Shot some footage over the weekend in Times Square. Lot’s more “movies” to come, especially with snowboarding around the corner.

View on vimeo

Nick Campbell who is a motion designer at Digital Kitchen Chicago has a wonderful blog which has become a weekly bookmarked visit for me. I spoke once before about his 5 second projects and how it’s a great way to play with an open brief to experiment and learn. His new thing is reel critiques. Basically you can send him a link to your reel and he’ll do a real time critique of it. I was 1 of the 3 reels chosen for his 2nd episode. He had some nice words to say about my reel which is very encouraging and offered some insight into how I could improve it. Thanks Nick! And thanks to everyone else who’s left comments, emails, advice and everything else.

Watch the critique here.

Trying to get my GH1 was impossible. Every store had it on pre-order and Panasonic decided not to roll them out until mid September. I patiently waited 3 weeks and thankfully, Crutchfield kept on their promise to send me one when they got the next shipment. I’ve read just about every forum on dvxuser and listened to all of Philip Bloom’s comments and it just made sense for me to get this now.  The compact size is what really did it for me as I can’t imagine lugging anything bigger on snowboarding trips. Also, I’m not too concerned with “MUD” as I’ll be shooting primarily at 720/60.

I’ve already purchased the Fader ND and 4/3 adapter from ebay so I’ll be up and ready come snowboarding season. Just a couple more accessories and I’ll be fully prepared for a nasty follow up to my Whistler documentary.

My new demo reel is up…check it out here.

I’m a bit late to post this but a couple weeks ago, I decided to change my portfolio website: thewiimix.com. I grew a bit tired of it’s layout and presentation. Although my flash site was created in such a way that following simple XML and SWF naming conventions would change the contents of the site, I wanted to go down an even more efficient route. I’ve always been a fan of cargo collective and indexhibit and decided to give the latter I try. I love the simplicity and the power of the CMS and it’s actually quite refreshing to go back to an HTML/CSS website. I have some new work to post soon as well as a new reel so keep your eyes out for that.

In other big news, I’m upgrading my HD camera. Although I seriously considered the 5D Mark II and the much-anticipated 7D, I fell in love with the Lumix GH1. DSLR cinematography is the new big thing – didn’t you know? Although Panasonic has been slow to release it, I should be getting mine in 2 weeks. I’ve already jotted down numerous ideas for short movies and what I’ll do for next year’s snowboarding documentary. Going to take my amateur shoots to a whole new level. Can’t wait!

Over the past month and a half, I’ve been working on an abstract, experimental short focusing on the theme of “Greed”.  During brainstorm sessions and explorations, I came across a quote by Albert Einstein. “The stakes are immense, the task colossal, the time is short. But we may hope – we must hope – that man’s own creation, man’s own genius, will not destroy him.” That pretty much summed up exactly what I wanted to portray – Man’s greed as a driving force for progression, yet destruction as well. Are we destroying what truly matters for selfish growth and advancement? Do we as people naturally yearn and desire for more? There seems to be a very thin line between greed and ambition.

These are some of the questions and ideas I had floating around my head when I began creating my concept. I wanted to create something abstract that reinforced this theme without being completely obvious. I hope I did leave some room for interpretation. I am also intrigued with the idea of trying this for all 7 deadly sins. Here’s to more free time!

View the video here: http://vimeo.com/5931699

Much to do 8-10 week deadline sounds reasonable at this pace..

Some test animation and compositing practice from some footage I took outside my apartment. Started off tracking in PFTrack but eventually just used 2D tracker in AE since there’s no real rotation/perspective change. Will take this and try and do something more elaborate.

View animation here.

Some more practice shooting with the Jag35…

http://vimeo.com/5087951

Some quick animations I put together using dynamics, mograph, etc. Multi-pass renders rock

Logo bounce animation

Lebron James inspired animation