What do you think about when you think of Thanksgiving? The food-focused holiday probably comes to mind is a turkey dinner, a presidential turkey pardoning and a bunch of turkeys all waiting in line for Black Friday sales. But is that what Thanksgiving is truly about?

Photograph from USMC Archives in Wikimedia Commons

In elementary school, many people may have been taught that the first Thanksgiving was about the American Indians providing a feast for the Pilgrims. The two groups sat down, said a prayer and dug in — instantly creating this November holiday.

However, this depiction of the Thanksgiving Day holiday isn’t the whole story.

For starters, the actual definition of Thanksgiving Day, as stated in the American People’s Encyclopedia, is thus: “Thanksgiving Day, the annual fall festival in the United States set aside for giving thanks to God for the blessings of the past year. It is celebrated with church services and family gatherings as one of the great American feast days. The date is the fourth Thursday in November.”

The encyclopedia continues to explain the first “Thanksgiving proclamation in America” — where the Pilgrim hunters “provided a number of wild turkeys” and the American Indians brought venison. But we have to get into the meat, so to speak, of the article to realize that this as an example rather than a definition.

Photograph from Steindy in Wikimedia Commons

In other words, an “annual fall festival for giving thanks to God” hardly resembles the modern perception. But it seems that the definition is apt for past Thanksgivings.

Though it wasn’t recognized annually and with an exact date until the Civil War, Thanksgiving Day was practiced in times when blessings were being counted most.

After the American Revolution, the holiday was recommended in 1784 by Congress because of the exhaustive war for independence. In 1815, after the War of 1812, President Madison set aside a day for Thanksgiving in November. Sparking a custom of proclamations by governors, his act kept the custom alive for nearly 50 years. Finally, in 1863 at the behest of lifelong campaigner Mrs. Sara J. Hale, Abraham Lincoln issued a national Thanksgiving proclamation which set the official date as the fourth Thursday in November.

The transition to what we now know as Thanksgiving Day started with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though Lincoln had proclaimed the fourth Thursday of the month as Thanksgiving, the custom with the succeeding presidents was the last Thursday. Roosevelt, according to Archives.org, changed it back to the second to last Thursday in November because he was “concerned that the shortened Christmas shopping season might dampen the economic recovery.”

However, this created a rift in the states who didn’t want to change the old custom. So Congress enacted a resolution in 1941 to make the fourth Thursday of November the official date of Thanksgiving. The resolution also gave the day its name and made it “a legal public holiday to all intents and purposes.”

From then on, it seems that the definition of Thanksgiving Day has become more synonymous with awkward dinner conversations, Black Friday stampedes, and four day weekends. The “thanks” in Thanksgiving Day was lost in the gravy. The blessings that were once cherished now sit in the liner next to the Natural Resources Defence Council’s estimated 203 million pounds of wasted turkey we could hardly stomach.

One of our previous presidents recognized this and had some advice for all of us in his Proclamation of Thanksgiving Day almost 44 years to the date: “Today, in an age of too much fashionable despair, the world more than ever needs to hear America’s perennial harvest message: “Take heart, give thanks. To see clearly about us is to rejoice; and to rejoice is to worship the Father; and to worship Him is to receive more blessings still.”

In conclusion be grateful for what you have, rejoice in it, and praise God for the blessings bestowed. Funny how it took President Nixon to state the definition of Thanksgiving. Granted, he said it after being reelected with 521 electoral votes.

So, after this little history lesson, I’d like to ask: What are you grateful for this Thanksgiving?

Film has always been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember, so when we were given the task to make a short film I jumped at the opportunity. When our professor first announced the final project at the beginning of the term, I have been coming up with ideas on what I wanted my short film to be about. As an avid fan of the horror genre and interests in psychology, along with my recently developed interest in surrealism, I set out to construct a film that combined those interests. During the end of my years in high school, I had developed an idea centered on a psychologically disturbed individual which I had titled Dark Minds and which I characterized as a “Dark Drama”. Over the years I reworked the idea, changing it so that it delved deeper into the mind of the main character and re-titled it  A Brief Glimpse into a Disturbed Mind which is the current title of the short film.  Since the original idea was supposed to be on a feature-length film, I had to condense the idea significantly in order to fit the parameters of the project. In order to accomplish  this, the idea went through another revision to what is shown in the finished product.

Since mankind has yet to delve that deep into the mind of the mentally disturbed, I had to intemperate what might be going on inside their heads, which was very fun to do. When filming began, I specifically sought out friends and family to be the actors in my film in order to prevent issues arising from people not showing up when I needed them. Filming and performing directorial work was an exhilarating experience, during the duration of filming I experimented with lighting, and camera position/angles in order to find out which shot worked more effectively. At times, filming was an exhausting experience, as some of the actors would not perform in the way I had coached them to do during the shot, forcing me to reassign them to a different role in the film. When it came to editing the film, I had specific ideas on how I wanted the final shots to look like. For example, two of the shots of the actors either reaching towards the camera or stretching out their arms I wanted to look like an emaciated shadow, which would give it an unsettling effect. However, during editing this proved to be too timed consuming so a different effect was used for the shots. Similar issues arose during the editing process, forcing me to change their look in ways I felt were less then satisfactory. Very early in production I had my idea on what music I wanted for the film, the vocals from 2001: A Space Odyssey I felt conveyed the right mood for the film. In order to make it more unsettling, I overlapped the music with a low key piece of music that enhanced the overall effect. Working on this project was both an exhausting and exhilarating experience, and I am proud of the final result even though some things didn’t quite go as planned.

I am tired of living in fear.

Fear for myself, and fear more specifically for trans-feminine people; especially those of color or different religious beliefs. It is dangerous in this day and age to be yourself if you vary from the general package of what is considered to be “right”–ie. straight, cis, male, well to do, white–and in this year alone we’ve lost 26 transgender people specifically to targeted violence in just America. 21 were transwomen, almost none of them white.

This number may be small in comparisons to the amount of people who die every day, but when the qualifying factors for murder are listed, the picture becomes dark and bleak.

Victims of domestic abuse are not included.
Victims of suicide are not included.
These victims were targeted and murdered in an act to specifically punish them for being transgender, and the motive was proven to be a hate crime. 
With how many people are lost and unidentified every day, the odd of a transgender person being murdered are close to 1/12.

When planning filming for this I was filled with constant unease and dread, worried. Would I be met with misunderstandings? Would anyone be moved by my project? Was I screaming into a void of seemingly neverending hate and violence directed at the members of my community?

It was only after I met with my talent that I began to feel truly hopeful. I had the honor of working with three incredibly bright and amazing young women who helped me clarify my message and kept my spirits up.

It’s hard work reminding yourself how likely it is to lose a friend

statistically speaking, in my extended friend group, one of them will be murdered before the age of 30.

Yet, through it all … we remain? Be it for good or for bad, we’re still here. Through the pain and the suffering and constant reminders of life being cut short, I am here with my friends and we are celebrating the lives of those who were lost, and mourning their hateful end.

The overall goal for this video was to provide myself and my friends a chance to heal in such trying times. That was my first point. To give these girls a chance to say who they were and what’s happening out there.

I know no one means to kill transgender people with silence,

but every moment you don’t speak up for the small injustices, you’re allowing microaggressions to pass … and microaggressions turn into macroaggressions and then the list grows.

I want this video to reach out to my classmates, even that small of a group is enough. I just want everyone to take home the knowledge that they can make a difference by standing up for them. Be loud about your support.

stop killing us with silence

List of transgender people lost in 2016

more information and resources

wiki page about TDoR

Get Your Game On! is a narrative short film about a gal who goes to her local game store to play her favorite card game.

When she arrives she walks along the aisles, filled with other game shop customers, while looking at what’s in stock (which is a lot). Our Gal eventually finds her way to the gaming area and initiates a game with another player. They take out their things: game mats, deck boxes, and such, and are ready to begin their game.

We fade away, coming back to the middle of the game where our protagonist begins her turn and plays a hydra, one of her favorite cards. She’s proud of the play, but is soon met with the equally proud response from her opponent who plays a card that gets rid of her good play. She’s hurt and stressed, not knowing what to do, when she spots a card she already has on the table, and attacks with it!

This video took quite a lot of pre-production time to make, with story boarding and shot listing playing a big part in judging how I wanted the story to go. Because of this being my first foray into this sort of film-making there were some bumps along the way, but the general gist of it got taken care of.

I had initially written a scene where our main character walked up to a pairings board and found themselves – and their opponent – by name, allowing our characters to be introduced despite the lack of actual dialogue.

Another scene that was cut, due to time constraints (and a depleted battery) was the after-game scene where the main character would mark down her win against her opponent, and her opponent would storm out as a sore loser. I ended up leaving this scene on the cutting room floor because we had already abandoned the previous pairing board scene and made this game seem like a friendly game between the two rather than a competitive one.

My overall favorite piece to edit during this was the game play. Cutting back and forth between the character and her cards, and then the reactions of the player sitting across from her all while keeping continuity was interesting, and in the end could have been done better if I had a way to sync up the footage during production, instead of eyeballing it during editing. I was able to make everything work, but it was definitely a learning experience.

When I got assigned my Final Project at first I had trouble coming up with an idea. I struggled for days with mind blanks but then I finally decided okay, I got pictures and video of Nature let’s do a nature documentary or a fake report on Climate trouble. well….

The plan didn’t work out too great, the weather was awful, I couldn’t get actors who were available so finally when I was on my last resort I found two actors. My idea ended up changing to the pollution in the water has gotten so bad a Zombie Apocalypse has broken out, in this video above you find a newscaster doing Breaking News and interviewing a specialist trying to figure out just what can stop this horrifying outbreak… but…. things are not what they seem, if you haven’t already watched the video you should.

My overall process for this project was very challenging The video has poor lighting because my actors were only available in the late evening when it was getting dark so we had to film quickly and only had a few chances, we didn’t have a good microphone so we recorded audio from a phone (not gonna lie, the audio isn’t too bad, could be better but for a phone recording we did good.) Although I ran into many challenges I pushed through and made sure to get my Final project finished. This is not my best work I can’t say I am proud of it but it is a piece I can add to my portfolio and say that is indeed another step in my learning path and shows challenges that Video Production students may face. I hope you enjoy the video, feel free to leave comments below!

Thank you.

Storyboarding is the process of brainstorming an animation before animating it. An animatic is one step further, it applies these storyboards to key frames before finishing the animation with images called in betweens. These are both important functions to making something animated.

What I enjoy about making a storyboard is that it’s a very organic approach to drawing. Of course, most art is organic though when drawing a storyboard, you really put yourself in the character’s shoes and atmosphere, and it’s as if your drawing next to them. You’re not just drawing one picture to capture the moment, you’re capturing something that is alive (perhaps). You’re the camera and storyboarding is your movie set.

My biggest learning curve with this animatic was use of needed devices and overall lack of experience. I know the principles behind doing in betweens for an animation and storyboarding, though have never made an animatic. It’s a very different use of my time, and overall it was a great learning experience for my own animation productions. Making a storyboard or applying that to an animatic is a battle plan for the final product an actual animation, and it will be the first battle plan of mine of many more to come in the future.

This project started from a big idea that kept having to be trimmed down. At the end I felt I had to condense much of it, and doubted that the complex ideas were communicated in their full scope to match my vision. I also feel the video lacked a certain unity. I shot footage in three different locations, with my original scope and vision. By the time I recorded the audio, I had to trim out one of the main aspects to fit the time constraints and much of my footage that would have assisted in unifying was no longer useful.  But I came up with a flow, using audio to unify.

Then, during the last editing session, some suggestions were made by the teacher and I had to scrap a few shots, leaving gaps that I rushed to fill, having to pull from my photographic still collection. During the editing, the audio got off. I felt those last crucial hours made a lot of awkwardness I didn’t have the editing time to smooth over. I would have preferred to have varied the stills among the visuals more, rather than having them clumped in two sections of the video, and have it thematically match up with the audio content better.

Overall, I am pretty disappointed with the outcome. I hope to revisit this project and give it a bit more editing to make it smoother and more unified.

For the first part I photographed food, and for the second part I choose to photograph circles. The first image is of candy canes hanging off the edge of a wine class with bows inside it. I made my own makeshift lightbox to photograph it and the rest of the food images in. The second image is looking up from the bottom of the wind chime. The third is of a berry bush, and the fourth and final image is of the halos of light created by a couple of outdoor lights in my neighborhood.

This project provided a few challenges for me. The time constraint was far shorter than almost any video I’ve ever done. Very few of the videos on my channel are under 5 minutes. In the end I had about three and a half hours of footage collected over two days that I was just barely able to cut down to exactly 3 minutes. I had to cut out pieces that I was really attached to and really liked in order to fit the time limit and keep a steady pace throughout. It made me appreciate the skill of those who make excellent Super Bowl commercials that last only 30 seconds.

Another problem I had was with the collection of the footage. I was filming a class that I had never participated in so it was difficult for me to know where to place myself to get dynamic shots. On top of that, the venue that the students had for us to teach in was a small, confined office. This made it difficult for me to get footage without getting in the way of the students or demonstrations. I had to quickly adapt to surroundings to make sure that I got the content I needed.

By: Ryan Miller