Saturday, November 25, 2006

What if God was one of us?




When I set out to do this project, I didn't really have an answer. There were questions I was interested in and those answers came from the crowd, from the people on the streets. I still don't know if the answers satisfied the questions, but that's the whole point, right? This video was done in San Francisco. What if we shot it in Dallas, Texas? What about some village in Africa? How would the people in those cities react?

I casted Carl Collins because he was a fearless actor and an imposing figure. When Carl walks down the street, you can't miss him. So the fact that "Jesus" is 6'5 and 300lbs, we can throw out the excuse that you didn't see him. I don't know if I succeeded. As a filmmaker, especially a beginning one, you try new things and experience with ideas that really are beyond you...at least for me. That's one of the most interesting aspects of film and story. It's a crash and burn theory of working. The only negative is that your failures are there for all to see.

The most credit, if any, should be given to Carl Collins - the fearless actor who played Jesus Christ. One - for playing Jesus Christ and two - for putting himself in such a position as to improv with the public and endure their skepticism and negative responses. He knew what the majority of the public will perceive him as and he still donned the costume and did it. That's commitment.

Thanks for watching.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

The good old In-Out In-Out

"The good old in-out in-out" is a line from "A Clockwork Orange". The music accompanying the footage is Faithless's "Insomnia". This was my final project for an editing 1 class. Editing 1 was the first editing class I took in film school.

I had so much fun with "Something about Mary running around with Sue" that I wanted to revisit the music video genre. The other option was cutting with Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" but that piece of music runs around 9 minutes long. It would've taken me a month and all I had was two weeks.

The great thing about watching your own work is realizing how much time it took and the utter disbelief that you actually did it. This was my last major editing project. I love editing but not a big fan of 10 hour days in the editing room. It's not much different than writing but way too taxing on the body and mind.

Hope you enjoy it.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Something about Mary running around with Sue

There's something about the golden oldies. "Runaround Sue" is one of those songs that can be re-mixed for today's audience. It's a very catchy song with great lyrics and a beat that's hard to ignore. This video was edited around the time that "Something about Mary" first came out on DVD. I was taking an editing class, tape to tape, which if you don't know, means we edited on a Sony Tape to Tape deck with linear editing.

The assignment was to make a music video with found footage. Which was nice cause I didn't have enough of my own footage to cut a music video. I loved the song before I started editing and not so much now. Not that I hate the song, no, it's still one of my favorites. But it took me around 30 hours to do all the edits and hearing the song over and over again. I don't know. Once you've heard a song over 500 times, I think, that's it. No more.

Regardless, I still love this video. Hope you enjoy it.