The Space Race!

This past semester, I took an Astronomy class (which both rocked and blew my mind). For our final project, we were allowed to take some creative liberty and stray from the traditional term paper. Take creative liberty I did, and opted to make a short film about the Space Race.

It was made completely with crayon drawn puppets, and all of the action happened in front of the camera (i.e. no animation in post). I wasn't sure if I would narrate it myself or have a child's voice do it, but I eventually decided to get my little cousin to narrate. This was a challenge at the time (it's not easy to get a kid to say "Yuri Gagarin"), but certainly made the video in the end. After I finished the film, I decided (being someone who is mildly obsessive compulsive about backup) that I should scan the puppets and save a digital copy, should I want to make use of them again. I also figured that someone out in Internet land might also want to make us of the assets, so I'm releasing them all (or most of them, at least) with a Creative Commons license. If that's your thing, you can grab them here.

If I Could Change the World...

... well not me. A Global Issues 151 class at The University of Prince Edward Island. Last month I worked with a friend of mine and her Global Issues class on creating If I Could Change the World, a 6 minute video inspired by a similar video by a class at Kansas State University, and highlighting some of the things the students learned throughout the semester.

The video was written and by Laurie Brinklow (the professor) and her class, and is performed by the students. I shot, edited, coloured, and scored (if you can call grabbing music from GarageBand scoring).

A blog about something.

Consider this post a placeholder. I suspect it'll be deleted before too long. Several years ago, I began blogging on Blogger. I did so because I thought it would be fun, and I figured it would be an incentive to get me to write more often (something I had been wanting to do). At first, I wasn't really blogging for anyone... aside from myself, I suppose. I was a university student and my blog was the perfect procrastination tool. Over time, I found myself less interested, and it was the blog that was being neglected (and not my school work). I suppose this was for the better, but I started to get nagged from friends that actually read the damn thing. So then I started blogging for other people. Mind you, I was still using it largely to procrastinate, but at least I had an audience. Having largely lost interest in writing, I started posting drawings and photos, which became a much more enjoyable medium for me. The drawings were mainly single-cell comics, and the photos (which usually involved a text overlay) were generally the same thing. All and all, my blog was about everything... and when you stop and think about it, a blog that is about everything is actually a blog about nothing. Thus, with the creation of this site, I turn over a new leaf. While this blog will still feature the occasional personal story or joke here and there, I have decided to focus on writing about filmmaking/video production, video technology, and tech in general. As with anything, this will evolve and develop over time, but if geek ain't your thang, there's a good chance that you're going to be bored most of the time. I apologize in advance. From time to time I will still be posting to Observations of the Everyday, so if that's more your thing, keep your eyes over there.