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.