Archive for the ‘my films’ Category

Those who would give up art to purchase life…

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

I often wonder whether making films and games is feasible as a career, considering how incredibly LONG it takes me to finish any given project.  The stop motion piece below was initially filmed in late 2008, and I’m just releasing it now.  Granted, there were specific reasons for this, but it’s not a joke that I spent over a year editing the live-action film that will (hopefully) be released next.  (And these are only a few minutes each!)

I guess it comes down to the conflict between quality and speed; any project I care about will incite me to spend as much time as necessary perfecting it.  The question then becomes, do I spend my time working a job that’ll pay me enough to live, or do I spend my time making pieces of my own that’ll leave me starving in the end?

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Does anyone hear what I hear?

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

It’s a testament to the workload at USC that my first post since the start of the semester is after over a month has already passed.  It’s enough time, in fact, that I’m posting about my second film project … but only because I’m still tweaking my first film.

The area between linear films and non-linear games is becoming increasingly grayer, with the definitions for each being stretched to their limits.  Many modern games play as though they wish they were devoid of gameplay, and we accept the embedded interactivity of a DVD as a natural part of the film.  What, then, should I call a movie with a rigidly linear story, that can only be experienced in a fragmented way?

Four-Way Stop

Four-Way Stop

“Interactive Movie” sounds contrived and awkward, but I guess it’ll have to do.  The problem is, I don’t think of this film like that, because you don’t interact with it at all.  You merely shift your perspective of the story in real-time, and I honestly think it would be better presented on four separate, simultaneous screens.  The contrast between the parallel storylines is good, but it’s the knowledge that they’re all happening at the same time that is the important point.

This project was a tad rushed out the door, because of the aforementioned workload, and I imagine I might one day revisit it to finish it properly, but I don’t entirely believe I’ll ever have time to do it.  I’m finding an unfortunate situation in my classes:  the projects I have time for I don’t want to do, and the projects I want to do I don’t have time for.

I had almost convinced myself that the first two years of my MFA would not consist of undergrad classwork.

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Thank you, Newgrounds!

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

newgrounds

It was there for two days!

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I lost out to toilet paper tubes

Friday, April 24th, 2009

So I recently sent in a claymation video to compete in a “World of Goo” video contest that Game Trailers was having.  My partner and I thought up a horribly morbid take on the subject matter, and we spent two weeks storyboarding, building sets & models, filming, and editing.  The idea was for it to be a quick, throw-away film, but it ended up being a lot more involved.  In the end, we produced a film that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to put in my portfolio, which surprised me:

The really shocking part, though, was the level of response.  You can go here, and see for yourself; it received more comments and views (over 20,000!) than any other video in the contest.  We even attracted the attention of websites not affiliated with the contest at all, which I say makes the project a success, contest or no.

But, as you can guess from the post title, we didn’t win.  We didn’t even get an honorable mention, which I thought was in the bag.  Maybe we violated one of the rules, or missed the point of the contest, but I think we just weirded the judges out and they didn’t know what to do with us.  Heh.

Anyway, this video is probably the most cohesive narrative I’ve filmed yet, and the animation is much smoother than my previous attempts at stop-motion.  It makes me want to do this all the time, actually, if the process wasn’t so agonizingly painful!

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