The Greatest Journey

Well.

Hello, to the vast, unpopulated depths of the internet. It's been a while.

I'll cut to the chase.

I leave for college in five - now four, technically - days. Sweet mercy. I haven't even packed. I don't even know what to pack. In four days, everything changes. Everything I've ever known and ever loved falls behind me on my way to Los Angeles. Good God, I'm so unprepared that I had to look up how to spell Los Angeles.

I've spent the last 18 years in this city, in this house. I've gone to the same school since first grade. I've sat in the same kitchen, on the same couch, at the same table for all of my measly existence. And in four days, I make the biggest change I've ever seen. I step into a world where nothing is guaranteed, where nothing is granted to you, where all that happens to you is because you made it happen. From, basically, here on out I "have the con". I will choose the paths on which I go down, and from those paths go down more and more and more until I cease to exist and none of it mattered in the end.

Because that's. How. Life. Is.

An innumerable number of paths. And so many will go unexplored. And in the end, the path you chose, will not influence even a mite of dust.

But... of course. That's not it. It never is, never was, never shall be.

Life is a spectacular gift. Life is a spectacular gift because it is a chance. A chance to do anything and everything you ever wanted. Now, we'll likely never ever do anything and everything we ever wanted, I don't think anyone truly does; but at the very very least, you can appreciate what you did have:

A chance.


I don't know if all of that made sense or not, but it felt profound and pretty, and profound and pretty is my choice right now.

Hopefully someone out there in the far reaches enjoyed it. And if you're out there, allow me to ask of you one thing:

For God's sake, wish me luck.

You Know the Music, Time to Dance.

Let me get into some editing tips, here, for those that care. And I'm gonna use our old friend, the bullet point.

• Sound is without a doubt one of the most important elements of film

Oh, you didn't get that? Don't worry, making bullet points is super easy.

• Sound is without a doubt one of the most important elements of film

There. You get it now.

Think about it, think how empty film would be without sound. No dialogue, no sound effects, no music. It would suck. Right now I'm gonna focus on the hardest, and most over-looked, aspect of sound.

• Music.

Don't you love bullet points? But really, music is crucial. You all know the Jaws theme, the Indiana Jones theme, and that "BWAAAAAAAH" from Inception. For some reason, John Williams is really good at making memorable themes. Way to go John. You too, Hans. These are examples of doing it right. But you'd be surprised how easily music can make or break a film.

Take my work, for example. Right now I have one project on hold, just sitting on my computer, waiting for me to get some pretty music for it. Because I know that if I add the right music, it will be moles better. Music is the magic fairy dust of filmmaking. It will make or break you It can add to the intensity of a scene, or it can distract you from what's going on. 

And that's the trick with sound. It has to be there, but it has to go unnoticed throughout your film. It has to be natural. Never forget that. EVAR.

Finding music that is legal to use is the real trouble, though. I'm a student. I also have no musical talent. I am forced to scrape music from the highly overused loops found in Apple's Garage Band. But even still, at least I'm able to make something that is halfway decent. In fact, I recently made a video for a Video Contest put on by some company, (hopefully I can link it to you guys soon) and I had to make my own music for it - which meant I had to use Garage Band. I wasn't thrilled about that, but low and behold I made a near perfect track for my video. So I'll lay off Garage Band for now.

I recently (back when I had money) purchased Video Copilot's Pro Scores. Which is a bunch of super high quality tracks that are perfect for so many different moods and feels. If you have $100 to spend, and you make videos, and you hate not having good music, I would recommend Pro Scores. 

I will probably be coming back to music in the future, because it's very important and I totally had other stuff I wanted to say but forgot what it was. Haha. So that's all for now. Sorry for the long post.

tl;dr: Music is important.

Also, before I go: I decided that I'm gonna start using links more often. Cause they were fun to use in this post. Haha.

That's all for now, my friends.

My Maneuvering Options Were Limited.

Consider this my first "regular" post. Maybe I'll delve back into my ideas at a later date (if need be).

Yesterday I shot a little short film. It was one of those spur of the moment shoots that I come up with at like 6 P.M. In fact, it's extremely similar to the last one of those I shot, hmm... But it was pretty easy to shoot.

I shot on my personal Canon T1i for the first serious time at 720p at 30fps. I got the T1i the Christmas before last, and how I wish I had waited for the T3i... The T1 is great and all, but the T3 has way better options, especially for me. The T1i can shoot at 720 and at 1080, but the 1080 can only shoot at 20 fps. Which looks, in a word, terrible. The T3i can shoot actual 1080. Also, the T3i has that fancy flip out LCD, which has so many freakin' uses for me... Oh wells. I also have a Panasonic HVX which is pretty
dang fancy.

But anyway, sorry about the tangent.

I shot everything in like 3 hours, with a couple snack breaks and a Doctor Who break. And Edited till approximately 4 A.M. Good lord... I gotta stop doing that. I struggled for a while with the Visual Effects for it because - oh hold on, I need to emphasize this-

Because I am a PERFECTIONIST when it comes to videos.

Which is really something I need to get over. Often times I'll drop videos because I can't get one element right. But this time I'm biting the bullet and simplifying the edit. Good for me.

That's all I got for ya'll. I'll get ya'll a link to this short (and my other) when I finish.
Goodnight, my friends.

A Blind Jump.

Hello.

Welcome to Rough Cut.

Okay, so I have no idea what this is. I'm not really sure that this will take off and get popular, in fact I doubt it will; I'm also not sure if I will stick strictly to the ideas I have right now. Right now it has a very "filmmakey" feel because that's me, that's how I am. But I digress.

Welcome to Rough Cut.

I'm starting this to chronicle my life as I go through four years of college. So maybe I will start with expounding on that. Haha, I seriously didn't plan out what I was gonna say so bear with me. Maybe I'll make bullet points. Bullet points are the bomb.

• College (See?)

At the end of this summer I will be moving from my beautiful home in Anchorage, Alaska down to La Mirade, California (Which is right outside Los Angeles). I will be attending BIOLA University, as a Freshman, with a Major in Cinema and Media Arts.

You know what, I'm gonna stick with these bullet points.

• The Big Idea/The Scheme/The Great Train Robbery

What I'm looking to do here on Rough Cut is to just document my life, like I said. But not only document for my own purposes (although I'm sure I'll look back at this sometime) but hopefully I'll pick up some followers along the way who are interested in me and what I have to say and what I do.


Let me just say this:
Right now, outside of my ramblings, RC (That's a sweet friggin' acronym) is going to be made up of Video/Film/Editing/Stuff like that. But do not dismay, those who don't care about that. I have other interests that I may express on here. Back to this bullet point.

In addition to the mission of "Documenting my life" I'll also hope to put up some DIY stuff, for video and otherwise. Maybe I'll do some Practical Effects tutorial and maybe some Visual Effects tutorials. I might review some things I watch and I might suggest things to watch.

• This is the third Bullet Point

In addition to ^this^, I also might post some behind the scenes of the stuff I do, as I am an amateur Filmmaker myself. I'll also post some of the stuff I make, because why the crap not, this is my blog and I can do what I want.

That's all I got for now. Hopefully this wasn't too long and boring, I tend to think of myself as a pretty entertaining writer so I'll try to keep you guys entertained. I also hope this didn't seem really complicated, cause trust me it's not. It's very straight-forward in my head. Haha.

Well hopefully someone out there sees this. If you do and you read this far, you're pretty rad.

Have a great day/week/standard measurement of time, everybody.