I recently had the opportunity to animate some titles and on-air graphics for a new branded entertainment show Along the Way for Under Armour. Working from designs by Second World Design out of Boston, Massachusetts I was able to quickly turn out some simple, clean and effective motion graphics. The show is due to launch later this month and I will update with clips once they’re released.

My first opportunity to shoot on the RED camera, this was conceived as a single shot that with it’s stark simplicity would feel unique and grab some attention. Of course it was far more complicated to execute than it appears. Shot off speed first full of stuff with the door closing, then multiple takes with the beach ball that was eventually slowed to 80% full speed, then much later in the day shot with the garage empty.

Creatively, once I was brought into the project as the director I realized in order to really sell this as being one moment we had to have some element carry over from the full garage to the empty. We shot a few different elements but ended up using a rubber ball.

Karl, the copywriter on the project, and myself shot a behind the scenes video walking through some of the complicated compositing we pulled off.

Aside from full time at Coates Kokes and a few freelance projects, the project that has dominated my personal life for the past 2 years (has it really been that long??) has been Red Shadows, a web series that I’ve been developing along with my partner Clinton, and a whole team of amazingly committed friends and family. We’ve worked on a number of short films over the years but this is easily the most complicated. We’ve taken a bite out of the 85 pages we have to shoot but there is quite a bit more work ahead of us.

The image here is the first frame out of the shoot that I’m ready to show. That’s the wonderful Heather Morley who has just done… something. Check out the show (eventually) to find out what.

Recently I helped my buddy Peter Chee with shooting an audition video for a friend of his. She’s auditioning to be an on air QVC personality. I think she’d do a fantastic job in that she’s funny, smart, and good at keeping things moving.

Mike Sheen, the creative director at Coates Kokes and my boss stood in for the initial shots on the SeaPort Testimonial Photo Shoot. The tests started a little darker, on location they seemed too dark so we brought the fill light up a bit more, but there is something very nice and moody about this shot.

The final SeaPort shot had a somewhat subtle cross-processed look to it; the shadows and midtones got bluer and the brighter highlights got a warmer golden tone to them. It helped pop his face away from the background and gave a nice feel to the shot. This setup doesn’t look as good in that color treatment – partially because Mike’s jacket was warm toned as well. When I looked at it with the same treatment it just looked like Mike was going to die from jaundice.

This is a video I did in 2006 for a one week project in Collaborative Process at Oregon State. We spent a class period writing sentences to each other regarding our thoughts on process and then the project was to put some sort of design to that to illustrate the point. I used imagery to compliment the quotes and tried to keep it moving as much as possible.

The style of the video I shot – desaturated, slow motion – influenced a few other projects I did that year. I’ve sense moved away from it some although I’ve always found that DV and HDV video looks more beautiful in black and white.