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.

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.)