Ever since launching Editing Luke: The Portfolio (www.editingluke.com) earlier this month I've still found myself investing a lot of time into how the site is put together. Call it working out the kinks or just my obsessive attention to every detail with this project, but the energy and money I've invested so far in building my own unique online space, feels incredibly rewarding because of the potential it brings.
In just the few weeks since the site has been up I've added a featured video element to each of the 4 genre pages of my portfolio section, have continued to compile edits, completed my interactive archive with a few more never before seen mementos, and most recently have updated my main page to feature revolving content (the 'evolution' banner above features the rotating links). My continued goal with all of this is to make accessing and exploring my work easier, more enjoyable, and expressly original.
The main page is the biggest change from just a few weeks ago. The slide show of banners allows me to highlight numerous posts, series, or videos that I feel are relevant, classic, or still in production. More than just a stylistic change, this format (much like my live blog feed on the main page also) allows people to see what I have going on and get a quick overview of things they may want to explore. As I continue to branch out it also allows me to pull everything together again, highlighting content from across the web in one convenient location. Like I've said so many times throughout this process, the portfolio site is meant to be a hub, and whether someone wants to view my YouTube channel, read my blog, or just get in touch with me, it can all be done from the main page on editingluke.com.
I'm sure there will continue to be some major changes that I'll share with you as I continue to refine the site. The lessons I'm learning from doing this - plus also from working in two uniquely different media jobs during the day - is really giving me the skill to fine tune things to my own tastes. It's exciting to feel in control of something that I've wanted to do for so long.
Be sure to stop by and check out the Archive section on the new site to see interactive materials from letters, notes, posters, and links to other online content - or just get lost in the pages I've created. To get a first hand experience of what I'm rambling on about, visit my portfolio site here.
Created around the end of semester in the spring of 2006 I was going to be saying goodbye to several friends who were graduating. Starting my university career in 2002 I should have been graduating then also, but my evolving plans and a couple wasted classes determined otherwise. As a student I found inspiration in a lot of things outside of the classroom . . . still, with the snow thawing and things rapidly changing that semester, I could appreciate the milestone of how the absence of friends was going to alter my experience and so I thought about making a video. What I decided to do was collect a few of the home video clips that I'd shot over the semester to include with a photo collage of the university - kind of creating a time capsule on DVD of what the place was like then. You may think that you'd have to wait a decade or so to really see some major changes, but we actually all came to the University of Regina when things were just about to shift. Regina, Saskatchewan had been awarded the Canada games for 2005 and in 2003, still in my first year, ground had been broken on an expansive new phys. ed building and a set of twin tower residences. Those residences have since become the focal point of the new campus and dramatically altered the green space that the university centered around. By 2006 the games had passed and the buildings were all in full operation, however, construction had begun on a brand new lab building right next to College West - now the old residence - that we all lived in. It was probably this that inspired the photo collage more than anything. I knew that in just a few years the building would be complete and it would instantly date the footage and remind us all of the semester that that giant crane and construction created so much noise. I even mentioned the new lab building in my retrospective short, Quirks, as the park location we shot at in 2004 was now covered by a lecture hall.
I gave out my DVDs as everything concluded in the winter semester of '06, ending my collage saying 'may our time at the U of R serve as a reminder that we are always working to better ourselves'. A bit cliche perhaps, but true nonetheless. In 2007 I found myself staying in Regina over the summer for the first time. Not really intending to make a project necessarily, I ended up shooting a lot of pictures of the campus with the weather being so nice. It's worth noting that when you're in Saskatchewan for predominantly winter months it can be tough to fully appreciate your outdoor surroundings. In any case, I created a secondary video of the architectural details of some of the campus buildings - which are actually quite notable, as both the modernist/minimalist library and classroom buildings were designed by Minoru Yamasaki, the architect behind the World Trade Center. What came out of all these photos was essentially what I had hoped in 2006. Time has passed and with each year the landscape and tone of the university that I attended changes. I'm really happy to have both these videos to remind me of a location that I not only lived in, but experienced in so many ways. Just as the University of Regina evolved so much when I was there, it continues to inspire my nostalgia as it reinvents itself for new students. It was only a few years ago, but as far as I'm concerned these shorts now represent a completely different time.
Having been to the Calgary Zoo numerous times, I'm almost always surprised by how different your experience can be each time. Short of going on safari, it's actually the next best thing to capturing candid and spontaneous shots of animals that you otherwise can't see in Canada. Over the summers of 2005 and 2006, I made several trips to Calgary and spent the afternoon at the zoo.
There's potentially more footage to be shown here, but I thought it was about time that I at least reorganized the original short edits that I uploaded back in 2007. To refresh the quality of the videos (which were originally quite pixelated) I re-uploaded the three short clips that I had cut from several longer travelog type videos I'd made titled, At the Zoo.
Intended to be slice-of-life, observational type shorts - these mini clips are no different than the longer projects really. What I enjoy about seeing some of this footage now is how my shooting technique still spoke to my style as an editor. You can see by the shots that I was thinking how I'd cut for a transition, for example, how shooting the skylight of the African Savannah exhibit outdoors, and then zooming out from the skylight indoors was a simple way to move through space. Some of these things seem so obvious when watching, but most amateurs (and film students even) don't always think about how their shooting style translates - or that they even have a style for that matter.
There are a lot of clues here to how things have evolved in nearly 5 years time. However, editing aside, these are fairly casual, fun, and upbeat vids. Animals are easy subjects, and certainly energetic enough to make for lively clips. Enjoy.
