These are the pre-visualization assets for Takin’ It to the House, a 30-second PSA that I wrote for the Urban Weed Warriors Program of the Park Conservation and Community Outreach division of the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks. The overhead diagrams were created using Apple’s Keynote presentation software, which I found much easier to use than a program like Adobe Illustrator. The storyboards backgrounds are still photographs that I took at a dog park a few blocks from where I live, and the software used to create the storyboards was Storyboard Quick.

This is a reel of several motion graphics projects that I’ve worked on: 130R production bumper, Garden TV network id, Chesapeake Bay interstitial, and After Hours title sequence. A question that I’m often asked is what is the music in the reel. It’s only a clip of a song, so it might not be readily recognizable; but it’s an a cappella cover of Alanis Morissette’s Uninvited by the Bostonians of Boston College.

Entire Video (17:50)

The premise of this project is the argument that five Oliver Stone films are actually part of a single narrative about the seminal events of the 1960s and early 1970s. The clips from Born on the 4th of July (1989), Heaven & Earth (1993) , JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), and Platoon (1986) included in this project were edited to form a single narrative to help illustrate Stone’s argument that the assassination of President Kennedy was likely the result of a conspiracy that ultimately led to the escalation of the Vietnam War. While films like JFK and Nixon focus on the politics and crimes committed by those in power; Born on the 4th of July (1989), Heaven & Earth (1993), and Platoon (1986) provide insight into the destructive effects of the Vietnam War on those without political power, the ordinary foot soldier, an idealistic and patriotic teenager, and a Vietnamese girl.

With this in mind, I edited the project so that clips from JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995) would bookend clips from the other three films. The intent was to show how politics, crime, and high-level decisions made by those in power affected our soldiers and the Vietnamese; the end result, as Stone would likely agree, was that Vietnam represented a morality battle that challenged the mythology of America by vying for the souls of the soldier and the nation.

A question that I attempted to answer with this project was whether Oliver Stone could be considered an auteur. There is a saying about writing that states you should write about what you know, and I believe that this is an apt description of the body of Stone’s work. His comfort zone is films about the 1960s and 1970s because he is a product of that generation; his biography parallels the lives of the idealistic soldiers, Chris Taylor and Ron Kovic, in Platoon (1986) and Born on the 4th of July (1989); their words and internal conflicts are his.

Thus, it is no wonder that the narratives of these films have such coherency and resonance that they would apparently elevate Stone to the level of auteur. This conclusion might be a reasonable one if Stone continued to build on this about the events of that historical period; when Stone leaves this comfort zone, his work seems to suffer, e.g., Alexander (2004), Any Given Sunday (1999). Stone’s voice seems to be missing in his non-Vietnam era films, which might lead you to a different conclusion about whether Stone is an auteur. Of course, the argument may be moot since the validity of auteur theory as a means of film criticism is open to debate, especially in light of postmodern thoughts on authorship.

From a technical perspective, this project was a challenge because I was just beginning to learn how to edit. Now that I’ve watched this project again after a few years have passed, I can see many things that could be changed to make the piece stronger; I didn’t know about split edits back then. As I was preparing this video to post on this website, I attempted to make several changes only to have Final Cut Pro lock up with each attempt; but I’m sure I’ll eventually be able to get past the technical gremlins to make the improvements I have in mind.

Clip 2 (3:16)

Entire Video (13:26)

The Montgomery Coalition for Adult English Literacy (MCAEL) is an organization whose mission is to provide resources, training, collaborations, and advocacy to the many English proficiency providers in Montgomery County, Maryland. This project resulted in the production of an advocacy and fundraising video that could be used by MCAEL to advance their mission and bring much needed attention to the importance of English proficiency to the economic and social vibrancy of the community.

The rewarding aspect of completing this project was getting to know the community of people involved with English proficiency in Montgomery County. It was clear after conducting the interviews and photographing students in their classes that English proficiency is about more than learning a non-native language; it’s about dreams, hopes, and aspirations of immigrants and of our community. Learning English is a means to not just an end but also new beginnings in a life’s story.

Clip 2 (4:37)

Entire Video (11:33)

Flying is a short film about a man named Roger who does not know why he is at the airport or where he is going, but what he does know is that he is sick and wants to call his family before his flight takes off. The airport is eerily empty but for a blonde flight attendant and an older, white-haired gentleman named Paul who engages Roger in conversation as they wait for their boarding call.

I edited this film from footage provided in my editing class as an educational exercise, so I make no claims to ownership of the footage. But I’d venture to say that I learned more about editing (e.g., pacing, split edits, audio) from this working on this project than any other that I’ve completed thus far in my short filmmaking career. The opening scene of Roger walking through the airport had no recorded sound, so I had to spend a lot of time searching for the right ambient sound effects to build the soundscape of the airport. It certainly wasn’t a trivial task, and I was exhausted after finishing this project.

My cut of this film certainly isn’t perfect because there are things that I should probably take another look at; but if I had to guess why my cut seems to work, it’s because I was able to make editing choices that supported the mood and tone of the film. Much of this required putting myself in the place of Roger to try to feel what he might be feeling. What is it like knowing that you will die soon? How frustrating is it to not be able to reach your family on the phone?

On a personal level, this project took on special meaning because about the same time that I started editing this film a close friend of mine learned that her long-time friend, like Roger, had a terminal illness. Unfortunately, her friend succumbed to his illness a few months later, but perhaps, the thought that this project might provide her, even if momentary, some sense of comfort made the many hours editing this film worth it. There are, after all, things that add up to more than passing moments or the sum of all hours experienced and to be known.

This interstitial was part of the documentary, EcoViews: Reclaiming the Bay, which was produced by American University film students. It was originally aired on April 19, 2009 on Maryland Public Television as part of its annual Chesapeake Bay Week of programming, and it won an award for Outstanding Environmental Production at the 2009 Visions Film Festival at American University.

The general focus of the documentary and this interstitial was the negative effects of dead zones on the ecological health of the Chesapeake Bay. Dead zones are areas in a body of water where the level of oxygen is so low that marine life can not be sustained, and a significant contributory factor to the development of dead zones is runoff of harmful nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen from the Bay’s vast watershed.

Much of the nitrogen runoff comes from agricultural sources, and this interstitial provides an idea of the scale of the problem and identifies a couple of new agricultural practices such as buffer zones of trees and foliage between water and agricultural plots that can help mitigate the amount of nitrogen runoff. The photographs in the interstitial show examples of buffer zones as well as agricultural land adjacent to bodies of water. And the main animated graphic is a timeline that plots the level of nitrogen in the Bay over recent years.

After Midnight is a film about a lonely homicide detective who has been assigned to investigate a series of murders. All of the murder victims were participants in a sadomasochism culture that comes to life in the city after midnight. Unbeknownst to his superiors, the detective is a participant in this culture; and as he uncovers more clues about the murders, he discovers that the murder he seeks is, in fact, himself.

My goal when designing this short title sequence was to create a sense of mystery and foreboding. Under the fractal are photographs of a woman’s hands bound with handcuffs and a woman being choked under a water-splattered window. The abstract black and white images are interrupted by the flashing lights of police cars and yellow crime scene tape being stretched across the frame to create the rainy opening scene of this supernatural, crime film.

The name 130R is a dual reference. The first is a reference to the famous 130 degree radius turn on the Suzuka race circuit in Japan while the second reference is to the pen tool that is used to create bezier curves in graphics programs. The overall concept was to use a mask to create a “curvy” R to allude to the pen tool, bezier curves, and at least remotely, the 130R turn. The rotating fan was created in Illustrator using, among other things, the pen tool.

When I was in grad school for my other graduate degree, my mom planted rows of plants on both sides of the sidewalk that led from the front door of my house to the street where the mailbox was. They looked nice, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that the plants actually created a lot of additional work when I mowed the lawn each week because I would have to get in between each of the plants. This became really annoying after a while; and after a few months, they began to wilt and die. So one afternoon when I was mowing the lawn, I paused for a moment, looked around to see if anyone was watching me, and ran over the plants with the lawn mower. Just like that they were gone, and life became a little easier.

Perhaps designing a network id for a gardening television station absolves me from any wrongdoing with the plants I mowed down. Nonetheless, the two elements in this animation were the butterfly and the cross for the T. The butterfly was masked from a stock photograph while the cross for the T was created in illustrator. To get the butterfly’s wings to flap, I masked each wing separately and masked the torso. Then a little bit of motion blur was added to help trace the butterfly’s movement. Finally, the cross for the T was revealed using a simple mask. From there, it was just a matter of getting the coordinating timing of each animated element.

This was an interesting project to work on because it was shot on 16 mm film using a Bolex camera. Shooting on film requires a great deal more planning since film is much more expensive than video tape. The concept for this commercial was motivated by one of my favorite songs by the Cowboy Junkies, Cold Tea Blues. The ending of this song is actually a bit sad, but I was able to avoid the melancholy ending since the commercial wouldn’t be as long as the entire song.

The desired effect of the commercial was to sell the comfort and warmth of drinking tea; it takes you to a safe place. The entire shoot took several hours, with most of the time spent blocking shots. The cookies in the commercial were baked shortly before filming since my partner, Nicole, shot a commercial about cookies in the same kitchen. When we were planning our shoots, we decided to work together since the concept of our commercials were somewhat related. From what Nicole told me, the tea I brewed tasted awful; but she was a good sport about drinking so much of it for me. It’s too bad I wasn’t able to reciprocate because while my tea was terrible, her cookies tasted great.