Andy Waplinger

2012-02-28T20:22:00.001-05:00

Back on the 14th I met with the Juniata Class of 2012 Officers to discuss and brainstorm ideas for a video for the Senior Dinner that was coming up on the 25th. The purpose of the video was to be shown as an introduction to the Senior Class Gift and actually show the gift that was chosen.

After passing around some ideas, we came to the conclusion that because of what the gift was, it would be too time-consuming and/or campy to actually show the gift in a video. Instead, I came up with the idea of creating a "Day in the Life"-style film of a Juniata student.

What I wanted to do was create a film that could connect with all Juniata students, regardless of which class gift they had voted for. To do this, I created the theme of, essentially, "look at what you've been able to do, now it's your time to help those behind you." The result is a stronger message that is capable of hitting a broader audience much more effectively than a video that simply introduces what the exact class gift is.

I had help from a number of wonderful people (Val Deraville, Dominic Bornman, Alden Hiller, Tim Carn, and Holly Tolles), who were all willing to ~~look ridiculous~~ strap a GoPro to their chest and record themselves throughout their day. I wouldn't have been able to capture all of this great footage without their help.

After I had collected several hours of footage, it was off to a marathon editing session starting in the evening of the 24th and ending with a USB drive drop-off at 5a on the 25th. The film was shown at the senior dinner that evening and was a success.

I hope that the message and story of the film resonates with every Juniatian (and ideally every college student) who watches it.

Zombie Invasion at Juniata!

2012-02-22T12:52:00.000-05:00

This past fall, as Juniata's semester was winding down, the campus became overrun by a zombie infestation. The exact causation is still unknown (although rumored to be a result of the tuna salad), but the Juniata Theatre Tech Dept. stepped up and single-handedly fought off the living dead by blasting the Quad with enough light to put the Eiffel Tower to shame.

Now the Theatre Techs are in need of your support to win another battle. They're currently in the running to win a new light board in a competition sponsored by ETC, and with your support (and Facebook Likes) they can be well on their way to taking first place.

To support the Juniata Theatre Tech Dept, all you need is a Facebook account and to follow these steps:

1) Visit the ETC website at: http://showusyouretc.com/movie4.aspx

2) Click the Like button underneath the video.

3) Enjoy the following 5 minutes as you watch “Showtime,” a film by senior Andy Waplinger.

4) Share the short film on Facebook and encourage your friends to also watch and Like the film.

Voting ends on March 23rd, and with your help Juniata can have enough lighting capabilities to thwart off any and all future zombie attacks.

Zombie Official Release

2012-02-07T15:42:00.002-05:00

My zombie short film, now titled "Showtime," has officially been uploaded and accepted into ETC's Show Us Your ETC competition. If you're unfamiliar with the contest, then please read my post explaining this project.

If you'd like to check out some of our behind-the-scenes stuff, then check out these previous blog posts: Update 1, Update 2, and the BTS Tour.

We threw a premiere this past weekend and had invited the cast and crew and their friends. We had a great turnout and it was awesome being able to share the film with so many people!

Don't forget to use a decent set of headphones or speakers (trust me, it's worth it), and please click the Like button below the video to help us win!

So now, please click the image below, sit back, and enjoy "Showtime."

Learning Final Cut Pro X

2012-02-01T11:33:00.000-05:00

I know this is a little late in the game, but this past weekend I spent roughly 6 hours learning how to use Final Cut Pro X. After all that time I have come to the conclusion that...

It's not shit.

Well, it's not complete shit like everybody claimed when it was first released. Admittedly, the learning curve is surprisingly steep, but it does a lot of things right. There are also plenty of things that I really don't like. Some of them I blame Apple for, and some might have been because instead of reading the user's manual I just dove right in.

With that said... let's, well, dive in:

Preview Window
One of the biggest issues I have is that Apple has now removed the Preview pane, so you only have one Viewer window.

The Preview window in FCP7 is absolutely crucial to my workflow. It allows me to keep my raw footage and my sequence footage separate. With a simple double-click, I can look at a raw shot in addition to the edited sequence, set my in and out points, and throw the clip in. Simple, easy, and a staple in every professional editing software out there.

In/Out Points
Which leads me right into my second big issue: I have scoured the user's manual and Google and have found nothing on setting permanent In/Out points. I and O still work and setup In/Out points, but they're only temporary.

The yellow box represents the In/Out points that I have chosen by hitting I and O, but the Start and End haven't changed. As soon as I click on something else, then click back on that clip, those I/O points go away and I have to start completely over again. On top of that, you have a pathetic amount of control when trying to find what part of a clip you want.

Gone are the days of being able to quickly scrub through your raw footage by clicking and dragging along the scrubber:

Instead you now have two very sad options. You can look at the raw footage in a combo list/preview mode (left) or an expanded filmstrip view (right) by click one of the icons circled in red:

Honestly, both ways suck, especially if you are dealing with clips that are longer than, like, a minute. On the left side you have virtually no accuracy when scrubbing because, regardless of clip length, that's the preview size. On the right side you gain accuracy while losing sanity. If the piece that you want extends beyond that viewable area, you now have to scroll down and look through the filmstrip to find your Out point.

I really hope that I'm just missing something and that you can still set permanent I/O points, because if not then that is an absolute deal-breaker for me and I will never, ever use FCPX in any capacity. If anybody has any insight into the I/O issue, then please let me know.

Magnetic Timeline
The third issue I have is in regards to the new Magnetic Timeline. The MT is both a pro and con for FCPX. It's really great to be able to throw in a clip and have the rest of the timeline shift instead of the new clip just eating whatever was accidentally left underneath of it:

The issue is that when you drag clips around using the Select tool (the A key), they automatically snap to each other. This means that it's more difficult to just throw clips around when you're organizing your sequence.

Now, there is a way around this by using the Position tool (P key). The Position tool will allow you to move the clip anywhere you want, but FCPX will automatically put in a Gap to keep the clips from "attracting" to each other. It's an unfortunate annoyance that requires a change of habit coming from FCP7.

Log and Capture
Another hugely glaring issue is the inability to log and capture. If you're a documentarian, stay far, far away. If you're trying to capture anything more than a couple hours of footage, just give up. How do you not include something so basic that allows the editor to do a batch capture of only what they want? That's just stupid.

Keyframing
Keyframing, compared to the old FCP, is a bit confusing. You have all of the options in the Video Inspector (Transform, Color, Crop, etc.), but the Inspector no longer has the ability to show or edit your keyframes.

Instead what you have to do is click on the clip and then press Cntl+V, which will bring up the Video Animation bar.

The Video Animation bar is now where all of the keyframing resides. It's a needless, obnoxious step that is very counter-intuitive. Instead of simply being able to double-click on a clip and bring up all of its properties, you are instead stuck with having to ensure that the clip is first selected and then pressing Cntl+V.

Skimming
The skimming in FCPX really isn't Apple's fault, it just happens to be a feature that I'm not terribly fond of, and thankfully I can turn it off. With the skimming turned on, whenever you drag your cursor across Event footage (not on the timeline) FCPX will automatically start to skim through the footage. While the idea is pretty neat, on my machine the playback is terrible.

Now, this is most likely due to the age of my laptop (going on 3.5 years), but even with its beefed-up RAM (6GB) it will lag behind a couple of seconds. Because of this, skimming through footage is basically useless. By the time I see where I want to start or stop the footage, I'm already a couple of seconds past, which means that I have to back up and try to find the right spot again.

Maybe others will find this useful. Personally I don't, especially with my current machine.

Resource Hog
And that brings me to my last major con: I've found FCPX to be an absolute resource hog. The only other time my laptop spins up as hard as it does when editing in FCPX is when I'm watching some Flash video while my laptop is sitting on a pile of blankets.

OS X also popped up a couple of times to let me know that I was running low on disk space, even though I know I had at least 7GB before starting to work in FCPX. This resulted, numerous times, in my laptop coming to an absolute crawl and at one point even having to Force Quit some other programs so that FCPX could continue to run.

Compared to this, FCP7 is an absolute breeze. I've never had any sort of resource issues like this while working in 7, and I've worked on some really heavy sequences while using this laptop.

Conclusion
This is a pretty heavy list of complaints about FCPX. I also have several other smaller complaints, but I don't have enough experience with FCPX yet to know if they're true issues I have with FCPX or if I just haven't explored them enough. There are also a few new things that FCPX does right, which I'll highlight at a later time.

Honestly, after working with FCP6, 7, and Premiere Pro, compared to FCPX they all just feel more "right." Like I said, FCPX gets some other things right, but all of these "rights" by themselves just aren't capable of bringing FCPX up to par with the big boys. I really do believe that Apple should have stuck with their (rumored) plan to release a FCP8 and just incorporate the proper advancements from FCPX into that.

This isn't something that I would recommend to anybody in a professional setting, at least not yet. Maybe if you have a 16 year old who's getting really handy with a camera and needs more than iMovie, then FCPX is for you. But with the tight integration and established ecosystems of Apple's Final Cut Studio and Adobe's CS, I see little point in a professional using FCPX except for the ability to beef up their resume (e.g. myself) or if they're operating a very small (possibly recent start-up) business and are looking for a limited investment. If it's the case of the latter, then just look into purchasing a used copy of FCS2 (like mine, available for only $350) for about the same price.

There's a reason that Apple priced it at $300, and it shows. Bear in mind that Apple has never been known to under-price one of their products. They know exactly where they want this product to sit: right in the middle. I hate to say it, but I'm confident that this marks the end of Apple's "pro" market days.

Zombie Update 2

2012-01-30T12:36:00.000-05:00

We're down to the home stretch for the (still) untitled zombie short film that I shot a couple of months ago. I've been busy finalizing the edit, coloring, and adding in ADR/SFX. Since coming back to school, my classes and schoolwork have been seriously limiting the amount of time I have been able to put into this project. I spent about 8 hours this past Friday sitting in the editing bay in order to work on everything.

I'd say that the color is at least 90% finished, all ADR has been recorded, and the SFX are nearly complete. The cut is definitely finished, though, which is relieving. I've been able to keep the entire editing process within Final Cut Pro by using Red Giant's Magic Bullet Looks plug-in for color and FCP's built-in plug-ins for audio. I had tried to utilize Apple's Color for coloring, but Looks gave me virtually all of the same functionality (with minor limiting differences) that Color has while allowing me to stay within FCP. Ultimately this should mean less processing of the footage and higher quality in the end.

The film will be done and ready for its premiere this-coming weekend, so keep an eye out on YouTube, Facebook, Blogspot, Twitter, and (hopefully) the Juniata website. We'll need everybody's votes in order to help us win! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read about it here.)

In the meantime, please continue to enjoy the multitude of BTS stuffs:

Dom... being Dom.

Everybody having a laugh after Alex's demise.

Two cold extras.

Our group of zombies.

BA.

OM NOM BRAINS.

Awesome design by Stef!

One acceptable way to stay warm.

Lights up!

Killing zombies!

The chips were almost gone. :(

Filming the last shot.

Another acceptable way to stay warm.

The epic finale.

Zombie BTS Tour

2012-01-12T11:46:00.002-05:00

The lovely Jess Spirko shot a little behind the scenes tour on her way to the zombie green room, so I took the liberty of editing it down to a minute for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Additionally here's a POV clip of what it's like to be a zombie, shot by Allie McCauley.

Zombie Update 1

2012-01-11T19:18:00.001-05:00

I've been slowly making progress on post-production. I have all of the audio sync'd up and have the cut largely finished. There's still a list of tweaks that need to be done, just waiting to be crossed off.

I also realized that I really should've moved away from H.264 from the very beginning and gone straight to ProRes before making the edit, so I'm now paying for that. I have the current cut being recompressed to ProRes 422 HQ, which I'll use to finalize the cut and color correct. After it's all finished I'll render the project out as H.264 for delivery to YouTube and Vimeo.

Waiting this long to move to ProRes isn't screwing me over, it just means that I have to wait 5 hours for the sub-5 min sequence to recompress. On the plus side, this is what I would recommend doing for those who have limited hard drive space. By only recompressing the shots that have already made it into the cut, I'm probably saving myself upwards of 400GB (not that I had 400GB to spare anyways). After this finishes in the next hour or so I'll be able to confirm that this workflow works, and assuming that it does, this will probably be my workflow when using DSLRs from now on. H.264 is just a miserable codec to edit in. Here's to hoping...

There's still a bit of tweaking to be done to the edit, along with the audio. I haven't even had a chance to look into foley yet, but I don't believe that very much will be necessary. Color grading shouldn't be terribly difficult after I determine the look within the first couple of clips. I also think that there's a couple of places where music or underlying audio would be really beneficial, so eventually I'll need to see what either the internet or GarageBand has to offer. Everything is moving along, albeit not as quickly as I had hoped. I ended up getting more distracted over break than I had initially expected, but that just means that I'll be dedicating a couple more weekends during the semester than I had anticipated.

Anyways, as promised (a while back), here are some more BTS shots! Enjoy!

Zombie make-up.

First rehearsal.

OM NOM NOM.

A safe landing.

Sluts.

BA.

Our team of extras.

Directing zombies.

Dom, my ever-faithful 2nd AC.

Epic.

Zombie group shot!

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T21:07:00.005-05:00

Over the past few years, Christmas has become far more about the gifts that I've received over the past year and less about gifts that I want on Christmas Day. It's incredibly more rewarding to be able to reflect upon the people, the places, and the experiences of the past year.

2011 has been, for the first time in a couple of years, an overall great year. Obviously it had its ups and downs (which year doesn't), but I've gotta say, 2011 had some pretty amazing ups. After years like 2008 and 2009, it was incredibly refreshing. Here's a brief recap of my 2011:

At the very beginning, I celebrated the new year with some very good (and others new) friends and had the time of my life in Pittsburgh.

The next day I celebrated my first official year of car ownership. She's still running strong, even if she's just as much of a money pit...

I met the wonderful Michael Trim, who gave me the greatest internship I could've asked for.

One day I woke up and decided it was time to lose weight. I dropped 50lbs in less than 4 months.

I finally turned 21. That took long enough...

I drove cross country twice, each time with somebody awesome.

I lived and worked in my favorite place for 3.5 months and met some absolutely incredible people.

I was able to take a ride in a helicopter and fell in love. Now I'll have yet another money-sucking hobby once I get a job.

I finally went on a roller coaster. And then I couldn't get enough.

I met some of my favorite actors from one of the best shows I've ever watched.

I'm dating one of my best friends, who is absolutely wonderful. She pushes me to do great things and helps me every step of the way.

The world lost one of the greatest visionaries that has ever existed. Steve Jobs had set a bar so high that my goal is to just be able to see it, let alone reach it. His life drives me to push hard and be better.

I've been trusted enough to drive a wide variety of cars, big and small, old and new, and I've loved it every time.

I've had the opportunity to take thousands of photographs. Some are great, some aren't. But they're mine, and that's what matters.

I've been able to collaborate with some amazing people and do really, really cool things that I couldn't have done by myself.

I'm sure that I'm missing a couple of things, but I feel as though that's a fairly good summation of my 2011. It's been a great year, and I'm incredibly excited for what 2012 and beyond (assuming the Mayans were wrong) has to bring.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!
Andy and the Dynamic Duo

Zombie Film

2011-12-18T19:15:00.001-05:00

For the past few weeks, as a few of you know, I've been working on a (yet untitled) zombie short film. The idea came from the theatre tech crew, who discovered a short film contest being put on by ETC titled "Show Us Your ETC." It's a student video contest, and the winner is awarded a brand new console and a trip out to Long Beach for the USITT Conference (I'm not in theatre, so hell if I know what that is).

We had a small meeting to discuss the idea and I was so excited about the idea of shooting a zombie film that I went home that night and immediately wrote the script. I sent it out to everybody involved and immediately received some good feedback. We met again to run through the script and give everybody an opportunity to throw in other ideas or changes. Since I'm not really involved with the theatre they gave me a bunch of tech references to incorporate.

By this point, everybody had been divided up into respective departments. I was set to both direct and shoot (along with write and edit because, you know, I'm a glutton for punishment). Our crew consisted of:

Jessie - executive producer
Kelsey - producer
Gus - concept
Myself - director/DP
Jess - 1st AD
Stef - tech director
Alex - asst. tech director
Gary - make-up
Jazmine - costume and props
Dan - audio
Dom - 2nd AC
Steve - boom operator
Heidi - 2nd AD
Alex - production stills
Nate - sex appeal

We only had a couple of weeks to lock down the rest of our cast (thankfully most of it was comprised of the theatre tech crew), finish any minor script revisions, draw storyboards, create a shooting script, design and test lighting, rehearse, prep equipment, find extras, and balance about 15 schedules.

We then determined that the best nights to shoot were the Saturday, Sunday, and Monday at the beginning of finals week. We had all of the big interior stuff on Saturday, all of the outside work on Sunday, and the remaining bits and pieces on Monday. Due to scheduling conflicts, we knew we'd be running with a pretty limited crew on Monday. We ended up having some people pull double duty, but we managed to find replacements for most positions.

Saturday started off a little slow since it was the first day and everybody was getting comfortable, but we managed to get through the night pretty much on time. Admittedly I did forget to grab one shot that I had intended to get that night so that Grant could go home earlier. He was willing to stay an extra night, so we just bumped the shot to Monday and all was well.

I knew from the beginning that Sunday was going to be terrible. We were shooting outside all night in 20-something degrees, along with managing 15-20 extras. Additionally I had to go up in a cherry picker for two shots, and I'm not a terribly big fan of heights (but since I storyboarded and DP'd this, I had no excuse). I went inside twice the entire night for 5-10 minutes, but otherwise I was outside directing, shooting, or juicing. By the end of the night my fingers and toes were legitimately numb.

Monday took a bit longer than I had expected, but everything went smoothly even with the limited crew. Since this was mostly the little stuff, we had a bunch of moves to different places around the building. We shot the scene inside of the Black Box, which was absolutely gorgeous. In the end, we called wrap at midnight. We had an awesome team effort to get the equipment back to the DMS, which probably saved me at least 45 minutes.

Since then I've been editing and am in the process of rendering out the first rough cut (emphasis on rough). I still have to transcode the slo-mo, finalize the cut, sync audio, create foley, paint, and touch-up. It's gonna be a busy vacation...

My sincerest thank you to the entire team. The cast, the crew, and the extras: you were all fantastic. None of this could have happened without you. And the biggest thank you ever to my executive producer Jessie, producer Kelsey, and AD Jess for giving me this opportunity and allowing me to remain focused. I would've gone insane without your help. And Dom, you saved my shoulder and my sanity. You're a damn solid 2nd AC.

There will be more updates on this in the near future as editing progresses, so keep an eye out for updates and more production stills!

As a reward for reading through this entire post (or just scrolling to the bottom), please enjoy the following production stills:

Zombie Brenna.

(Most of) the cast.

The AD Dept.

Sound Dept.

Stunts on a budget (yes, that's my bed).

Yum.

Keeping warm on the 1Ks.

Let the battle begin.

Heights aren't really my thing.

Photography by Alex Loughran, Jess Spirko, and probably a couple others who grabbed the camera.

Follow Your Dreams: Chasing the Dream

2011-11-27T11:32:00.000-05:00

Last semester I was contacted out of the blue by a rather curious Brit. This Brit is now my good friend, Jodie Orton, the author of the lovely piece that's available to read below. Jodie was writing a piece at the time about people of all walks of life who were pursuing their dreams.

Jodie had seen the article written about me in the Juniatian and wanted to include my story in her piece. We ended up meeting in Muddy (No, not Eagle's Landing. Muddy) and really hit it off. Our interview about my internship quickly turned into a friendly conversation about our lives, what we were doing, and what we wanted to do.

Since then Jodie and I have kept in close contact, and she even came out and visited me in LA before she left to go back home to the UK. After I returned back East, she managed to fly back out to LA again for a couple of weeks so that she could continue to work on chasing her own dream.

Jodie and I enjoying the Santa Monica Beach.

She had finished her piece as I was on the road heading out to LA, but I didn't actually get to read it until today. It's definitely a good read.

Follow Your Dreams: Chasing the Dream

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

I'm thankful for my Juniata family, though I definitely don't spend enough time with you as I wish I could.

I'm thankful for my friends at home and how easy it is to reconnect after not seeing any of you for months on end.

I'm thankful for all of the wonderful and interesting people in LA. I hope to be reunited with you all soon, and maybe we can grab some more street dogs at 2a.

I'm thankful for all of the education I've received in various capacities that has stretched me as a person and an artist and has opened my eyes and heart to new things.

I'm thankful for my international heritage and the diversity in my family. My life would be far too closed and boring without it.

I'm thankful for the skilled doctors, surgeons, and medical staff that I've had over these past couple of years. I wouldn't be here without you.

I'm thankful for the influence that Steve Jobs had on my life for the past several years, not just in business, but in passion, focus, taste, and perseverance.

I'm thankful for the suspension of disbelief, because without it stories would suck.

I'm thankful for those who create, whatever your forte, because without new ideas and creations the world would become stagnant and boring.

I'm thankful for those who gave me the ability to try, regardless of whether I failed or succeeded, because trying is the only way to learn.

I'm thankful for the details, the little things, because those are what truly create the whole.

I'm thankful for cars, particularly of the German/Italian variety, but really anything that creates several explosions per second and loud noises.

I'm thankful for my E34. Even though she has almost run me dry a couple of times, she has yet to let me down and is always giving me an excuse to get my hands dirty.

I'm thankful for the stupid grin that mashing the gas pedal at 4000rpm brings to my face.

I'm thankful for anybody who makes me laugh.

I'm thankful for apertures, shutters, and ISOs. Oh, and pixels. Lots and lots of pixels.

I'm thankful for problems and challenges, along with the perseverance and resources necessary to overcome them.

I'm thankful for the future, the opportunities that will be presented, and the people who I will meet.

But above all, I'm thankful for my family and their undying love and support, even when we don't see eye to eye, because without them I wouldn't be who or where I am today.

Thank you.

Internship Presentation

2011-11-20T12:38:00.000-05:00

I gave a short presentation on my summer internship on Showtime's Weeds back on the 10th. If you weren't able to make it to the presentation and would like to watch it, it's now available on YouTube!

Details include the drive out, being on set, the people who I worked with, what I did in my (little) free time, and Q&A.

Backlog

2011-11-16T10:51:00.001-05:00

I just want to clear up any confusion that may have been caused by the previous blog post. I have a fairly substantial backlog of blog posts from this past summer, so I'm going to be posting those every so often in the mix of new blog posts.

Sadly, I'm not moving back to LA (just yet), but in the meantime I hope that you enjoy my many stories from this past summer!

The American Dream Team Interview

2011-11-09T22:25:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I had a phone interview across the pond with my good friend Jodie, who is a co-host of a radio show/podcast called The American Dream Team. I met her at Juniata last year when she was a foreign exchange student.

We met after she found out that I had received an internship on Showtime's Weeds, and she was writing a piece about people following their dreams. She asked me if I could meet her for an interview for her piece. We became good friends after the interview and have kept in close contact ever since.

At the end of the semester I left for California, but before she flew back to England she took a cross country trip from PA to CA. She stayed in Santa Monica, only a few minutes from me, for about a week before flying back, and we were able to hit the beach and spend some time together.

Jodie wanted to interview me for her show months ago, but our schedules never lined up until my fall break a few weeks ago. The interview was first played on the radio and is now available on their podcast! Jump to about a quarter way in for the interview.

The American Dream Team - Episode 5

Santa Monica Timelapse

2011-07-18T22:43:00.000-04:00

I recently purchased an intervalometer (aka remote) for my Canon 40D that allows me to do time lapses and I finally got a chance to test it out! I placed the camera so that it shot out of the dining room window towards Ocean Park Blvd.

The camera was set to Aperture Priority mode at F5.6 and auto ISO, allowing the shutter to walk up or down to maintain an accurate exposure throughout the shoot (and overall I think it did really well without any touch-ups). The remote was set to take a photo every 5 seconds, which, thanks to the auto ISO, was enough time to fire every time even when the shutter was walked down late at night. I started shooting at 2p and she finally died just after 1a, all on the battery. Pretty impressive.

The total photo count is upwards of 4000. Even at JPG the memory card wouldn't have survived that, so everything was tether captured using Lightroom. I imported all of the photos into Adobe Premiere Pro, set the duration of each image to 1 frame, and then placed Coldplay's "Sleeping Sun" behind it. I felt that the title was rather appropriate and the pace of the song really helped to keep the video moving.

I'm a huge fan of time-lapse sequences because they make patterns incredibly apparent, and I love recognizing patterns. The most obvious example from this piece is the lamp, which I knew would shut off periodically, but I had no clue it was actually timed like that. Coincidentally, you'll notice that for a short period near the end the lamp and the song's beat match up. It also become quite apparent how much air traffic happens at the Santa Monica Airport. I live about 3 miles away, but I don't even notice the air traffic anymore.

I'm quite happy with this for my first time-lapse. I'm excited to see what other fun things I can do with my new intervalometer!

Sacramento and San Francisco

2011-07-05T21:25:00.000-04:00

Kelsey and my family flew into LA this past week, and we all traveled up to Sacramento to visit one of my mother's best friends, Abbott, and her husband, Matt. I actually met Abbott years ago when my dad and I traveled to California when I was 13.

Yes, embarrassing, I know.

The drive up was... fun. It was basically just 5 people crammed into a Crown Vic and traveling for 6 hours on California's most boring highway. That's the last time I ever want to be in the backseat of a Crown Vic.

Eventually we arrived, and it was absolutely gorgeous. They had just moved to a new place a couple of years ago, and it sits right on the edge of a state park that has a huge lake.

Their backyard.

We ended up spending a day out at the park, which was absolutely gorgeous. We all rented kayaks and traveled across the lake. Matt and Abbott took us to some back waterways where we could get out and swim.

There was also a pretty awesome rope swing on one of the small islands that had about a 20 foot drop. Not really my thing, but Kelsey was all over that. The water was just a bit too cold for my taste.

My parents also decided that we were all going to make a day trip down to San Francisco for the 4th of July. It was surprisingly chilly, especially that night. We spent the day walking around Chinatown and the piers. We grabbed lunch in Chinatown, dinner around Pier 39, and then went down to the bay for the fireworks. They were absolutely beautiful.

Everything was great until the walk back. There were thousands of people all walking back to their cars and trying to leave San Fran. It was absolutely ridiculous. On top of that, somebody thought it was a good idea to set off explosives along the railways heading back to the parking lots. We had three of them go off about 30 feet away from us as we were walking back to the car.

We finally got back to Sacramento much later in the night after miraculously making it through the San Fran traffic. I much preferred Sacramento over San Fran. San Fran is just far too cramped for my taste.

My First (Yes, First) Roller Coaster Ride

2011-06-19T22:39:00.000-04:00

Last week, Mike, one of the dolly grips, invited a few other crew members and myself out to Six Flags. I've been to Hershey Park once or twice, but I absolutely hate large, sweaty crowds and having to wait in line for half an hour for a stupid two minute ride. But today was different.

According to Mike, Father's Day is one of the emptiest days at Six Flags, and as long as we got there at right around opening time, everything should be fairly quick and free-flowing. So it was settled. I purchased my ticket online last night and drove to Mike's house this morning, where I met up with him and Kyle, another grip. The three of us drove up with Mike to Six Flags to meet up with Jai, her husband, Rachel, and her husband.

And Mike was right. It was smooth sailing getting in the park and to a ride. Everybody decided that our first ride would be Tatsu, a flying roller coaster. I was pretty damn scared, but I took it in stride. I also left permanent imprints on the hand grips. Regardless, after I stepped off of that roller coaster, I was hooked. We spent the next several hours walking around the park and getting on as many rides as possible.

My favorite, by far, was Goliath. Which coincidentally is the largest roller coaster in the park. I think that this photo basically says it all:

I went on Goliath a couple of times, and it was totally worth it. You can't even see where you're going at the beginning of the initial drop because it's so steep. And then the next thing you know you're flying through a tunnel and coming up and around a turn. There's some pretty intense drops, a place where you're going so slow and you're tilted so far that you swear you're going to fall out, and even some helixes (which I almost blacked out on).

Also, if you're looking for a ride that really throws you for a loop, take a ride on X2. That thing is absolutely insane. It's the world's first 4th dimension roller coaster, which allows the seats to rotate independently from the movement of the track. The vast majority of the time you have no clue where you're going. Apparently there's usually a two hour wait, but we got on in less than half an hour. Totally worth it.

While we were walking around we also ran into the Dynamic Duo, so of course I had to grab a quick pic with them.

Today was seriously some of the best fun I've ever had and I'm glad I got to go with such a great group of people.

Up in the Air

2011-06-18T19:14:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago Dustin asked me if I'd want to go on a helicopter ride. Initially I was a little wary about the idea, mostly because of my fear of heights, but when is an opportunity like this going to happen again?

So I said yes.

He told me that he'd talk to his buddy and let me know when he'd be able to get us up. Finally after a couple of weeks, yesterday he asked me what I was up to today and if I'd be able to fly at 1p. Of course I can. A broke college student with no friends on a weekend? Yeah, I'm definitely free.

I woke up, got Dustin's address, and weathered the traffic into Burbank. Adam met us at Dustin's, we all hopped into Dustin's truck, and booked it down to the airport in Long Beach where we met Tom, our pilot and Parks and Recreation's A-camera operator.

Our ride.

After a brief safety introduction (always run forward or from the sides, never towards the rear) and ensuring we know how to open the doors (if you get it wrong, you fail flight school), we warmed up and took off.

The view was absolutely breathtaking. Any nervousness subsided once I saw what was around me. Obviously I've ridden in commercial airplanes before, and I've even gotten a private ride in a small Cessna, but helicopters are a whole different animal. You no longer have to travel at a high speed to stay airborne. In a helicopter you can move around at a more casual pace, which means that it's easier to take in the view and you're able to go to places that other aircraft can't.

We flew up to downtown LA. Unfortunately we didn't go in between the buildings due to the wind, but apparently that's a possibility. We then flew around the northern LA area, past the Playboy Mansion, over the most expensive property in LA, and by the Hollywood sign. Then it was over to the coast, past Santa Monica (I could almost see my apartment), and back to the airport.

Dustin and Adam paid for my flight, which honestly is one of the best gifts I've ever been given. I can't thank them enough for that ride, along with Tom, who gave me an incredible experience.

Other Pictures:

Downtown.

Chinese Theatre.

Playboy Mansion.

Spelling Manor.

Santa Monica Pier in the distance.

UPDATE: A few days after the flight I contacted Tom and asked him if he'd be willing to meet up to chat about flying and operating, so we met for brunch. I'm really interested in getting my pilots license in order to fly helicopters. It was a life-changing experience being up in the air, and definitely something I want to pursue when I move back west.

I also got to chat with him about his operating career. Apparently he was at the forefront of reality TV. He moved from Philly to LA to work as an editor about 15 years ago when somebody gave him a camera and had him follow the doctors in an ER. It was so cool getting to hear about his work experiences, especially since he does what I want to do.

Turning 21!

2011-05-18T22:34:00.000-04:00

Santa Monica Pier

Dinner

I finally turned 21 today! All of the camera crew wished me a happy birthday and promised to take me out sometime. And as luck would have it, we had an incredibly short production day. I was home at right about the same time as Ceil, so she took me out for dinner and drinks on the Santa Monica Pier.

At the end of the pier there's a Mexican restaurant. I ordered a plate of chimichangas and a banana margarita (a little girly, I know, but it was worth it). The food was decent, and the drinks quite delicious.

After dinner, Ceil dropped me off at a bar that I had found on Yelp. It was only a couple of blocks away from the apartment, so not a terrible walking distance, and it had great reviews. When I got there it wasn't terribly crowded and I grabbed a spot at the bar. I hung around for about an hour, had a couple of drinks, chatted with the bartender (who shared my name), and walked home. Now the only thing standing between me and total adulthood is that damn car insurance company.

Moving Cross-Country

2011-05-04T20:39:00.000-04:00

Saturday
Well, the time has come. It's time to pack up and move my life from one coast to the other. Because I need to be on set by the 9th, I have to leave before finals week. Thankfully all of my finals are portfolio-based and not test-based, or that could've caused some issues. I spent the entire day finishing my packing and moving back home. It's surprising how much stuff I have. Now I need to spend the rest of my night repacking so that we can load the car up and hit the road tomorrow.

Absolutely no wiggle room.

Filled to the top.

Sunday
I am absolutely exhausted. I've been running on very little sleep. Prepping for the trip took a lot longer than I had expected. I was up late getting everything ready to load into the car today, and then we had to leave fairly early to make it to our destination tonight. I got about 3 hours into the trip before I made my dad take over. It was the first time I've ever almost fallen asleep at the wheel. But we did make it into Zanesville, Ohio to my aunt's house. Tomorrow we'll be meeting up with my uncle and his family for lunch in Indiana, and then we need to get down through Illinois until we're just a bit outside of St. Louis, Missouri.

Monday
We left nice and early today, so I'm still running on fairly little sleep. We got to around Indianapolis in time for a late lunch. It was great chatting with my uncle and cousin; my uncle about cars and my cousin about film. After lunch it was just non-stop driving until Belleville, Illinois where we met up with another one of my cousins and his family. Tomorrow we're driving through Missouri and Oklahoma until we get to our hotel in Shamrock, Texas.

About to leave Zanesville, OH.

Tuesday
While my dad was out running this morning, he stumbled upon this great little gas station-turned-gift shop right behind our hotel. It turns out that this particular gas station was used in Pixar's Cars!

Conoco Station in Shamrock, TX.

We also stopped at a rest area called Russell's Cafe just outside of Texas in San Jon, New Mexico. When we walked in we spotted a classic Ford Victoria, so we both went over to take a look. As I was checking out the car I looked above it and saw a window, and through this window were even more cars. We had inadvertently stumbled upon a car museum, and there were some nice pieces!

1951 Ford Victoria.

Russell's Cafe and Car Museum.

Lingenfelter Corvette.

Sadly all of this excitement had to come to and end, and the rest of the day was spent staring at the desert as we made our way to our hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Wednesday
So apparently during the drive last night we managed to get a crack in the windshield, mostly likely from a rock, and I'm sure that the elevation change didn't help. Now I need to deal with a windshield replacement as soon as I can.

Otherwise the drive today was pretty boring. We were greeted with stop-and-go traffic on the highway just outside of LA, and I'm sure I'll be dealing with much more of that over the coming months.

But the good news is that I'm finally in LA! We arrived a bit after dinner, and I've been busy unpacking and settling in. My dad is going to be staying until he flies out on Saturday, and we're both going to Universal on Friday to take care of my paperwork and hopefully meet some people.

My lovely room.

Arriving at the apartment.

I'm so excited to be here! It's been hectic trying to get my life moved cross country, but I did it, and it's awesome. Expect to hear more fun adventures of my new life in this awesome city!

Article in the Juniatian

2011-04-01T18:47:00.000-04:00

The Juniatian, Juniata's campus newspaper, covered my story about the internship on Weeds!

Here's a link to the newspaper article: http://juniatian.com/?p=402

California, Here I Come

2011-03-01T19:47:00.001-05:00

This story starts about a month ago. An alum from Juniata, Mike Trim, came in to visit for a couple of days thanks to my boss/his friend Nathan Wagoner. Mike has been the DP of Showtime's Weeds since the second season, and Weeds just so happens to be one of my absolute favorite TV shows. So Trim is in town, and for three days it was basically non-stop Trim. He hung out at the Digital Media Studio with us, we had dinner with him, he gave a lecture, and he talked in a couple of classes.

At the end of his stay, Nathan drove him up to State College so that he could fly back to LA. Unfortunately for him, his flight (which wasn't cancelled when he got dropped off) ended up getting cancelled due to a snow storm. The next flight he could get was out of Harrisburg (two hours south) the next day at 1p. So, lucky me, I was designated to be his transport from SC to Harrisburg.

I left at 8a and made the not-completely-cleared trip over the mountains into SC, picked Trim up at the airport, and we left for Harrisburg. Over the course of those two hours, I finally got to have a one-on-one talk with Trim. We talked about his past experiences, his current career, and my career goals. When we arrived at the terminal, I got out to help him with his bags, he thanked me for the ride, and then told me that when he got back to LA he'd look for an internship for me.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and I receive a phone call informing me that I had an internship on Weeds. My jaw dropped. I couldn't believe that this was happening. It was literally the most exciting moment of my entire life.

So now I'm going to be living in LA for a summer and working on my favorite show! All I have to do is figure out where I'm gonna live, how I'm gonna get there, when I need to leave, and, well, you know. Basically everything.

w000000000!!!

Epic Showdown

2011-02-17T01:28:00.000-05:00

If you aren't already familiar with the Epic competition, read about it in my post here.

Epic Showdown is an incredibly close second favorite of all of the Epic videos that we had created. It involved some more planning because we had to work around both an actor's schedule and a child's schedule, but in the end is was completely worth it.

The original idea was still an arm wrestling match between a child and a rather large man, but we were going to have our actors dressed up in WWE-style costumes (spandex, bright colors, etc). We quickly realized that dealing with those kinds of costumes and setup just wouldn't work for our accelerated schedule. Instead we opted for these two fine gentlemen to meet up for a game of dominos.

As usual, the wonderful Nate Frieswyk was willing to play our large, bearded man, and we asked one of our professors if he thought his son, Oscar, would be willing to be our child. We were already using Oscar for another project that's still in development, so we were hoping that he wouldn't mind some more screen time.

The day of the shoot was incredibly windy and a bit nippy, but we knew the shoot would be fairly quick so it wasn't a terribly big deal. The noise of the wind in the leaves was also great because it added some great ambience to an otherwise silent movie.

Bennett had grabbed a table and two chairs from one of the small cafes on campus and took them all out back to a small field behind the building in which we were meeting. There was a small grove of trees that were spaced far enough apart that we could setup within the grove. We brought our talents and equipment up to the grove and got our game of dominos underway.

The shoot started at around 4:30p and took only an hour. Nate and Oscar, who had just met for the first time, made a great connection and worked incredibly well together. Oscar was also a great trooper. We must have taken at least 10 takes of him falling off the chair, and after each take he'd just pop right back up, ready to take another dive. Near the end I was calling for more takes just because it was hilarious every time and Oscar was a great sport about it.

There was also the under-the-table shot of the dominos flying off. That took a couple of tries to get right, as far as speed and direction, but it came out really well. It's technically a slo-mo shot, but they were thrown off so quickly that even at 60FPS it still looked rather fast. Since I was running camera I was sitting slightly under the table to steady the camera. I had to make sure the shot was good, hit record, then duck under the table (again, while holding the camera) and basically bury my face into Nate's leg to minimize getting hit in the face by flying dominos. I took a couple of bruises for the team, but it was all worth it for that shot.

We wrapped the shoot, Oscar and Nate left, and we grabbed just a minute or two of leaf/wind foley to help bring everything together. It all really helped the ambience of the film.

I'm incredibly proud of this short. Everything went very smoothly from beginning to end. We also got amazingly lucky with the weather. The environment was absolutely perfect: cloudy with a bit of sunlight peeking through, so it was diffused but not terribly flat. The location was great. That small grove of trees was a perfect place to hold a game of dominos between two classy gentlemen. Occasionally we were fighting with the sun, but it was usually only for background continuity reasons.

Every shot was simple and easy to get, and both of our talents were on the ball and great to work with. This was also our first time working with a child, and it gave us a bit of a test-run for the project that we'll be working on later with Oscar. Overall I'm very happy with and proud of Epic Showdown. It's a great example showing that with proper planning, a good team, great talent, and a little bit of luck productions can run smoothly and efficiently and everybody can have a great time.

Our Epic Videos are available to watch on Vimeo.

Epic Dive

2011-01-08T17:17:00.001-05:00

If you aren't already familiar with the Epic competition, read about it in my post here.

Epic Dive is my favorite Epic video for so many reasons. The idea was very straight-forward: large guy + Speedo + little pool + slo-mo = epic. So with the overall idea banged out, it was time to take care of the details.

We already knew that we could use Laura's backyard as our set, so I went around securing a kiddie pool and our actors. I knew that my roommate, Quintin, had a small blow-up pool. It ended up being slightly bigger than your typical kiddie pool, but I think that it worked very well.

The larger issue was securing an actor on such short notice who was also willing to get soaking wet in freezing November weather. Thankfully I'm good friends with the lovely and shameless Nate Frieswyk. Not only did he absolutely love the idea, he was completely onboard and willing to get up early on a Saturday morning and jump into a pool. In November. And he already had his own Speedo to boot. I also asked our other friend Ben Mahan to be our second man who would get completely drenched as Nate dove into the pool. Being the good sport that he is (or incredibly stupid, whichever) he agreed.

We were all set for shooting on Saturday morning. Crew call was at 9a, cast call at 10a, and we had to be wrapped by noon so that Nate and Ben could make it to rehearsal for the theatre show they were in at that time.

When I woke up I immediately checked the weather. I honestly thought that my phone wasn't updating from the night before. It was a diamond-cutting 24 degrees. I texted Laura, telling her to begin boiling as many pots of water as she possibly could. Over the course of the next hour and a half I believe we ended up boiling over 10 medium- to large-sized pots of water, which is in addition to the several pots we simply filled with hot water from the sink. And this was all done just so that we could bring the pool water to a lukewarm temperature.

We began shooting with Nate, which went very smoothly and quickly. He came up with the idea in the beginning to do that rigid "diver's run" (his words, not mine) and the "adjustment" of the Speedo, which we thought really added to his character. Ben showed up a bit later into shooting, since he wasn't actually needed until the last two shots.

While we were shooting, a local man was passing behind the house. The look on his face was priceless. We were in the middle of shooting the shot where Nate jumps over the camera, so you can only imagine what could have been running through this guy's head: it's sub-freezing, there's a large man in a Speedo jumping over a guy with a camera onto a matress, and an orange pool in the background.

He thought that what we were doing was hilarious and decided to stick around for the remainder of the shoot, which wasn't a big problem because all that we had left after Nate's dive was the last two shots. He actually proved to be quite useful, too. We needed somebody to throw a third pot of water onto Ben so that we could get as large of a splash as possible, and he was excited to help.

We nailed Ben's splash shot in one take and moved onto the last shot. We shot 3 different final reactions of Ben for the final take, all of which were great and made the choice very difficult, but you can see our final choice by watching Epic Dive.

As I had said at the beginning, this was my favorite video hands-down. From start to finish, I loved everything about it: the idea, the cast, the production, everything. Even running on ~4hrs of sleep and working in sub-freezing temperatures (oh, and having to blow that damn pool up by myself), I had a tremendous amount of fun, and I know that everybody else did, too.

Our Epic Videos are available to watch on Vimeo, and expect additional write-ups of our other Epic videos to come shortly.

Epic High Five

2010-12-24T16:51:00.006-05:00

If you aren't already familiar with the Epic competition, read about it in my post here.

Epic High Five is the very first Epic video that we had shot for the competition. Originally we weren't exactly sure what we were going to shoot, but we liked the basic idea of an epic high five.

We soon remembered that Laura (our Art Director) had a cat, Zilla, and we decided to run with the idea of utilizing Zilla as the second half of our high five. We figured that one of the easier ways to make a high five epic is to simply slow it down, so it was decided that we would have Bennett's (our Director) hand flying through the frame at multiple angles in slo-mo. Then at the very end, out of nowhere, Zilla's paw would fly from the other side of the frame and high five Bennett.

We brought all of the equipment over to Laura's house one afternoon and quickly found the largest, clearest wall available, which was in her kitchen/dining room. After removing a rather large mirror, we now had a (fairly) clean, blank wall on which to shoot. We threw up two umbrella'd halogens, setup the Panasonic for 60FPS, and set off grabbing Bennett's hand flying through the air.

After grabbing at least 5 different angles of Bennett's hand it was time to move onto the last shot with our star. Our uncooperative diva of a star... We finally wrangled Zilla, and Laura was put in charge of cat duty. She held onto Zilla, attempting to get her to cooperative and hold out her paw. In the end, we ended up using Zilla's back paw since she was far more willing to throw out her hind legs than her front.

We managed to get a couple of takes before Zilla became too much of a handful, but we got the shot.

What really brought the video together, though, was the use of sound. I utilized a short royalty-free clip of wind blowing and slowed it down tremendously, giving that very low rumble and brought this build-up to the high five. You have to watch this video with a proper set of speakers. Laptops are hardly able to produce anything.

Additionally there was the cat "mrow." We tried to look for more royalty-free clips of cats meowing, but we were never happy with anything that we found. They either didn't have the right noise we were looking for, or the quality just wasn't good enough, so we decided to have Bennett perform the "mrow"-over. (Side note: Bennett has an impressive ability to mimic several animals. It's a little weird... Just ask him to make the noise of turtles having sex.)

Overall I'm pretty happy with the video. I wish that we had worked on the lighting a bit more, it seems a bit too flat and bland. During editing none of us were quite sure if it was going to work or not, but once we got the sound in it really managed to pull it all together and I'm certain that we're all fairly proud of the video.

Our Epic Videos are available to watch Vimeo, and expect additional write-ups of our other Epic videos to come shortly.

Epic Tranquility

2010-11-27T15:02:00.000-05:00

If you aren't already familiar with the Epic competition, read about it in my post here.

One of the first Epic videos that we created for the Epic competition was Epic Tranquility (originally Epic Leaf). The original idea that we had come up with during brainstorming was a 30 second clip of a leaf blowing in the wind, and at the very end the leaf would fly off the tree.

The idea of this leaf flying off was expanded upon with ideas such as using a firecracker to blow the leaf off, several firecrackers to blow several leaves off, having the entire tree spontaneously combust, have somebody walk up with a chainsaw and cut the leaf off, and a few others.

Well, we decided to basically scrap every one of those ideas for various reasons (mostly because we didn't have firecrackers are our immediate disposal) and instead went with a spin-off of the chainsaw idea and the idea that you see in the final video of a blurred out background with two guys fighting.

The submitted video of two guys fighting started with us messing around in Laura's backyard. Bennett had discovered a hatchet somewhere in the backyard, which we promptly used to destroy anything not valuable. Eventually we ran out of stuff to destroy, at which point we decided to shoot a video of us fighting each other, hatchet included, in the background while focusing on a leaf. We ran back and forth a few times, chasing each other with the hatchet, then eventually wrestling each other to the ground.

What I realized later is that this idea had the potential to be truly epic. Had we thought of it sooner, we could have gathered 20 or 30 people, split them in half, and had each half stand on either side of the frame. We could have had Bennett and myself running back and forth a couple of times, and then all of a sudden these 20-30 people would amass upon each other from out of nowhere.

The second idea, which we didn't release, was of a leaf blowing in the wind, and then Bennett walking up to the leaf and chopping the leaf off (yes, with the hatchet...). Not particularly epic, but it did look damn good. I love that 50mm f1.4 lens...

Our Epic Videos are available to watch on Vimeo, and expect additional write-ups of our other Epic videos to come shortly.

Sprint's Epic (Failure) Competition

2010-11-04T21:58:00.001-04:00

As some of you have noticed over the past two weeks, I've been producing short videos for Sprint's Epic Video competition. The idea of the competition is that you make a video (up to 5 per YouTube account) under 30 seconds that's somehow epic, and the top 10 would be judged by Michael Bay.

This competition was brought to my attention on October 21st by my director, Bennett Rea, and the due date for these videos was November 1st. With hardly even a week and a half to pull this off, Bennett, our art director Laura Campbell, and myself sat down for a brainstorming meeting (yes, it was quite long) and banged out 6 ideas that we both liked and believed we could pull off in the amount of time that we had.

The six epic ideas that we had were: Dive, Arm Wrestle (Showdown), Mouthwipe, High Five, Tranquility, and That's What She Said. Of those 6, we managed to shoot all but TWSS, and then submitted all but Mouthwipe due to post-production issues. We enjoyed all of them, but we were particularly confident about Dive and Showdown. Check them out at the end of this post.

But then an hour after submitting our videos, I receive an email: "Thank you for submitting your Epic Mini Movie. Unfortunately, your video is out of the running..." And of course there was no real explanation as to why it wasn't in the running, just a suggestion to check their guidelines. I quickly fired off an email to Bennett and Laura with a resounding "WTF," letting them know that at least one video was out of the running. And then shortly after I sent out that email, I received a second one with the same message.

Naturally we were all incredibly upset. There were no logos, no products, and no songs (that alone is a story in and of itself). After scouring through their guidelines, I came to the conclusion that our videos were probably rejected due to "indecency," which we were again rather upset about because we called bullshit. So we were now left with only two videos in the running, and they weren't our best two.

Of course in the end of all of this, we did walk away with great experience and great pieces for our reels. We went from brainstorming to final product in 10 days, and while it was draining and stressful, it was challenging and fun. I intend to continue producing projects like this because of their simplicity and exercise of skill.

Sprint managed to piss off a large number of people. Enough so that somebody created a YouTube channel dedicated to films that were rejected from the competition. Additionally, all of our shorts are available on my Vimeo channel. And lastly, as a shameless plug, please vote for our two films in the running: High Five and Tranquility.

Juniata and the DMS Take Home a Davey

2010-11-02T21:45:00.001-04:00

Early last Spring I was involved in a production for Juniata College's Scholarship Fund. We released a short film on Valentine's Day as a way to reach our alumni, asking them to donate to the Juniata Scholarship Fund.

Scholarship Fund - eHarmony from Andy Waplinger on Vimeo.

The short film is a parody of the eHarmony commercials that we've all seen for years. A current student and alum talk about what they're looking for and what they have to offer, respectively. Then at the end you're thrown for a bit of a twist.

After having taken the Fall semester off for medical reasons, this was the first project that I was involved in upon my return, and I was extremely excited to be able to immediately jump back into work at the Digital Media Studio.

Because it was the middle of January and this video was to go live on Valentine's Day, our production schedule was pretty quick. I also had to quickly meet an almost entirely new crew, since most of the DMS employees had graduated the year before. I was put onto the project as cameraman, having to learn the new equipment immediately, and also volunteered to be editor since I hadn't edited anything for a while.

Overall I had a great time, working with a new crew, jumping into a new project, and filming new and fun talent. This was an enjoyable production that I'm very proud to have been a part of.

And now this video has won a Davey Award! The Davey Awards are awarded to small firms (Davids) who make a large impact using their creativity and ideas instead of big budgets (Goliaths). Everyone who was involved should be very proud of their accomplishments.

How to Properly Carve a Pumpkin

2010-10-28T22:09:00.001-04:00

That's not a knife. This is a... gun?

Chris Crisman - Gorgeously Simple Photography

2010-10-28T16:01:00.001-04:00

I was just introduced to Chris Crisman today through David Hobby over at Strobist. Crisman has quickly become one of my new favorite photographers. His photos are so simple and elegant and at times remind me a little bit of Dan Winters. Really, really great stuff.

My Future Career

2010-10-28T15:20:00.001-04:00

This is absolutely what I'd love to do for the rest of my life: make movies about cars with cars.

I love Formula 1. I just got into it a couple of years ago, and damn, you really can't have a better combination of art and engineering. I'm incredibly excited for this documentary to be released. It's going to be seriously fantastic.

Heaven Never Sounded so Good

2010-10-26T22:36:00.001-04:00

Oh. Dear. Lord. The sound that emanates from this E46 M3's S54B32 is absolutely glorious.

Obioban, I will buy this beautiful beast from you. Just give me about 15 years. Also, I want a ride in your E39.

Light-Painting an Entire City

2010-10-26T14:47:00.001-04:00

These guys are absolutely brilliant. Approximately 50 photographers were involved to make this project happen, and their work absolutely pays off. From conception to final product, this was nothing short of fantastic. Enjoy.

Mmm... Koenigsegg CCXR

2010-10-24T16:10:00.001-04:00

The only possible way that this video could get any better would be if Sabine Schmitz was the person behind the wheel.

Passenger Etiquette

2010-10-24T00:12:00.001-04:00

I have been following Scott Adams' blog for years, and his brilliance, wit, and insight never disappoint. In one of his latest posts, he discusses the etiquette of passengers and their phones.

This is something that I've been thinking about for a long time, after having to deal with this situation so many damn times. Back in high school, whenever I had my mother as my passenger, the phone would be to her ear in less than 2 minutes, and I'd spend the entire car ride without my music and listening to her babbling... great times.

So if you have half a heart, don't use your friends' cars as your personal phone booth. It makes you a douche.

The Future of Computer Interaction

2010-10-21T00:24:00.001-04:00

For those who missed the Apple event held earlier today, you really should check it out. Engadget was kind enough to provide a nice rundown of everything that was announced, along with plenty of pretty pictures.

In just a few short years Apple has revolutionized the multitouch market with mobile devices and its iOS using the underpinnings of their desktop-based OS X, and they're now taking what they've learned from iOS and bringing it full circle it OS X. I think that this is one of the coolest and most-needed developments in GUIs since the implementation of the trackpad (also by Apple).

The defining move was made back in July when Apple released their Magic Trackpad, bringing multitouch to their desktop computers and not just their portable devices. I fell in love with my trackpad on my MacBook Pro the second I touched it. Utilizing more than one finger is huge when it comes to efficiency and usability. Apple believes that multitouch is the way we're going, and I couldn't agree more.

Goodbye to You

2010-10-18T22:29:00.001-04:00

One of my friends from back home, Brooks Hanna (piano/vocals), just recorded his first single, "Goodbye to You," with his bandmate Nate Rost (strings).

I'd fallen in love with the piano riff months ago when Brooks had first written it, and this quickly turned into one of my favorite songs ever. He's also got one hell of a voice, too, considering he's just 16.

Definitely take a listen, and keep an ear out for new stuff as Brooks gets more time in the studio.

"Living" Art

2010-10-18T21:07:00.001-04:00

I think that this is a really cool take on living art. It's an interesting type of installation that really piques my interest as a photographer by combining a traditional art form and turning a person into an art medium.

The Almighty BMW 767

2010-10-16T12:49:00.001-04:00

I had the fantastic opportunity to borrow a 750iL with the M73 5.4L V12 for 3 days 2 years ago. The ride was beyond words, and that engine knew how to sing. The first time I hit the highway, I was passing traffic while on the on-ramp, and once I finally looked down I realized I was going 110. These are serious highway cruisers.

But to sit in the cockpit of this beast... I'm pretty sure I'd start shaking with fear. I mean, look at those rear side intakes! They're scarier than a Lambo. And 16 cylinders? I currently have 8. I like 8, 8 is good. Those 12 were great. But 16?!

This is the reason why I love BMW. Let's throw a bunch of brilliantly crazy engineers at a chunk of aluminum und schteel and see what happens (i.e. M Coupe).

Water + Superhydrophobic + Overcrank = Awesome

2010-10-16T02:23:00.004-04:00

This video is awesome for so many reasons.

I've been a physics nerd most of my life. The use of hydrophobic materials is really cool and has a lot of great applications, ranging from medical to automotive. I'd love to have this stuff on my car, inside and out. And my clothes. And my camera equipment. And my computer. And and and...

Also, I absolutely love overcranking. Slo-mo videography is so much fun. There's a reason I loved Discovery's Time Warp. Everything looks so much cooler shot at 53289234 fps.

Welcome!

2010-10-15T21:20:00.001-04:00

Welcome to my new blog! I've decided to start working on increasing my web presence and expanding my digital portfolio.

I'm a student studying Digital Media Arts at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA. I love taking photos and producing short films. I've been working with computers and media since I was around 10 years old, and I love them both more and more each day.

The goal of this blog is to not just share who I am, but also what I love, ranging from film to cars to computers. I'll be using this blog to throw out my own ideas and opinions, and I'll also be using it to share with you different things that I find interesting.

If you're interested in finding out more about who I am and what I do, please check out my other web pages:
Homepage
Facebook
Flickr
Vimeo
YouTube

-Andy