendered the ship in Lightwave and I think the glow and flash effects are from Vegas. I composited the ship onto a background plate of stock footage of outer space. I think it looks pretty good considering I had no idea what I was doing at the time.

"Blue Sky Dream" - My 2011 Campus Movie Fest Entry

I just finished uploading my submission to the 2011 Campus Movie Fest site. It's a surreal piece called "Blue Sky Dream". You can check it out here:

http://campusmoviefest.com/movies/7774-blue-sky-dream

Or watch it below.

New Year, New Place, Back Online.

The last few weeks have been one big heap of crazy.

Lindsey and I have moved to Tuscaloosa, AL where I'm attending the University of Alabama as a Telecommunications & Film major. We've been on a bit of a digital fast and just got our internet service connected a day or so ago. I've been busy getting my class schedule settled along with all the other fun college stuff.

Today on campus I learned that the Campus Movie Festival, the "world's largest student film festival", will be at UA in 2 weeks. I'm strongly considering taking part and am already working on ideas for a script.

I'm also open to shooting someone else's script for those of you who came here from my CMF profile. If you've got a good concept or script or are looking for someone to shoot, direct, edit, DP, or whatever, then please feel free to contact me. I'm not really sure what I'm doing at this point, just fairly certain that I want to get involved.

On another note, we finally finished up the "Paranotica" music video for Chaotic Theory before we skipped town. It took us well over a year to pull the whole thing together since the band kept changing it's lineup and requesting that we re-shoot with new members. I'm fairly satisfied with the end result, but it pains me to say that a lot what I felt was the best material ended up getting cut since it was footage from early shoots featuring people who were no longer in the band. I'll probably post some of that cut footage here at some point or work it into a new demo reel.

So here's the video:

Again, as far as the CMF goes, I'm open to just about anything so feel free to email or message me on the CMF site if you'd like to talk.

Click here for my profile.