Cutout - Animation Test #3

One of the final animation tests we did in Film 203 was with jointed construction paper cutouts that we each made.  This form of animation has been most notably popularized by the South Park series, and although my test isn't much to go on, it was a lot of fun to make.  I animated a cowboy who shoots his gun and the bullet bounces around the frame until it hits him.

With each test we learned a little bit about the patience and subtly required to create movement in inanimate objects.  What resulted from all of these was one final project that we could create in any medium we wanted.  I opted for a claymation/stop motion project titled, Over at Grandpa's.  More on that soon.

Sand - Animation Test #2

The second animation test we did in Film 203 consisted of using sand on a light box. Once again the Bolex camera was used to capture the experiment one frame at a time. My clip was really just me playing around to get a feel for the medium, but most of our exercises were inspired by the classic NFB animations we previewed.  The Erlking by Ben Zelkowicz is the impressive sand animation short I remember.

Flipbook - Animation Test #1

In a continuation of the old film school projects I've been rediscovering since purchasing my Revere projector, this is the first of three animation tests I created in 2004 in Film 203.  What we did was create small hand drawn flipbooks, and then captured the books one page at a time with a Bolex camera to share them with the class.

This film strip was a bit rough and unfortunately the flicker on from the projector was particularly heavy on this test.  Still, it was an interesting experiment.  I drew a washing machine exploding in suds.  Each of these shorts were stand alone exercises, but the tricks we learned along the way did play a large role in the final projects each of us had to make for the class.

Line Art - Drawing on Film (2004)

Of all of the experiments we did in our film school animation class in 2004, drawing on film was by far the most tedious to me.  If you keep in mind that 24 frames equal one second of screen time, it meant having to replicate an image over and over again to create the project - or at least it should have.  

I chose instead to go the completely experimental (and in many ways easier) route, and opted to create a colourful film strip inspired by frequency lines.  I divided my film strip evenly between frames of green, red, and blue.  This was done with a clear strip of 16mm film and pack of sharpie markers. On top of that I drew various lines that would fluxuate in contrast to one another.  The result was as busy as you might expect, but it created a cool effect.  See what resulted below.

Custom Filters and Video Filter Software

About a week ago I received this message:

Hi Luke,

I have been reading your blog daily as a result of my hobby of photography and video.  I am just a little older than you at 50 years old.  I have been off and on doing photography for a few years... My real question is how do you get that "old time" look to your videos.  When I watch them, I always seem to drift away and think I am watching films or home movies from the 50's or 60's.  I don't know how to explain the look I am seeing.  It is almost like a sepia or 8 mm look without the film scratches, etc.  Do you do post production filtering of some sorts?  I guess a better description would be, the videos remind me of early 50's documentary films with the dude with the tenor voice narrating...."Here we are at the Grand Canyon, Timmy can't seem to get enough of climbing rocks.  Even the donkeys join in"  I am sure you know what I am trying to say.  I use a Canon HF G10 HD camera for videos and love it.  My first video camera was a DVD mini disk, by Sony.  I still use it sometimes.  Anyways, enough of my ramblings.  Thanks for the videos and interesting read from your Blog.  Keep them coming. 

Sincerely,

Don N.

St. Charles, Missouri

First things first, thanks for writing me the message, Don!  I always appreciate the feedback, and like I said when I first responded to you, your question seemed like a great topic for me to blog about and answer.

I've always been big on post-production filters and customizing them to create different looks.  As you noticed, vintage looks from the 50's on through the 80's have been a point of interest for me.  I actually wrote a post around a year ago (almost to the day as a matter of fact) about creating vintage filters that highlights some of my past experiments.  It's a good place to start if you want to get an idea of what some of these looks I'm talking about are.

I do all of my filters through either a combination of overlays created in Adobe Photoshop, or more recently, through the Magic Bullet Looks Builder as part of the Pinnacle and Avid Software that I edit with.  There are a wide array of presets to play with, and I've often used them as a jumping off point to create custom filters that best suit the look I'm after.

Another tool I use to build and customize filters is the proDAD VitaScene software (also available through upgraded packages with Pinnacle and Avid Studio).  What I love about this program is that it comes in handy for tinting your footage and it also gives you a lot of useful tools for text - like flares or glowing overlays for instance.

Creating filters that look fresh and professional is tough to achieve with presets though, so I almost never use them as is. Instead, I use the presets as templates to build upon. These programs make it easy to layer various filters, to adjust the aspects of each individual filter, and to manipulate your base footage all within small steps of one another.  It's really not a complicated process to play around with, but achieving the right balance for certain looks does take some fine tuning.

If you look at the edit I did for Backyard Bubbles, where I took some of my home video footage and gave it a vintage upgrade, you can see some of what I'm talking about. With this clip I applied very soft crushed edges to create more darkness in the corners, I upped the saturation, played down the contrast, and added a soft blur to take away some of the digital sharpness.  I remember there was a lot of tweaking to get the lighting correct, because it was easy to wash out or black out large portions of the footage.  And, just in case you're thinking I was using some fancy camera, this was shot on a $100 Flip Cam.

In short, pretty much every tool I use to edit video (both personally and professionally) is very affordable and easy to find.  The difference comes from experimenting and playing with what the options really are, and not just what they're presented as.  Digital video has made having a professional edit suite much simpler, and often professional looking results are possible with a less than professional budget.

I hope this helps - and presents some new challenges too!

X (2006)

Presented with the challenge of shooting (and manipulating) an experimental short on film, X was the result of a few late nights spent scratching my reel and coloring individual frames with a red sharpie.  I can't say I had much of a plan during the process, but it was fun.  This experimental film class also resulted in some of my other random edits like, The Other Time Machine and from 84.

What made this project stand out was that we each presented our films at the Sask Film Pool in downtown Regina at the aptly titled, Terrible Film Festival - a regular event each semester for those taking the avant-garde class. It was a pretty casual affair where some films played on a loop, others were screened traditionally, some in make shift tents, and some overlapping each other.  The entire exercise was really about playing with film, not just from behind the camera, but actually working with it, splicing it, and in some cases, tearing it apart. I remember my friend Tyler actually tried burning a piece of his film and it sounded like cooking bacon when it played through the projector.

I kicked things off with my film on a loop, and a last minute decision to use a mirror to reflect the projection around the room.  My entire idea really centred around 'X marks the spot' because I figured so many of the films would be just as busy and nonsensical as mine, but at least mine would have a red X throughout to give you some place to look. It kind of worked.

At the very least the evening was something out of the ordinary, and it created a more lasting memory for a project that would have otherwise just stayed packed away.  Our professor, Gerald Saul captured highlights from the evening and gave each of us a DVD of our short films.  

Looking back at it now, this was one of those stereotypically ideal film school situations that I'm glad we were forced to take part in.  And I couldn't forget it if I wanted to, as that mirror I was using ended up broken in the back seat of Tyler's car and stayed there for my remaining few semesters in university.  See my experimental film below.

Pop Art Collages

The influence that pop art has had on my style and work seems immeasurable when I consider how my perceptions where shaped at such an early age.  I've always loved iconic images and have gone to great lengths to wallpaper the places I've lived in with them. There's something about arranging and selecting them that fascinates me. There's always something new to focus on, and the finished walls of imagery exude an overwhelming blend of culture, history, excess, and targeted ambition - there's so many ads in the mix!

In the summer of 2004 I wanted to focus some of that energy and created these three canvases from scraps of old posters, calendars, and magazines.  All of them are based around urban life and in addition to highlighting shots of famous New York locations, my canvases were really an experiment in perspective and scale.  

These canvases have been tucked away for a while now, but they all hung in my dorm at film school.  I'm still quite proud of them.

Interestingly enough, I haven't produced any canvases in the last few years (with the exception of a few wall collages) but it's largely because my blog has become a more immediate outlet for my graphic experiments.  My headers are constantly changing and I think my style is even more apparent now that I also include images of myself with my other original photographs. The experiments are still ongoing.

Editing Luke: Video Wall Edit

Inspired by video installation walls, I got to playing around with my promo reels and syncing them up to see what they looked like.  While this is a simple exercise, the result makes it really easy to not only see my progress over the last few years, but to get a better idea of my editing style and structure.  From the colours used to the way I cut on the action or emphasize motion, it's cool for me to be able to explore some of my particular approaches. Because my promo reels are often so intensively edited, the result is a visual smorgasbord.

Creating Vintage Filters

Filters can be the exclamation point to an edit or be the tipping point that unnecessarily complicates the finished product.  I've always been proud of the experimenting that I've done in trying to enhance the style and look of my work, and I've had a lot of fun in the process.

Vintage filters are particularly interesting to me.  I think my goal has been to pay homage to the style I wanted to recreate digitally, while still keeping in mind that fully achieving an aged look is best done by using aged equipment.  Keep that in mind.

One of the early projects that I played with vintage filter effects was, Silent Shoppers.  I was in film school and wasn't experienced enough to fully escape the automated options of my software yet, but I did experiment with Photoshop to create a more uniform border around the video.  What I mean is that I wanted to recreate the look that a projector gives off by having it lighter in the centre and darker around the edges.  I created a frame in this style, reduced the opacity of it within my timeline, and then incorporated it into the digital 'old film' effects available.

I improved on this simple strategy when I created a short trailer to promote the project on my blog.

In another short, Siblings 2, I played around with creating a holga effect for the first time.  Holga cameras are cheap plastic toys that frame the edge of your images with a soft dark border that blurs out from the centre.  Mixing this style with some heavy handed color correction and tinting, I had a look that suited the nature of the comedy - the joke, by the way, makes more sense if you watch the first part HERE.

While I've followed up with a lot of random edits that play on various styles and formats, one of the most recent examples I've created was for my Newport Beach edit.  I was fascinated by some of the home videos that my parents had and how some of them gave the illusion that you were actually looking through a viewfinder.  By adjusting my borders and adding a softer glow, I heavily saturated a golden filter to enhance what might be a stereotypical California day at the beach. 

Through all of these experiments the goal has been to create looks that are more dynamic than those pre-packaged with your software and that define a certain style both in my personal editing and in the period I might be inspired by at the time.  My vintage filters haven't been created to fool anyone that the footage was legit, instead it's been used as a nod to the viewer to make them draw the line between old and new - to give greater context to the theme.  

The continuous borrowing and reinvention actually keeps things looking fresh and perhaps most importantly, broadens the scope of choice available in a digital medium.  I find experimenting has not only kept my editing sharp, but I also look at it as great inspiration for a wealth of projects that I've yet to make.

Flip Cam Test - Jaguar XJ8 Winter Drive

An experiment, a Flip camera demo, a glamour shot of my Jaguar - this edit is all of those things.  I'm starting to feel energized about the idea of producing a more ambitious, stylized, narrative short film.  Meaning that a years worth of work could easily go into a single project and allow me to draw on the variety of creative and technical experiences that I've had in just the last several years.

What I did here with this winter drive test was actually play with the way I could mount my Flip Ultra HD to various points on my car. This included the dash, along the edge of my wheel well, and to the front of the grill.

I decided to cut together a short edit from this footage just because I was impressed with how well some of it turned out.  I see a lot of potential in mixing both the lightweight and maneuverable benefits of my Flip cam with the more cinematic and rich footage of my HDR-FX1 in an upcoming future project.  

For now, I find it encouraging just to see what I can do using my own resources.  Tests like these are really just ways to find inspiration and push myself to tackle even more ambitious and creative shooting techniques that just weren't possible for the low budget indie filmmaker 5 years ago.  I love the idea of merging a professional look with the spirit of an amateur shoot.  

Split Wash 2: Jaguar XJ8

Nostalgia seems to be a great motivator. When going to clean my car a couple weeks ago I decided to bring along my camera simply for the sake of capturing something similar to what I had with my 1989 Buick. From that footage I created Split Wash, a short experimental video using a split screen to divide the recording in to two separate points and layer them together.

What I've done here is of exactly the same principal, except this time the image has been roughed up a bit more and repetition has been applied to the bottom layer. While the validity of these types of video as art can be debated, I've always had a fascination with the subtleties of editing and how it can force us to look at things in ways out of the ordinary. I often attribute this to painting. Like how an artist will create something that is as much about recognizing the paint on the canvas as it is about the art itself.

My goal isn't really to make this seem like more than it is, but in washing my Jaguar (just like I did with my Buick) I've captured a moment and presented it somewhat out of context to make the video and edit the subject. I find something visceral and tangible about working this way. In a little over two years the first version of Split Wash is now a little piece of my history; not quite a homevideo, not quite a complete project.

Conclusion: Indio Outio

Day Six and Seven (08.28.09-08.29.09) The road home was a breeze. After all the traveling, suddenly taking the same path home felt familiar and comfortable. We were both tired and anxious, not that we wanted the trip to end, but I think we were both eager to take a break to really think about the things we'd seen and done. I hadn't even had the chance to review any of the footage I'd shot, and looking back at all the edits I've uploaded, you can probably understand why I was excited to see what I'd captured.

I decided for this conclusion, because I'd already mixed all of the 'road home' footage with each of the edits, that a summary was in order. Instead of my typical quick cut type deal, I created a split screen/window pane effect to really emphasize just how diverse this road trip was. I've been saying it all along, but you really get the picture of just how contrasting all the locales were when seeing all this footage playing side by side. It literally was a patchwork, a mosaic of landscapes and scenes.

What a journey. Even though this won't be my last road trip, maybe not even my last time to Indio, I can say with a great deal of satisfaction that this road trip exceeded my expectations when it came to creating something memorable and unique. It was something that I wouldn't be able to duplicate the same way even if I wanted to - isn't that the mark of an incredible trip?

I'm not sure what else to say exactly, but I'm excited to think about how this series of blog posts and videos will give me a great deal of insight, years from now, when this trip becomes a blip as part of a much bigger story. I've said it's an experience I'll never forget, I suppose all this is the proof.

Thanks for sharing the road to Indio with me, again and again.

Buick Stop Motion

For some of you this may look familiar. Not just because it's another video featuring my old Buick, but because my Buick 360 video has been around since this blog began. This new edit was actually put together last summer, yet like so many of my random shorts, it took rediscovering the photos to feel like sharing it. Not much else to it really, but you can always check out Buick to the Future or Educated Detours for more of my old car. I think it's safe to say that more experiments like this are sure to find there way to this blog - they're just a lot of fun to make.

Ontario Postcards (2000)

One of the greatest editing exercises I've ever done actually happened before I even knew I wanted to be an editor. In fact, it happened before I even had editing software on the computer. As you should have guessed by the title of this post, these edits were my Ontario Postcards that I shot in 2000.

It was the summer. I was 16 and had saved up just over $1200 to purchase my very first digital camcorder - I'd never wanted anything so bad. My friends were buying cars, but for me it was the camera. At the end of August I was leaving on a vacation with my family to Ontario. We were heading to Ottawa, Toronto, and Niagara Falls to be exact. This proved the perfect opportunity to shoot some fresh footage.

So what was the editing exercise? Well, I had made up my mind before hand that I wanted to shoot some polished looking videos of the locations we'd be traveling to. Without the software, and without the patience to try and edit on the VCR anymore, I decided that I'd create these videos in-camera. In-camera means exactly what it sounds like - shooting using only the camera effects, creating your edit as you go.

I picked out my music before hand, but I still can only imagine what I was like to travel with. Because I was shooting in-camera, I had my discman with me and I'd play the selected song while I shot to match up my cuts. This was the case for Ottawa, Toronto, and Niagara Falls. If you can imagine keeping a song on pause while touring, keeping in mind what you last shot and how it connects to the new location, all the while ensuring that you're still synced up to your video footage so that the rhythm is intact - that was the routine. The very idea of it seems ridiculous now with cheap and free software for video editing so easy to find and use. The digital revolution has changed everything, and it's crazy to think of what a different world it was 9 years ago.

*Me filming at the War Memorial in Ottawa. You can see my discman in hand as I set up my shot. Not surprisingly, almost all the photos from this trip with me in them look like this.

When I got back from vacation school started up right away. Having made myself familiar in the communication technology department, I was able to use their dubbing equipment and added my music to my in-camera videos. All these years later, the edits are still exactly the same. I didn't shoot any additional footage because of my chronological in-camera project for one thing, but I don't think I could bring myself to change them even if I could. The experience of shooting this way not only proved valuable as I developed my own video skills, but it was truly one of those early tests that really allowed me to prove to myself how much I wanted to do this. That history and energy still motivates me in the things I approach today.

I remember in early 2003 in my very first production class in film school one of the assignments was an in-camera edit. Upon this announcement I showed my friend Ward my Ontario videos, explaining how they were made, and sure enough the project felt like a breeze in comparison. Ward starred in my film school in-camera project, Mean Mr. Mustard is Homeless.

Today, the only real difference in my Ontario Postcards is the addition of the titles, postcard border, and a clip of a WWI soldier in my Ottawa video with the war memorial. The music and cuts are otherwise exactly the same.

In addition to these edits, I put together a short clip of the only home video footage I shot while in Ontario. After we left Ottawa, Toronto, and Niagara Falls we went to stay with some family and went sailing on their boat through the Trent-Severn Waterway. Traveling through the locks was certainly an experience for this prairie kid. Until right now - this footage has never been used or even watched since it was shot in 2000 (I'd forgetten that it even existed).

All this said, these edits remain my earliest work that I still screen as they were originally cut and presented. Most of my work has had a cosmetic update or been put into context for this blog - these edits were already YouTube ready before YouTube even existed. I remain extremely proud of what I accomplished from a technical point of view, and it's work like this that now makes it so clear why my focus became directed towards editing. See for yourself the result of my early filmmaking challenge.

Ottawa (2000)


Toronto (2000)


Niagara Falls (2000)


Trent-Severn Waterway (2000) UNSEEN FOOTAGE

Buick 360: Photo Collage (2007)

As one of the first edits I ever created for Editing Luke, my Buick Photo Collage (or Buick 360 as it's now called) was essentially just an experiment. I wanted to take pictures of my old 1989 Buick Park Avenue purely for memories sake. Getting older and showing her age, my car seemed like a worthy subject for a few photos while sitting all alone in the university parking lot.

This was June 2007 and I was staying in Regina over the summer for the first time, taking some electives in university. I shot several vantages of my car in combination with several sets of pictures I intended to animate. The goal was to create a short edit highlighting the scratches, dings, and old school styling that made my car the character I've always insisted it was (and still is for that matter). Following this project, it should come as no surprise that the first episode of Buick to the Future was shot just days later.

Buick 360 is short, snappy, and my answer to what was your first car like? Driving 'THE Buick' since I was 16, this car has seen and experienced a lot of things with me. Just in the time from making this short till now the car has gone from 240,000km to nearly 260,000km. It's crazy to think it's even been this long. Even as she's started to wear out a bit more each year, there's something comforting about knowing that this piece of machinery I grew up with is so well documented in a number of my short films from BTTF to Educated Detours to even a small cameo from the roof top in Day Dream Day.

There's been a lot of memories, and while this edit is only a showcase, to me it speaks of a car that's put on a lot of miles through some unforgettable adventures. This car has taken me through my youth and into adulthood, from getting my driver's license to driving away from university for the last time. With this video it was even instrumental in helping me kick of edits for this blog.

THE Buick has seen a lot of things and been a lot of places, and for that, I don't want to forget what it's been like to drive this car for so long and have it become a symbol - not for what it is, but for what I made it out to be. There's always been something about me and cars, and for a first car, this old Buick is my Lightning McQueen, Delorean, and Herbie all rolled up into one awesome piece of late 80's luxury. Classic.

The Other Time Machine (2006)

What can I say about a project that came together largely by chance? Early in the fall semester of 2006 I was taking an experimental production class. One of the first assignments we received was to create a found footage project using the old video edit suite at the university. Right away I was convinced that I was going to do this project using my own equipment, because scheduling and planning around the university was continually a hassle - however, and mostly because my friend Tyler and I had discussed editing our projects at the same time, I ended up working at the school.

Not every project can be a masterpiece. This was the idea I had in my mind prior to pulling my project together. I had no VHS tapes to work with, I was completely willing to pull something together using the old tapes in the suite - a true experiment/found footage project if you will.

That night Tyler and I were hanging out in the suite and Tyler was the first to edit his project - which you can see here. He seemed to have a rough idea of what he wanted, but I'm sure he was winging it too. When he finished it was probably around 9 or 10pm, which strangely enough is what I consider to be the best time to work at school. I have a number of memories surrounding late night projects and wandering the hallways in the middle of the night - I also lived at the dorms so part of the wandering was about finding my way home sometimes, haha. Anyway, the point is that the editing became a mix of running for slurpees, watching old Weird Al clips, and catching up with Tyler - who at this point wasn't much more than a familiar face from first year.

Tyler had a copy of The Time Machine, Death to Smoochie and Back to the Future which became the basic elements of my edit. The dread of doing the assignment turned into the excitement of things falling into place. I genuinely had a lot of fun pulling random clips, working on the old VHS equipment, and dubbing audio from old tapes. The whole time machine element seems kind of funny now because this was all before my Buick to the Future series was even a consideration.

While The Other Time Machine is a flawed video, it's always made me laugh. Despite being crude both in content and construction, it was the inspiration behind a lot of other experiments that followed. The most notable being Space Drama in 2008, which was a much more intensive, personally motivated editing exercise. The Other Time Machine is significant mostly for the history and time it marks in my film school career, but I won't make too many promises. Some people love this, some people hate this - it's a lesson directly from Film 100 (or technically Film 400 something). Enjoy!

The Other Time Machine (2006)
Found Footage Edit by Luke Fandrich

Split Screen Experiments (2008)

In their varied simplicity, my split screen experiments have become a regular source of inspiration, not just in and of themselves, but for the editing exercises that they lead to. They're personal exclamation points that pander to my own creative entertainment, and whether any one else can see value in them is less important to me here.

It's like I wrote when discussing my latest split screen short, Headphones - "...the idea behind shorts like this isn't about masked themes, but about appreciating the digital medium and editing technique by taking a forced look. Just as a painter might fill a canvas for the tactile experience of seeing the streaks and runs in drying colours of paint, these editing experiments serve a similar purpose for further nurturing my personal appreciation for the technical execution of editing".

Split Wash, Split Thoughts, and The Wave are the three main shorts that were created within weeks of each other at the end of summer 2008. While at first glance they have little in common, it's the technical approach and self-portrait aspect of each short that has established an unmistakable theme, however unintential it was in the beginning.

Split Wash stirred up some interesting conversations when it was first posted on August 12, 2008. In a discussion about visuals vs. substance, I defended my approach saying, "Split Wash is just a clip, take it or leave it, no different than someone talking to a webcam about something they did today. You'll either find beauty in that or you won't, but I wouldn't post something I didn't personally appreciate. This direction isn't about telling a story, it's just a slice, an art short, it's about reworking a simple clip to see something in a different way".

Split Thoughts posted on September 26, 2008 and The Wave posted on October 6, 2008 both embody that sentiment even further.

This need to experiment, and even to share it, is part of showcasing the experience and not just the product. I'm not trying to create a traditional channel or blog series here, where the work all compliments each other or fits perfectly. In shifting focus to make it not just about my work, I'm creating a journal to document my own ambitions and trials - which just happens to be open to outside interpretation.

On the surface it's shallow, in the context of the big picture it's essential.

Split Wash
August 12, 2008

Split Thoughts  
September 26, 2008

The Wave
October 6, 2008

Headphones (2009)

Created in the same technical guise as my earlier split screen experiments, Headphones is a brand new self-portrait of sorts. This is but one more short in a series of edits that is meant to reflect a process, a personal awareness, and a deliberate approach to editing as art.

I've said it many times before, but the idea behind shorts like this isn't about masked themes, but about appreciating the digital medium and editing technique by taking a forced look. Just as a painter might fill a canvas for the tactile experience of seeing the streaks and runs in drying colours of paint, these editing experiments serve a similar purpose for further nurturing my personal appreciation for the technical execution of editing. Working with seemingly mundane raw footage only emphasizes this, and putting myself in the mix puts a face to the technique.

As I find myself more inspired to shoot, more of these edits always pop up and I feel that it's for the sake of variety that I share them. While individually, Headphones doesn't say much, it does add to the diversity and overall arch of my portfolio. Which, for the sake of this blog and myself I think it's essential to showcase editing not simply as a career or task, but as a powerful way to express creativity.

I Was Dead (2009)

It's just what mainstream audiences were crying out for, another one of my art shorts! I'm joking of course. As pretentious as the title may sound, I'm not really making any sweeping claims or revelations about my own mortality other than the fact that, like everyone else, I will eventually die.

My death, as you likely assumed was the focus in I Was Dead, felt like a captivating subject for a new art short mainly because of how pointless it seems for me to think about it right now. Being so enamored with getting my life started is far more relevant, and clearly more uplifting then worrying about checking out.

Still, I think we all wonder how we'll be viewed when we're gone, and I became intrigued with the idea of what someone might say if they were visiting my tombstone. Will anyone even visit? What day of the week will I die on? Would this blog post seem more meaningful somehow? The concept of the short was based on the illusion of visiting my own grave site - trying to imagine how I'd reflect on my life and comprehend not existing anymore if it were actually possible to be there after I'd passed.

Last year I had shot a bunch of random footage on my little Samsung cam in the hopes of using some of it for my split screen experiments. Until now nothing ever came of this graveyard footage, but I remembered how beautiful some of it was and thought it would make a nice edit. The 'Fandrich' tombstone is my Grandpas, but seriously thinking of it as my own felt incredibly unnerving.

I Was Dead is an eerie but poignant personal edit, that in my view, presents a stark view of individual mortality and our craving to understand it. We'll all be gone at some point, but to what degree does that mean the end? How will you be remembered?

Bellagio Fountain Remix

Somewhere between a series of animated ink blots or gushing oil geysers is where I'd categorize this latest edit. I had started out with the idea of making a short travel clip of the fountains at the Bellagio that I shot while on vacation in Las Vegas last November. The further I got into it the more I felt like switching things up.

If you want to experience what the fountains are really like you can go to Vegas yourself or watch one of the thousands of videos already uploaded on YouTube. I opted for some inverting, overlapping, and rhythmic cutting. It was fun playing with the patterns and motion in this short, which made experimenting easy - and then creating several variations after mixing it with the MGMT Kids Soulwax Nite Remix. Parts of my footage were filmed from the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel, and others at various points out front of the Bellagio itself. Yes, it's different, maybe even a little weird and/or pointless, but to me it sure feels energetic and cool.