Here I am being surprisingly articulate and self-effacing (if I do say so myself) while discussing politics, performance and other things related to Third Party ’08 and Discouraging Words with Lawrence Levesque on the TV show Student Short Films:
Also on this episode is a very funny short film by Clifton Archuleta called The Company Man.
I’ve got two shorts here for you, both trying out YouTube’s HD feature (click the ‘HD’ button to watch in 720p!)
The first is a short piece of direct cinema called Desperation Sonata. A couple months ago I was doing a low-light camera test in the MCAD student center late at night, when the halting strains of Moonlight Sonata began echoing around the room and the whole thing turned into a documentary in the style of Frederick Wiseman or Béla Tarr:
The second is a silent experimental short I made a couple years ago called Mind/Body, playing with the relationship between positive and negative—and on a more theoretical level, the separation between the physical and mental world. This was my excuse for learning how to smash open Super8 cartridges with a rock and process the film by hand:
Also, I’d like to point you once again to Exploding Goldfish’s YouTube channel, which is finally going to get some use now that they do HD and don’t have a weekly upload cap like Vimeo (now if only they’d let me replace existing videos with newer versions I could go back and re-upload all my old videos in HD).
Yesterday, we shot in a news studio! It was very cool and the footage looked awesome! Incidentally, this station, KSTP-TV, was the first full-color television station in the country, way back in 1961. Now they’re making the transition to high definition.
This all came about because The Ultimate Challenge calls for a news studio location, and I figured that before I ultimately gave up and attempted to fake one, I should do my due diligence and send out a shotgun blast of e-mails to all the TV stations in the city, fully expecting never to hear back from them. Surprisingly, an incredibly nice woman who is the operations manager for KSTP got in touch with me and said that we could indeed shoot in their studio. Fox turned me down—just sayin’. (And KARE, whose call letters indicate that they should be the nice ones, completely ignored me.)
But it’s all for the better, because of a really beautiful coincidence. My fictional news station moniker of choice is Eyewitness 2 News, simply because it’s generic while sounding specific (the phrase “Eyewitness News” is in widespread use and therefore cannot be trademarked), and guess what?
Don Peterson as Eddie, news director
That’s what: giant metal signs reading “Eyewitness News” all over the place in the studio. Also, only one piece of trademarked signage for us to avoid, and no copyrighted images printed on the backdrops. I can’t think of a more ideal location anywhere else in the world.
Kathryn Criston (director of photography)
A brief bit of geekery:The studio is set up pretty much as expected (three-camera setup on the news desk), but I did take note of a few things: The overhead lighting is a mixture of tungsten and photo-flo fixtures. The tungsten fixtures seem to be predominately Baby Moles. There are two PC workstations set up so their screens are visible through the glass-topped desk, and a laser printer is positioned a few feet behind the desk for easy access. The backdrop is composed of an array of functioning video screens displayed behind a diffusion screen. My favorite, though, were the cardboard cutouts of video patch bays installed at the top of the set (to help it look more high-tech?)
Andrew Gingerich (director) and Matt Kane (excelsior grip)
The second half of the day was spent in abject misery on the palatial estate of a cycling champion. I wore trash bags inside my shoes and the weather was a bad problem. I don’t want to talk about it.
Sincerely yours (with much gratitude),
Andrew Gingerich
I just got my transfers back from Cinelicious today, and man are they ever gorgeous! Take a look at these two shots:
Out the Window: Hello World from Andrew Gingerich on Vimeo.
Of course, now I have to sync all this stuff, which is kind of a problem because we decided not to slate in order to save film. Kinda stupid, but we probably saved about 20 feet of stock. Anyway, it makes it a bit of an ordeal to get all the sound in sync with the picture. *WEEKEND PROJECT #1*
Here it is on Vimeo (click the “HD” button to watch in 720p):
Third Party ’08 from Andrew Gingerich on Vimeo.
Or if you prefer, click here for a direct-link QuickTime.
Peace,
Andrew
BARACK OBAMA IS YOUR NEW PRESIDENT.
One thing I’ve learned about the RED is that its files are enormous, and debayering the RAW footage takes all kinds of forever to do. That being said:
THIRD PARTY ’08: THE TRUE STORY OF THE PRESIDENT OF KANSAS
or
STROBE JENSEN: A MAN OF GREAT PRINCIPLE
or
HOPE, SUCCESS AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FUTURE
or
HONEY, I THREW THE ELECTION
…is picture LOCKED, and first-lighted, and the online conform and sound mix are in progress as we speak. Because of the processor-intensive debayering, I am forecasting a 4:30 AM CST premiere of the thing.
In the meantime, here’s a little bit about the film:
Third Party ’08 stars the incomparable Jim Westcott as third-party presidential candidate Roger Deerborn, the incompressible Jesse Griffith as Deerborn’s chief strategist, and the incomprehensible Landyn Banx as Strobe Jensen—a man of great conscience, and Deerborn’s unpredictable running mate. Also featured are Anne Westcott as Deerborn’s idealistic daughter, Melissa Hoppe as an inexperienced public radio reporter, and Heather Amos as Deerborn’s politely misanthropic press secretary. The film follows the characters through election night 2008 as their margin drops from 0% to 0.0% to 0.00%.
It was written by myself and Matt Kane. I directed. Matt did the cinematography. We were the only crew members.
The film was shot at 3K resolution on the RED ONE digital cinema camera, with a set of very nice Zeiss prime lenses. We did not pay for the camera. Our production budget for the entire film was approximately $25.
Stay tuned to this channel, folks. It won’t be long now.
UPDATE: It’s late and I’m going to bed. Movie is compressing now and will be posted in the morning.