eabaker's movies thread

[eabaker]

Wow, I haven't posted in here for about four months! I was waiting on a friend to provide me with a decent looking quicktime of my student film, but he still hasn't come through, so today I finally grew impatient enough to just rip a copy from my DVD (which was dubbed from the beta SP master via - ugh - composite cables). So, if and when I get a higher quality version, I'll upload that and replace this link. Meanwhile, let's step into our time machine and go back more than a decade, to my final year of college, when I wrote and directed the horror comedy "Dead Air." Enjoy!

NOTE: The audio starts out very low. This is completely intentional, and by about 30 seconds in it's up to full volume. Also, if possible, you might want to turn your bass up, because the atmosphere is very much enhanced by the low, rumbling score.

[eabaker]

Starting to run low on content to post here, but this one is a 48 Hour Film project that I dp'd, with the genre assignment "noir comedy."

[eabaker]

Wow, I haven't added anything here in over 4 years! Yikes!

A big part of the reason for my long absence from this board has been my decision a couple of years ago to join my wife in going back to school to get our Masters degrees in Film. The combination of working full time and being a (mostly) full time student hasn't left much time for forum posting. We're not actually graduating until the Spring, but at this point we've taken all but one of our classes (we're taking a leave of absence for the Fall to focus on finishing our thesis, and then taking our final class in the Spring), and I've probably produced more material in the last two years than I had in over a decade prior.

So, I'm going to get back to doing weekly entries in this thread (if I remember).

The first one I'm posting was also the first assignment I did in the program, and it's very, very personal. We were assigned to show some kind of process from beginning to end. This video documents the planting of a tree over my father's ashes. It was his idea that he and my mother should help me and Jenn out with our grad school expenses, and he passed away after we'd been accepted but before we had a chance to start in the program. You'll see me briefly in this video, and the t-shirt I'm wearing is for a production of a musical that my parents wrote (about Jack the Ripper). And the song playing over the video is one my father wrote and performed.

[lhb412]

^It's a wonderful gesture, and a wonderful video. Before reading your description I took the song for a real old drinking song or some such!

... and congrats on going back for your masters! You and your wife!

Makes me think about just how I'd like my remains to be handled. Besides wanting to be cremated I haven't given much thought. I mean, sure I should have a lot of time to think about it - but you never know: there could be a bus with my name on it next week!

[eabaker]

[eabaker]

K, now that I'm posting my grad school work, I was tempted to front-load the best stuff. But, either out of some sense of "honesty," or maybe just an obsessive compulsive leaning, I'm gonna stick with chronological order.

This next piece, "Individuation," was in response to an assignment to tell a simple two character story without dialogue.

[eabaker]

Continuing the chronological trip through my grad school work, we come to "Talking to the Dead." In this case, we were given a list of titles, and had to choose a title and make some kind of short to correspond to it.

This piece was really rushed out. Written in one sitting, shot in a single afternoon/evening. We were in the midst of packing to move at this point, so I wrote it around the idea of a character who was about to move out of his place.

This isn't one of my favorite pieces, by any means, but at least it moves at a pretty quick pace, I'm pleased with sme of the ideas I was playing with, and I think the soundtrack my friend Jeff created for it kinda ties it together in an interesting way.

[eabaker]

And now, "Food Lust," which was done for a film history class as an exercise in Soviet montage techniques. This one was a group project; normally, I stick to my personal projects here, but since this was largely an editing assignment, and I was the editor on it (and during shooting was really trying to guide everyone towards the edit), I'm gonna go ahead and throw it out there.

[eabaker]

Today's link is to "Hell-O." This one is a bit of an oddity, even by my often odd standards. The assignment was simple: shoot a three character dialogue scene. But I didn't want to keep it that simple, so I chose to set my scene in Hell. I also chose to shoot it during class time, which meant that (a.) I had to work only with classmates (remember, this was the first semester, and some of these people had little-to-no production experience), all of whom (including the cast) got their jobs on a volunteer basis, and (b.) we had to get everything done really quickly, because other stuff had run over time that day. Also, I was literally in the middle of moving across the Valley (as in that day, I took time out from moving to go to class, then went straight back to moving).

So, the results are... not what I had intended. But I don't hate it. I've been told that it feels like something off of Tim and Eric, which isn't really my style of humor, but... well, like I said, I don't hate it.

[eabaker]

Seems I've felt compelled to issue caveats with my last few pieces posted. No caveats this time; I'm genuinely happy with how "Tom vs. the Graveite" turned out.

For this one, the assignment was to create a piece in one take, with a moving camera.

[eabaker]

Okay, moving away from the narrative stuff for this week!

One of our professors during our first couple of semesters asked us to keep a regular video journal, basically just making sure that we took our cameras out and shot SOMETHING every week. Then, at the end of the semester, we'd be assigned to cut together something about a minute longfrom that footage. The first semester, we chose words out of a hate to define what the theme of the edit would be. I chose the word "Round," and this is what I put together:

[eabaker]

Ah! Now here's one I'm really proud of. "Unkempt," an attempt at Lovecraftian horror, was my major project for advanced cinema production. My wife dp'd and edited, and ever since then it's been my preference to have her shoot and cut almost everything that I direct.

https://vimeo.com/171145020
Password: Lovecraft

[eabaker]

Whoops! Forgot to post in here yesterday!

So, while "Unkempt" (above) was really the only narrative piece I directed in Spring of '16 (I also DP'd and AD'd a few other projects, some of which I may post down the line if I run out of other content), we were once again expected to keep a video journal, and to cut a one minute video at the end of the semester using footage from that journal.

This time, the assignment was to take our one minute video and present it with three different audio options: silent, accompanied by a piece of music, and accompanied by a soundscape of our own creation.

The piece I made for this was called "Deeply Shallow," in part because most of the video journal stuff I'd done that semester had been playing with shallow depth of field, and in part to take a self-deprecating jab at the kind of empty, pretentious enactment of art that I felt I was creating. Not sure if anyone got the joke.

Oh, also, this is one of the handful of videos I've made for school tat incoporate a few of my kaiju toys. Keep an eye out for Rodan, Angilas, and a couple of different incarnations of Godzilla.

Anyway, here are the three versions.

DEEPLY SHALLOW w soundscape


DEEPLY SHALLOW w music


DEEPLY SHALLOW silent

[eabaker]

Okay, now we're into Summer of 2016, a period when mostly what we were doing were small exercises, so rather than post one at a time, I'll primarily post what I would have been turning in over about two week chunks of time. Basically, every two weeks, we had two shoot two one-minute films for our thesis class, based on VERY broad keywords, and we had technical assignments for our cinematography class.

In this grouping, you'll see puppets, 80s horror toys, and Godzilla toys; and you'll hear some audio from classic horror, Godzilla 1985, and assorted other things geeks like!

The first pair for thesis:

SELF-PORTRAIT:
LOSS:

First cinematography assignment:

[eabaker]

Again, this entry consists of two 1 minute videos for thesis class, and one assignment for cinematography class.

Keep your ears attuned for music from Godzilla vs. Megalon in one of these, as well as more puppets, monster movie books and toys, and a little glimpse at my OCD leanings!

For thesis:

ANGLES IN A ROOM: (I loved this assignment, which was just to choose a single spot in a room, and shoot as many angles from that one spot as possible)
32 M&M'S_FLY ON THE WALL: (the entire assignment here was just the words "fly on the wall")

Second cinematography assignment: (lighting exercises)

[eabaker]

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm pretty excited about the Thesis and Cinematography assignments in this post!

The first cinematography assignment was to create a video to accompany a recording of a poem (we were given about a dozen recordings to choose from). Here's WHAT IS LIFE?:

I chose the next topic myself, in place of the assigned one. I knew we'd be doing some split-screen stuff in our thesis, and wanted to practice it a little, so here's SPLIT (I named it that before the Shyamalan movie was out, obviously):

And for cinematography class, we were assigned to shoot a scene in which we used blocking instead of editing or camera movement to create multiple different compositions within the same frame, resulting in THE RIGHT HANDS:

And, for an extra treat, around the same time Jenn did an assignment focused on tight, tense editing, and I let her use the script for THE RIGHT HANDS, resulting in a totally different take on the same scene. Here's JENN'S VERSION OF THE RIGHT HANDS:

[lhb412]

[eabaker]

[eabaker]

Oh! It's Thursday! Time to do this again!

Not gonna bother with the next Cinematography assignment, because I really didn't even try to do anything interesting with that one. So this'll just be my Thesis assignment for... let's see, I uploaded these on 7/26/16.

In this case, the assignment was to shoot something in a single take, then turn in three versions: with music, with an original sound design, and silent. For the version with music, I opted for a Masaru Sato track from Yojimbo.

ONE SHOT THREE SOUNDTRACKS MUSIC:
ONE SHOT THREE SOUNDTRACKS SOUNDS:
ONE SHOT THREE SOUNDTRACKS SILENT:

[eabaker]

Alright, this is gonna be the last week of the Thesis/Cinematography split posts, and this time I'm going to lead with the cinematography assignment, because it features kaiju toys!

For Cinematography, the assignment was simply to shoot something with our smart phones.

For thesis, the first assignment was "portrait of a person" and the second was "portrait of a place."

Cineamtography assignment TABLE MONSTERS:

Thesis assignment PORTRAIT OF A PERSON:

Thesis assignment PORTRAIT OF A PLACE:

[eabaker]

And now to finish up Summer '16, my final project for my directing class. We were given scenes from plays, which we had to direct for the screen (we weren't allowed to re-write them for the screen, although I did let the actors ad lib some stuff at the very top of the scene that I ended up using in my cut; dialogue from the original script starts about 44 seconds in).

THE FLICK ACT 2 SCENE 5:

[eabaker]

Okay, now to move on to the series of experimental shorts I did in the Fall of '16. Each of these explored some different juxtaposition.

The first in the series, JX1A, was me playing with red and green as visual elements.

For most of these videos, I edited to a temp track before giving it to the composer to create the final music. Sometimes, I think the temp track suits the finished piece better, other times I think it works better with the final score. In this case, I can go either way; the main difference, in effect, is that in the temp track version the visuals perceptibly follow the music's lead, whereas in the finished version the music is being lead by the visuals.

JX1A:

JX1A (with temp music, "Wicked Little Critta" by They Might Be Giants): Password: Juxtaposition

[eabaker]

Continuing that experimental series I did, this is the only case where there was no temp music track; I shot with an intended rhythm for the edit, cut it that way, and Jeff scored it that way. Only after the scoring did I decide to re-edit, which meant also re-editing the music, which I guess makes this the least "pure" entry in the series.

In this case, the juxtaposition I was examining was movement/stasis.

JX1B:

[eabaker]

And the next entry in my experimental series; here the juxtaposition is between saturated/desaturated shooting, though there's also a nature/construction element. I also had a lot of fun playing with focus on this one.

As with the first in the series, with this one I can kinda go either way between the version with final music and the initial temp track version. I think the final music suits the images better, and provides a nice rhythmic counterpoint; but I did some fun editing to the beat on the temp track that always makes me smile.

JX1C:

JX1C (with temp music, "Rock A My Soul" by The Pixies): Password: Juxtaposition

[eabaker]

Another week, another entry from my experimental JX series. In this case, the juxtaposition is between fast motion and slow motion. The other entires in this series were all shot on a Canon 70D, but this one was shot on an iPhone.

In this case, while I like the temp music version, I think the composer really captured something interesting, and I ultimately prefer the final version with his score.

JX1D:

JX1D (with temp music, "Let's Rave On" by The Raveonettes): Password: Juxtaposition