stillmotion

now i know this is a little late but recently i attended fanExpo 2010 at the metro toronto convention centre. if your unfamiliar with the fanExpo experience just picture the canadian version of the san diego comic-con with a heck of a lot of people dressed up as every conceivable character you could possibly think of. i consider myself somewhat of a fan of the comic, video game and anime aspects, but what i really go for is the sci fi and horror cons. there’s nothing i love more than walking into a building and running into a zombie and a storm trooper at the same time! it’s a ton of fun and this is my 6th year of attendance. this year there was an all time record of over 60,ooo fans! the most they’ve ever had. so you can imagine it got a little crowded. i got to see Stan Lee, Adam West, Michael Dorn, and i was also lucky enough to sit in on a q & a session with one of my favorite canadian directors. the visionary himself David Cronenberg. can’t wait till next year!

- PWL

so on sunday, i decided to take advantage of my day off and spend the day at the zoo with my girlfriend sam and a 7D. accompanied by a 50mm 1.2 and a 70-200 4.0 lens. i’m not much of a photographer but man, did i ever enjoy taking photos of all the cool animals! if anyone knows me, i’m a huge animal lover and we had a blast. i think i took over 500 photos so it was a big challenge to only post a few.

if you haven’t been to the zoo and plan on going, i do recommend wearing some comfortable walking shoes! we spent over 6 hours walking around and i remember reading that there are over 10km of walking trails! i must say that today, my legs feel like i just ran a marathon… i guess i’m not used to that much walking.

but overall it was an awesome experience and i will never forget how fun it was! we even got the chance to pet the stingrays (they surprisingly loved to be rubbed!) they would come to the surface and lift their head above the water and wait to be touched by our hands! i thought that was pretty cool.

jordan.

we certainly had a tough time trying to pick a winning film. so many entries had such strong points to them, but it was hard to choose which one represented great editing, cinematography, storytelling, impact, as well as application to the concept.

there are too many films to critique all of the entries, so instead i’m going to go over some thoughts on what you voted to be the top contenders.

danielle and jared of side by side video had another super strong entry, but like the last, i think the left a little bit on the table with their execution. i think i felt this was the strongest story of them all because it really pulled me in and hit me at the end. throughout all of their entries they are very talented at putting a narrative in each piece and really building off that into a strong ending. i felt the mixed lighting on the main character felt a little awkward. i certainly understand the demands of shooting in a public place, but being that the majority of the piece worked with that light, i would have tried to blend it better for more pleasant skin tones and more balance in the color. the biggest thing i struggled with in this piece was how the words were shot. to me, it felt like it should be a slider shot, revealing the words as the reader would move their eyes across them. the angle also felt very low to represent the girl reading her book, which disconnected me a bit in the first viewing. my guess is that they tried a higher angle but fond too much was in focus so they went to a lower angle to isolate specific words. how wonderful a tilt shift shot of the book would have been to simulate the selective focus you have when reading, and to also focus the viewer on the line of copy you want them to see.

dani and jet from kaiser films had some amazing cinematography, perhaps the best of all of the entries. they had some strong color grading, and the shots were all solid, but more than that, they used their lens choice and camera movement to really reinforce the story. the, what looked to be a 16-35 right in front of actors face as he ran, really gave it an immediacy and energy that a different lens and angle would have lost. the tight shots with so much happening in the frame really added to the intensity and really quickly pulled me into the piece. now i will probably get a lot of disagreement from others here, but i am not sure i felt that the copy added to the story. i understand what it meant and the symbolism of them being stepping on, grabbed at, etc but with such strong visuals it felt like it pulled me away from the story being told by the guy alone. with the epic soundtrack and such energy in the visuals, the ending here really left me hanging. i think a line of copy more about what infocus is, or what the experience can do, and relating that to the transformation the main character just had would have tied it all up so much better and left us with something.

brett’s (it was fate films) piece was a stunning mix of imagery and a wonderful application of the concept. being a self-promo it did feel like it suffered a bit from him having to shoot and be in the piece at the same time, but with that being said, it is quite remarkable how far he took it by himself. mixing in the go pro footage certainly provided some great visuals, but i always find that you need to really know your color to mix that in with EOS footage as it always feels so flat and dull in comparison. to me it felt like the strong point of this film was also it’s weakness. the diversity in the imagery was fun to watch, but it made connecting to an overarching narrative a little harder for me. i loved when the words were represented in the imagery (such as he children paired with inspiration), and i think my biggest suggestion would be to try and incorporate more of that. the white fence with the gate is obviously a strong tie to the theme and your message, but it felt like perhaps using it more symbolically would taken it a step further. there were lots of shots leaving and then returning home to the gateway but i think there are really three strong visuals that follow the story line you put forth; a tight of the latch being disengaged (representing you preparing to move forward), the actual gate opening and you walking through (representing the new direction or new beginning), and then the gate closing behind you with nobody there (representing what you left behind or where you came from). more than that felt like it watered down the impact of the others.

stephen’s (at first sight cinematography) entry was probably the one i was most conflicted about. the message, impact, and tie to the theme were all so well done. the interview was strong, well shot and the simple grey-toned background tied in very well. what i struggled with was the addition of the visuals over top of the narrative. while they were very well shot and such a smart representation of the story in a deeper way, there seemed to be a lot of camera shake, stutters in the slider moves or rack focuses, and other minor hiccups. i know stephen and his team love the feedback so i hope they don’t mind when i reference some specifics. at :38 there is a shot of the flowers in the rain. it ties in wonderfully to the story but the shot is shaky (possibly hand held) and the blown out sky in the top left immediately pulls my eye away from the focus, where as raising the camera and shooting on a bit more of an angle would have eliminated that all together. it felt like a lot of the nature shots were ungraded as well, and i think they really lent themselves to a vibrancy and richness i found missing. a couple other small things, and some may say i am nitpicking, but that make all the difference in a film, i think. the ‘order and design’ line felt like it would have been so well represented by the tree bark shot you showed in the next paragraph. lastly, some of the cuts from the interview to the visuals felt a tad, dare i say, lazy :) at :41-:43 he says ‘life is perpetual’ and then right before you cut he looks down and opens his mouth for the next line. those several frames, though they might seem small, certainly don’t add to the story, and for me that look and mouth opening with no audio just pulled me out just a little bit. then again at :53 the film waits for him to say ‘umm’ before the cut, which again is lost time.

with all of that being said, it’s time to pick the sm favorite and the grand prize winner of a spot to IN[FOCUS] 2011 as well as a 1-on-1 workshop with us. congratulations to stephen and the team at  ‘at first sight’. your film, to us, represented the best balance of editing, cinematography, storytelling, impact, as well as application to the concept.

the winner of the popular vote, which was determined by all of you, receives a $300 voucher to IN[FOCUS] 2011. the winner of the popular vote was also stephen’s team ‘at first sight’ but since they took the grand prize, the voucher goes to the second highest popular vote, which was dani and jet of jet kaiser films.

thanks to everybody involved for commenting, submitting your films, and voting. the original vision for this project was that it would go beyond creating fun shorts and also give us a place to focus on a shared project and all learn from that together. the next theme and date will be announced shortly.

i hope you will all come out and join us at IN[FOCUS] this january in new orleans. we will be a keynote speaker and also offering some hands on group training as well as one on one training.

P.

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