Mindless Mumbling Musings: College Film Class

Calvin College Media Production.

Well. The year is winding down, and I have neglected this blog hardcore...

It is not without reason, mind you! I have been working hard, well, okay, hard-ish on my college courses. Exams are this week, but after... freedom. And a tour to Asia with the Calvin College Capella Choir. Needless to say, I am looking forward to said tour.

But what exactly have I been doing in school, you wonder (you probably don't, but I'll tell ya anyway!)? What have I been doing?

Making movies.

Like this. But... not really.

Okay, that was way too dramatic.

Awhile back, I mentioned possibly starting an Education segment for this blog. Yeah. That still may come, but it's currently on the back, back, back burner.

However, I am using this post as a blatant self promotion of some of my short films that I worked on in my Communications and Sciences: Introduction to Video Production class at Calvin College. No, these were far from the "best of" the intro level classes, but they were fun, nonetheless. I had the greatest team of people to work with, which is a huge bonus!

For our very first project, even before classes started, we had to make a short intro video of yourself or a person you are familiar with. This was my submission:

Well, it was a worthy attempt at stop motion...

Here's another version of the intro... Why? Because.

Anyway, we had some work taking photographs of various objects for composition, lighting, etc. reasons. This is the first attempt our group had at making live action films:

Not too shabby for a first time. Also, we took some flak for, uhhhhhh... "violence towards women." Yeaaaahhhhh... whoops.

In between this project and the next, we made a film on movement, be it primary or secondary movement. However... that turned out to look awful. So, I will not show it here...

Moving on...

After getting pretty well acquainted with lighting, composition, and the camera equipment, we moved on to working with audio equipment. Argh. In short, that was pretty frustrating... This was also our first time using the editing software, Avid. Two frustrations in one project. So fun. 

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. The obstacles we faced during that project, such as our camera dying on us, the flash recorder running out of battery, the sun deciding to set early, etc.... well, I'm surprised we even finished it on time, let alone, actually finished it! 

Then. The final. This short film was shown for roughly 300 people who were fellow film students, friends, relatives, etc. The scary part wasn't the sheer numbers alone, but rather, our peers were watching our work... aka judging our work... This was shown at the showcase...

I was quite pleased with the response we received from the audience. They laughed at the places they should have, and... other places. But, all-in-all, I am very pleased with what was shown. Hopefully... my prof. is as well, seeing as this is the exam...

We actually had a longer version of the prior video, but our professor told us to "put it in a blender." As you can see, it got seriously chopped up... Here's the original:

Well, thank you for sitting through these videos. After going to the Calvin College Media Production Showcase, I am both excited and ridiculously scared to get into the upper level classes. Excited because I see the talent and skill that is there, and ridiculously scared for the same reasons... I just hope that I can rise to the occasion... 

Check out my Vimeo page for more! 

Fish Sticks and Custard.

~Peter