Video Postcards: A Decade

The first few posts I made on this blog back in June 2007, were about my travel edits - specifically my video postcards. The postcards were put together in December 2006 as part of an editing exercise I made for myself, where I captured all of my vacation footage and then linked it on a DVD. The main menu was a map, and by clicking on the various markers you could watch a short clip of each destination. It was part of a gift I was making for family and friends who I'd traveled with before.

Since then, my postcards have evolved into various projects, they've also undergone several re-edits, and some are exactly the same as the first time I put them together (ie. my Ontario postcards from 2000). Now there are over 20 travel edits. When I first wrote about my reason for making my Travelogs I said:

"At best they're polished recollections of various destinations, events and experiences, and at worst they're just snappy music videos. However, for those who have traveled with me and have found themselves watching one of these VVs (vacation videos) years later, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who wouldn't agree that the video became an essential piece of memorabilia in giving face to the experience."

It's true, as time has gone by the videos have proven their worth by holding on to a lot of the random moments that my friends, family and I associated with the various trips. You wouldn't necessarily pick up on the exact same things, but there again is the value of the work. Everyone sees something different, associates their own memories with the spot, picks up on something they missed themselves, or is given a quick glimpse of somewhere they've never been.

I'm not a world traveler yet, but ranging from the late summer of 1998 to the fall of 2008, these various vacation vids compile a wealth of personal memories in mere minutes. Because this blog began with reference to my postcards, it felt like an update was in order to bring all the shorts together in their different playlists at last. For as much as was shot, I want to clarify that this is not really the beginning, nor is it the end of the postcards. Part of the fun in having home video footage is being able to reflect on it for years to come. Here's to a decade.

Use the arrows to scroll through each playlist to see the edits for each location, and look under My Selected Videography in the sidebar to see the playlists separately.

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