Creative Block & Amateur Filmmaking

I went into my #LostSock project with an immeasurable amount of ambition and little experience over 2 years ago. Not really understanding the scope of my project I was determined to teach myself as I go, and that’s exactly what I did.  I could hold a camera, frame a shot, and edit it together so how hard could it be right?  I had put out a few short videos in the past that were well received, this project would just follow the same patterns and be done in short order right? No. It turns out that all those words scrolling …

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Breaking Gravity – Gymnastics and Bullet Time

I’m very proud of my oldest son Alex, who was a gymnast in high school and State Champion on the still rings for several years.   Those years provided a crash course in technique and scoring which lead to my love of the sport, which still remains to this day. Breaking Gravity was produced by Marc Donahue, who also has a great video about his array of cameras.  (Note: There are several really great sequences here, specifically the fire around 1:30, his excellent mouthing of words while the array is firing and the desk shot at the end) This video combines gymnastics, cinematography and multiple video …

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Lowell At Night

These were taken the in Lowell at night, the day after the Lowell Folk Festival. I hadn’t seen Lowell in this light since being an EMT in the city almost 20 years ago.  It’s a great, but ghostly place.  I purposefully made these images noisy to contribute to the overall vibe. I hope you like them.

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Lowell Folk Festival 2014

Sun, Sweat, and Music at the Lowell Folk Festival There are only a few times in life when standing in the sun, sweat dripping from my could be considered fun.  Today was one of those days!  Today is the second day of the Lowell Folk Festival and I got there right when things kicked off.  It’s nice because there is a large section of downtown completely roped off for pedestrians only so it’s easy to get to all the stages. I wanted to take my time and just look for compositions I liked, meandering around looking for things that caught my eye.  There were …

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Lowell’s Poetic Landmark – The Old Worthen House

The Old Worthen, in Lowell, Massachusetts is an odd triangular building built in 1830’s and finally became a tavern/hotel in 1889. Jack Kerouac was a patron of The Worthen House in downtown Lowell. Allan Ginsburg, Jimmy Breslin, and Edgar Allan Poe, who reportedly wrote The Raven on the building’s second floor, shared this distinction. My personal experience with The Worthen were as an EMT in the city.  In the middle 90’s we would occupy the upstairs, playing pool and burning off the unwanted energy our jobs posed.  Much has changed, but much has stayed the same…but that’s Lowell for you. …

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My First Foray Into AstroPhotography

For a while I’ve been wanting to try my hand at astrophotography.  I had a decent wide angle lens for my Canon 60D, the Rokinon 14mm aspherical lens, and my wife gave me the “ok” to relinquish Dad duties for the evening and I jumped. Light pollution is a problem for most people trying to capture the Milky Way so I decided to tackle that problem first.  Knowing we’d found a spot, Jim and I headed for a state park outside of Montpelier VT., which is about 3 hours from where I am 95% of the time. We found a perfect …

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Jack's swimming lessons at the Groton School.

AquaJack 2014

Jack has been taking swimming lessons and I wanted to put something together that utilized my After Effects and Premiere Pro skills. The intro was fun, but I should have keyframed the motion blur to only be active during the quicker motion times.  I could have also easy-eased the motion keyframes.  The audio mastering also needs a lot of work as the ambient noise could be eliminated in all but the most important parts. If you’re new to keyframing check this guy’s explanation.  Hope you enjoy the video!

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An Actual “Sweded” Sportscast. No, really.

If you’ve never seen “Be Kind Rewind,” the oddly charming yet starkly barren comedy from 2008, go see it (or check the meme) and you’ll know what this post refers to.  It’s really an entertaining film and you will probably not be sorry you spent a paltry 100 minutes you dedicated to it. Now that we’ve got THAT out of the way check out the awesome Sweded version of NCAA highlights.  The station didn’t have the rights to the actual highlights, so they gave us the next best thing.  Believe it or not, the commentary was helpful! Check it: Cheers!

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