Going it to this project I had no clue what I was going to do. This led me to brainstorm ideas with some classmates and one of them suggested five dog tricks (Thank you, Jocelyn). I thought this was a perfect idea because I know a dog that can do tricks! I also thought it would be fun to make an adorable video. I loved the experience of filming. It was fun to figure out what shots I wanted, as well as how I wanted to display them. I did a small storyboard of how I wanted the shots to look and planned it out pretty well. When it came to filming, due to time constraints I had to do a lot of my shots on the spot. Doing some things on the spot was fun and spontaneous and I think that making a storyboard helped but I’m happy I kept the process fluid. The puppy I worked with was also super cute. I loved the editing part of the project too. The best part about editing was finding music that would match the cuteness of the puppy. A challenge I had was trying to find the shots I wanted and piecing them together to make the video flow. I wanted the style my video to be similar to a home video and I think I was successful in that. It was also hard trying to find a way for my niece to be in the video. She desperately wanted to be in it. I decided this could be a good chance for her to practice her counting by counting how many tricks there were. The worst part about this project was wanting it to be longer than two minutes. The best part of this project was playing with the puppy!
Category Archives: Fall 2019
Puppy Play
Going it to this project I had no clue what I was going to do. This led me to brainstorm ideas with some classmates and one of them suggested five dog tricks (Thank you, Jocelyn). I thought this was a perfect idea because I know a dog that can do tricks! I also thought it would be fun to make an adorable video. I loved the experience of filming. It was fun to figure out what shots I wanted, as well as how I wanted to display them. The puppy I worked with was also super cute. I loved the editing part of the project too. The best part about editing was finding music that would match the cuteness of the puppy. A challenge I had was trying to find the shots I wanted and piecing them together to make the video flow. I wanted the style my video to be similar to a home video and I think I was successful in that. It was also hard trying to find a way for my niece to be in the video. She desperately wanted to be in it. I decided this could be a good chance for her to practice her counting by counting how many tricks there were. The worst part about this project was wanting it to be longer than two minutes. The best part of this project was playing with the puppy!
5 Bandana Colors
I enjoyed making this video. I have always wanted to make one, but I feel like I could have done better. It was cloudy on the day I shot the photos, and that didn’t help me while I was I taking the pictures. I wish it had been sunnier. In order to edit the video I used a different app other than Premier because Premier is only available at school and I worked at home. Instead, I edited the video on my phone because it was the only device I had that has photo and video editing.
I’ve never done video editing before, but I’ve always wanted to edit videos and photos. I’m into photography and video editing so I was excited about this assignment. I want to learn more about both types of editing in the future.
At first I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do for my video. I think I was making it more complicated than it had to be. I had a lot of ideas, but each of those ideas would have taken more time than I had, so I decided to make a video of five of the bandanas that I have. The person in the video is my brother. I told him I wanted to make a video with him wearing all my bandanas. He was down with my idea. I told him to go on top of the house just for fun and I took some pictures while he was on the roof. I also videotaped him on the ground. I had him sit in a chair with the different bandanas on his head. My brother was also wearing a handmade mask. At first, I wanted to use different colors of masks, but then the attention would have been on the mask. Black doesn’t take attention away from the bandanas. All of his clothes were also black and only the colors of the bandanas changed.
While I was editing the video, I decided to add a couple of effects. You can see some of them at the start of the video. I also put the color of the bandana next to the picture, along the side of the frame, so people are more likely to notice what color of bandana my brother was wearing. I put that because I think that will make people focus first on the bandana and not something else in the picture. I want people’s eyes to go right to the bandana.
The app that I used for editing didn’t have a lot of editing choices. It would have been nice if I had more choices. For the sound, I downloaded music from Freesound. That site has a lot of sound effects that I can use for free. I wanted to use a different song, but I couldn’t because of copyright issues. I liked working on this assignment. I’m happy with my project. I feel like I did well, especially considering that this is my first time making a video.
Coffeehouse-Five
Music: Dryad Drone
This video assignment for MUL 101 was a lot of fun. One of my most favorite past time with friends is chatting over tea. While in Portland for the weekend, I met up with my friend Ly for just that. In keeping with the theme of fives, the place we patronized is called Coffeehouse-Five. Within the video footage itself, the number five is seen five times. My friend Ellen sent me an audio file of her band rehearsal to use for the music.
I enjoyed having a chance to use Premiere Pro again, which I haven’t since Time-Based Tools class with Mel Stark. I found that I remembered the basics of how to use the program, but there were several things that I had a vague memory of having the capability to do, but not sure how to execute those. I accessed YouTube many times to find tutorials for a refresher on how to accomplish my desired outcomes.
Overall, I am extremely happy with the results of this video. One thing that would severely improve the quality would be to have less camera shake, which is particularly noticeable at the end. There are lots of forms of equipment, such as a Motorized Gimbal Stabilizer, certain steady cams, and dollies that would eliminate that problem, yet, were not within my time or budget over the weekend. I believe I could have tried harder, with more time, to accomplish smooth camera movements with less shake. As this is one of the first things I have filmed, I did not realize that this problem would be so severe.
In post, I used several stabilizer effects to smooth things out a bit. I made the opening title in Photoshop. I put an image of the coffee cup in Ps, then used that as a template to decide the placement of the lettering and to select lettering that closely resembled the font type of the stamp on the cup. I off-centered the title, because I wanted to see more of that pretty brick wall, but in retrospect, I keep questioning if that was the right choice.
Only five minutes left…
I spend most of my waking hours dedicated to five clients. I mean five classes in the Media Arts program. I guess five clients too, but that’s my day job and the number varies. The thing about clients is they’re rarely coordinated with each other, so that is on you, the contractor, to resolve.
I think Media Arts covers scheduling project load and managing client expectations in a course scheduled for next semester?
Anyway, I have a hard time of it or I give myself a hard time of it. Without an external creative director, I tend to go all-in and can quickly spiral down a rabbit hole of elaborate ideas with no concern for feasibility or complexity.
For this project, I wanted to box myself in with a small concise concept that would be accomplishable while respecting overlapping deadlines from all five of my “clients” projects. Initially, I thought about doing someone with a 5-second attention span, but that’d require a lot of quick cuts. I thought it’d be a really difficult concept with which to achieve a cohesive story.
Two minutes is more than enough time to get across commonly identifiable concepts, so I pivoted to another concept involving time. The premise was I had 5 minutes left to throw together a video. The video itself having a 2-minute limit meant that I couldn’t work in real-time. Which is probably a benefit, as editing can have a lot of dull moments where you’re just waiting. So I set up a screen recording and recorded myself creating the video sequence.
This project was a lot of fun and it generated a lot of thoughts around a million and one ways I could have done things differently. But in the real world, people get paid based on timely results. It takes a long time to build the reputation and network that can support/insulate creative work on longer/larger/more involved projects. This is also something I try to remind myself of constantly. I tend to be a “Jack@#$ of all trades” and can quickly overwhelm myself trying to bite off a bit of everything. It takes a focused effort, on my part, to make deep progress in a specific direction. I am happy overall that this project was a reminder to dial in and focus. I look forward to being on the other side of this journey and having more autonomy over which projects I take on at any time.
Thanks for reading!
-Greyson
P.S. – My computer did literally crash five times during the making of this video. Now I’ve another project to diagnose why that occurred! 
F19-P5 Image Editing (Wirrick-Coad)
So for this project, I was trying to accomplish lots of things. Firstly, of course, is the well-known fact that many of us suffer from anxiety or panic attacks on a daily basis. This can make life extremely difficult and also add more stress to your life, making the anxiety or panic even worse. I wanted to portray the different types of ways people might start having an attack from just a pencil breaking to someone yelling at you for doing something wrong. The second part of the video is trying to give someone who has never had an attack have the feeling of one. I think this is a really good thing for people to see as it will create sympathy for people going through something like this and what to do. Finally the ending. I wanted to show that everything can be calmed down with enough practice and time. Another purpose for this piece for me was to work on my audio and video horror skills. Throughout this term, I have been wanting to work more with unnaturally settings and sounds and get better at using them in different ways. This feels like another perfect setting for that so that’s why the heartbeat sounds and sighing play a very important role within the narrative of the video. This project was a very fun experiment for me. From using different people as actors to using my own voice to create sounds, noises, etc. This has really opened up my eyes to the idea of what we can do with editing software after getting the base image or video from our DSLR’s or other types of media recorders. I obviously still have a lot to learn from Adobe Premiere but I think I did a fine job for my first time. I hope this is informational, unnerving, and fun for you all to watch. Thank you for your time. -Alex
Informational Interview with Portland Film-maker Edward Pack Davee III- Krizia Walker
https://www.instagram.com/epdavee/
Who is Edward Davee?
Edward Davee is a professional film-maker and photographer living in Portland, Oregon and traveling far and wide!
He goes by Edward professionally, but I know him as Ted. He has been in my life- well, my entire life. Him and my mom were married when I was a kid, and are now divorced, yet remain great friends, so I still consider him my stepdad. He is the reason I became interested in film-making from a young age. I used to borrow big, bulky cameras from him to film my own stop-motion animation and skits with. He is a highly skilled, ground-breaking artist who has created countless projects since he was a young kid until today, including feature films, music videos, and documentaries. I even played a small part in one of his feature films, How the Fire Fell, about a true event in turn-of-the-century Corvallis! You can’t possibly imagine the amount of hard work… and coffee… that goes into making a feature film!
He recently returned from out of the country filming a documentary (details to come!) and I asked him a few questions, hoping to gain insight and refreshed inspiration and to impart his wisdom on my readers.
Krizia: What advice would you give to beginner photographers and film-makers?
Ted: “I’d say I’d advise beginners to always trust their intuition and believe in themselves. If they feel motivated to create films then they likely have a vision of their own. Hold onto it and don’t let people tell you you can’t do things your own way. It’s good to learn the usual basics but it also can cloud your vision and lead to self doubt a bit. It’s really hard to make films and you have to really believe and keep trying your best and not let people bring you down or discourage you. Unfortunately, it happens all the time whether you’re a beginner or not. You have to take criticism well, consider it as you see fit and either take it to heart, or throw it out the window. Sometimes doing the opposite of what people have told me I should do has served me well. But it can be a difficult balance to keep. Because you can’t ignore advice and criticism completely. You just have to keep working and keep making things until you start to feel at peace with your own decisions”
Krizia: How long would you say it takes to find your personal style when starting out?
Ted: “That’s a hard one because I think it’s probably different for everyone. I started by using still images to develop my own style. But personal style always comes from the things that inspire you, to some degree. So the tricky thing is to let that inspiration guide you, but not to try to copy it. Mix your influences together to create your own recipe. Be inspired by other films and other filmmakers, but also let music and nature and architecture and whatever else be a part of your vision and style. I also think it helps to consider where you’re from. For me, I think it always comes back to my childhood in Corvallis Oregon. I may have romanticized it, but that’s not necessarily bad for the development of personal filmmaking style. Also, just experimenting and messing around with cameras and even sound can help you find things that click with you and that you keep going back to. A simple “mistake” that you make with a camera one day might be something you like and use later and maybe even keep using”
Krizia: What is the most challenging part of doing a day-long shoot?
Ted: “Day long shoots are challenging for many reasons, but I guess I’d say that the most important thing, and therefore the most challenging, is to maintain good morale on set. People are working long, hard hours, often for very little or no money. Everyone is in it together so the challenge is to keep that feeling alive. Let everyone feel like they are part of the process and that they are appreciated. Everyone is important and necessary on a set. If morael is low, it spreads like cancer very quickly. Every link in the chain needs to remain intact. So this is especially difficult on low budget productions because people are doing too much for too little and there’s not a lot of time for keeping the personal connection side of things alive. And communication break-downs can happen very easily”
Krizia: Where do you find inspiration from?
Ted: “Inspiration comes and goes. Sometimes I don’t know when it will strike. I often get inspired by watching behind-the-scenes documentaries on films and directors that I like and reading interviews and such. I get inspired by getting out to nature and experiencing quiet moments in solitude. I take walks a lot to think things through. To me, the things that inspired me to make films in the first place continue to be sources of inspiration. It’s kind of like rediscovering yourself. Sometimes I forget about my early influences and experiences a bit so I go back through my own history to remind myself. Sometimes just going out with a camera and messing around can bring inspiration. Sometimes you just find yourself in a perfect cinematic moment by chance and suddenly you feel really motivated to make movies again. It might be getting up at 5 in the morning and walking to get coffee or something and suddenly everything just seems perfect for a moment. It’s important to listen to those moments.”
My Reflection
I felt really encouraged and inspired by Ted’s words. It’s hard work, but if you stay motivated and as he said, listen to your intuition and pay attention to those important moments, you will go far and succeed in your creative journey. I really liked what he said about getting out and messing around and mixing inspiration to create your own recipe. I like that it isn’t JUST film that inspires him. He mentioned architecture, nature, etc, and I think that is so cool and so important to pay attention to, research, and collect things outside of just film to gain a well-rounded record of inspiration. That really spoke to me in my early stages of the Multimedia program. It was also a valuable reminder that you need to keep positivity and team spirit up while you are working with others, no matter what. I can get grumpy sometimes and I will have to put effort into this aspect of creative collaboration!
This was such a great experience to interview him! Thank you for reading!
FIVE
The Kite and the Pigeons
I’ve chosen to use this Aesop fable as my project. I think the story is a good metaphor of how giving in to a tyrant and putting them in a position of power can lead to horrible consequences. The has a dark undertone that I wanted to match with both the audio and the visual perspective. I found an image of a white-tailed kite. It had this wicked appearance of being mostly white with creepy red eyes. So i used that picture and made my own design in Photoshop to make it look more dark and surreal. I felt this visual was perfect for the evil narrative of the kite’s intentions.
I needed music that was dark and eerie so I found a good choice for a song from freesound.org. I felt that adding biting and crunching sounds was very fitting to this story. It was suppose to add a feeling horror as the kite devours the pigeons while they realized they brought it upon themselves by choosing to let him rule over them. Their good intentions turned out to be an exercise in futility.
This story can be compared to many dictatorships that have existed throughout history, as well current events around the world. It should be served as a lesson to be careful who you choose to lead over you.
forging from all sides
Last Monday (October 28), I was sitting around on campus in building 18’s media lab, drinking a to-go cup of creamy tomato soup, when Jan Halvorsen emerged from her office and reminded me on her way out of the building that she was going to be giving a talk across campus with Mel Stark and Michael Maruska about a stop-motion video they’d created together over the summer. I, of course, having already seen the stop-motion video, and being very excited to hear more about the story behind it and the process of making it, chugged the rest of my soup and charged on over to building 11 to attend the talk.
The stop-motion video in question is Flash After Dark. It tells the tale of a camera that comes to life on a production set and begins to explore its environment. The camera (Flash) discovers a storyboard on the set and realizes it is detailing the events of Flash’s awakening- as well as his impending doom: a broom is about to sweep in and crush Flash under its bristles. He begins to panic and attempts to escape, but is inevitably swept up.
At the talk, the team discussed their inspiration for the short film. Michael explained that “one of the reasons [they] wanted to make it was that [they] did get a copy of Dragonframe, and [they] wanted to see how it worked.” Dragonframe is a software designed to help stop-motion animators capture the frames necessary to make their films. It was used in the creation of films such as Missing Link (2019), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), and Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015).
(Side note: Did you know Shaun the Sheep was stop-motion? That never occurred to me. Weird.)
As the team described it, Flash’s story evolved especially during the building of the set. The team would be inspired by an idea and put together a piece of the environment, and then find more inspiration from that piece they’d just made. For instance, Michael described where the storyboard Flash encounters came from: “Jan was like, Oh, we could put storyboards on [a whiteboard] and add it to the set,” and I was like, oh, that’s a great idea! […] We could make it the story that he’s experiencing!”
It was super interesting to be able to hear about the process behind writing and creating an animation like this. I’ve never considered doing stop-motion myself before, but now that I’ve gotten to see a little bit about the process of doing stop-motion, I really hope we’re able to put together a studio for it here at LCC! It looks really fun to play with!
-Amanda