Attached to this post is a small sampling of some of the video work that I’ve done over the past two years. The video includes clips from several short films such as “Molly and the Good Shepherd”, “Purgatory Inc.”, “Put Him in the Ground” and various projects from my time at Avid Technology producing web content.

The image included with this article is from three years ago when I was working on editing a project on set at a small corner store. I sat in the isle with my old Macbook importing P2 footage so that the director could check his shots before moving on to the next setup. Editing on set isn’t always a great idea, but one of the biggest benefits is having a second person there to check for continuity errors. If the script supervisor doesn’t catch it while filming I will most likely catch it when reviewing the footage. I’m a stickler for continuity, but at the same time I know that you shouldn’t sacrifice a great performance just because an actor had his shirt untucked in one shot but not the other.

Put Him in the Ground is a film written and directed by Daniel Vang, a fellow student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The film is about a young African American male rap artist who is about to make it big, but struggles with conforming to the more popular violent lyrics in order to succeed. The film finished primary post production in November 2007 and is currently retouching the music score. It should appear in a few film festivals in 2008.

I worked on this film through all three stages of production as an editor. During preproduction I was used for camera tests with the Panasonic HVX-200 and Redrock Micro lens adapter. The HVX shoots on P2 cards, which was something new I picked up on. I actually own my own HVX camera, but I have in the past always tethered it to a laptop with a firewire cord to record straight into Final Cut Pro. This option works fine if you have a speedy hard drive with plenty of free space, but if you don’t have that you will end up getting the occasional drop frame. Another downside to the tether mode is when you have a dolly shot where you need to keep the laptop close and hold it steady so the hard drive doesn’t lock up. The P2 cards offered typically 20 minutes of storage on a 16GB card recording 720p at 24 frames. While I’m speaking about these two recording modes I would like to mention a third method that I tried out at NAB 2007, the Firestore by Focus Enhancements. I had such a horrible experience using this product with a Canon camera at NAB, even with representatives from both Avid and Focus Enhancements there to help me out.

During my first quarter of my senior year at college I worked as the assistant editor for the film “Molly and the Good Shepherd”. The short film is based on the children’s book of the same title written by Chris Auer. Savannah College of Art design students and professors partnered to produce this film during Summer 2006. As the assistant editor I worked on an Avid system to perform various roles to help the editor and created a video trailer to be sent to investors.

Purgatory, Inc. was a short film written, directed and edited by myself two years ago. I wanted to wear as many hats as possible for this project so I ended up working all the way from pre production to post production. The story is about a man who shows up for a job interview, but ends up visiting the wrong office which ends up being purgatory. The film uses a lot of filming techniques that I had never tried in one of my own films before, including two dolly shots and a green screen segment. This was probably my favorite film to work on because I’m proud of being able to take on so many roles and try out new things.