SF & SIFF

It's that time of year again...  The Seattle International Film Festival is on now through June 22nd, which means a lot of skipping work and watching films an unhealthy number of films.  I'm shooting stills for SIFF again this year.  I'll be posting a few selects to my flickr site and a lot more will be up on siff.net.

In the last month, we spent 2 weekends in San Francisco. S.F. is one of my favorite cities.  The first weekend was for a cinematography project for an upscale hotel chain and the second was a photography project. I can't wait to go back.

Sean has been in the studio working on a stop-motion music video for the Fleet Foxes.  I've been shooting a bunch of behind the scenes "production diaries" in my free time.  Some of that and the video coming soon.

"Lolita" for Throw Me The Statue is live on MTV.com and will be playing on their show, Subterranean!!!

http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?vid=235865

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

A couple of other fun links:

Polaroid Collection 

Shipwreck Collection

Busier & Busier

The last month has flown by! The Lolita video should be hitting the internet early next week.  I'll post a link soon.  

I just wrapped up 3 back to back projects (4 Pay).  Two of the projects were in San Francisco, which happens to be one of my favorite places ever.

Adam McDaid visited earlier in the month.  He was in town (from LA) shooting Megan Griffith's Fly Film.  I'm excited to see their work premiere at SIFF this year.  I shot some production stills here.

I helped Linas Phillips finish "Great Speeches" (2+ years in the making) with a couple more timelapse shots and the opening and closing credits.  The film went through color correction at Modern Digital and is officially finished on the festival circuit.  It too will be playing at SIFF this year.

I spent the last couple of days shooting stills all over Seattle with the new Nikon D3 and hope to land a couple of cool photography projects... also considering another music video and an interesting Blu-ray project.

Sean Porter is back home safe from Nigeria.  He's shooting a music video for Linas and the band, "The Grand Archives".  I spent the afternoon driving the van around while they film scenes.  A couple of photos coming soon.

Here's a recent pic from a hike we took around Mt. Rainier:

mt. rainier cabin, originally uploaded by thinklab.

From 1 to 2

We finished up the UW Commercials last week.  The clients were all very pleased.  Here's a look at one of them.

The Lolita music video is 90% edited and should be completed by the end of the week.  We went back and grabbed a few more RED camera pickup shots with one of the actors early last week.  We ended up with a lot more action and cake explosions.  

Alex and I have been editing the video in 1k (1024 x 512), but we're finishing it at 2K.  I did some of the conversion to 2k and the footage looks better than anything I've ever seen on my 30" monitor.  

Between working on this music video and finding spots like this Ford commercial it's getting pretty easy to imagine a world without Kodak, or maybe a world with a lot less Kodak.

This week we're also putting together an estimate for a Dungeons and Dragons TV commercial. How awesome would that be?  Mike and I are making plans to build a semi permanent green screen in the studio. Bad ass cinematographer, Adam McDaid is in town for the week working on Megan Griffith's Fly Film.

Links:

MTV Bloom - Winners announced

Sled - It's the simpler things

The Fleet Foxes - are on fire, and Robin's solo stuff is just too good

Isis, Holy Tears - this is cool and disgusting

Time Flies

The past week has been filled with many, many, many hours behind the keyboard.  The HL2 guys have been in the studio working on the UW TV commercials.  All 3 spots have been edited now.  I'm just putting the final After Effects touches on them.

We celebrated daylight savings last Sunday and it's officially starting to feel like spring in Seattle. Thad was even out weeding the courtyard just outside the studio window. Eventually we're going to build a miniature city skyline to go where the weeds grow.

Rob Dalton came by for lunch yesterday and we talked about a new idea he had a for a short visual piece that sounded pretty sweet.

One of my iPhone photos was selected for the Flickr photo of the day on the Stranger's Blog: Slog.  I also put up a few stills from the TMTS music video footage this week.

More links:

• Funny photoshopped celebs - Would love to see a video version of these
  
• Shots Ring Out - Have been listening to this guy's podcasts all week
• My Name is Amy Walker (21 Times!) - Great actor promo vid
• Ridiculous music video - I'm having trouble getting this out of my head
• Del music video - Awesome to see that Del's still workin it.

It's a Wrap!

The UW TV Commercials and the TMTS Music Video shoots went off without a hitch. These were a couple of the biggest jobs I've directed and were done back to back. More like a sandwich really.  We shot long days on the music video last Sunday, Saturday, Sunday and shot the commercials on Tuesday and Wednesday.  It felt like a marathon of days running all over the city, but I couldn't be more pleased with how everything came together.

The RED camera held up well on both projects and I'm excited to be learning (inventing) a RED/FCP/AE workflow.  I plan to be in the studio doing a lot of After Effects and Editing for the next couple of weeks.  Working with these 4k video files, It might be time for a new workstation.

uw commercial, originally uploaded by thinklab.

I haven't been online much lately, but here are a couple of recent finds:

• Scared Girl - Made me chuckle
  
• Decoy.tv - Ryan (insanely talented freelancer) is also shooting a music video on the RED in Seattle right now
• Justice Music Video - Sweet retro motion graphics heavy music video

Big Production Week

So busy prepping for next weeks jobs that this was as much of a post as I could muster... We shot the first part of the TMTS music video on Sunday.  I spent most of the day prepping for the UW commercials that we're shooting tomorrow and Wednesday.

l.a. landing, originally uploaded by thinklab.

Preproduction X3

It's been an amazingly crazy-busy-fun week.  I shot 2 TV commercials for World Famous in the Superfad studio on Tuesday.  Sean Porter did a wonderful job with the lighting and it's always a blast to work with the World Famous crew.  I want to start a company called 'The Best Around' and this would be our theme song.

I've been auditioning for the TMTS music video and have met a ton of great local actors. 

Mike and I took the RED out on the town to test its low-light capabilities and then its daylight capabilities on some shots for Great Speeches.  I'll be posting a RED reel soon.

If all goes according to plan by the end of next week I'll have completed 1 MS stills shoot, 3 UW commercials, and have shot the TMTS music video.

Here are the links:

• Neat Hotel Rooms
  
• Skater Ollies Car - This would be easy to make in After Effects
• Atlantic Ave. Art Walk Promo - Great stop motion
• Dubai is NUTS!!! - and that's an understatement
• Toyota Organic - Motion Control?