Comm 2660 final

Since I was involved in making the documentary fil Erik I will answer the second question. Since this class was one of the last film classes i needed in the program, I already knew a lot about the different ways to produce film and everything, so my whole overall experience in the Dixie film program has changed the way i watch and even think about film. Everytime i watch a movie now i am thinking about how they got that shot. Since being in the film program i have learned about all of the different equipment that is used to pull off certain shots, and I am so intrigued by the way that equipment is used. The one thing nice about being a welder/fabricator is that I can see these ideas and all of this different equipment, and i can look at it and replicate it and make my own. especially after NAB now i have all these different ideas on how to make a really nice jib and a remote control slider for doing timelapse photography and things like that. I'm really excited about one project im going to start working on as soon as i get back to alaska and start working in the shop again. Im going to make a big Jib that mounts in the back of my truck. I'm also going to make a steadicam arm to go on the top of the jib so that way somebody can drive my truck, and i can be standing in the bed operating the jib and i can still get really smooth shots. So it has been more of a combination of all of the film classes that i have had at dixie that has turned me into the critic and the thinker that i have turned into. Ben Braten and Luke Draper have been a huge help as far as an editing and a production standpoint goes. Being able to work with professional DP's and editors has been a huge learning experience. Now I am headed back to alaska where I'm going to take this fall semester off to do all kinds of hunting trips where I can work on my senior capstone film and hopefully establish myself as an alaskan outdoor film maker.    

Photo Journalism Final

I always thought it would be cool if the newspaper would do an article once or twice a week about random local people who might have an interesting story, especially in a smaller town like St. George. I feel like it would give the readers a chance to get to know some people that they might not normally come across. So my story is more of a heartwarming piece about an interesting young man with an interesting story that I know here in St. George. 

The first day I rolled into St. George on January 6th, 2011, I showed up at my apartment and met one of my roomates. He saw that I had a decent sized truck and immediately asked if i would like to help our other roomate get his truck unstuck out of the mud. We drove down to the virgin river near where all the skimboarders hang out, and there was a young skinny blonde haired kid covered in mud trying to shove boards under the tires of his truck so he could get traction to get out. Thats when I met the owner of the truck, Andy Markus. Andy drives a 1977 GMC Sierra single cab long bed truck with a 6 inch lift, and two of his tires were stuck in the mud about up to his fenders. My immediate thought was "what was this kid thinking?" 

 We finally had to get a professional tow truck with a big winch to winch him out. As soon as we got back to the apartment and all cleaned up, we finally got a chance to talk and get to know eachother a little bit. He noticed that I had a truck with a custom light bar and toolbox that i had built myself, and he immediately started questioning me about every little detail on my truck. It was then i realized that Andy was a HUGE truck nerd. 

So I started asking Andy questions about his truck. Andy's Grandpa had given Andy the truck when Andy was a senior in high school. Andy's grandpa lives in idaho and Andy and his parents lived in Salt Lake, so His Grandpa left the truck in Salt Lake and headed back to Idaho. This is what the truck looked like when Andy got it

This was a 2-wheel drive truck that is normal ride height. As soon as Andy's Grandpa left, Andy began researching and learning everything he could about the truck. The unique thing is is that Andy's Father knows nothing about mechanics or trucks or working on anything for that matter. Andy was so grateful of his grandfather giving him a truck that he felt he owed it to his Grandpa to know how to take excellent care of his truck. Andy immediately took the truck into his shop and basically began rebuilding it from the ground up. His goal was to have an awesome 4x4 truck when he got done. Andy taught himself how to weld, and did some research and began converting his Grandpas 2-wheel drive truck into a 4-wheel drive.  He litereally had the entire truck apart, down to the frame, without any prior experience. Andy recalls his father coming into the shop to have a serious talk with him. His father basically told him that he was extremely dissapointed that he would take a perfectly nice truck and basically destroy it. Andy's dad had no faith in him that he knew enough about mechanics to put the truck back together. That pretty much inspired Andy and within the summer Andy had a perfectly well functioning off-road 4x4 truck with a 6-inch lift and big mud tires. 

Andy knows this truck like the back of his hand. Since he had built the truck he has been pushing his limits as an off-road enthusiast. He is harder on his truck than anyone i have ever met, but he knows exactly how to fix every little piece if something goes wrong.

Since he has got the truck, He has gone through SIX engines, He has blown THREE transmissions, he has broken FOUR back axles, SIX axle shafts, FOUR clutches, he has snapped a leaf spring, and just recently he snapped clean the 1/2" Cast Iron transfer case mount. 

Just a few days ago Andy had told me that his transfer case mount had snapped clean, which is pretty impressive. He also told me that at the same time he recieved a phone call from his father telling him that his Grandpa was in the hospital after having two heart attacks... I knew that meant that Andy was going to be working his heart out on his truck, and I offered my hand, and asked if I could photograph him as well.

This is my good friend Andy Markus, an extremely gracious and generous young man who appreciates above and beyond when someone lends a helping hand or sticks their neck out for someone. He's more passionate about his truck than anyone i have ever met. After the semester is over, Andy is driving his truck to Idaho to visit his Grandpa, who is doing better now but is still getting older and more unhealthy. Andy's Grandpa will see for the first time the truck that his Grandson has rebuilt from the ground up. 

This is Andy working on his truck after hearing the news about his grandfather. 

New Media App Final

Brooke Gladstone poses the question "How can we ensure that our development as moral and social animals keeps pace with our rapidly evolving communication technology?" 

She suggests an answer to the question immediately by saying we have to play "an active role in our media consumption," and i totally agree with her. An older man asked me the other day if i read. And i said to him that i usually dont have time to read. And he responded with some philosophical quote about people who dont have time to read are.... well i dont remember what he said but he basically said that we are screwing ourselves if we dont read books. Just because i dont read books does not mean that i am not active in reading and informing myself and keeping up with ideas that people are writing down. I just get all of this information on the internet now through different apllications like stumble upon. I skim through stumble upon just about everday, and there i can learn about new things happening all over the world. so now who is more educated, the old man who can read through one book in a week and says he is now that much wiser on the certain subject of that book, or the young man who can get online and find the information on not only the book, but responses to what people around the world thought about that book.  

But this is where the active role in media comes into play. The young man who gets online and finds the information on the book is in a dilemna. The problem with our society these days is that a lot of people arent looking and searching the right kind of information. The web is so full of social distractions and entertainment that nobody takes the responsibility to look up hard hitting news, and to say that someone is playing an active role in that media and is researching online to seek the truth is almost unheard of now. But luckily there are some professionals and other people that are willing to sift through the bullshit and make it aware to the public. I'll use the recent SOPA and PIPA legislation as an example. I would not have known anything about SOPA or PIPA if it wasnt for my facebook page, where i saw that some respected friends of mine post how much bullshit those pieces of legislation are. From that i researched it a little more and was able to form an opinion of it. From then i posted it to my facebook and asked everyone to read it and become aware of it. 

The social media and the communication tools that we are using online mostly is becoming a huge tool that is leading to larger and richer webs of interdependence around the world. If it wasnt for this online communcation tool (Facebook) that i used, i would not have known about this web of interdependence that was going on in my own country which was a group of individuals who were standing up for the rights that our constitution guarantees and that our lawmakers were trying to take away. The recent Egyptian Government overthrow is a great example of how we as people of the earth are ensuring that our development as moral and social animals is keeping pace with our rapidly evolving communication technology. Thanks to the online communication tools a majority of the country of Egypt, along with other people around the world, became aware and fed up with the government in Egypt. The people of Egypt organized themselves in a large,  rich web of interdependence and overthrew their freaking president!  

I think our development as social and moral animals is evolving because of the rapidly evolving communication tools in the direction of the events that took place via Egypt and with the online Blackout protesting the SOPA and PIPA act. We as American citizens are realizing the power of these communication tools and are realizing how a kid way up in bum fuck Alaska can be interconnected and apart of a nationwide protest of certain federal legislation. It would tickle me pink to see someone like the ACLU or something similar to that start making some noise via online communication tools about how we as american citizens can become aware and stand up for, unite, and protest some of the rights that our government has taken away and continues to take away from us right under our noses because people these days are busy looking up and searching for KONY 2012 videos or something like that. So maybe this rich web of interdependence has gone so far as to connect everybody around the entire world, that people in America are more worried about becoming globally educated because they can, and they forget to educate themselves and keep track of whats going on in their own country. 

Thanks for making me think over this semester Erik. I am not only appalled at what is happening with the world as far as communication technology, but i am also enraged, disgusted, happy, sad, and all the above  about how the majority of people use it, and what they pay attention to.  

Post Production Research

I am in the documentary film production class here at Dixie State College, and over the course of this semester I have been working my ass off to help make this documentary the best one that Dixie has ever made. The first half of the class was mostly pre production and production, where the second half of the class was finishing production and then getting into post-production.

Let me first give a brief description of the movie. "The Approach" is a rock climbing film that focuses on the lifestyle of different rock climbers in the area. We have our two main characters, one is a "Dirt bagger," who is a climber that doesn't own a house and pretty much lives out at the wall in his tent and climbs year round. The other main character is our "Corporate" climber, the guy who has a full-time job and has to balance work with his passion for rockclimbing. It is a film about life vs. lifestyle.   

The post-production of this project began with me, because I was made in charge of managing all of the media. I was completely overwhelmed with the hours and hours of footage that we kept getting. The first order of business was to start organizing and logging this footage. Many students in the class had no post-production experience, and I had only a little experience. It was my job to give out assignments to people to go through and log all of the footage and go through the interviews we were getting and to listen to them and make markers and write descriptions of what they were saying so our main editor could easily go through and pull out the stuff that he needs. Each day we filmed something that folder of footage was labeled usually the day and the location of the shoot. We would make individual final cut pro projects of each shoot usually and separate all of the footage into separate bins, and that was basically our logging breakdown. Within each project their would be bins labeled: Scenic b-roll, b-roll, interviews, climbing, and behind the scenes. We found that was the best way to have multiple people logging this footage and for it all to generally look the same. 

Once we got about 3/4 of the way through shooting me and one other guy began making trailers for the film. The one guys made a simple trailer that just had climbing and b-roll in it along with some text to help tell the story, whereas I was working on a trailer that had the dialogue from the people we interviewed to help sum up our story. It was at that time where someone actually started going through the interviews to see what the story was. Documentary film is so run and gun and kinda unscripted, and at the beginning of the class we had a treatment written up and we tried to stick to that treatment based on the questions we were asking people and the answers they were giving, but now in post production it is interesting to see how the story can kind of stray from the treatment based on the people we were getting to know and the stories that they were telling us. 

Luke Draper, who works for CMI and teaches post-production classes here at dixie, was assigned to be our lead editor. Luke's job in this whole process is to kind of help guide us and to put together the final product. Luke is our lead editor and me and one other guy are assistant editors. The unfortunate thing is that Luke had not been on one single shoot, he hadn't looked through one minute of footage, and he didn't even know who our main characters were. whereas i was on just about every shoot and i have listened to every interview multiple times and i know the list of our footage like the back of my hand. So a collaboration process had to take place and is continuing to take place between me, Luke, the writer, the director, and the other assistant editor. We all have sit down together multiple times to make sure everyone is on the same page. Luke has undertaken the roll to put together the intro of the film and all the graphics and things like that, along with the end and he has given me and the other assistant editor assignments as well. As of right now I put together a seven minute section on the "Dirt baggers" and I am currently (literally right now as I take a break to write this blog post) in the process of editing together our corporate climber section which will be another seven minutes probably. The other assistant editor is currently putting together a montage of our best climbing footage that will probably be two minutes, and then he pieced our philosophy section together where he pulled interviews down and put a short 15 minute story together about the philosophy of climbers and their approach to life, and then Luke is taking that 15 minutes and breaking it down shorter and putting music and b-roll to it.  

After speaking and collaborating with Luke on multiple occasions, he says that I am extremely fortunate to be working on this project because he thinks this is a great story and that this looks like by far the best documentary that any class has made at Dixie. He says it is really nice having a couple students like myself and the other assistant editor who took the initiative to take on a huge part of this project, and who was talented enough to actually be in charge of putting a piece of the story together that is actually a final product in the movie. As of right now we are about 3/4 of the way done editing, we have until thursday to piece together the last sections, and then thursday Luke is going to take all the sections and put it all together finally on a timeline and then he is going to make sure all the sections transition well, and then we are giving it off to Ben Braten to do the color correction and to tinker with our audio. The film Premieres Wednesday, May 2nd at the Red Cliffs Theater at 7 p.m. Keep in mind that this is probably going to just be a rough cut, and then if we have to film anything more or move some stuff around we will over the summer to get it ready for film festivals in the fall. Overall this class has been the most beneficial and the most rewarding of any class here at dixie, along with taking 24 credits this semester this documentary film class has been like having a full time job because we (about 10 commited people) just made a 44 minute tv hour long documentary in about 3 months! And Its almost time to get the reward of seeing the finished product, and having my name as a big part of this film. 

attached below are links to the trailers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN-WRdEVarw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YgeVgc0-o0

2-day Media Abstinence

Luckily over spring break i was invited/had to go for a grade to a trip to Havasu Falls. I was asked to go because i was one of the only film interns fit and athletic enough to do the ten  mile hike down through the canyon. I was asked to be lead videographer for a pilot reality TV show about four recovering alcoholics as they train to climb Mt. Everest. Climb 4 sobriety or 180 south is the name of the show. Little did i know the guy in charge ended up being most likely a fraud or a crazy recovering alcoholic going through withdrawals. Even though i was following some "interesting" people while filming them all weekend, i still got to see one of the top five prettiest places i have ever seen in my life. The Havasu falls and the hike going through the havasupai village was absolutely gorgeous.

We parked up at the top of the canyon at the beginning of the trail head and began to prepare our packs for the 10 mile hike. The people we were supposed to be filming took off down the ten mile trail without the lead cameraman or the writer/photographer. From that moment on we realized the trip was going to be a complete joke. And not to mention some of the more noteable senior film students that were supposed to be helping create this pilot show took off without me and the writer as well, didnt offer to help carry any of the camera equipment, and quite frankly were an embarassment to the film program at dixie the whole trip. Also at the top of the trailhead we realized none of us had cell service. I turned off my iphone and threw it in the truck and lead off down the trail without any kind of electronics except for the extremely limited sony handycam and battery operated wireless mics. We were down there for two-and-a-half days.

I'm pretty used to going on weekend long trips without any electronics so this abstinence wasnt very hard at all. It was spring break and i was camping in one of the most beautiful places in north america, even though i was with a bunch of yahoos for an exception of one or two. We also could not have fires down there, which was absolutely a pain in our ass. We pretty much hiked around all weekend, pow wowed with some of the native american alcoholics in the village teepee, and played cards to entertain us all weekend. The only time i would reach for my phone and realize it wasnt there was when i wanted to check the time. I dont even think i thought about my facebook page, the only social media i thought about down there was my blog site and how i would use this time to wrap up my new media app class. I wanted to make a few phone calls to my sick mother back home, and maybe a few other friends, but they were all still here when i got back to civilization.

Overall the trip was a lot of fun. I always enjoy a nice weekend away from it all where i can get back to    how the world use to be. It is a time where i can be mostly stress free

Feature News Story

Hundreds of Beautiful vehicles rolled into Hurricane last weekend for an Easter weekend car show. There were several different types of vehicles including classic cars/trucks, dune buggies, new tricked out cars, old hippie vans and many others. The show included lots of food and beverage stands along with entertainment. It was almost like a flee market/car show/carnival. It was fun for the whole family. The weather was so hot that there weren't just nice cars to look at ;)

Production Research "The Art of Flight"

The film I am doing my production research on is on debatably the best snowboard film ever made from a production standpoint. The film is called "The Art of Flight." The film was made by Brain Farm Digital Cinema in association with Red Bull Media House. Brain Farm is an Elite Turn-Key production house out of Jackson, Wyoming that specializes in aerial cinematography and action sport productions (http://brainfarmcinema.com/).

Brain Farm's President and CEO is good buddies with Travis Rice, who is probably the best back country snowboarder in the world. They teamed up to make this film. They had to pick a crew of professional snowboarders that would be patient with their tedious production tasks and who would get along with Travis Rice. My Focus on this research is basically what this crew had to go through to get all their equipment up on the mountain to film all these incredible shots that they got for this film. According to the behind the scenes it was really tough being a professional snowboarder who just wants to ride ride ride, to wait wait wait for the crew to get cameras set up and all the gear in place. But a few of the riders said that working with this crew is pretty much top of the line in the snowboarding world.

First I want to talk about equipment. The Art of Flight has bonus features where there is a whole section on the behind the scenes of this movie, and that is where I am getting most of my information from. As far as cameras go, almost 100% of the time they were filming with a Cineflex, which is an extremely expensive camera that most people use to stick underneath helicopters to get extraordinary aerial footage. They also have a Red One camera, two Varicams, and a phantom flex. Those are the big guns that they have, thats not to mention all the DSLR's that some of the crew usually had along to take photos and behind the scene videos. Other equipment they have is a great big jib arm that was probably at least 12 ft long. They would truck that up the mountain via snowmobile usually to get great shots. also they have a Ford F-250 Diesel truck in which they were able to trade the tire for snowtrack systems where they could drive the truck through the halfpipe and through other hardpacked snow. They also have one of those big 4-wheeler side-by-sides which they were also able to put snowtracks on. That's not even the cool part. They were able to mount the cineflex camera on an articulating arm on top of the truck and the side-by-side to get these super steady shots. Oh yeah and the truck is equipped with a 17" LCD monitor that is built in the dash of the truck, where the passenger can remotely run and operate the Cineflex camera all from the inside of the truck http://www.brainfarmcinema.com/cinema_truck.aspx).
Oh yeah, and you cant watch more than a minute of the film without seeing a shot that was filmed from a helicopter. There was a sequence filmed in Alaska where they had a bush plane and a helicopter to ferry the riders up the mountain, and a helicopter just to film out of. Talk about a budget. They also had access to a mini heli in which they mounted the phantom camera to.

Now that they have all of this fancy equipment, Brain Farm has to find a way to utilize all of this fancy stuff. According to the behind the scenes they would sometimes have 15 cameras with like 7 crew members to operate them. Its one thing to use this equipment in the studio or at warm temperatures for that matter, but to be outside in the snow halfway up a mountain takes some strong guys who have to know what they are doing. Its one thing just to keep yourself warm and energized out in the snow like that, but to also have to haul equipment and film these professional snowboarders is a completely different story. Some of the snowboarders joked that after they got one shot they were done for the season. They said that there was sooo much work into getting one shot that they didnt want to put in the work to get another one. Some of the crew said it was basically a logistical nightmare getting all this gear  up and down the mountain. But they all said in the end, the product was totally worth the work.

This research doesn't focus on just one specific part of production like on a feature length film, this is an overall look at a small crews production tasks. Curt Morgan, Owner and CEO of Brain Farm was the Director, the Editor, cameraman and DP for a lot of the shots that they got. The film has the look and feel of a major Hollywood production, actually it looks better than that. The shots that this crew was able to get was absolutely spectacular. Brain Farm actually made a snowboard film in 2008 titled "That's it That's All" that ESPN claimed as the most visually stunning action sports film ever  ( http://artofflightmovie .com/). Its funny because Curt Morgan and Travis Rice say in the behind the scenes that "That's it That's All" was more like an on-the-job training for "The Art of Flight." 

APP Review "Frameographer"

I chose Frameographer as my mobile application to review. Frameographer is an application that allows the user to shoot and export high definition timelapse videos using your mobile phone camera. The app is very useable, it has a really simple interface that makes it easy to use for just about anybody. As far as sustainability goes, this app only allows you to export the video in 720 HD. There are other apps that will export out at 1080p, which puts frameographer a bit behind in that regard. Some good things about this app is that you can lock the exposure by simply touching which part of the frames exposure you want to lock the exposure at right on your phones viewer. Here is a link to frameographers app store page, where you can see the interface and kinda get a feel for how the app works: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/frames-time-lapse-stop-motion/id503347879?mt=8

The app costs $2.99, and it is probably worth it for somebody who is into timelapse photography like myself. It is very handy incase you see that gorgeous sun setting and you dont have your dslr on you.

here is a link to my youtube page where I have posted a small compilation of timelapses I have taken with the app

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMJUPcP8Roc&context=C4555e13ADvjVQa1PpcFMKzeZwnGHeEK5e8FnKNAewBN1v82I02ug=

St George Hard news story

After trying to follow 2 ambulances to a scene this is the hardest news i could find to meet the deadline. 

I am embaraased to say that I saw a cop make a regular traffic stop and i caught it just in time as he was finishing up writing her ticket. Everything was shot on my iphone as fast as i could get out of my truck and shoot a couple of shots before he left. The photos were touched up in Iphoto. Please note that i will be on the lookout for more hard news to make up for this lack there of take.