Binocular Kid

This was my group's 60-second film project.

Springs of Silver

I grew up in Silver Spring.  I was brought home from the hospital at three days old to the house I live in now, and that house's address has always contained the phrase "Silver Spring, MD."

The thing is, how does one describe a nebulous, inconsistent suburban sprawl in ninety seconds?  How does anyone define a town?  By its people, of course.

So I set out to film little impromptu interviews over the course of my typical day at school.

The result is this fun little assembly of natural dialogue, laughter, and B-roll.  The ending's a little cheesy, but whatever.


This was a fun one to film.  This is the first independent video assignment since I got my new Droid for Christmas, so it's been fun to have my camera in my pocket all the time.  This makes media class 500% better.

And like last time, the use of my father's Mac allowed me to use one of Apple's superior editing softwares.  iMovie isn't nearly as good as FCP, but it sure beats whatever the muffins YouTube thinks it can call editing software.

I learned from last time and didn't even bother with ccmixter.  I went straight to the free music archive and found this fun little song to play in the background.

I enjoyed messing around with the audio, choosing whether or not to keep the diagetic sound.  The levels were hard to get equal but wwhatevver.

The hardest part about this project was whittling down what I wanted to be my final product in order to meet the 90-second limit.  I would have loved to keep it where it was when it was 1:48 long, but alas, that did not meet the guidelines for the project.

In the end, I narrowly got it into the margin of acceptability, and voila!  Video.

Yellow Leaves, Grey Water, Blue Jackets

This is my "Capture the Fall" independent film project, titled Yellow Leaves, Grey Water, Blue Jackets.  I really like the way it turned out.

I filmed this all on my dad's iPhone, and edited it in iMovie.  The music is from freemusicarchive.org.

Filming was so much fun.  I stopped by Heyser Farms and the local park on the way home from a birthday party.  Dad just pulled over, handed me his phone, and I filmed a few seconds of fall scenery.  

The really fun part started at home, when I got my sisters to help.  They were all too eager to be filmed raking leaves, though Suzanne originally wanted to go in bare feet and no jacket.  Not only did I get a few nice shots of raking leaves, but they kept suggesting new ideas that eventually became the backbone of my project.  Katie wanted to be filmed climbing a tree, Suzanne wanted to be filmed jumping into a pile of leaves, and I suggested the shot where Katie runs down the hill onto the swingset.  When Suzanne jumped into the pile of leaves, I stopped recording - only to have Katie jump in after her!  Then Suzanne started throwing leaves, and I just had to film it.  The original clip is 40 seconds long, but I only kept a few seconds in the video.

Katie helped me film a few staged shots, and then it was time to get editing.

iMovie was really weird, and it seemed to be made for a less advanced editor than a high school film student - which was annoying - but eventually I got it to work.  The simplicity of the project kept the dumbing down of the program from being a problem.

I ended up having to cut out a few clips that I was going to have, just to fit into the time limit and because they didn't fit the overall theme of the video.

Music was annoying at first, as ccmixter was ridiculously unhelpful, but freemusicarchive was much nicer for finding wordless classical music.  I like the bittersweet tone to this song, and the piano is lovely.

I also made a short blooper reel for this video, mostly involving their leaf fight, but also a couple of mishaps from filming.  Included is a guitar song under the "comedy" tag of freemusicarchive.

Enjoy both videos!

5x5: Beach Trip

YouTube is being stupid again.  It doesn't accept my change of the thumbnail, and it won't let me view the video.  I don't know why Safety Mode is not letting me view the video in school.  There's nothing wrong with it.

I'm going to try to embed the link here.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX_BQmOi2Rw

1. Ferry ride
2. Walking towards the water
3. Sand games
4. Waves
5. Walking down the beach

I used the camera in my mom's Droid to capture this video.  I used WeVideo to edit it. 

I tried YouTube's video editor, but it had far more problems than I could deal with.  You had to upload footage to your channel as independent videos, then trim those clips to how long you want them, THEN put together the video.  Basically, you can only arrange videos on your channel into the order you want.  There's very little editing that you can do in the actual video editor.  Trimming the clips also was weird; it would trim them, but it would just take the length of the clip you wanted from the beginning of the video instead of where you actually wanted them from.  It was altogether a nightmare.  WeVideo made much more sense.

I rather like my 5x5.  I just wish the school system would actually allow me to watch it.  I hope Mr. Mayo's computer works better.

I would love to put together something along the lines of a 5x5, but with an actual story.  Creating a story in that short of a time is difficult, but can be done very well.