Film
My film and video production start came around 1999 when my dad and I purchased a shiny new video card, the ATI All In Wonder Pro. We were very impressed with its many features, among these were composite and s-video inputs. Thus it became possible to input video and even edit a little. At the time I was running a 200mhz Cyrix, and video editing taxed the system quite a bit. I created several short pieces including a very nostalgic video introduction to my webpage.
My first real project work began when I signed up to take video tape production the second semester of my junior year in high school. Then things really started rolling. I created several short video pieces for school assignments, and in 2001 my friend Michael Denis and I completed our first major work, “The Most Dangerous Game” film.
I continued working in video throughout college, completing “The Butcher” film in 2005 and two additional shorts. All my work is available for viewing below.
The Most Dangerous Game
Arguably my most successful production, “The Most Dangerous Game” was a close collaboration between myself and my friend Michael Denis. The work took 5 months of our high school senior year to complete, and has a runtime of 35 minutes . I’m proud of the film, I think that Mike and I had a good groove going with this production. You can view “The Most Dangerous Game” as well as some behind the scenes clips at http://thegame.borism.net.
The Butcher
“The Butcher,” based upon an original script by Clyde Denis, was Michael’s and my second major collaboration. The film was a technically difficult due to its heavy reliance on blue-screened footage. There exist two versions of “The Butcher”, one finished by Michael in Avid XPress DV, and one which I completed in Adobe Premiere. The version below is my cut of the film. The Butcher premiered at WPI along side two video shorts I completed as part of my WPI humanities and arts sufficiency project. (see photos from the event)
Reflections: Video Shorts
The two video shorts below, jointly titled “Reflections” were completed in the spring of 2005; my senior year at WPI. The work is a return to the style of music-influenced videography I started with in my high school days. The first piece, on the immigration experience, is set to Russian Rap, while the second, on ballroom dance, features a jazzy foxtrot melody. “Reflections” is so named because it touches upon subjects close to my heart and being. A 16 page PDF document explains these works in greater detail and touches upon scene selection and meaning.
Early Video Shorts
The following video shorts are from my high school video production class. These were shot in analog video and digitized for editing.
The purpose of Assignment One (Monday Morning) was to demonstrate an understanding of the various shots and angles used in video tape production. I am very happy with the outcome of this project, it was my first experience video taping as well as editing in Adobe Premiere. The final product was well worth the learning curve. A big thanks goes to Mike Denis for starring in the video.
An interesting side note is about the music. The piece is set to Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King. As I got towards the middle of editing, I realized that Grieg’s dramatic climax of the piece came much too early. With a little careful modification in CoolEdit 2000 I extended the song by about 35 seconds, so in the audio track is indeed not as Grieg composed it. Listen carefully for where the edit was made.
This second project was created for the Winter 2000 Oyster River High School Sports Awards. Specifically the video features clips from the Boy’s Track Team. Editing was much more complicated in this project. The reason is that I did not shoot the footage, and had very little to work with. To create this 3 minute video I had approximately 9 minutes of raw un-edited footage. This can be compared to the 45 minutes raw of footage that I taped for the first assignment. This video was shown to approximately 60 people at the Sports Awards.
The third assignment (Pool On Garden Lane) had a purpose of demonstrating motion in video. It is the most free-flowing creative piece. There is a loose plot to the actions, but for the main part the assignment is shot and edited to be interesting and visually pleasing. Audio credits for this one go to Trio’s Da Da Da. Shouts go out to Mike Denis and Josh Nygren for the lead roles and to Mr. Perry for letting me borrow a physics video.. hmmm pizza.
Next came another Sports Awards assignment. This one for the tennis team was shown to a crowd of parents and students at the Spring 2000 Oyster River High School Awards. Unlike my first awards assignment I shot all of the video that was used in this project.Though some questioned my musical choice of Russian pop-folk group Lube, I think it fits the piece very well. Strangely or not I feel happy each time I see the video. Lube rocks.Like the previous project, the piece is very free flowing. I had a great time syncing the video to audio. Watch for careful audio/video timings.
Sherlock Holmes and The Speckled Band was the final and largest project I created for video tape production class. It also served as an English Literature final exam for the movie’s three actors.I worked long nights with Mike during finals week to finish editing and producing the piece. It was something I did for my own interest, we enjoyed the work. It was a challenge, and we were pressed for time.
A knowledge of the Speckled Band story will help when watching the video. The mini-movie features Mike Denis, Matt Shump, and (only one) Emelia Parker. Kudos to everyone for pulling this thing together, it will remain as one of my fondest memories of the infamous Oyster River High School.