Mutually Awkward

Tag Archives: filmmaking


by Leave a comment

Creativity Noms

 

For the most of this year, I’ve been feeling really drained on creativity – a really shitty situation to be in. The reasons vary, from January’s biggest-depression-I’ve-had-in-like-over-6-years-fiasco to just editing productions that I could not find myself getting excited about.

Luckily, it looks like things are starting to turn around. I’m not sure what happened, but lately I’ve been feeling my creative juices returning. I’ve been feeling hungry to learn again and ready to seek out freelance projects more aggressively like I used to. This has already led to some good stuff: I finished a fun, new music video a few weeks ago that I will be posting up soon and I will also be editing another freelance gig this weekend, while simultaneously getting some good Premiere Pro practice.  That’s another good thing: I’m finally taking steps to get my ass of working on Final Cut 7. I already can work on Avid, so my plan is to train on FCP X when I have downtime at work while learning the ropes of Premiere Pro during my free time at home.

One thing that has definitely helped was getting involved in editor communities and talking to my fellow cutters. One tough thing about living so far from L.A. is that I am around MUCH LESS film people than I once was. But of course, the awesome connectivity of the internet leaves no excuses. In addition to the always-amazing #PostChat community on Twitter, I’ve recently been finding myself in the r/Editors subreddit on Reddit, where there is an abundance of inside jokes, tips, AMAZING HELP, and general good feelings among editors.

From out of the tons of good information coming out of that subreddit all the time, here is a terrific video that gave a huge chunk of creative noms for me today. It is a 30 minute talk by film editor Eddie Hamilton, who cut X-Men: First Class and Kick-Ass. Though the video was posted by Avid, a lot of what he says is completely applicable to any editors, regardless of what system they cut on. It is definitely worth a watch – especially in the latter half, in which he dissects a kind of dull one-shot scene that he edited into some awesome action. This video was definitely my creative nom for the week.

 

 


by Leave a comment

Stuff and Some More Stuff

 

Things have been quite busy since my last post two weeks ago. Last weekend I was suddenly asked to join a team for the 48 Hour Film Project as editor. I had done a similar project two years ago when a friend asked me to join the USC Ed Wood 24-Hour Film Festival back when he attended school there. The extra 24 hours for last weekend’s shoot definitely was much appreciated and I had a good time working and meeting lots of new good people. Below is a still from our film.

The concept of the contest is pretty much each team must pick a genre from a hat and go forward in creating the film. A specific phrase and prop must also be used. We picked out dark comedy and  yesterday our film was screened at a movie theater (a 15 minute walk from my apartment – booya!). Now that the contest is over, I’d like to do some cleaner edits to the film since there aren’t time restraints. I’ll be sure to post it as soon as I’m finished.

With other things, I’ve been listening to a lot of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yelstin lately. Especially their track, Oregon Girl. Not sure if it’s because I recently decided Portland is a city I will move to in the near future or because I suddenly just remembered a good song. Though that song is from like 2006, I listened to it heavily during summer 2011 and it brings back a lot of fond memories, mainly of my bicycle and the girl I was crushing on at the time. Check the vid below.

 

 

It is already almost Halloween and my personal plan to watch nothing but horror movies for the month of October failed right after watching Shaun of the Dead. Instead of going for watching another horror flick, I ended up seeing Say Anything this week for some reason. Maybe because I’ve been feeling like a bit like Lloyd Dobler lately.

 


by Leave a comment

LA Comedy Fest.

As mentioned late last year, the short screenplay that I had wrote originally entitled Like Like  had spent most of 2011 sitting in my documents folder due to a lot of needless flaking from a former friend  while I moved on working other productions as I interned and took classes at Moviola.

But after meeting awesome person/director April Heather, the script was put to use and ended up as Jules & Me. It was a great experience seen something that I wrote be made into a film (and an interesting experience editing it as well) and I was totally happy to have been part of a project with so many talented people, especially April. About a week ago I got an email from her telling me that the film had been accepted into this year’s LA Comedy Fest, which immediately resulted in me breaking out with some morning bedroom dancing.

This definitely makes me want to write more, especially another screenplay. Let the brainstorming begin!

 

Gahhhhh, I wish I could somehow teleport to L.A. during April 23rd!

 

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 56 other followers