Harry Potter Birthday Bash

About a month ago, I turned 24 on the day that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 was released in theaters. Because of this, I felt it was only natural that I have a birthday party that led into the midnight show. Below, you can see pictures from the whole event.

This is Heather, my new girlfriend. She is pretty awesome and a big Harry Potter fan.

Blossom in his pretty terrible Dementor costume.

The best cake in the world.

Rebecca was on the verge of a breakdown the entire evening. I think it was a mixture of excitement and exhaustion.

I caught Whoopie Goldberg on TV. Win all around.

Blossom made us Butterbeer jello shots. They were pretty good. You can't tell in this picture but there were sprinkles on them that made them Gryffindor and Slytherin themed.

We met Ann and her sister at the theater.

This picture makes me happy.

I ran into Cami Roebuck in the lobby. This kid is awesome.

Who brings a book into a theater? Nerd.

Overall, it was a really fun night spent with great friends. I really enjoyed the movie and it was great to experience with those closest to me.

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog

So this past semester got pretty rough and, in the process, I stopped updating this blog and lost touch with a lot of great things in my life. Now I'm on a much needed break and I'm feeling much, much better about things. For one, I can say that I'm actually excited about making movies again and that's a really great thing.

So what did I do while I was gone? Well, a lot. I just realized that I haven't put a lot of my recent films on here. So let's do that now.

First up is At the End, a project I did for Professor Bear's 710 Film and Digital Production class. The goal was to tell a complete story creatively in one camera shot that lasted one minute long. We were not allowed to alter the image in any way in post. The film tells the story of a young man dying of cancer and how he views the last week of his life as a blur that jumbles up visiting friends, loved ones and his own memories. The blurred effect that appears in the film was created by using a 50mm Lensbaby Composer.

The next film is my final film that I did for 710. It is called Spotless and plays off of the urban legend of "The Hook," which is about the young couple that is terrorized by a hooked killer in a lover's lane. I re-wrote the legend though and gave it a little twist to make it more interesting to me. The film turned out pretty solid. I'm pretty happy with it. It's definitely a lot fun and feels a lot like a lot of the horror films I used to watch growing up.

The next film I have for you guys is my Self Portrait that I made for Professor Kocka's 729 Directing for Film and Television class. The goal was to simply express who I am creatively. The project became an obsession for me and what resulted is probably my favorite thing that I have made as a filmmaker. I had a lot of people be real with me for this thing and I really love the way it turned out.

The last film I have for you guys is a studio exercise entitled Possible that my classmate Rachael Abrams and I co-directed for Directing class. The goal of the project was to take what we had learned in the class and use those techniques to help explore the idea of memories and dreams. The film follows a young man as he daydreams about a girl in the park and then, after some thought, tries to make those dreams a reality. The film was a lot of fun to make and I feel like it turned out quite enjoyable. Rachael and I created the dream sequences all in camera via the technique of "lens walking," in which you detach the lens of the camera and "walk" it back and forth from the camera body. Great stuff.

I also completed my final film for Directing class called Student Teacher Conference. There is a cut of it but I'd like to have it re-cut slightly and cleaned up for festival usage. Because of that, you will not be seeing it online. However, I will be putting together a small trailer for it, which I will put on here.

The movie tells the story of a girl named Jill who has had a 4.0 her entire college career. When she does bad on a paper for Professor David Lister, she finds her precious grade point average threatened. She tries to persuade David to change her grade but no avail. So she decides to turn to alternative methods to have the grade changed. Possibly dangerous methods.

Student Teacher Conference is a hard movie for me. It's incredible uncomfortable and raw. Because of this, it's not the most pleasant thing to watch. However, that's kind of the point. Overall, I'm pretty happy with what we achieved, especially considered my lack of sleep and sanity at the time of filming. The movie is good but will kill a party vibe in a second. It came from a pretty personal place from me and that shows. I've been trying to get the film made for two years now and it's nice to finally have it out of me.

In a few months, I begin work on Rearview, my final film at SCAD. I don't want to say much about this film yet. But one look at the teaser poster should give some strong hints to its subject matter and theme.

That's it for now. Expect blog posts at a regular pace from here on out.

Coming Soon: Self Portrait

If you ran into me over the break, you probably know that I am working on my Self Portrait for Professor Lubomir Kocka's Directing for Film Television class right now. You know this because I probably harassed you into being in it. I got the assignment before the break started and, for some reason or another, I began to instantly obsess over it.

Basically the assignment is that I have to create a visual work that creatively expresses me as a person, filmmaker, artist, etc. I could go about this in a variety of ways. I decided to go a route that is slightly experimental. Since I was going back to Mississippi for a week during Spring Break, I decided to interview as many people from my life as I could during that time. This included people that were my friends, teachers, actors, crew members, parents, grandparents, ex-girlfriends, etc. I did my best to get what was best and worst about me out of these people. The goal was to get a variety of opinions, ideas and stories from these people and then to express what they say about me visually.

Basically, I wanted to have the people that grew up with me paint a picture of who I am. I didn't want to influence them. I didn't want to say who I am myself. I wanted them to tell me and paint my project for me. I took the assignment as sort of a spiritual quest to try and figure out who I am as a person, what I've done wrong and what I've achieved.

Now I sit here at 2:24 am rendering clips and patiently waiting to cut everything together. I have over two hours of interviews, home movie clips, Mississippi landscape footage, etc. My Self Portrait is only supposed to be five minutes long.

Needless to say, I have a lot of work ahead of me. The crazy part is that I'm not even done filming yet. Still, I couldn't be more excited and enthusiastic about this project. I'm working hard to create a real sensory experience with this film. I hope it works the way it does in my head. It's going to be a pretty strange thing to watch.

I'm still blown away by how many people did interviews for me in the break and by how much content each of them gave me. It's going to be hard to find the nuggets of gold in each of their interviews. You can see a screenshot of each person who participated below.

Andrew Hinds: friend, composer, co-writer, artist

Guy Stricklin: friend, artist, DP

Laura Murphy: friend, actor, performer

Zach Osborn: friend, actor, co-writer, performer

Margaret: ex-girlfriend

Rebecca Goysich: friend, film extra

Kelli Gann: friend, film extra

Dr. Everett: undergraduate English / Film professor

Hugh Latimer: grandfather

Kevin and Michele Caldwell: parents

Caleb Graham: friend, actor

Jonathan Blossom: friend, actor, various crew member positions

As you can see, I have a lot to go off of. I have to have the project ready to screen a week from today. Wish me luck. I'll be sure to put it on here. Also, I'll be putting up articles on the One Minute Film and the Urban Legend Film from last quarter soon as well.

Late Nights, Early Mornings

My friends Kristen and Christoph have started a producing team. Right now, their production team label is "Late Nights, Early Mornings." This is because that phrase pretty much describes life as a film graduate student at SCAD. It's fun if you really love film but it's also pretty pressing. Lately, I've been losing track of what day it is and, sometimes, where I'm supposed to be or what I'm supposed to be doing. A few hours ago I fell asleep in my computer chair while doing online class homework and then napped for three hours. My sleeping pattern doesn't really exist anymore. I don't know what's going on. I'm on random sets at random times. I'm in the cold, muddy woods in South Carolina. I'm at a wrap party. I'm going to see Dr. Dog. Sound design is still due. I don't know.

I wish I had gotten to blog more this quarter. I've had a bunch of pictures and things just sitting on my computer that I've meant to put on here. Life has just been a little confusing. Frustrating and exhausting. Good at times. Wonderful at others. Sometimes awful. So yeah... it's been confusing.

Anyways, here's my attempt to sum up the last month or so.

My friend Justin complained that he felt uncomfortable in my room last quarter because it felt very sterile. I agreed. So I added some posters (yes, more posters in my already ridiculously big collection), toys and a bookshelf.

I have a new roommate this quarter. His name is Bridson Wills and he's pretty cool. He's an undergraduate from Chicago that is majoring in Illustration. His art is pretty experimental and crazy. He pastes it all over our room and our apartment. He's kind of turned the main room into a studio. And he conducts strange, noise experiments in the apartment sometimes.

So basically, I'm living with Banksy.

You can see his sides of the room below and some of his art.

I went around Savannah a few weeks ago to get some footage for a short film I made. I realized that I had never really posted many shots of what Savannah looks like on here before. So here's some of the prettier sides of Savannah.

Me and my friends Justin, Adam, Michael and Alex went to the Dr. Dog show in Charleston a month ago. While there, we met my friend Karolle from high school. It was good to see her after a few years. The show was also pretty great. You can see a picture Michael took below.

I got a new rig for my camera at the recommendation of my teacher Bear Brown. It's called the Cowboy Studios rig and it makes it easier to use a DSLR camera in handheld shooting. You can see me strapped into the rig below.

Here are some pictures from class and a shooting set up we stagged in a fake warehouse.

Here are some pictures of us setting up the Canon 7D during the filming of some of our one minute film shoots.

As I just mentioned, we all had to individually make a one minute film consisting of one continuous shot for our 710 class. My film was called At the End. I will go into the making of this movie and cover some of my classmates films as well (because a lot of them were great) in a future post when I have more free time to write. Until then, here's a still from my movie.

Two weeks ago, Justin and I helped the Adam Tuckey shoot his Sound Design Final project. It's going to change your world when you finally see it.

Last week, the other section of 710 shot their final project, a film called Contagion. I don't know much about the film but it seems to be about a magician that goes bad to gain success. I was on set one day as an extra. You can see pictures from that day as well as others from some of the other days of filming.

The Jonathan Blossom constructed dolly has hit Savannah.

Last weekend, I played a serial killer in Abosede' Copeland's horror film Humans Can Lick Too. I don't consider myself an actor at all but Abosede' for some reason seemed to think I fit the bill for this character (should I be offended?) and it seemed like a fun gig so I showed up. What followed was a lot of awkward licking (you'll just have to see the movie to understand this) and lots of fake blood being flung at me as I stood in a shower.

Mom and dad will be proud.

Production photos are below.

The past week or so I've been working with my team on our 710 final project. We have to adapt an urban legend or myth into a film for a local myths and legends film festival. We are adapting "The Hook" urban legend but with a lot of interesting variations. Our film is called Spotless. I'm directing it, Brandon Neslund is producing, Katy Lowe is DPing and Abosede' is running sound.

The other day we went to our location to scout it out. Here are the photos.

A few days after that, we went back to the location to put together a photo script. This is where you take photos of each angle from your story boards and put together in a script and see if they flow or edit together. Here are some select shots.

That's it for now. More to come on the One Minute Films, behind the scenes on Spotless and much more. But, for now, sleep.