One Banana (2001)

It was in January 2001. I was in grade 11, 16 years old, and as part of a communication technology class I made this short animation project. This project in fact was the one that kicked off my love of stop motion and inspired future projects like Clumsy Claus and Sitting Bull. The concept is very simple, just a tribesman after a banana in a tree. In terms of my own history, however, this project symbolizes a distinct change in the presentation of my work. Knowing full well that I'd have to debut this project in front of a large class, I focused very closely on the little details of my animation. Sure, the motion is choppy, but for an early attempt I'm still impressed with how the little flowers, the toilet paper roll tree, and my handmade tribesman hold up. It seems charming enough to share, despite it's obvious flaws.

 

The photo above was taken in 2005, and was a set I designed as part of a possible sequel to this movie, to be called 'Two Banana'. That project was never made, but I held onto the set in the hopes of making a new short. I've been considering making a new stop motion flick ever since coming across my old animations, but part of the charm in these is that they were really some of my first stop motion experiments.

Quirks (2009)

This new short is part documentary, part home video, part experimental, and what I consider to be a somewhat kitschy stereotypical depiction of what every film student experiences on one of their first film shoots. 

The footage, as you might have guessed, comes from an old film school project that I shot with classmates Cam Koroluk and Thomas Gallagher in 2004, originally titled The Brief History of Metric Time.

Brief History was the result of a Film 300 assignment in which every student in class wrote a script, and then two other students in class would act as either the director or producer for that project. This system worked on rotation so that every student got to experience the various roles played in the production process. 

For this project I was the director, hence, I took it upon myself to resurrect the footage after 4 years and cut it into something I actually felt was worth sharing. 

It seems to be a common occurance in all creative ventures when groups are involved that comprimises have to be made. I'm refering here to the film class, which was a very diverse and opinionated group. With the scripts randomly distributed, I didn't have much of a choice in terms of plot, and didn't really have a lot of time to rework the concept before shooting. It was always what I hated about shooting on film compared to shooting digital, there was so much equipment to be booked, and so much more to do just to get your exposures and audio right. 

On top of that, everyone always had their own projects on the go at the same time, so there wasn't an abundance of people to draw on for crew. Even in the best of circumstances, it was just a complicated process to pull everything together in these classes. 

The original film, focused on a man who invented a new system of time based on the metric system. The dialogue was divided by pages of nonsensical mathematical equations, and aside from that, there wasn't actually much to go on. The student who wrote our script was the type that if you were casting roles for stereotypical arts students, he'd fit the bill perfectly, which is to say that he didn't need his script to make sense because he already believed himself to be the next Fellini. 

The worst part was that the concept really wasn't a visual story. I guess dealing with these challenges was what film school was all about.

On a side note, I recall that my script was a comedy about a guy getting dropped off at the dorms by his parents. Inspired by my own experience in the fall of 2002, the group that shot my screenplay did a sweet job.

Quirks (OR: The Blurbs Behind a Lost Film School Project) is a fresh edit composed entirely of the raw footage that was captured to mini DV from the film we shot it on. My goal here is to give a little glimpse of my own film school history, with some quips about just how random the experience was.

While this project obviously wasn't technically 'lost', it stands to represent the handful of my film experiments that were. At the very least, Quirks is a symbol of just how far I've come since 2004. The 4 years and 3 months since this was shot seems like an incredibly long time ago, largely because of how much more prolific I've become with my filmmaking. It's why I felt it was finally worth sharing. I've grown up a bit I suppose.

Quirks (2009) Directed & Edited by Luke Fandrich
Starring Cam Koroluk / Produced by Thomas Gallagher

Video Playlists

One of the biggest challenges I've faced in maintaining my blog is keeping an order and structure to my posts, both past and present. Some of my edits have been removed or changed, I've changed, and as always, time gives you a different view and context of what some of your projects mean to you. This has resulted in a lot of back tracking.

I've always promoted this site as both a personal blog and portfolio, so there's been a steady mix of homevideo/vacation/everyday edits mixed in with my narrative/comedy/festival work. In my videography I've tried to give a simplified reference to a lot of the projects that I've uploaded and written about here. Just this weekend I was busy with a lot of fixing old links, uploading old videos to my account again, creating video playlists, and refreshing old posts that refer to some of my larger projects from over the years.

Editing Luke has really been an evolution, and I've noticed it more now than ever. I've never had so much of my footage as accessible as it is now, all in a single location, all referenced, and everyday a bit closer to having full stories posted about all the various individual productions. It's been a year and seven months in the making, and with that comes a certain strength in being able to talk about my creative growth with strangers and actually be able to share it with anyone who's interested in seeing it.

Below I've posted a collection of playlists that I recently updated/created over the weekend. Have a look and thanks for stopping by folks!