My Editing Work in Austin Film Festival!

Well last year I edited The Teleported Man for my thesis project.  I asked the director, Zach Endres, for that role because it was a really interesting premise.  Without revealing too much about it, the title obviously piques my science fiction interests.  But there’s a couple cool twists that make it more then just a sci-fi movie.

The reason I’m writing to you about it today and not just telling you the twists is because you should go see it!  The film is screening at the Austin Film Festival this week!  I’m currently unable to go see it, as Los Angeles is a little far from Austin, but you can see it in my place.  Ironically or coincidentally, I’m not sure which applies, two of the interns I work with are going to Austin for the festival and they’ll hopefully be checking the movie out.  I guess it’s more ironic then coincidental since they’re not even from Austin or UT.

Anyways, on to the important information, the screening times!   It screens at 9:30 pm on Friday, October 19 at The Hideout Theatre and on Sunday, October 21, at 7:45 pm at the Alamo Drafthouse Village.  I hope you enjoy the film, I enjoyed being a part of it!

Actually, let me talk about being a part of it.  This was a really fun project for me because of the people attached.  Zach and Irene were a great director and producer, and both extremely dedicated to the film.  And Cameron, the cinematographer, did an amazing job of filming in a style that matched the story Zach told.  Again, I’m being vague here so you can see what I mean by checking out the film for yourself.  And it was tons of fun to work with Mystie, who really surprised me as a producer and is currently doing a kick-butt job over at TSTV.

I was only on set one day to supervise a visual effects shot I would later be working on, and it was a fun and professional set.  Everyone knew their specific jobs and things were getting done fast, but everyone was having a lot of fun with it.  I remember making jokes about ridiculous directions we could take the VFX stuff once we had our set up done.  And in case anyone from the set is reading this, who put the U-Haul key in my laptop case?  We spent like an hour looking for that key so we could all drive home, and I found it in the back pocket of my laptop case.  Good thing I stuck around, too, because I was thinking of walking back home and getting some sleep, with the key stuck in my case and away from the crew looking for it.  Fun times.

Since that was the only day I was on set, all the footage was new to me as I edited it.  I usually edit footage that I’ve been involved with during production, so it’s always nice to edit more traditionally with a fresh pair of eyes.  It helps me make unbiased decisions about which takes to use.  I also enjoyed editing and making visual effects for someone else’s vision, not my own.  As I mentioned in a previous blog post, when I make effects for myself I already have a clear vision of the end product in my head.  The same thing works for when I edit for myself.  But editing for someone else, like Zach, is a fun process since it’s collaborative and I get to discover and meld the footage into someone else’s vision.  It’s a great exercise in teamwork.

Anyways, I had a lot of fun working on it and I hope you’ll have as much fun watching it.  Everyone did an awesome job on the movie and it really shows in the finished product.  You can check out the film’s website here.

Writing is Rewriting

Writing is rewriting, yes?  I’m sure we’ve all heard that before.  But it really is.  Very few scripts are perfect on their first draft.  And it’s something I learn and relearn every time I write.  In fact, it’s the back and forth between work shopping and rewriting that makes most good scripts what they are.  Last week I talked about my newest project with my new Youtube channel, Hyperdrive Pictures, and the logo I designed for it.  This last weekend we work shopped about seven scripts.  In every workshop you’re going to hear things about your script that work, and you’re inevitably going to hear things that don’t.  Oddly enough, you mostly hear about what doesn’t work.  For myself, it’s something I never get completely used to, but something I learn to deal with.

But you have to remember that writing is rewriting!  The comments and critiques you’re getting will help you develop a better script, and if they’re coming from people who really know writing and what they’re talking about, like the group I was working with, you know that the flaws they point out are honest mistakes in your work that need patching up.  So what I do is nod and say “good note” and do my best to see it from their point of view.  Most of the time.  Occasionally I reach something that I really think works the way it is and fight over it, but later on I’ll come around and see it their way.  Maybe there’s a balance there.  You’ve got to stick to some things and let go of others.  And in the rewrite you’ll find the balance that works.  After all, you can’t change everything in your script because someone else has a different idea, but changing the bits that matter can really make that final draft worth it.

So in the end, with the whole writing is rewriting thing in mind, I look at screenwriting like this.  Don’t get attached to your first draft, because you know it’s going to change if you really want it to be good.  Be glad you took that first step in making a potentially amazing script, and look forward to what it’ll evolve into as you nurture it into something better.

My Logos: Then and Now

It's kind of funny how I work with logos versus how I work with other animations in After Effects.  When I usually work on an animation or visual effect, I mess around with it a couple times and leave my computer.  When I come back, I'll know what changes I want to make to finish my work and apply them.  But every time I make a logo I start and finish the visual design on my first sitting in front of the computer.

I've made 3 opening logos for my work to go in front of my videos now.  One when I was fourteen, which is on a hard drive waaaay back home, so I can't show you that one.  But it's not much to show, since it's literally a combination of a picture I drew in Microsoft Paint, a blur effect, and a shatter effect from Windows Movie Maker.  You can see my second one, which I made when I was 15, at the beginning of one of my high school videos below.  I was really into lightning at the time and had just discovered how to keyframe effects in Sony Vegas.  I had a clear image in my head of what I wanted to do.  So I combined lightning with a couple plug ins and hammered out that logo in an afternoon.

I stopped using that logo in college for a number of reasons.  First, it would have been really selfish of me to put that in front of my projects I worked on at TSTV.  It would imply that I entirely produced that project on my own, like I did back in high school, when that just wasn't the case in college.  My projects at TSTV were a team effort!  Also, I got the idea for Zurita Films from Lucasfilm.  I decided two or three years into college that my next company name shouldn't put so much emphasis on one person, since making too many decisions without others' input is be a bad thing for your team.  Also, by the time I was producing films in class on my own I had outgrown the logo.  It didn't match up with the skill in visual effects I wanted to convey, so it went on the shelf and I decided to make a new one at some point. 

Flashforward to last week.  With all the thought I've put into the new Youtube channel I'm developing with some friends, I've once again got a crystal clear image of what my new logo should look like.  And I've been improving some cool techniques I could use to do it.  So once again I sit down one afternoon and hammer out a new graphic I will proudly put at the beginning of my work!  I finished, tweaked, and perfected it all in one short sitting again, too!  I won't show it to you now, though.  Just this screenshot.

The first time you should see it is at the beginning or end of one of my projects.  You'll be able to see it on my new Youtube channel, HyperdrivePics.  There's obviously nothing there yet since we're still in development, but if you go ahead and subscribe to it using your Youtube account, you'll know when our first project is online, the second we upload it!  And you'll get to see the new logo for yourself, too!

One last funny thing.  Though I strongly believe the new logo is superior in every way, isn't it interesting how I used the same color scheme, and the text streak effect is still present, albeit different?  Guess that's a personal style thing that took me 'till now to realize.