Last night he drew his first animation, and I got to introduce him to Frameographer.
(We’ve been watching HUGO.)
I made a video from the set of Flummox and Friends (as an update for Kickstarter backers).
Some of it was even in focus. [YouTube link]
The assignment said “Make it! Draw it! Sculpt it! Paint it! Build it! Write it! Create it! The choices are endless and open-ended!”
So, of course, he made a TV show.
Yes, he is shamelessly ripping off Beakman. In his defense I was ripping off Monty Python and SCTV bits all the way through high school.
Trailer #3.
Clearly a lot of work went into developing the iMovie trailer templates, from the title animations to the shot suggestions to the original scores recored with the London Symphony Orchestra. And I’ll grant that I don’t have a better idea about how to motivate people to edit and share their home movies.
But if you’re going to use standard home movie footage, these trailers are kind of wildly discordant. Even the examples Apple cut together for the template chooser aren’t especially successful (running the gamut from cheesy to non sequitur).
But for a group of imaginative children ready to “make a movie”, these are kind of @#$%ing brilliant.
This was one of the funnest days I recall having as a dad. (Trailer 1 | Trailer 2)
…and here’s Trailer #2. We snuck a few Action Movie Effects into this one.
For the boy’s birthday party we made some movies with his pals and a green screen made with a bed sheet and dowel rods. Here’s Trailer #1.
In 1988, Christa Dahlstrom—a college sophomore and Minnesota native—rented a VHS camcorder and brought it and two friends (Ted Johnson and Brian Glenn) to the Minnesota State Fair (running now through Labor Day).
Back at school she spent weeks learning the dorm’s linear video editing system, with the help of her film-major boyfriend (i.e. me), and cutting together this irreverent and loving 13-minute journey through the Fair.
Food-on-a-stick, Ye Old Mill, beauty queen butter sculptures, tractors, sideshow barkers, and bull semen.
Looking back at this I am reminded that she has always been funnier than me, and a better filmmaker. I’m excited that she’s making movies again.
So I made this… criminy. TWENTY-ONE years ago.
It’s a fifteen-minute comedy about a community access television talk show taping that goes off the rails. Shot on analog cameras and edited linearly, tape-to-tape, so the audio’s rough in spots and none of the shots match.
The two hosts and guest improvised for an hour, and then I spent that night and next day filling in the various bits around them. I snuck a couple of unused moments into the end credits, as if it were a Judd Apatow movie.
It’s a student video to be sure, but after two decades it still makes me laugh.
Also notable for the moment that I get to swing a stepladder into the face of my future wife. [Vimeo link]
Freeway Chase (1 min 9 sec)
The family that makes preposterous action sequences together, stays together.
Edited down from one shot, one take, almost no rehearsal.
