Archive for the ‘48 hour’ tag

Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse!

I got myself a job. I’m now editing for a little agency in Scottsdale called Mission E Commerce. So far things are going well, working all day and going to school at night is going to get real old really fast, but I’ve worked a full schedule and passed classes before, so I probably just need to HTFU. This is the first time I’ve had the job title of “editor” so I’m pretty stoked to have that first career hurdle behind me. The work we are doing isn’t real exciting and the clients are pretty particular, but I’m sure as we grow we’ll be able to get better and better jobs. In the mean time it pays well and they seem to like me, so I don’t really care what I have to edit.

The screening for my latest weekend film festival was saturday. Only seven teams finished the challenge but the ones that made it were pretty good. We ended up getting third place, which I am happy with. We went a very simplistic route so I’m not sure we deserved a whole lot more then that. The films that beat us were good, the production value of one was pretty low but it was clever and that’s kinda how these things work.

I got to go see Stars on friday and they put on a great concert. The opening band was a local act named Back Ted N Ted. A friend had shown them to me a few months ago because he was in talks to produce a music video for them. The music ranges from some cool electronic rock to some weirder almost experimental stuff but you should definitely check em out. After seeing them rock out on stage I’m definitely going to try to get that video to actually happen. Our little group has now done a few videos but all have been hip hop or rap and I really want to direct a rock video.
Stars took the stage soon after and while I’ve been into Stars for quite a while I’m sad to say that I had no idea Amy Millan played guitar. The band uses two vocalists on most of their songs but I didn’t know that both also played other instruments. There was a session guitarist who played a lot of the guitar stuff and almost every solo, which I hate to see, but Amy definitely played her share and did some acoustic stuff. The other lead, Torquil Campbell, actually plays the trumpet parts in a few songs, the keyboard and the melodica. The band rocked the house for the next hour, took a break and then proceeded to play just about every song on their last two albums. The show was at The Brickhouse, which I had never been too because I’m lame, but it’s a nice little bar and was packed. I’ve been pretty proud about how Phoenix turns out for indie shows. The band could have easily filled one of the small venues in town, they seemed pretty surprised at the turnout and were sincerely appreciative. After a great set the two founding members of the band came back out for an encore and played “Barricade” which was awesome.

I went out with a new friend of mine last night. We met a few weekends back on the set of an ASU production I was helping out on. I honestly had no plan of action, I just knew I wanted to see her so we took a walk down Mill Ave and ended up at Tempe Beach Park (which is surprisingly nice). It was really low key but a lot of fun. I felt a little bad that I didn’t have some great idea of what to do, but we simply enjoyed each other’s company and that seemed to turn out for the best.

I leave you with the following two videos, they have nothing in common other then the fact that I like them both. During the week I often collect links that I think I’d like to reference in a post and usually don’t end up writing about them. However these are too good to not share.

A great promo for the Discovery Channel, the VFX were done by a cool production house called Method.

If you’re still on the fence about the whole Hillary vs Obama thing this should pretty much cement things for ya :D

Thanks to everyone who send me a note or a card, I’ve had a pretty good Birthday. Being 23 was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to being 24 :D
David Hildreth

Under the hot spring sun

I was taking my usual walk to my local Circle K (the most excellent Circle K in fact) for some mexican coca cola (which is further proof of a benevolent God) and decided to listen to something I hadn’t put on my ipod in a while.

Weezer

Undoubtedly my favorite band back high school their last couple albums hadn’t really been all that amazing and I just hadn’t felt like listening to them in a while. I threw on the green album and began to remember why I loved them. They are releasing another self titled album (a red album I gather) this year and you can hear the single here (via HTFAF)

I did a 72 hour film festival this last weekend and I can safely say this is the last weekend film fest I will do for a very long time. Beyond all the drama that happened in our group (which, in the end, turned out for the best) I just don’t really enjoy the format anymore. We ended up going with a very simple concept and had a lot of fun shooting it, but I still just can get over making a film and knowing that it’s not our best work. You are so limited by the time constraints, that no matter how much effort you put in you’ll never be fully happy with the results. So it looks like my sixth festival will be my last for a while. A friend of mine threw out the idea of doing claymation or some other wacky format and I’d be down with that, but that’s mostly hypothetical at the moment.

Here is our entry for the Fuse 72 hour film festival entitled Pursuit. It, as always, is also available in HD.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

My short is coming along nicely, I am currently story boarding what I have so far and at the same time trying to add a subplot. I’m using a neat little program to story board but it’s slow going. I have about 10 shots done, that gets me half way down the first of eighteen pages.

It’s going to hit 100 degrees for the first time this year any day now. I can’t say I’m ready for the summer heat but I am ready to spend my days at the bottom of my pool. :D

Late,
David

Let the seasons begin, it rolls right on

I’m on spring break.

That’s probably the first thing you should know, because I’ve decided that my state of mind is first and foremost guided by that fact this week.

:D

I’ve waited for a little while to post this but I finally got my stickers together so here is the 48 hour film fest entry I wrote about last month.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

You can also see it in HD here.
It’s called His Name Was… and while the plot is a little hard to catch the cinematography is something we were all very proud of. This entry made the top 20 showing and won an award for best story. We really do think we deserved recognition for the look of the video but beggars can’t be choosers.

As I mentioned I’m on holiday. I’m not really going anywhere or doing anything special but I am complaining more and working less… so that’s a start. There are some things I have to get done this break and I am working hard on them, but every second I’m not outside in the sun or at the bottom of a pool is sorta wasted.

Things are starting to roll a little bit on my next project. I wrote a short last year called Hit and Run and I’ve made it my goal to get it shot before July. A friend has a short that will probably be our little group’s next production but I am getting pre-production into full swing to make sure my vision can come to life. The script is short, pretty simple to shoot and I have yet to talk to someone who doesn’t like the twist at the end. Look for more on this in the coming months, I’m so excited about it that I’m sure you’ll all be sick of hearing about it.

Last week for my final in an editing class we were expected to shoot some footage on wednesday and have something decent by thursday. That doesn’t sound very exciting but it was an exercise to familiarize us with our two high end HD cameras, the Sony F-900 and the Panasonic VariCam. I chose to shoot with the 900, and I can not even begin tell you the size of the nerd chub I got by walking around with it on my shoulder. The following is a little fake movie trailer that we shot and I edited. It’s nothing amazing but do look at the quality of the footage… it’s incredible. I did some color correction but when you consider that we weren’t allowed to use any lights, the footage is remarkably colorful and sharp.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Also available in HD.
The Jade Monkey… that’s what you get when you lend a group of film students a $100,000 camera… and I sometimes wonder where all that tuition goes.
We were in a group of about 10 people so we all had the same footage but made separate cuts. Mine is serious and sleek, Marco’s is funny and has a nice soundtrack, while Randy went for a “straight to DVD” sort of approach.
Check em out. FYI the visuals are all safe but the audio is NSFW.

I’ll try and post from my phone this week… but then again I’ve lied about that before,
David

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