Here is a poster for “Out of the Blue” by Westbound Films. The movie is currently in production.

]]> http://www.limocreative.com/?feed=rss2&p=161 http://www.limocreative.com/?p=151 http://www.limocreative.com/?p=151#comments Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:37:36 +0000 Bob http://www.limocreative.com/?p=151 Had the pleasure of being called into my old work “alma mater,” Sony Music, to help with the package design of the latest Beyonce album, “I Am Sasha Fierce.” The album was designed in secret and within a few weekend days in order to make a special and surprise release. Thanks to Fuko and Goldie for bringing me in, it was great to see everyone again! Here are some samples of the album…

Cover

Spinesheet

Station Identification Spot 1

Station Identification Spot 2

Mexican Farm Labor News Story

Autism News Story

Day Twenty Two (60 Megs)

Notice: This video is a “low res” version with the time code burnt into it.

Let me know what you think!

My experience as a Supervising Sound Editor on Nick Bryan’s film, Day Twenty Two, was a whirlwind of long hours, creativity, frustration, and ultimately satisfaction. Having only one month to fully realize the sound for the film I knew I had to act quickly. My co-supe, Bandele Prioleau, and I jumped on the film once we received it. We immediately had a spotting session with the director and talked about his vision of not only his film but also film in general. This spotting session proved valuable because I was able to feel out who Nick was and what he envisioned for the sound in his film even if he did not know it himself.

Nick’s film is about a young man struggling to find his path. This young man is constantly looking for clues and insights to life through anything possible. He keeps a detailed journal and never leaves any stone unturned for adventure and new experiences. After wandering streets and alleyways for the first few minutes of the film he steals some mail from a house and finds an invitation to a silent auction and dinner. He decides to go and there meets a lovely young woman with whom he spends the night. He awakens in the morning and has trouble deciding if he should stay or leave. During the rest of the film he battles with this issue and ultimately leaves the decision up to fate.

During the initial discussion with Nick, I began to formulate ideas about how this “silent” film could come to life through sound. I immediately remembered all the reading and studying I have done regarding Internal Diagetic sound in film, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation, all works by Walter Murch. Early in Day Twenty Two, our young man waits and ponders as a train passes and I decided to use this sound as a recurring theme in the film as a symbol of his constant searching and need for a type of romantic adventure. This theme pops up from time to time as our young man is faced with a choice. I took the initial sound of the passing train and internalized it by putting it through a series of filters— a high pass EQ, then a crazy wide delay, followed by a suitable “internal reverb.” I believe this use of sound was beneficial in that it helped explain and tell the audience where we were going and what was happening in the mind of our main character.

After I got the main sound effects down, I began concentrating on what the film was missing. I thought it lacked a sense of “organicness” and verisimilitude. Foley was what I was missing. I was lucky enough to also be in the Sound Effects and Foley class offered this quarter and established a good relationship with a couple of great foley people— Anna Gramlich and Michael Imbriale. Anna acted as the foley recordist and editor while Michael was our primary foley artist. I also stepped in as an artist when we were pressed for time. I could not have asked for a better foley crew. Their professionalism, dedication to the art, and organization made our recording sessions run smoothly and go quickly. They realized they had a job to do and only a short time in which to do it. I enjoyed seeing them in action.

All in all, I enjoyed my experience as the supervising sound editor for Day Twenty Two. I learned about how to organize a sound crew, deal with sometimes abstract directors who do not have a clear image of what they want in their film, and also how to handle difficult partnerships. I look forward to expanding my knowledge about supervising and also how to bring my concepts to life. I realize this is just a beginning of what I hope to be a fully developed and artistic career.

Fugitive, Censorship, Labor

I was asked to be apart of the Performing Arts Department here at SCAD, to mix their music for an original dance performance created by Vincent Brosseau, a professor. The performance examined the origins and causes of genocide presented through dance. It turned out to be an incredible, interesting and thought provoking show.

I should be getting a video clip of the performance shortly. Once I do I will be sure to get it to you– but for now please enjoy these two pieces. Prelude is an approximately fifteen minutes piece that showed before the performance. It featured video produced by my friend Andre Danylevich. Fugitive, Censorship, Labor were the first three movements of the second act. Real interesting stuff.

Let me know what you think!

]]> http://www.limocreative.com/?feed=rss2&p=96 http://www.limocreative.com/?p=94 http://www.limocreative.com/?p=94#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:55:08 +0000 Jon http://www.limocreative.com/weblog/?p=94

Hey y’all! I just want to share a few excerpts from the chamber ensemble’s concert in Hilton Head that I have recorded. I was chosen out of all the graduate students in SCAD’s Sound Design program to head up this years Chamber Music Hilton Head’s concerts. So, I will be heading up there every couple of months to record their concerts for the next year, and hopefully the year after that. Its not much but I do get to walk away with a pocket full of cash! Don’t tell Uncle Sam.

Here it is. Lets begin with J. S. Bach’s Sonata in D Major for Viola & Piano. Here are the first two movements.

I. Adagio

II. Allegro

Wasn’t that lovely? Now we can move on to Dmitri Shostakovich. Here are his first two movements of String Quartet No. 8.

I. Largo

II. Allegro Molto

I hope you enjoy them all. Let me know what you think.

]]> http://www.limocreative.com/?feed=rss2&p=94 http://www.limocreative.com/?p=92 http://www.limocreative.com/?p=92#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:52:37 +0000 Jon http://www.limocreative.com/weblog/?p=92 These clips are a few of my sound design projects. The visual is just as you saw it in the original film but I ripped out all the audio and put in my own. So, all the audio that you hear is done by yours truly… jptich. Take a listen and let me know what you think. (large files, may take a few minutes to download).

Children of Men (19 MB)

Silverado (16 MB)

The Incredibles (19 MB)

Cast Away (25 MB)

This Behind Enemy Lines clip is one that I did in 5.1 Surround. I wanted you to get a chance to look at it so I also did a discreet stereo mix for you. I left it uncompressed for ya too. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know.

Behind Enemy Lines (146.5MB)

Abstract Improvisation

This project, like most of them at B.C., was only partially brought to the screen. It was suppose to be a dream sequence project. I had big ideas of filming my star, Abby Smith, trying to drown herself in a bathtub then waking up to this sequence. abby didn’t have time that day and she was already freezing because it was about 38 degrees and raining during that shoot. Enjoy!

Special Delivery

“Special Delivery” is a crowd favorite. It was a result of last minute/ need to film something/ mind numbing think session. Be warned it is rated PG-13, for some minor language and a beheading.

Street Art

This montage sequence was one of my first projects. It incorporates images of street art or “graffiti” in New York City in 2004. As a little side note the building on which most of these images were taken from no longer exists; the man has ripped it down to put up some luxury condos.

The Wrong House

This project is a short narrative about a man who comes home, takes a nap and wakes up to discover a burglar in his living room. He then deals with the situation in true Vermont style.

Let me know what you think about all these fun little clips. They were great to put together and I think they are fun to watch too. ENJOY!

Mam Maw’s Stories (126MB)

At the beginning of my journey through this project I had no idea what to expect, nor did I truly understand the challenges that lay ahead. I thought I knew how much work it was going to take but I really didn’t. I couldn’t begin to put a number on the total hour s spent on the project as a whole but I do know that every hour spent was worth spending two compared to the amount of not only the technical knowledge gained, but also the knowledge I acquired about my family and the need to understand and appreciate them and all that they do for me.

I went into this project knowing that is would be an emotional rollercoaster ride for everyone involved and now that I’m nearing the end I realize I really had no idea how much of a rollercoaster ride it was going to be. The ride was constant, and whether going up or down it was always relentlessly moving forward. At times I saw aspects of the project that I have spent hours on get thrown out the window in less than a heartbeats’ time but other parts were clinched onto and held tight from the very beginning.

I faced many issues and challenges during this process. At the beginning I really hadn’t thought about all the issues I would run into but did manage to anticipate some of the major ones and avoid them. My instructors were incredibly helpful during this entire project, from conception to completion. I don’t think I could have done it so efficiently without Mary Arbuckle, Barry Snyder and Joe Bookchin.

The valuable lessons I learned during this production opened my eyes to not only the filmmaking process but also to the importance of support and compassionate understanding from those involved. It was this aspect of the process that I didn’t anticipate, and now that I am looking back on it, it seems the most important.

Ever since I was little I remember my mother being interested in history. The first job I remember her having was as a sixth grade history teacher. She was also involved in the Historical Society in our town, of Frankfort Kentucky. She is particularly interested in our family history—both genealogy and, more importantly, people’s personal stories and accounts. Recently she has begun giving out family heirlooms as Christmas gifts and presenting them by going into the history of who owned it, where they got it, and why it was chosen for us. Recently I received a candy dish of my great-grandmother’s and an early painting my grandfather did in art school in the 1940s.

The idea for this film spawned from one she had several years ago. She wanted me to bring down a camera on one of the trips down to visit and tape my grandmother talking about the history of the family and personal accounts of everything she has experienced. She has a memory like a steel trap and we realized that she was the last of her generation to still be around. If we didn’t record these stories they would be lost forever. I agreed just to get her off my back and put it on the back burner for about a year. At the time I thought I was way too busy to be bothered.

It came time to start to think about my Degree Project. I needed to figure out what I was going to take on. Initially I wanted to do a narrative of some sort about the connection and commitments of marriage and how modern couples struggle through these ideas. Then I began to think about how I got to this point of even needing to think about a degree project. I began to realize that without my family’s support and possitivity I wouldn’t have even gotten to this juncture. I realized that the idea of family and the bonds, which keep us connected, are the things in life that gives it meaning.

I think seeing my wife’s family operate opened my eyes to this the most. After we were married we lived about six hours away from my family but only about six minutes away from hers. She had weekly lunch dates with her mother and spent time at their house as often as she could. I didn’t understand why she needed this constant tie or how she could stand it for that matter. Before we got together I was living 3000 miles away from my family and that seemed too close for me. My wife and mother-in-law’s relationship seemed to be that of friends and she relied on her mother to see her through everyday problems. I couldn’t understand this relationship or more importantly the need for it. At the time I couldn’t live far enough away from my family. The last thing I wanted was to talk to my mother everyday. But then as I began to live that life with my wife I began to see the structure and importance of their relationship and how they relied on each other for companionship, and more importantly, my wife’s need of family connection.

After five years of this observation I began to examine my connection with my family and found there was very little there. I’m still not entirely sure why this was, maybe because of my broken home past or the fact that my family has always been spread out across the country. Growing up we lived in Kentucky and my mom’s parents lived in Pennsylvania. Now we are spread from coast to coast. Regardless of the reason, I found myself detached and unsure of where or even whom I came from.

I began to examine my evolution in life and realized that without the support that I had from my family I would never have been in the spot I was in, which was a rather positive one, I think. Just then I remembered the conversation I had with my mother some time ago about her idea of capturing my grandmother’s stories on tape. It was then that I decided to dedicate my final degree project to the family and make something for them, since without them I would not have been here. I began to plan.

As I was introducing this idea to my instructors they were suggesting films to review as examples. I watched several documentaries in the next couple of months; A Brief History of Time, to get an idea of what a profile film was, Harlan County USA, to examine the aspects of a film that make it powerful—mostly rhythm and pacing, Troublesome Creek; A Mid-Western, to understand a family story as told through this medium, and Sherman’s March, to look at personal examinations in film. Although all of these films gave me insight to the world of documentary film and the different types therein, I couldn’t see a correlation between my personal memoir idea as a style and these films. So I had to make up a style. With Mary’s help, I began to put together my grandmother’s stories into separate vignettes which when viewed independently of each other as simple little accounts of life from my grandmother’s perspective which, when assembled as a unit open up and define the rich, interesting, and wonderful life she has had. Sitting back and reflecting on the whole experience I begin to understand that this process of making a final degree project is not just about getting a film made from beginning to end. That process is just a vehicle to discover how to overcome obstacles, become a better problem solver, and examine one’s own existence.

There were many issues and challenges that worked as speed bumps, yield signs and at times complete roadblocks and detours during the development of this project. I continually had to think and rethink aspects of the original project while piecing the film together. Never having taken on such a substantial project as this I always found myself questioning my choices and backtracking to get around obstacles.

Many of the technical choices I made during the different phases of production were simply made because there was no other option at the time. One of the major obstacles I continually ran into was the film’s audio. I essentially had three different sessions with my grandmother in front of the camera. The first one was in October of 2006. My plan was to travel down to my grandmother’s home town near Scranton Pennsylvania, and do research at the local historical society and libraries in the area. During that time I was then going to get a first round of visuals for the film. I went to the school to get the equipment I needed to shoot only to realize that the school did not have available an external short shotgun microphone for the camera was taking down—the PanasonicDVX-100. Joe Bookchin suggested I just run with the camera’s built in microphone but I didn’t like that idea and wound up taking one of the school’s omnidirectional microphones. This type of microphone is not ideal for interviews. It has a very wide pick-up pattern and doesn’t lock in on a subject as well as some other mics do. During the week I was down there my mother offered to take the day off from her teaching job and drive me and my grandmother around to different places in the area were she grew up so I could get footage of her there. We went and I ran with the only external microphone I had, the omni. When viewed independently from the other interview footage the sound I got with the omni microphone did not sound too bad but it just wasn’t ideal and when I put it in the middle of other interviews in which I used a tiny lavaliere microphone and attached it close to my grandmother’s mouth I realized just how different the two were. This difference in sound created an aural discontinuity that distracted the viewers from the subject matter and needed great attention during the sound mixing process. Thankfully, I brought Chris Albertine on, who is one of the area’s top professional sound mixers, to help with the problem areas and although the sound in the first round of footage still is discernable from the other interviews it is much closer than in the raw footage. Similar audio problems showed up time and time again during the editing process.

For the most part I didn’t realize the discontinuity of my different interviews during my production until I sat down at the editing studio and began piecing these stories together. The interviews I did at my grandmother’s house looked entirely different and much cooler than the one I did two months earlier at my mother’s house, which were warm and inviting. Luckily the interview at my mother’s was about three hours long and gave me plenty of material to work with. I actually never ended up using any of the footage from the later interview in the final cut of the film.

In the two scenes at an outside location, the audio and video worked fairly well for the most part. The framing was off a bit during the lake scenes and the wind noise was an awful distraction at the cemetery. By using multiple visual b-roll over these scenes and using Vermont Public Radio’s vast audio editing equipment, where Chris Albertine is employed and where I also took a course during the last semester at Burlington College, I was able to create what I believe are the two most dynamic scenes in the film.

The biggest challenge for me was that of aesthetics. How was I going to make this intimate video memoir of my grandmother interesting not only to my family but to the general audience? The difficult choice I had to make in selecting an instructor proved to be the right one. Through Mary Arbuckle’s gentle prodding and guidance I was able to find the right balance and not having my only audience be my family. I knew previously that the editing process of a film was where the magic happened but I really had a chance to see it and experience it first hand through this film. After hours and hours of discussion with Mary during weekly and some times twice-weekly meetings we were able to find the “diamonds in the rough” in the hours of footage. She taught me how to find the special moments in an interview and highlight these moments. We went through multiple edits, cutting and pasting and covering up, bringing out the good bits and hiding the not so good ones.

After we were able to see the main structure of the film begin to take shape I began to consider music selection, which turned out, was the one thing I began to stress over the most. I must have spent a hundred hours trying to find the right pieces. I was searching the Internet for just the right thing. Also, I had my friends who are dialed into the music scene in New York City searching and was striking out every time. I was going through the schools’ Network Music files, which is a compilation of available music tracks open to the public, but came up with nothing that really worked. Everything was real close and touched on the feel I wanted but didn’t hit quite right. It wasn’t until the first mixing session I had with Chris Albertine my sound mixer that I found the right pieces. He introduced me to a couple of CDs from a local musician named Paul Asbell. Paul is a guitar player who has compiled a couple of recordings. His mainly instrumental and often interpretative covers of classic tunes bring the historical keystone of the film into a type of aural light,but with a modern language. The viewer identifies with the recognizable melody but through Paul’s interpretation of that melody the viewer doesn’t really connect the tune with any preconceived notions of it.

It was hard as an editor to find myself having to press the delete button on a sequence that, as a family member, was funny and a classic in the family story vault, but as a stand alone film for the general audience just didn’t work. I discovered that finding that balance was an on-going process. Having to cut this type of scene was difficult. I found myself explaining to Mary the value of a scene time and time again, then realizing her point and finally accepting it and pressing that button. There was one story in the film that didn’t work for Mary since the beginning but I loved it and kept refusing to take it out. I saw her argument that the context of the set-up wasn’t there, the viewer was unsure of what and whom they were hearing about but let it sit for several edits. Finally I began to examine it more closely and looking through the raw footage, managed to find a link for it. I found, added it and it worked. The scene stayed in the final cut and, having just shown it to the Burlington College community, got just the reaction from the audience I was looking for. I think the film’s softness and subtleness resonated to the audience and they shared in the great ness of my grandmother’s simple life—job well done.

The process of making this film has taught me invaluable lessons not only about the process of making a film but, as I mentioned previously, about myself and the need for family connection and the importance of knowing where one comes from. The lessons I learned about making the film include how to better plan for shoots, what equipment to use to create more valuable footage and how to use this equipment most effectively. The mistakes I made during the process gave me valuable information on how not to do things and what to expect and therefore to avoid on future shoots. Don’t get me wrong: there were good aspects to the things I got on tape. Otherwise I wouldn’t have a film at all. The things I did right were all because of the things I did in anticipation of those things. Of the filmmaking process I believe that the most valuable lessons learned were those that were taught during my first production class at Burlington College which was reinforced during this process of making my degree project film: the more planning you do the better off you will be and if it can go wrong it will. I learned to make checklists, and more lists of lists I need to make, and more lists of other lists and so forth. The better prepared you are the smoother a production will go. Initially I was going to bring down a friend to be my Director of Photography but Mary thought that would distract my subject, my grandmother, and therefore lose the intimacy I was trying to acheive during production. That taught me the need to understand my subject and how to most effectively bring that understanding to the shoot.

Although I was not entirely sure of what I was going for at the beginning of the project, all I knew was that I wanted to show the world my grandmother and give back to the family that helped me achieve this degree, I am happy with what has been produced. During multiple sessions in my degree project class with Joe and Barry and in my Citizen Filmmaking course with Mary I was able to figure out what the film was about; my grandmother’s life. I believe I was able to show her reflection and examination of her own life to people who have never met her. After the viewing of the project to the community I realized that this film does that and it also worked as an inspirational piece. Several students told me that they now saw the value in something like this and wanted to do something like it themselves. I was also asked if it could be shown in a woman’s lives course offered at school next fall.

Most importantly I feel like I have contributed something to my family that will prove to be valuable as a type of family archive to future generations. If it were not for this project these stories would be lost forever. It was also a collaboration of everyone in my family. It wasn’t just my grandmother and me. My wife helped at home by working long hard hours so I could afford to take the time to complete this. My mother and step-father worked as financers, not that this production cost thousands but it require a bit of backing, and my sister turned into a family archivist. She was the one who was most familiar with the family photos. All I would have to do was call her and ask for a photo of a certain person during a certain time period and she would e-mail me something that worked wonderfully. Everyone was eager to do whatever they could to help out, again showing the support and teamwork necessary for a family to succeed. In one of the e-mails she sent me she summed up the value of this project to the family very well. She writes,

Jon,

I’ve been thinking about your project and wrote a little of what I have perceived as some of the journey I heard, observed, and felt as Mam [my grandmother], Mom and Bruce [my step-father] have proudly spoken of your project.

Our Mam - we knew no words would ever REALLY put her personality, presence and love on paper in which people might get to know her fully.

It has been the “external” focus on Jon’s project that has opened the doors of transformation and in the process has given many gifts to those of us sharing memories and feelings. The project became a vessel of transformation where questions could be asked and answers buried deep within could be RE - MEMBERED and the gift received by the giver and the interviewer (and others in the background). Through the process of creativity, connection is born - as we journeyed into the depth of her life we found what mattered to her then, how things have changed and where she is now. This woman full of stories and memories holds the cherished life of love we’ve all received through the years. This project allowed her to receive the recognition that she has lived her life in so many ways and celebrated with the love of God she holds deep in her heart.

Love you, Hannah

I really appreciate this process. Now having come to the end of my time at Burlington College I know that I have made the right decision in coming here. I really didn’t have a path in the past and B. C. has shown me what it takes to forge ahead in the path I have chosen: that of being involved in the filmmaking process. This school has enforced in me a desire to make films and become something that helps shape the world in a positive way no matter how small the contribution.

This project is the culmination of all that I have learned here. When I first applied for enrollment I thought I understood who I was and what I wanted to become but now I see that our person is always under a state of evolution. We can never really anticipate where we will go or who we will be after we get there. I feel like this experience here at the school gave me valuable tools to not help analyze and evaluate where and who I am but I also now realize that I could never really totally understand who I am since I am constantly changing with each new experience.

As I look ahead after graduation I hope to be accepted to a graduate program at Savannah College of Art and Design or SCAD. I realize that this program at Burlington College gave me a strong foundation and understanding of the filmmaking process and now it is time to hone in a skill that will better train me on a specific aspect of filmmaking. After running into so many wonderful audio problems and watching Chris Albertine masterfully manipulate the sound and after I began looking into aspects of sound that help make a film complete I think I want to go in that direction. The program at SCAD is specifically geared toward Sound Design in film and will hopefully give me more tools to evaluate certain aspects of life I haven’t yet.

I value the tools each and every course strove to teach me while I was here and look forward to using and expanding on them in the future. Without the help of the wonderful and intelligent instructors and guidance of the faculty I would have never seen the full potential of storytelling and would have never been able to tell mine so well and completely. Thank you.