How I Answer Questions About My Future: "IDK, MAN."

After the workshop on Monday, I left feeling unsure of myself. Unsure that maybe production isn't really for me. When I started my academic career at Ithaca College, I was sure that production was where I wanted to be. In middle school and high school I always loved video production and working creatively with a small group. However, I'm starting to realize that maybe I would be better off in a pre-production position.

I learned a lot from Chris, but when he gave his "This is what production life is like, CAN YOU HANDLE THISSSS?!?!" speech, I'm not gonna lie it made me a little nervous. I recently had the opportunity to meet up with my friend Emily, who graduated from IC in May and started working on set for So You Think You Can Dance in Los Angeles. She said all the same things as Chris. (Obviously, field shows and studio shows are drastically different, but the high stress environment surrounding television production is the same.)

How I feel in life sometimes.

I told her, straight up, "I don't know if I can handle that." She said that it's okay if I don't know exactly what I want to do now, and that I would get a much better idea once I'm out in LA--I plan to go for my last semester senior year.

She too talked about long days on set, having to deal with people yelling at you all the time, (for her, it was her boss in her headset) and starting out at the very, very bottom. But the boss she thought didn't like her hired her to be a talent coordinator for a new TV show, so things worked out well for Emily in the end.

I have adopted an associate producer role in our group project. Theo is doing most of the work, but I've been trying to help out with small stuff, like designing an audition flyer, editing the script, contacting a composer, and trying to make sure other people stay on task. We don't have a lot of time to complete our project, and I want it to be the best it can be. I've found that I feel more comfortable in this role, but that's because it's familiar to me.

As for my future, I think I need a lot more experience before I make any big moves. Or maybe I need to make big moves to gain experience. I can't say I have any predictions for the future, so for now, I'm going to focus on putting 100% effort into everything that I do.

SoulPancake

This past spring I spent a semester in Los Angeles. I interned at a production company called SoulPancake which is what made my experience in LA so amazing. I worked with five other interns and created two of our own videos while also assisting on other videos and shows with the rest of the SoulPancake team.

I definitely learned the most from creating videos with the other interns because we weren’t just assistants. We were in charge of the project start to finish. We had to produce, direct, edit, etc.

The video below is our first video. I co-produced and edited it. It was a four-camera shoot and we were very frazzled because it was our first one. We didn’t use a clapboard which made my job during post-production a little more difficult.  We had three days to edit it until it was released on Valentine’s Day. One of those days was used to sync all of the footage without the magical software known as PluralEyes. The head of production and channel manager didn’t think we could get it done but we did! It may only be 3.5 minutes but it wasn’t scripted and there was A LOT of footage. We talked to real people strolling around the park and had to create a coherent story with the answers that they gave. It was a great learning experience! After making this video I became more interested in documentaries and the non-fiction side of production.

The Garden of Gratitude is the second video we created. I edited this video as well. We asked random people to come inside our courtyard and dedicate a plant to something or someone who had helped them grow. It was very challenging to convince random people to come into a place they weren't familiar with and answer questions. However, as a result I learned a lot about how to approach and talk to strangers.

SoulPancake has some amazing videos on their channel so I urge everyone to check them out here!

"This too Shall Pass" Video By OK Go is Not Your Conventional Music Video

The "This Too Shall Pass" music video is not like anything I have ever seen. The amount of time and work that had gone into preparing such a perfectly smooth video must be astounding. The whole mechanical set up was named the Rube Goldberg machine. It was designed and built by a very creative and talented group of engineers. The builders were from a Los Angeles art and technical based collective, called Syyn Lab. They are known for creating intricate and mechanical moving set ups just as they did for this video. Between 55 and 60 people worked on building this incredible, moving set.

The video was directed by James Frost. The whole apparatus took a month and a half to build. They spent two days shooting and over 60 takes to get the perfect shot. The video was shot with one continuous shot of the entire video. Paula Salhany was the videographer and used a steady cam to shoot the whole thing. To follow everything that was happening at the exact time  it was supposed to happen while getting all musicians in the frame seems impossible, but she made it look like it was done with ease. This whole video is truly a piece of art.