Film: The Killing

My first scary film.

Film: A Dog Decision

Film: Barkley's Birthday

5k Review

Hopefully by now you've had a chance to watch the lovely video that Matt made before, during, and after our run. He was gracious enough to cut out the shots of me making ugly faces and telling him to get the camera out of my face. I might have even used the s-phrase once, "shut up," but that doesn't sound like me at all. Exhaust can bring out an ugly side, people.
I'm so happy we decided to run for Team World Vision. A) I really love World Vision. B) It was fun to be involved with something that my bother of a brother is also passionate about. C) When we arrived at the race, TWV was there waiting with open, encouraging arms. They said a prayer of blessing over the race and the people in Haiti, for whom we ran. That was a great way to begin the race. Not to mention, they watched our backpacks while we ran.
We then prepared to head to the starting line- we stuffed our jackets in our backpacks, strapped on our iPhones, plugged in our headphones. While we were waiting for the race to start, I looked over and saw Kevin Connolly, also know as "E" from Entourage. (Later, I looked up his time... I beat him!) We had to wait about 20 minutes before the race began, and during that time my stomach began growling. I was sooo hungry! I knew this wasn't the best way to begin a race, but I just had to deal with it.
Overall the race went better than I thought in most ways. When we finished, I didn't collapse. I didn't have any regrets during the race and afterwards I was excited about continuing training for our next one. The biggest challenge was this: hills!! The race was in Elysium Park, around Dodger Stadium. I knew the Stadium sat up on a hill... why didn't I consider there might be some inclines in the course? So we mostly power-walked up the hills and ran down them and continued until we came to the next hill.
As we came to the end, we could hear the crowd cheering and started jogging again. As we headed in, Matt ran ahead to cross the finish line first, so he could turn around and film me coming in. But as I was running, I decided that I was feeling really great and wanted to shave a few seconds off my time. So I just took off.... I ran as fast as I could, the crowds were cheering, I even ran PAST Matt. And all of the sudden.... my stomach started wrenching. I slowed down, covered my mouth, and was trying to think quickly about what to do if i couldn't hold it in. Should I toss it on the path, where runners might step in it? Should I run to the side, and hope that the crowd would back away? Luckily I was able to keep it down and just walked slowly across the finish line. My full concentration was on keeping my stomach settled, and running at the end wasn't going to help that. I do feel a little lame about walking across the line, but throwing up on little children would have been a lot worse. Agreed?

Next up... May 8, Revlon Run/Walk 5k for Women's Cancers. Goal... run the entire thing.

Film: Baby Lyla @ Lunch
This was a film I shot during our lunch outing with the Holsapfels. We love them very much and their beautiful little girl, Lyla.
This was all shot and edited on my iPhone using ReelDirector.

Film: New Balance Commercial (beginning portion-rough)

Today I worked on my latest film: a New Balance commercial spec. I've already shot some of the product portions and I will be interviewing Katie tomorrow, hopefully, which will make up the bulk of the commercial.

Here is some of the rough footage:

Film: An Ecclesia Wedding

Katie and I were unknowingly attending a wedding service today at church. Appartently a couple wanted to get married at Ecclesia during a church service. The ceremony only lasted a few minutes and the bride had always dreamt of having her wedding surrounded by poppy flowers so they handed them out before her entrance. During the ceremony everyone held up their flowers and her dream came true. It was very touching and fun.

This film was shot and edited entirely on my iPhone. I used AutoStitch for creating the panoramic picture used in the beginning and edited the whole video using ReelDirector. The film was exported to my photo reel and from their I uploaded the video to youtube. I only have to use my computer to embed the youtube code into Blogger. Hopefully I'll be able to do everything on my iPhone one day.

Film: The LA Marathon 5K

Well Katie and I ran our first official race today: the LA Marathon 5K!

We had a great time and while we participated I brought my canon TX1 (the first canon digital camera to shoot 720p HD) and shot some footage. I edited the film using Apple's latest version of iMovie. It's a fun program that allows you to do some very cheesy transitions, title sequences and the fact that it is super easy to edit helps alot as well. Granted, you loose quite a bit of control over your footage but you end up with something fun and easy.

Film: Baby Lyla

As I mentioned on an earlier post, I recently bought the iPhone app: ReelDirector. It is basically a simple video and photo editer that allows you to do everything iMovie 1.0 would let you do right on your phone... Very cool!
I have really enjoyed and made a little film with Barkley yesterday and last night I made a photo montage of our friend's baby, Lyla.



Our LA Marathon 5K film will be up soon!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Film: Fryman Canyon

I shot this film very quickly this afternoon when Barkley and I visited a park off of Laurel Canyon. I shot everything with my iPhone and used a new app I downloaded--ReelDirector--that allows me to edit films solely on my iPhone!

So here is my first film shot and edited entirely on my iPhone:

Freaking out...

Before I actually start working today, I must post this news...

Last night, after our healthy dinner of chicken teriyaki and salad, I made cupcakes for the first time-- PW, of course. A couple of days ago, posted this recipe for frosting that she declared was the best she'd ever tried. So obviously I had to try it, too!

As I sat down on our couch and was munching away on my creation, I looked at a website that I frequent in order to keep up with industry news... and literally screamed when I read this:

It's A Blog! It's A Cookbook! It's a Reese Witherspoon Romantic Comedy?

My dear friend of 4 years, Ree Drummond, has sold the rights to a movie! Most industry people are bashing this already... but I do NOT care! I call her my friend, because I've been reading her blog so long that I feel like we are friends. I'm sure her other 100,000+ readers feel the same way.

It will be 2012 maybe even 2013 before we see this movie... but I'm starting the countdown already!

Film: The Dog Bath

Here is my latest film creation. I was tasked to wash Barkley today so I made a little film about it. Enjoy.

Film: Home to Hollywood

I was fairly busy today and attended a Canon 5D Mark II event at the camera rental house I interned at two years ago-Birns & Sawyer. It was a great event and I met a young husband and wife team who just completed a full length film. They filmed it over the summer with the 5DMII and just recently premiered the film. I'm excited to have met them and hopefully Katie and I can meet up with them sometime.

I wasn't able to create a film today that was overtly creative but here is a short timelapse film of me traveling from our place in Sherman Oaks to Birns & Sawyer in Hollywood. It's boring but at least you get to see the famous 101.

This video was shot using an iphone app called iTimelapse. It basically allows you to create timelapse films within your iphone and then render and export your films to the web. I used the same app when I shot the Bad Robot Romance video.

Weekend Update

Here's what actually went down...

Friday: We started off with no plans, but by the end of my workday (7pm) we decided to go on a date! We used some giftcards and ate dinner at Maggiano's, then saw Shutter Island. The critic and peer reviews haven't been great for this movie, but I enjoyed it. It's not the most original concept for a movie, but I like thrillers and the Scorsese/DiCaprio team. However, I NEVER see movies that are scary... so I jumped quite a few times. We got home around 12:45am from the movie, and had to watch some comedy TV before we went to bed to get the movie out of our minds. I think we went to bed around 2:30am...

Saturday: ... and woke up at 11:24am!!! I am shocked that Mr. Barkley let us sleep that long, as he's usually up by 8:30 or 9:00. It felt great to sleep in, but half of our day was gone! And running was our TOP priority. So we ate some breakfast and headed out for our run. We went out to a park by Balboa Lake (a teeny tiny lake near our house), and ran on the sidewalk around the water. The weather was beautiful, so there were tons of families out with picnics, puppies, kites, and even some busty Renaissance women. What?!? I have no idea why they were there, but you get used to random stuff like that when you live in LA. Our run was sooo hard (for me), as we began new, longer running intervals with our C25K program. But we were successful and felt good afterwards. After our run, we blessed the people at Costco with our stinky, sweaty selves and loaded up with some food for dinner and for this week. Later in the evening, our friend Jenna and her buddy Charlie came over for dinner and it was goooood. We had grilled steaks with Perini Ranch steak rub, twice-baked potatoes and salad with homemade ranch dressing. Mmmm!! Later, after some sweat-inducing Wii tennis and boxing, we built our own frozen yogurts at Menchies. Pretty great Saturday.

Sunday: Wonderful morning at Ecclesia followed by a delicious lunch at Roscoe's. We enjoyed visiting with the Texas family that had come in to visit Pepperdine and LA. If we can't be with our own family, it sure is nice being loved on by some Texans. :) That afternoon we took Barkley to our neighborhood park where his feelings were hurt by a lot of dogs who weren't interested in sniffing him. So then we took him to a dog park where a humongous Great Dane did show interest in sniffing him and then drolled all over him! Gross! But he had lots of fun chasing other dogs, running around, sniffing butts, and rolling in the grass. We loved it because it wore him out and he slept the rest of the night! In the evening we did celebrate the birth of our dear friend Greg Jong and enjoyed a glass of Blackthorn in his honor. We ended our evening with some leftovers, Biggest Loser, and Mad Men.

Next weekend: 5k!!!

Film: Sherman Oaks Park

Here is today's film. I shot this footage yesterday afternoon and edited it today. I spent a few hours trying to figure out Apple's Color which is a color grading application. Very confusing but I am slowly getting the hang of it. Sorry if this film is over graded but it is my first take.

Film: Katie's Dinner Animation

Even when Katie and I are on a date we still make films!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Film: Roxbury Park

So I met Katie today for lunch. We didn't know where to go and then Katie came up with the wonderful idea of having a little picnic at Roxbury Park. We bought some hamburgers and headed to the park. While I was there I was able to sneak in about ten minutes worth of random footage and this is the montage that I created with it.

I shot all this on my JVC HD-110 in 480/60p mode. Final Cut Pro hates this format for some reason so I was forced to use imovie to import the footage then in cinema tools I conformed the footage to 24fps which gave me this beautiful slow motion video.

The colors weren't that great and the sun was pretty strong so I went for a stylized b/w look. I think I like it better then the regular footage.

Weekend!

Finally... so happy it's here. And the weather is b-e-a-utiful! I am VERY ready for sunshine, spring clothes, and the beach. Not so much ready for swimsuits, but I am ready for a tan! Here's what our weekend is looking like so far:

Tonight: no plans! Maybe hang out with our better halves, the Holzapfels, or maybe just catch-up on some Tivo. I haven't watched Biggest Loser in 2 weeks!

Tomorrow: Running -- we are moving up to Week 5 in C25K tomorrow.... even though our 5k is NEXT weekend! But I am at peace at walking part of it. My major goal is MAY 8 for the Revlon 5k. I really want to run the whole shebang. I also need to start thinking about taxes tomorrow. We had to pay quite a bit last year, and a refund would really come in handy right now. Tomorrow night we are also hanging out with my great friend, Jenna. Jenna is a receptionist in our building and occasionally I would do reception with her. One day we discovered that we were both Christians, and I invited her to church. The rest is history! She's loving Ecclesia as much as we are, and I love having a buddy at work.

Sunday: there's no such thing as a free lunch? Not the case with Matt and me on Sunday! Some family of Abilene friends are coming to LA for their son to look at Pepperdine, and they offered to take us out to lunch after church. Yes, please! Now we just have to decide where to go... hmm. Then on Sunday night, we're headed to the Robin Hood British Pub to celebrate our friend's birthday, who just so happens to be British.

Did I mention that we're still raising money for Haiti? Click HERE to make a donation!

Hope everyone has a great, sunshiny weekend!

My Unemployment Assistant

You know being unemployed would be much more difficult if I didn't have the constant support of my young assistant. He is always there for me and is a very hard worker. He constantly reminds me to do my house chores and never wants to leave my presence. He is probably the best assistant any unemployed person could have.
Here's to you Barkley!

My Favorite 2010 Lunch

I am right now enjoying my favorite lunch this year! I am sharing my lunch time with my two favorite sisters through Apple's ichat! Jackie is in Germany and Audrey is in Nashville!

I love them both so very much.

Film: Bad Robot Romance

Here is my latest creation.

Lots of fun... under 4 hours.

Whats the deal with 24fps??

What a great question and one that most people have just one response: "because thats how movies are shot." Well my return is why? Why do they choose such an old framerate to shoot these modern digital masterpieces?

I recently stumbled over this interview with Stu Maschwitz who clearly and understandable defines this unusual relationship we all have with this certain frame rate.

Before you watch let me say this about these new TVs that are hitting the market everywhere. It seems that a popular new feature is this "Smooth 120 or 240 megahertz" refresh rate. In essence it takes films that are shot in 24fps and essential turns them into this ultra smooth crud that looks like it was shot with a consumer hanydcam. Anyways, Stu touches on this annoyance of mine as well in this little interview.

I can't embed so you'll have to follow the link...

Click here to watch the interview

Film: An R/C Dream

Well I am currently unemployed. Wipeout season 3 finally finished and I am currently looking for bigger and better projects but in the mean time I have alot of time to myself. I keep myself busy working on side projects for friends back home and doing house work for the wife.. She is fantastic.

Anyways, just the other day when I attended Philip Bloom's fantastic Canon Masterclass I was blown away by the quickness of his short films. Basically when he gets some new equipment, camera or lens he just walks outside--wherever he might be in the world--and starts filming. He films for just a few hours and then edits whatever he shot. As I sat there astonished by his works I thought to myself why can't I do that and then I made the excuse: because i don't have that new Canon wonder camera...whats the point.

Now fastforward to the next day at our huge oscar party... I was talking with one of my fellow LAFSC alums and he asked me if I have done any films lately. I quietly laughed and told him that I haven't had time and nothing has come up. He then went on this rant telling me that I should be doing more films because, apparently, he really enjoyed mine from class two years ago! Then it hit me... Why can't I do small little films? I already have great equipment and nothing else is holding me back right now, so why not.

I then decided that I will try my hardest to make one film a day! Many might stink but a few might turn into something special and this is what I did today. Within about 8 hours I wrote, shot and edited this little film.

So without further adieu, here is An R/C Dream:

Oscar Party

Last night we held our 2nd Annual Oscar Party. Last year we mostly invited people from my office. This year, it was our friends from church, LAFSC (Matt's film program), and from WipeOut. We also used this festive event as an opportunity to promote our upcoming 5k, which we are running for Team World Vision. We are currently fund-raising and everything we raise will go to World Vision's efforts in Haiti.

{Btw, have you read this article regarding WV? It really is fantastic. Read it now, and then rejoin us here.}

As part of the WV team, we are supposed to raise funds. I think typically this means sending out letters/emails to our friends and family asking them to support us. So many people have already given so generously towards Haiti, and we just felt a little strange about asking people out of the blue to give more. So we decided to use our Oscar party to help us reach our very small goal of $250. We invited almost 50 of our LA friends, with hopes that at least 10 could come. In the end, I think we had around 25 stuffed into our tiny apartment. We had $10 buy-in for Oscar predictions and came up with some pretty sweet prizes, if I do say so myself. We must have had 16 people play, because we raised $160.

Here are a few pics from the party:

This was early in the evening. The event started at 5:30pm PST, which is awesome, because everyone was gone by 10pm.

Later in the evening...

Yes, the party even carried over into the bedroom. We have small TV in there, so we added some folding chairs and enjoyed the view from a comfy bed.

Prize corner! Everyone who played got a prize, with the winners choosing first and then working our way down from there. The winners chose 2 movie tickets w/ 2 free drinks. Other hot items were movie posters, a signed concert poster (w/ Oscar-winner Ryan Bingham's signature), restaurant gift certificates, skin care/make-up products and homemade cookie "IOU"s from me.

We're so grateful to all of our friends who supported us last night and shared encouraging words for our marathon... which I gently reminded them was just a 5k. :)

If you would like to lend your support, you can visit this website. {Katie & Matt's TWV page} 100% of the money raised will go to WV's work in Haiti.

Barkley likes his mama, too :)

My Sweatshirt & Pup!

Katie is quite the photographer!

Summer 2009

March 2010

House Repelling

For whatever reason this morning I was reminded of a my first climbing and repelling harness.

I was probably around 13 or 14 and our boy scout troop had just finished our first repelling trip and I was in love. I quickly learned every knot and researched all the equipment. That year I spent my birthday money on a harness and a carabiner. As soon as I was equipped, I wanted to test my new equipment. I rigged a towing rope to the top of our house and threw the rope down the side of our 2nd story deck. I checked and rechecked every knot, tightened my bicycle helmet and was about to leap... but suddenly realized that I needed a someone running a belay at the bottom. Crud. No one in my household knew what to do so I had to be the belay and I someone else would have to make the jump.

"Audrey!" I yelled. My younger sister would be perfect and was much lighter then me so I sized my harness for her, sized her bike helmet to make sure it fit snuggley and prepped her on what to do. We were finally ready to go.

I don't know why she let me coax her into this situation but there she was, hanging onto the railing on the outside of our house deck about 9' above the ground. "Go ahead Audrey," I would yell, but she wouldn't budge. "Come on Audrey."

Finally she jumped and I immediay realized a miscalculation. As she leant backwards and began her repel, there was an overhang where the deck ended. When she jumped past the overhang, she swang right into the side of the deck with her head. Luckily she had the helmet, but the wild incident scared me quite a bit.

That was the first and last repelling adventure from the side of our house.

Thanks Audrey for always being my guinea pig.

Couch to 5k

Have I mentioned that Matt and I are running in a 5k in two weeks?

Did you know that 5k = 3.11 miles?

Did you know that before January, I couldn't run .11 miles without keeling over? It's true.

When I told Matt that I was signing up for LA Marathon's 5k, he told me he'd run it with me. I said, "But you don't have time to train." He said, "I don't need to train, it will be easy." Then I gave him the death look.

WHY am I doing this? Just because. Because I've never been able to run more than a block. And because I just always thought that "I can't run." And because I watch Biggest Loser and see people who are WAY overweight becoming runners and then running marathons, even when they've still got the extra pounds on them. I decided I had no more excuses not to at least try.

As I started developing my plan for this effort, I consulted the pro-runner in our family- my brother Will (also known as William, Willie, Bill, Bother of a Brother). He wasn't so much of a bother that day, and was very helpful and encouraging when I told him of my idea. He told me of programs called "Couch to 5k" that gives you a running schedule, gradually adding more running each week.

Last May I walked a 5k at the Revlon Run/Walk that benefits women's cancers. I walked in memory of my friend Kerri Lane and was really moved by the experience. I decided that I would RUN the 5k this year instead, and run in Kerri's memory again. William, however, thought that I should shoot for the LA Marathon 5k held 6 weeks earlier in March. He told me it was ok if I didn't run the entire thing. So I immediately signed up.

My plan was to start training January 1, but due to a certain number of events (rain, stitches, etc), I didn't start until the end of January. Six weeks later, I am actually still in week 4 of training. I was moving right along, but when I came to week 4, I really struggled with it. I am about to finish my 3rd week of week 4, and I'm doing much better. One more run on Saturday, then I'll move on to week 5.

Here are the things that have helped me the most:

I rarely find athletic shoes that don't hurt my feet. I have wide feet (ugh) and when I wear tennis shoes for long hours, my feet inevitably hurt at the end of the day. Well, not anymore! I need to own 2 pairs of these New Balances. They are incredibly comfortable for running and for just hanging out. (Shout out to Jack & Jill for giving them to me for Xmas!!)

This is the plan I've been following. If you have an iPod touch or iPhone, you can search for the "C25K" app that I've been using. It is a-mazing!!! Once you open it, you can choose music from your own iPod to run to! And then it tells you when to walk and run. So when you begin, it says, "Ding, ding, ding, WARM UP", and then your music begins. Five minutes later, it says, "Ding, ding, ding, RUN." Then you just walk and run when it tells you to! This way, you're not having to pay attention to your time or a watch. So easy. You can also friend them on Facebook, and they update their page with really great articles for runners of all experience.

For most of my runs, I've been listening to music. I downloaded some Top 40 sorts of songs (yes, I had some Lady Gaga and Timbaland), because Bon Iver just wasn't getting me going in the mornings. But one day, I decided to listen to my favorite podcast- This American Life. It made ALL the difference with my run! I got lost in the story and didn't pay as much attention to how much time I had left. It also helped me with my pace, so that I wasn't running faster to upbeat songs and slowing down for other songs.

T-minus 15 days until the race!

Ta-da!!!

So?!? What do you think?? Didn't Sharon do an incredible job? I am so pleased and excited with the way our blog turned out. All I had to say was "Hatch Show Print" and she ran with it. If you are wanting a new blog design OR any sort of print design, I highly recommend Redbud Designs.

Missing Texas

This is another reason why Katie and I miss Texas. Gotta love those tater tots and ocean water!
Needless to say... We love our Sonic Drive-ins!

Wrapping Wipeout!

My current life on the set of Wipeout!

Photo by: Ryan White

Jury Duty

On Thursday, February 18, I reported for jury duty. The only other time I've been called before was in Abilene, where I was dismissed after an hour. Not this time. Not only did I have to spend the entire day, I was there for the next SIX days. I was.... (Law & Order bum bum) Juror #2.

Now that the trial is over and the verdict has been delivered, I am free to discuss the case, the details, my opinions, etc. We were told up front that it was a domestic violence case-- the defendent was a man, the victim was his domestic partner. All of the jurors had a basic feeling where this would go. But after a week of witnesses and testimonies, we all agreed there was not enough evidence to convict this man. Did he do it? We all think so. Was there evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it and it wasn't self-defense? No. So we found him not guilty. The really cool part was that there was a former cop on our jury. And he even agreed that the police had done a very poor job of collecting evidence in this case. Basically these two people are both very violent and cocaine users. A dangerous combination. I hope they will stay far away from each other now-- but that is doubtful.

I found the whole process very interesting and enjoyed getting to know my fellow jurors. If you like people-watching, a court house is a great place for that. In my juror pool alone, there were some very strange people who had some crazy thoughts and prejudices. At first I had a bad attitude about serving. But then I thought that if I were on trial, I would want intelligent, fair, open-minded jurors contemplating on my behalf. Over all I had a great 7 days on jury duty. And now I'm very happy to be back at work. :)

A Really Good Friend

Katie and I have been incredibly blessed throughout this adventure here in LA. One of our greatest blessings has been our friends. With no family out here these friends are what we rely on.

One of my greatest friends out here is Drew Curtis. We were met at LAFSC and have stayed good buds. We recently worked on Wipeout yogether and spent several hours 40 feet high in a boom lift dumping buckets of paint on contestants!
Lots of fun.