Creation Year.

Every New Year, friends and I gather at a local bar in Grand Rapids to talk about the year that was and the year that is to come.  It's become a powerful tradition in our lives, giving us an opportunity to reflect and vision cast as a community.  We each set a theme for the year, sometimes shared, sometimes not. 

2012 was the year of being invested.  Every decision I made about how to spend my time was all about that one theme.  Being invested.  Overall, I think it went well.

This year, I sat and thought quite a lot about the past few years.  Pretty much since graduating college, I've been planning on going to graduate school for games.  I've applied several times over the last couple of years to different schools around the country, but haven't made it in yet.  Currently, I have an active application at the University of California at Santa Cruz.  I don't feel especially great about my chances.

If I don't get in for fall 2013, then, clearly, the last couple years have not given me the experience I need to get in to grad school.  How, then, do I get that experience?

I present to you, Creation Year.  This year, my goal is to create something every month and present it for critique to those that know more than I do.  That way, I can both add to my portfolio and gain a better perspective for my abilities among my peers.  No more of this big fish in small pond business.

I spent January teaching MDA 480 - Video Games Theory and Criticism at Cornerstone.

February has given me this:



This is my first experiment with Source Filmmaker, Valve's cinematic creation toolset.  More thoughts to come on that business.

Feedback is welcome.  More Creation Year products to be displayed here.

Endnote.

There seems to be a huge backlog of content to update this blog with, so over the next few days, I'm hoping to write up a bunch of posts and automate them for the next few weeks.  Maybe a slow drip of Kemp-thoughts will be helpful for someone.  Or maybe just me. 

Endnote was the short film that occupied my "What I'm Working On" tab up there for far too long.  Here's the final product:

Endnote from Kemp Lyons on Vimeo.

I've been an employee of Cornerstone University now for three and a half years.  In my position, I get the joy of helping students with their film productions.  There came a point last year (at about this time) that I said to myself, "Kemp, you haven't actually been on a film set since you graduated...." 

"You know what, self?  You're right!  We should do something about that."

So I wrote something.  And made it.

I learned many things in the process.

1. Making short films on the cheap is difficult.  You really do ask a lot of people.  If it weren't for Producer Sarah Schaefer and Director of Photography Mike Brown, I wouldn't have been able to do this.  These two people suffered through a lot of phone calls, emails, and production meetings just to help make this film happen and I am deeply grateful.  It's because of Sarah that we were able to have any sort of decent location.  Mike Brown helped transform my blocky ideas into beautiful shots. 

My editor, Leesa Lehmann, is equally amazing.  We originally scheduled out that she'd have all the footage ready to go during some vacation time she had coming up.  That didn't work out.  So she spent stolen hours here and there over a period of four months getting this film cut together.  I couldn't be more happy with the result.

Our actors were amazing.  Flexible, talented, good spirited, and just amazing to work with.  I'm deeply grateful for their sacrifices to make this film.  Largely because of this next point.  Lesson: love your people.  Shower them with praise.

2. Getting back into shooting scheduling was...  difficult.  I was an idiot.  Big time.  I signed off on a schedule that alotted us 8 minutes per shot.  Madness.  Sheer madness.  Poor Ujwal and Whitney pretty much hung out by the back of the shot for take after take after take.  We scheduled them until 11pm but they stayed until probably 1am.  Rock stars.  Lesson: 20 minutes a shot.  At least.

3. Professional practice really does help you teach.  This might be filed under, "No, duh.", but I was able to draw on this experience many, many times over the last year.  It has given me more confidence working with students and, hopefully, has resulted in them getting a better education through me.  Lesson: do this more often.


I'm currently working on ideating for some new short films.  As a faculty and staff at Cornerstone, we want to make a short film over the summer.  My problem is that I'm always coming up with ideas that take a few more effects than we have the resources to accomplish.  There's a blog post coming about that, too.

Anyway.  I hope you enjoy Endnote and it makes you think just a little about relationships and how we process them.

Twilight.

Tonight, I did the unthinkable.  I watched the Twilight movie.

Hold the lynch mob.  It was a purely academic exercise, I promise.  As a student of culture, I realized that it was terribly ignorant of me to judge the film without even seeing it.  It seems that people either love it or hate it, so I wanted to know just what it was that was so divisive.

Going into it, I knew the sparkle thing was a big deal.  Vampires have never, ever sparkled before.  But they also don’t read minds.  Or behave so… stupidly.  So I just went in understanding that the mythology was not going to be what I traditionally understood as vampires or werewolves or anything else.  I knew that the lead actress, Kirsten Stewart, was criticized for a complete lack of emotion.  Got it.  I also knew that the love story was, at best, juvenile.  So I didn’t go in thinking I was about to witness something pure and beautiful.

And boy was I wrong.  It was the most beautiful film I’ve seen in years.

Not really.  Scared you for a minute, though, didn’t I?

If you’re only interested in my final verdict, I’ll save you reading the rest of this and say this: it’s no worse than many other mediocre movies.  It has many, significant problems, but we gloss over these all the time in adventure, sci-fi, and action movies all the time.  So I guess I’m not going to be a straight hater of this film, but I will never say that it’s a good movie. 

Now the details.

Let’s start with what was decent.  For one, it was a pretty film.  The cinematography, while not jaw-dropping, was not bad.  Several shots had great lighting and composure.  They used their environment well.   Second, I didn’t mind Robert Pattinson’s acting.  Though his accent faltered on a number of occasions, I at least believed him most of the time.  Looking through the IMDB trivia, I respect the investment he put into the role, as well (he didn’t talk to anyone for 5 weeks before filming trying to get into the isolation of Edward’s character).  For what it’s worth, I thought the last act of the movie was pretty good.  At least, it was good enough that I stopped taking notes and actually started caring about how the characters would survive.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t until then that I cared at all.

The first two thirds of this movie were pretty awful.  The narration was monotone and useless.  The music was cheesy.  The more I think about it, the less I respect the character of Bella.  She doesn’t really do anything, does she?  I mean, I guess she goes to school and stuff, but everything happens to her, not because of her.  The one time she influences the story is where she insists that they find a way to ensure her father’s safety.  So for over an hour, I’d say, we are just waiting for something interesting to happen.  Nothing does.

The biggest thing that bothered me was a lack of believability.  I mean, I know we’re dealing with fantasy here, but still.  There are rules. 

Take Edward Cullen.  He’s really bad at being a vampire.  You’d think that, for a guy that had graduated high school somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 times, he sure sucked at being secretive.  Bella asks him about why his eye color changes, “Uh…  Um…  Ya see…  It’s, uh, the fluorescent lights.  Yeah.  The lights.  That’s what it is.”  She tells him that she saw him stop the car with his hand and, instead of making something sensible up (“You’ve been through a lot, you might not remember what happened….  I was walking toward you and…”), he says, “No one will believe you.”  That’s not indicting, there, fella.  No one’s going to see that you’re hiding something weird.  You don’t have to worry about keeping your identity a secret for any reason.

Speaking of secrets, don’t you think Bella jumped a little too quickly to the vampire idea?  All it took was an incident whose remembrance could be heavily affected by the trauma, the fact that he was cold, and some other small detail that I can’t remember right now.  All of a sudden, this film that has thus far been fairly reasonable takes a dive into crazy town.

(But then again, Bella lives in crazy town.  Ladies, If a guy tells you “I don’t have the strength to stay away from you anymore,” your answer should not be, “Then don’t.”  That’s a sign you need lots of counseling.)

So why did the last act work so well?  Stakes.  Not wooden ones.  But something at risk.  Nothing was at stake through the whole first two thirds of the movie.  Edward doesn’t lose anything by telling his secret to Bella.  Bella doesn’t lose anything by being (or not being) with Edward.  No one’s in danger.  Not even her happiness seems to be at risk. 

One last note and I’ll let this rant come to a close.  I think Kristen Stewart is a better actor than we’ve been led to believe by this film.  There are several scenes (most of which are with her schoolmates) that she actually bursts to life.  She’s a believable 17 year old girl with interest in what’s going on around her.  I think the director purposely pulled her performance back when she’s with Edward.  When she’s with him, she reverts to this lifeless, monotone girl with no smile.  But whenever Jacob walks into the scene, she smiles and comes to life, pulling more attention as an actor with a vastly more interesting performance.

Honestly, the seeming purposefulness of this shocked me.  If I didn’t know that Team Edward wins, I’d say that this was the setup for the second (or third?) film’s love triangle and that Bella should end up with Team Jacob.  But that’s not what happens.  As I’ve been informed, Bella ends up marrying Edward.  To me, it seems like the director is being surprisingly subversive by controlling Kristen Stewart’s performance like that.  Isn’t the point of the books and movies that she ends up with Edward?  That he’s the right choice that makes her happy?  And yet, at least in this film, she bears more resemblance to a vampire when she’s with him than a happy, in love human.  In fact, her love for him seems more akin to a traditional vampire’s ability to charm someone than anything else.

Just an interesting note on the director and her lead actress. 

Juxtaposition.

Yet another video and a response...



My work is pretty awesome.  For those who don't know, I run all the technology at the media department at Cornerstone University.  (We have a Vimeo account.  You should check it out.)  Lately, my boss has been incredibly gracious in allowing me some student workers that can help me a few afternoons a week.  That has left me with time enough to a) take care of longer term needs and issues, and b) start learning and doing new things.  So, in addition to some dinking around with Adobe After Effects, I've been trying to brainstorm some short film ideas.

I'm not much a a short writer.  Most of the ideas that I get excited about are absurdly large journey stories.  My poor players in my Dungeons and Dragons campaign have hiked around most of the continent just to satisfy my lust for hugely epic narratives.  So, to get myself in the mood for writing shorts, I've been watching quite a few short films.  On the clock, no less. 

16: Moments is one of the films I checked out today.  I loved it.  I thought it was incredibly unique.  There are no words at all, yet it is packed with simple meaning.  I have heard that the power of filmmaking comes only from the juxtaposition of images and the audience's interpretation of those images.  16: Moments is this idea boiled down to its simplicity.

Now, its meaning and power do not simply come from the images.  The soundtrack does a heck of a lot to enhance the theme of everyday life and beauty.  But most of the heavy lifting is done by the editing and beautiful cinematography.

Ultimately, I think that this short is about the beautiful moments that make up our lives.  The fluidity of motion between most of the shots helps the viewer to thematically connect the two shots into similar ideas.  (Side note: isn't it amazing that the human brain can, in hundredths of a second, determine complex and abstract relationships between two moving pictures?)

Take, for example, the segment from about 1:14 to 1:39.  It's a brief story of life.  From the first shot of the fisherman casting his line to the shot of the footprint disappearing in the sand, every shot is a reference, in some way, to a life story.  Some of the shots only make sense looking backward, but it still makes sense.  The fisherman casting his line (looking for the girl).  Two teenagers kissing in the hallway (young, innocent love).  A bird chirping in spring (the season of love).  Unwrapping a condom (a little more mature love...).  A drill going into a two by four (...).  A couple holding hands as they step down stairs (maybe even a little more mature?).  Baby pressing footprints.  Baby walking.  A gravedigger at his work.  Finally, footsteps in the sand (recalling this poem, perhaps).  In 25 seconds, we're given a look at a life.  All through the juxtaposition of simple clips and the natural, cultural connotations that we have inside us.

One of the other things I love about this video is that it is beautiful without caving to the DSLR "look" that is so, incredibly pervasive in short film these days.  Yes, bokeh is beautiful.  Yes, I love high contrast images and tight depth of field.  But 16: Moments manages to be beautiful even though some of the shots look like they were shot with a news camera.  Almost everything in frame is in focus.  It looks like it may have been shot at 30fps instead of 24fps (like film).  It flies in face of what is popular right now while retaining a cinematic beauty that continued to compel me to watch.

I continue to be fascinated by short films like this.  Though I'll never be able to write one, they still inspire me with concepts, ideas, and themes that I want to draw on in my future writing.

What stuck out to you as you watched?


(Huge shout out to http://www.filmgen.com/.  I've been trawling their archives for good short films yesterday and today.)

Work.

Since I'm on Blogger at work, I figure I might as well talk about it for a moment.

Currently, I work at Cornerstone University. (Coincidentally, I also graduated from here in 2009.) My job title is "Media Technology Coordinator," but all that really means is Studio Technician. I keep all the gear running smoothly in the department, teach students how to use the gear safely and effectively, and administrate all the post-production workflows for our film students.

Unsurprisingly, this is not what I wanted to do with my life. In college, though I was a film major, I worked largely in pre-production and writing. I want to be a game writer and designer. But you know what? I love my job.

One of the reasons why is the phenomenal progress we are making as a department as far as skill and quality of output goes. We finally started a Vimeo account a few weeks ago and we're sharing what we've done with the world. I'm really proud of what our students have done.

This is one of our music videos from last Fall semester. It just won Cornerstone's Creative Arts Festival (which is pretty cool) and will be making the festival circuit soon.

The sheer improvement over the music videos from the last time the class ran is unbelievable. (I was in that class and, frankly, I won't upload the video we made out of embarrassment.) And all of it - from the music writing and performing, the recording, the concept, the pre-production, the filming, the editing, and, now, the distribution - was done by Cornerstone University students.

I'm quite proud of where we've come from and I'm excited to be a part of where we're going.

(That being said, my passion still burns for video games and I'm working quite actively to get there. See the cool sidebar to the right about what I'm working on now to achieve that goal!)

So... did I mention that you should watch our videos on our Vimeo account? You should.

87 Views, baby!

So... I am officially done with Fall semester 2007. Only thing left to do is turn it all in.

Also, Reflections... has 87 views. Does anyone else think that's kinda weird? Sweet, though. Theoretically, people like it. Even if the lighting's kinda dim.

I guess we should have just fixed it in post.

The Fruits of Our Labors