Fernando's Senior Video

Every years, WMJF has a tradition of making senior videos of all the graduating senior of all the work that senior has done over their time at WMJF and Towson University. Usually, we get one of the current members to do the video, but because I had the most Fernando footage and Fernando wanted his video to be somewhat good, he asked me to do it.

So after some convincing, from the man himself, I decided that I would end up doing his senior video, even though I no longer was a WMJF member.

This would be my fourth senior videos and there was a reason why Nando wanted me to do it. I've always done a good job with them. The problem with them, is that you have to go through a lot of footage to make a good video, and Nando has got a ton of footage. So off to work I went.

Like always, I would loose a lot of sleep.

Going through all of Nando's footage was kind of hard, not because there were a lot or too few. But because most of Nando's footage involved me in some way. I was always next to him or behind the camera. So watching all that footage, just reminded me of how much fun we had making all those shorts and TV shows and how much we both missed doing them together. It hadn't been the same since my graduation, and now he was graduating, so it would be completely different.

Usually videos are suppose to last about 5 minutes. But there will always be a problem when you have a lot of footage and you get a good friend to cut your video. So 5 minutes changed to 7 minutes then 10 minutes. way too long.

I'm not a big fan of the music I chose, but my option were quite limited. I really don't know music like that. I am also not a big fan of the cuts to black. It was kind of a rush job, so I really didn't have time to fine tune the editing.

Overall, everyone seemed to like it very much. So I guess I ended up doing a good job. I hope you all enjoy the man. FERNANDO!!!

p.s.
I'm not going to put my other senior videos on here. cuz I don't have permission from those seniors. I didn't even need Nando's permission, he expected it to be on here.

Freelance Theatre Gigs.

What have I been doing since my last post? Well, I'm still in search of a full time job in the film or television industry, but it's not as simple as finding work in the service industry, especially in MD. In the meantime, I've been doing a few freelance gigs for a couple of theatre plays. For the most part all they ask is that you film the play and make a few DVDs for the actors and crew. The particular one above however, wanted me to make a promotional video, because they want to shop it around for grant money, so they could be able to tour up and down the east coast. It wasn't as easy as it sound, I thought the play was boring and uninteresting with a few funny jokes. So getting the motivation to scour through an hour and half of footage was tough. But at the end, I think this was the best I could do with the material given to me, and most importantly, the client loved the video. There are actually two videos. one 2 min teaser and a 7 min promo.

Since graduating, I've had less and less projects done. The truth is, between finding work, availability of equipments, availability of crew, and writers block, I just haven't had the chance to do any personal projects. I've helped on other project, but nothing for myself. Hopefully, this trend will change. I am already in talks to do a feature, a tv pilot, and a commercial. So now, it's all about getting the ball rolling. I also plan on doing a couple shorts. So here hoping 2008 is a better year.

Tennis Point (Test)

This short is basically a small exercise I gave myself so that I can get familiarize with Final Cut Studio 2, which I'm in the process of converting to from Avid. I have been using Avid for the past few years, but with the popularity of Final Cut, I figured that it would be a smart idea to, if not switch to, then at least learn the software.

Unlike Avid, Final Cut Studio 2 is actually a bundle of software. Obviously you have the editing software in Final Cut Pro 6, but you also have Motion 3 for 3D graphic, Soundtrack 2 for sound mixing, Color for well coloring your images, and DVD Studio 4 to make DVDs. You also have Live Type and Compressor to round out the bundle. The best thing about the bundle, is that every single one of these software are intergraded with each other, so working from one software to another is a smooth transition.

I had used FCP before so I wasn't complete starting from scratch, plus I already knew how to edit so I already knew what I wanted to do. I just needed to learn how to do those things in FCP, and more importantly learn the shortcuts, knowing the shortcuts can save you a lot of times. At the moment, I know about 80% of the Avid shortcuts so I can fly when I edit. After this exercise, I only know about 30% of the FCP shortcuts.

It took me awhile before I got started because like any red blooded human being, I just had to find out what every button did. It also took me awhile before I could stop my Avid habits. Once that was done, it went pretty smooth. There were a few things that I did in Avid that I still don't know if I can do in FCP, there are some that I know you can't do, and there are others that are just done differently. I have also noticed that FCP seems to be mouse driven. Yes there are shortcuts, but not all function have them, for instance, transition don't have shortcuts, which i wish they did. I know a few people that have either learned or converted to FCP from Avid, for their shortcuts they basically reassign the FCP shortcuts to look like the Avid shortcuts. I have decided not to do that, because I don't want to be dependent on them and one day work on someone else machine and realize I don't know where anything is.

I also did some motion affect in FCP and some titling. I was really impressed with the way the motion looked. As most filmmakers should know by now, digital video don't do well when you slow them down. I slowmo the film to 30% at first and it looked pretty good. It's at 40% now in case you wanted to know. The titling however was basic, unlike Avid, but I guess that's why Live Type, which I have yet to use, is included in the bundle. For future reference though, I find that motion affect don't do well in Color or Soundtrack, there seems to be a bug there.

Once I was done editing the film. I sent it to Color. Color is the software that I had been itching to use ever since I had heard about it. I've always thought that my films looked dull and boring, even though they were well composed and shot. I always figured it was because of the color. I absolutely love the way most Chinese imports looks. Their color contrast is amazing, and I want my films to look like that. Obviously part of that is set and costume design, but the other is definitely the coloring in the films. I think I accomplished that to some extent, although I still need a lot of practice and know how. I'm still not entirely sure what I am doing in this area.



These are some after and before shots. This one scene was shot on a different day from the original film. I never managed to get it to look like the other shots, but I think I came pretty close for the first time and for someone that really doesn't know what they are doing. As you can see in the above shot, I totally messed up the sky. I wanted it to look like the other shots so I added some blue, I don't know if I added too much or not enough.



In this after and before shot, you can definitely tell the difference in the sky. I did a much better job here, although it was a lot easier to do then the previous pic. Also if you look at the grass and the tennis court, they are more saturated.



The changes in this shot is less subtle, but you can still see the difference. The after picture is bright and has more contrast. The fence and the tree are greener, the sky is bluer, and the shorts are redder. This shot already looked good as is, I just did a little tweaking.



This one was shot on the first day, but the sun was dying out, so it wasn't as bright. I tried to get it to look like the other shots and I think I did an ok job, like I said I still don't know what I'm doing. I brighten the shot up and added some green to the whole scene and this is what I came up with.

Overall, I was really impress with Color. I just wish I knew what I was doing with colors. I went to a coloring lab in the fall and that guy was freaking awesome, but thats why he charged us $400/hour, and that was discounted.

Next came Soundtrack 2. I knew that I was going to do a lot of foley for this production and after seeing Soundtrack 2 in action at a Final Cut Studio Conference I was really excited to get my hands on this thing, but it completely surprised me. As I was working on singling out every bounce and racket pop. I was just astonished at the level of detail I could delete from the original sound without loosing the key sound that I wanted. I basically went through all the bounce and pop and deleted all the nat sound around. This is got to be the best sound mixing software around.

The production was simple and completely ad-lib. There were a couple of shots that I knew I wanted, but the rest was just made up on the go. We basically set the camera up and hit some balls and pose for some shots. It was pretty simple, altough it took quite awhile and it was really hot that day.

This was shot with a Panasonic DVX100B and I use FCP6, Color, Soundtrack 2, and Compressor for post.

48 Hour Experience - part 2

6:30am Sunday. I am editing the film. I have just a little over 12 hours left, more than enough time, and I haven't slept in about 42 hours. That's when it hit me. No matter how hard I tried to stay up, I just couldn't. My eyes felt so heavy, as if there were unsuspecting forces pulling my eyes shut. My brain couldn't function properly, as if it were already asleep, I just didn't know about it. My body too relaxed to even move. My head starts to dip lower and lower without my control, and then BAM. I'm fast asleep.

I would regain consciousness every 5 to 10 minutes, and continue to edit with what ever energy I had just replenish, only to fall back asleep as that energy diminishes. The process, wake up edit fall asleep, would carry on for a good 3 hours before my editor would wake up and finally relieve me.




6:00pm Friday. We arrived at the meeting and pick up our information. The meeting took place in a small bar in Baltimore where it soon became apparent that the bar was too small for all 45 groups taking part in this contest, but we carried on. As we patiently sat at our table, we began to analyze the competition. There are more guys than gals, and the age varied from 15 to 60. We looked around to see who our biggest thread could be, but we couldn't figure it out, as everyone pretty much looked the same.

By 6:30, teams were finally beginning to randomly choose their genre out of a hat. By the time it was our turn to pick, 20 minutes later, we were pretty nervous but anxious at the same time. There were genres that we thought we could work with, but there was also genre we just didn't want. (Buddy Film, Comedy, Detective/Cop, Drama, Fantasy, Film De Femme, Holiday Film, Horror, Musical or Western, Road Movie, Romance, SciFi, Spy, and Superhero) We ended up getting DRAMA. We were definitely disappointed with that, mainly because we wanted something a little bit more fun and challenging. Once everyone got the genre, the host told us the prop (a Flag) and the character (Glen, House Painter) that we needed to include in our film. And then we were off.



7:00pm Friday. We were on our way to HQ. We really didn't worry too much about the writing, as our original story was a love story and our writer was all about writing Drama. But once we got there, it took us a good 2 hours before we would write anything down. We debated with the writer, trying to fix plot hole in his story, but he just didn't want to acknowledge them as holes. Even after he began writing the first act, it took him 2 draft to realize that he had to incorporate what we had talked about before we would OK the script, and that this was going to be a collaborative story. The other thing we debated about, was that our writer is a big Kevin Smith fan, and he likes to write long monologue. But even though we knew that this story was going to be dialog heavy, we just felt that a lot of the dialogs needed to be dramatically cut down. Really for two reason. One we all thought that the monologues dragged way too long, our writer was no Kevin Smith, and two, the actors wouldn't have the time to memorize all the lines in such a short a time. Once all that was squared up, the writing ran pretty smoothly until the end of the script.

4:30am Saturday. Most if not all filmmakers have something that they want in the film whether its a line, vision, or a scene. The good filmmakers know that if it doesn't help the story along that they should and do cut it. Well our writer wanted this one monologue to stay in the film and everyone in the group there kept telling him that it needed to get cut down. This is where our writer lost it and snapped at us. "Fine, you guys write it the way you fucking want. I don't care anymore!" We kind of did, but we also rationalized with him and manage to move on. The script was finish at about 6:00am. I broke down the script and made a shot list and shooting schedule in about 2 hours. I had to make sure that the all the scenes with one of my actors were done before he had to work at 3Pm Saturday, and that the scenes with one of my other actors didn't start until 4pm after he got off work.



9:00am Saturday. We are already an hour late from our original schedule, and we are just now getting ready to set up for our first shot of the day. But once we got started, everything ran pretty smoothly which can definitely be accredited to the people there. We got done with the first half of the shoot with enough time left over for all of us to be able to take a small break and all get food.



4:30pm Saturday. We came back from lunch and the crew were taking a break while the actors were getting into wardrobe, when the entire crew fell asleep before the actors had even finished looking for their wardrobes. Being as this whole project is volunteer base, I didn't bother waking them. Myself and another crew member, who had taken a couple of nap earlier in the day, trucked on with the actors and did an entire scene before the rest of the crew began to wake up. The rest of the shoot went well. But you could see the lack of sleep taking its toll on everyone. We began cutting shots off the list and there were a few times were I directed from the couch. There were crew member sleeping during takes, since they weren't needed to hold a camera or a boom. And there were overall less chatter amongst the group as earlier that day. We were done with all the shooting at about 11:00pm.



1:30am Sunday. After cleaning up, a much needed shower, and a quick bite to eat. I was off to editing. My editor showed up at 2am, but couldn't do anything until I was done capturing and separating all the takes, which took me most of the night, so he went to sleep. My writer and a couple of my actors came by around 2:30am after hitting the bar after a long day of shooting, but they too fell asleep. I was all alone and I was exhausted. After separating all the scenes and takes, I kept going and began to edit the film since my editor was still asleep. Eventually, I hit the wall at 6:30am.

11:00am Sunday. I had a quick 2 hour nap. My editor had been editing while I was asleep. And my music scorer had just arrived. We were now running really late, thanks to the collapse I had earlier. We were suppose to have a rough cut of the film for our scorer by noon, but we were no where near that feat. We still had plenty of time though, as long as we kept at it. This is where I am really disappointed at my editor. He just kept taking unnecessary breaks. We had a couple of guys go to dunkin donuts, so he just had to tag along with them, wasting 40 minutes. Then someone popped in a episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so he had to watch the episode wasting another hour. And then there are the times where he would go online to check something only to have him surf online for what seemed hours. Eventually, as tired as I was, I started to edit the film, but I was really slowed by the lack of sleep.

6:00pm Sunday. While other groups were starting to turn their project in, we were just finishing our rough cut. Our editing dragged on all day, when it should have been done by 3 or 4pm at the latest. Throughout the day we gave what ever we had to our scorer so that he could score while we finish. Once we got a rough cut done, we gave it to our scorer and we moved on to fixing the audio. We didn't have the time to go back and tighten any cuts. We also made some make shift credit and mandatory slates. Our scorer got us the music by 6:45pm, we were cutting it close, but we were going to make it, the deadline was 7:30pm and the place was 20 minutes away. Then the editing machine CRASHED while importing the music. We wasted at least 8 minutes trying to get it back up, but we had no luck. We however had other editing machine at our disposal, and it took us another 10 minutes or so to get our project back up. We had wasted almost 20 minutes with this whole misfortune. We put the film on tape which took the equal length of the movie, 7 minutes, and went off like a bat out of hell. We had 10 minutes to get to a place 20 minutes away. We got there in 12 minutes. WE WERE LATE!!! and officially disqualified from the competition.

That was the most disheartening experience in my young filmmaking career. We had gotten it done. We all lost so much sleep over this project, only to be disqualified before the judges had a chance to see it. At the end, we were 6 minutes late. It was even more disheartening after the screening, as we were by far one of the top 3 film.

Would I do it again? Probably, but I don't know if I would want as much responsibility as this time. I was so worn out at the end. I was the only one there from the beginning to the end. One of the biggest reason to do a 48 hour film project is really to see if you can do it. In my mind, that had been accomplished. Now, I still wanted to win and the fact that we didn't even get our film in will hunt me until next year. Will the taste of losing be out of my mouth by then, or will I want to prove myself even more. Only time will tell. There is one thing for sure, I wont be doing a 48 hour film project for awhile. My next opportunity will be in September for Camm Slamm. I already know that I won't take a big part in that, if I take a part in it at all.

This is the final version of the film. It was shot with the Panasonic DVX-100B and edited with Avid.

48 Hour Experience - Part 1

The 48 Hour Experience

This coming weekend I will be taking part in my second 48 Hour Film Festival. The first one was for Camm Slam, a 48 hour festival copycat but not as organize or prestigious, I didn't have a bad time, but I also didn't have a good time doing Camm Slam. I am hoping that part of the reason was because of the people I was working with. No offense to those guys, but everyone just kept butting head and I was relegated to bitch duty. I was also suppose to put the video up, but I still don't have a copy of it, and it doesn't look like I will be getting a copy anytime soon.

This time around I will have no one but myself to blame if I don't have a good time, as I will be totally in charge. If I don't like this experience, then it will probably be the last time I try this.

Personally, I wish I could just start shooting something when ever I feel like shooting something. But as most filmmakers know or should know by now. Unless you can beckon actors and a crew at will, it will take you a good week and half minimum before you can start to shoot. In other word, I don't like producing. It might be a 48 hour festival, but there is so much pre-planning beforehand.

I will put the movie up next weekend along with my experience. Wish me and my team luck. And please come support us. The movie will be screened Friday, June 22 9:45pm at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Look for Team Gone Crazy.

Out To Campus

Throughout my Towson career. I manage to produce two live sporting broadcast without killing anyone. I say that because, the stress and amount of work that has to go into a live sporting broadcast is mind boggling. You have so much stuff you have to worry about and there are just some things that you have absolutely no control over, but are so dependent on for your broadcast to go the way you want it to go.

This documentary is actually the first broadcast I produced. As soon as I was put in charge of putting the live broadcast together, I knew that I was going to document it, don't ask me why, but I am so glad that I did. The things that went on during that hectic week, just couldn't be told in mere words. The most memorable has got to be that car ride to eventech, where we almost died like three times.

The broadcast itself went as well as it could have. As a producer I would have to give myself an A+. Everything a producer needed to do was done. Most of the flaws from that broadcast came from technical problem and human error, mainly because not everyone was familiar with a basketball broadcast, but you can only work with what you got.

The documentary however sat on the shelves for about a year and half. I had all the footage, but none of the time. Then, it just fell into the back shelves not to be heard from until this year. With a lot of people on the documentary graduating, I thought that it would be nice present if they actually saw the footage. So off to work I went, it's not like I have a job I need to report to :( I shot some interview with key personnel and who ever was around and started to cut this thing.

The final product probably could be better, the cuts could be tighter. After watching it with other people. I realize that it runs slow on some parts. I also notice that the beginning and the end are a little vague. That's probably my fault, for not asking the right questions. I used about 80% of the B-roll, which is a high amount, because we only used one camera to document the broadcast. And the opening could be better, it was the very last thing I did and I was just running out of ideas.

Everyone who saw it seemed to like it, but then again everyone that saw it, new the stories, so I don't know if it's actually good, ok, or bad. It was submitted into the 2007 Media art festival and it didn't place at all, which surprise everyone including my self, especially since no one I talked to liked the winner. Most of the documentaries I watch are sports documentary, which are music driven. So my documentary was also music driven, but I've been asking my self if that was why my documentary didn't win, because I personally know that some of the judges don't think that music should ever drive a movie, so I can't really trust there judgment, also the time limit was 15minutes so my entry was cut down, which sucks.

This was shot on a Panasonic DVX100B and edited on Avid.

P.S.
My favorite documentary right now is "Dust To Glory."

A View From The Bridge

This assignment was part of a directing project. I was to direct these two theater actors who were learning to act for the camera. The scene is that of a theater play called "A View From the Bridge" It wasn't my choice to do this scene, but I was stuck with it.

I was really disappointed with this class and this assignment. The actors really didn't do us director any favor, and you can blame the acting professor for that. He actually told them that as actor you can walk out on the director if you wanted. Of course, non of us directors knew that, so we were wondering why the actors were such bitches. It all made sense afterward. We spend our entire time trying to work around the actors schedule just so we could direct them to do one thing, and have them do what they wanted to do anyway. It was either that, or the actor just plain sucked.

It was also hard to direct actors who knew more about the play then you did. "A View From the Bridge" takes part in the 50s in New York City, and the character were Italian and low class. Reading the scene I had gotten that part, but being the director I decided that I wanted to modernize it. I wanted to make it so that the year was 2000 and the characters were American and your typical middle class family. But when it came down to shooting, the girl came in an old looking dress and was just hell bent on doing her stupid Italian accent, and the guy came in regular cloth, because he didn't own a suit and just couldn't show any emotion on his face. Oh Yeah! Did I mentioned that I was assign the actors and the script by the acting professor. So basically all I did was tape and cut this thing for him to judge his crappy actors acting skills. This was the third directing professor in two year. The acting professor now teaches both the actors and directors. Good luck directors.

This was shot on a Panasonic DVX100B and Edited on Avid. It was completed Fall 2006.

This was entered in the 2007 Media Art Festival. It got an Honorable Mention for Directing.

EDIT:
I just watch this thing again, and wow. It is so poorly cut in my opinions. I can't believe I cut this, I'm better than that. It must have been the late night editing. I don't know what I was thinking.

Demo/Resume Reel

In order to get a job in this business, you kinda need a Demo/Resume reel to showcase your work. One of the biggest mistake most people make, is that they make their reel too long. But the question is, what is too long. I have done a lot of work in the past three years. My first attempt at a reel was almost six minute long. I have since changed it and this is what it looks like now.



This is my general demo reel. It has everything from TV/Film/Commercial/Documentary. This is what I would send out to potential employers, unless the job I was applying for, was something specific. It is only one minute long, and I have my best work at the front to make sure they keep watching. I have been told that some employers turned your reel off as soon as they see something they don't like. So my goal was to keep their attention as long as possible. I don't know if I achieved that.



This is my sport demo reel. This is what I would send out to employers, if I was applying to a sport specific position. I have been told that it is a good idea to have different demo reel catered to the job your applying to. unfortunately, I do not have my own editing machine, so I can't go out and change my reel to match that of my employers. It is also one minute long and is cut exactly the same as my general reel, which was actually cut second.

Towson Sports Shows

When I first started at WMJF I started on "Towson Sports Weekly," which is an ESPN style show focus squarely on Towson sports. Then came all the spin-off from TSW. There was "Towson Gameday" which focused on Towson football, There was "Towson Full Court Press" which focused on Towson basketball, there was "Face-Off" which was a PTI style show, and "Heatin It Up" which was like a talk show but dealt entirely with sports.

I co-produced TGD, FCP, FO, and HIU. And I was a director and technical director for TSW. I was also a talent on all five show.



Towson Gameday

I have produced over 25+ TGD episode, and they got better everytime. TGD was by far the best show on WMJF. We had a dedicated crew that would go out to every game and shoot, as well as studio crew. TGD was shot live-to-tape in studio, with the exception of two episode where we shot outside in the stadium when we couldn't get into the studio using a two camera setup.

In the fall 2006, I also executive produced a live-to-tape broadcast of an entire football game.



Towson Full Court Press

I have also produced over 25+ FCP episode. It was not as good as TGD, mainly because of timing of the basketball season and the quantity of the games. Basketball season usually started near exam and half the games occurred during winter break. Our dedicated crew, just wasn't as dedicated to do this show as TGD, as we also had more games to cover.

In spring 2006, I executive produced a live broadcast of an entire basketball game with a pre-game show, a half-time show, and a post-game show.

The rest of the shows aren't online, mainly because I was no longer producing them when we started putting shows online. TSW has never been posted online, since I don't produce that show. FO has never been posted online, since I give my producing power to younger member to alleviate my schedule, and HIU has never been posted online, since the executive producer has not had a show since spring 2006.

All of these shows are shot in studio using a three camera set-up with two VTR deck, a graphic generator, a teleprompter, and a six input/output switcher. I would also like to mention that our studio absolutely sucks. The guys in charge of keeping it running does a piss poor job of it, and one thing that always get affected is our audio. We have had instances where the audio wasn't going out, where we would get a ton of static, or where we would only receive one channel.

Press Start

Like "At The Movies," "Press Start" was a new show that I had created for the Fall 2006, and like "At The Movies" it is a review show, but instead of reviewing movies, the show would be reviewing video games.

If you thought getting in contact with PR companies for movies was hard, you should try doing it for video games. Almost all games publication, developers, producers, and distributors are based on the west coast. So living in the east coast, it was a bit hard for me to get in contact with any of them, especially when you don't know where to look. After a month of trying and "At The Movies" flourishing and taking up most of my time, I kinda give up and decided to just review old games.

The format is the same as "At The Movies" except that there are less correspondent, because there was less interest. Also like "At The Movies," I commissioned one of my friends to do the opening, but he never did it, and I just didn't have time to do one.



This was the first episode. My co-host and I went a little too long on the Madden review so the show ran over. The review of MGS3 was also a little long. I just did a poor job of judging time. It's not like I had a crew to help me keep time as I hosted. I cut as much stuff as possible, but at the end we just ran over about 2 minutes.



This is the second and last episode. I had aim to get at least four episodes on air, but my correspondent just got to busy to review any games. Unlike movies, game review takes a lot more time because they can take as long as 50 hours to finish. And I wasn't about to ask these freshmen to stop doing their homework so I can put a show on a student television station.

My co-host was also busy, so I got a guess host for this episode.

This show was shot using a one camera setup. I used a Panasonic DVX100, Flood light, and Avid.