Archives

Kimmy & John

Location: The Dana Hotel, Mission Bay
Graphic Design: Mary Young

“So let me get this straight, you don’t want the vows?”

“correct”

“you don’t want any of the toasts?”

“right”

“No prep, first looks, or rings…you don’t want a normal romantic wedding video?”

“Exactly. Just capture the fun. I don’t care about the rest.”

With that, I got my requirements to go and shoot a fun wedding video for a pair of awesome coworkers who met each other here at work years ago. Despite the bride’s clear instructions, I couldn’t help but put in the first part of the video because as you’ll see, it’s the first time I’ve witnessed an almost real ear-to-ear grin. Just had to show it.

Shooting wise, this wedding gave me a chance to try out some new gear I picked up. The Manfrotto 561BHDV-1 and the spider rig were used in this shoot with a set of Canon T2i’s. Editing in FCPX.

Fun fact: The first song is the one John sang as he proposed. Shout out to H.Vuong for providing the proposal footage.

San Diego Comic Con: Walking Dead Experience

Couples that survive zombie apocalypses together stay together…or something like that. J and K are getting married this coming weekend and to prepare for all that craziness they did the “Walking Dead Experience” with a few friends. It’s essentially a zombie run through a deserted Petco Park (home to the SD Padres). The course covers 1.5 miles, there are huge portions of straight up sprinting for you life, dodging zombies, clearing obstacles…this was no joke, real blood was spilt! It took them ~35 mins to finish.

At the end of the course is an inspection zone; all survivors are screened and any that infected (touched by zombies) are quarantined and dealt with.

Their experience was recorded on a GoPro and I edited it down to a 8 min exhilarating ride. Didn’t ask permission from J yet actually, so I might take this down later. In the mean time. Enjoy!

JMW590 x KREPTONIC: iRRational Fishing

Josh has done it again. This time it was all caught on camera, from catch to final dish. We went out one morning ~6am on a weekday at the tip that there were schools of guitar fish right off the coast. There’s a funny trend that whenever Josh goes fishing with other people, it’s an uneventful day. But whenever he’s alone out there he brings back a couple of big ones.

After being out there almost an hour I decided to go sleep in the car and let Josh do his thing. Lo’ and behold he comes back with 2 catches. 2 fish → 5 course meal! Pretty amazing. Check out the video, like it, don’t call PETA, and give JMW590 some e-props if you think he should seriously consider a culinary future!


IMG_0641 IMG_0648 IMG_0642 IMG_0645IMG_0650

 

Claudeo: Empty Cages (music video)

Shot on the 4th of July. Chris was just strumming away on his guitar around the fire and I was playing with my camera gear trying to record the fire. 1 take; no practice, no lighting equipment, no audio equipment. One of those times the simplicity of the video reflected the simplicity of the moment.

Filming:

I just got a second Canon T2i (550D) so I was itching to give it a run through. I also needed to figure out if there were any aberrations or major color differences between the two cameras so this would be a good test run. I just set one of my cameras down on a tripod, framed the shot and pressed record. I made sure the other camera was close enough to pick up the audio but it would be a challenge. It was almost midnight so we had to keep it relatively quiet in case the neighbors started pelting vegetables and shoes.

Editing:

FCPX has a great “synchronization” feature that aligns 2 or more video clips using the audio waveforms peaks and valleys. I wanted to give the feature a try which was the real reason behind wanting to shoot something simple. 2 birds with one stone. Claudeo gets a quick video and I get to polish my editing chops. Color was removed due to high noise in such a low light situation where the only useful light came from the flicker of the fire.

That’s it.

CEC Youth Retreat Series

A few weeks back I had the opportunity to work with a couple of high school and middle school youth and lend a helping hand. The shoot lasted 2 Sundays, with Cam K (enrolling to SDSU’s film school in the fall) as director, primary videographer, screenwriter and producer, while Clayton Y and I were second shooters. We all picked up DSLRs to shoot video around the same time so it was fun to share tips and learn from one another. Our styles are drastically different so it was cool to see how the younger guys worked.

My role on set was simply to help Cam capture a few more angles to edit. Below is the finished series edited by Cam’s team. Great job Cam!

Sweet…assistant director status. Watch out for these future filmmakers!

Project Resonate’s Chiyori.A returns Home

A dear friend of mine spent the past year abroad working with orphans and local churches. I had the opportunity to support her and visit for a few days last year as we filmed a few video segments and a creative peace. It seemed like just last month that we had collaborated on our video “Trust“before she left and now in less than 8 days she’s coming back!

ChiyoriA.projectresonate.org

Check out her blog as she chronicles her experiences over the past year. It’s incredible the work she’s done over there and as she spends her last few days and prepares to come home, she contemplates on the real meaning of “home”.

We also had the opportunity to catch up and through her sharing her experiences it really painted a picture of both her struggles and her triumphs. Below are a the web episodes we filmed over the course of 3 days.

Episode 1: Welcome!

Episode 2: Cooking

Episode 3: Living

Episode 4: My lil Friend!

Episode 5: Orphanage

Wo Hing Preserved Meats Behind The Scenes

Chinese preserved meat is something I cannot get enough of and so it got me super excited to find out that a relative of mine owns a store in HK. We stopped by for a bit and toured the store and the factory. It was really fascinating.

Some say, there are two things people don’t want to know how you make ’em: laws and sausages. I’m not sure about the sausages, cause this was pretty cool. We didn’t get to see how they made “lap cheong” but we got to see the drying stages.

Had some fun with editing and style in the beginning of the video. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Austin L: Resonating in East Asia

A few friends are heading out this morning to China to see God’s heart for Asia. Check out Austin’s video and keep him and his team in your prayers!

Notes:

For this video, I tried to emulate a guy whose work I really really admire. He’s stationed out in Dubai (recently it looks like he’s in Australia) and the stuff he does for his church is stunning. I took the idea off one of his church news video spots and tried to recreate a similar feel.

The artist’s name is Salomon Ligthelm and his work speaks for itself. The techniques, the color gradients, so beautiful…yet I don’t recall him mentioning formal schooling or training. His blog has references to him having to render on crummy laptops and wait over night before making a quick edit and rending for another 6-7 hours. Then uploading his final work over cafe wifi cause he doesn’t have internet at home. So inspiring!

Check out a clip of his…I won’t feel bad if you never want to watch my stuff again.

Air Alert: 6 months later

This is so stupid. We’re not even really testing verticals anymore, this is just macho bravado in its dumbest form. One of us will eventually get hurt…most definitely me.

3 months ago, 19 steps:

C.Yih’s response: a clean 20 step box jump:

I’m trying to end this madness.