Expiration Date

This past summer, Oxford High graduate and 2-time summer film class alum Felicity Flesher interned with us here at Media and Documentary Projects. Over the course of the last few months she has worked hard on sharpening her shooting and editing skills producing beautiful footage portraits of different landmark buildings on campus. In addition, Felicity worked hand in hand with us on some of the productions we did for Athletics including the Brandon Bolden Football Spot.

One of the goals we had for Felicity this summer was for her to walk away with a project of her own under her belt. And here it is. “Expiration Date”. Written, Produced, Directed and Edited by Felicity Flesher, “Expiration Date” tells the story of a young student who is forever changed when an expired cup of Ramen Noodles comes into his life. Shot at the University of Mississippi and focusing on visual storytelling, this hilarious short is a great culmination of all the hard work that Felicity did for us this summer and we couldn’t be prouder. Way to go Felicity!

Here’s Johnny!

I spent the evening yesterday with Oxford actor Johnny McPhail shooting scenes for my upcoming sci fi short, “Exit”. There were some interesting challenges that we faced to get the setups I was hoping for.

I wanted to get a really low (skimming the surface) dolly shot – pushing in on our main prop. We rigged the camera on my photography tripod and extended out past the dolly so we could shoot past the pipes. The camera still wasn’t low enough, so we spun the camera upside down which put the lens closer to the ground. I’ll have to flip the image in post but I was really pleased with the effect.

Another challenging shot was getting a jib shot up to basically an over-the-shoulder shot of a lampost over-looking my house. Unfortunately our jib ,extended all the way, couldn’t reach high enough. The solution was a bit precarious but effective. We (very carefully) set up the jib on top of Johnny’s car and were able to get the height we needed for the shot.

An extra special thanks to Matt Minshew and Johnny for all their help last night and my very patient wife Melissa for putting up with her home being invaded once again. I’ve got a few more insert shots to grab in the next few weeks and we’ll have a finished film soon after. Stay tuned!

– Matthew

Would you like to report a U.F.O.?

A few weeks ago, we started production on a short sci-fi film for Ch. 99 called “Exit”. It stars Highway 61 producer Eric Feldman and Oxford’s acting standard, Johnny McPhail. The story revolves around a mysterious unmarked package and a newly installed street lamp (with a really  bright bulb). I’ve got a few more shots to get in the next few weeks so be on the look out for the final film. Until then, enjoy these behind the scenes pics from the shoot taken by our set medic, Matt Minshew. Be on the lookout for my demon dog Riley.

– Matthew

Crew Call

This week, we had all hands on deck shooting a “State of the University” video with Chancellor Jones around campus. Special thanks to everyone involved who worked so hard for the last few days including Andy Harper, Karen Tuttle, Joe York, Rex Jones, Mary Stanton, Todd Lauterbach and Matt Minshew.

– Matthew

 

Ole Miss and the Grove!


This is just a short video showing how beautiful the Grove is at Ole Miss. Thanks Felicity for some nice shots I used in making this video! Hope you enjoy! Karen Tuttle

Ole Miss Mini Tour!

I love Ole Miss and love putting videos like this together to share just how beautiful our campus is. Thanks to Felicity Flesher for some awesome video she shot. Hope you enjoy!

Let's Jib It

Yesterday, our summer interns Felicity Flesher and Joseph Modirzadeh decided to beat the summer heat by spending two hours outside lugging our portable jib around campus. Here’s a few pics of the “fun”. The shots they collected will be utilized in Felicity’s upcoming video drawing from the best of the best of the footage she’s shot of the campus over the past few weeks. Check back next week for her video. Great job guys!

The J.D. Williams Library

Here is the newest update from our summer college intern Felicity Flesher. She’s continuing to expand her toolset, this week utilizing our portable dolly system as well as our new fader ND filter. The videos keeping getting better and we’re all really proud of the work she’s doing this summer!

"Preparation" – Ole Miss Football

As promised, here is the Ole Miss Football spot we produced last week featuring senior Running Back Brandon Bolden. A special thanks to everyone involved from Media and Documentary Projects and Athletics. Go Rebs!

We Need More Sweat!

On Thursday, we spent the afternoon at Vaught Hemmingway stadium on campus filming an upcoming commercial for Ole Miss Football with Senior star running back Brandon Bolden. The spot is a “Nike-esque” commercial with Brandon going through a rigorous training regimen in preparation for the upcoming season ending with a leap that’ll make Superman jealous! I wanted to quickly share a few notes of the shoot in case you’re interested.

It was a crazy hot day and we only had a limited amount of time with Brandon to get all the shots we needed so we shot with multiple cameras to double our coverage. The primary camera was the RED One Digital Cinema camera which filmed at 4K resolution and 2K resolution for some of the shots that were filmed at 100 fps. Former Producer, Micah Ginn (now the Creative Director for Ole Miss Sports Production) filmed with Panasonic’s new AF100 camera with a PL mount Red Zoom lens. Pictured here you can see most of our crew including student workers Matt Minshew and Chris Williams,  summer high school intern Joseph, and Athletics Producer Bethany Peters. Not pictured is our summer college intern Felicity Flesher. An additional shout out goes to Darrias Thomas and Ole Miss Track long distance runner Logan Waites for their help on the shoot.

I’ve been experimenting a lot lately with my old Glidecam 2000 after seeing some really nice uses of it online. We recently purchased a vest and arm for it so this was the perfect opportunity to put it to work. My Glidecam could only support up to 8lbs so we used the Canon 5D with it which was great since it shoots at such a high resolution anyway. I knew there was absolutely no chance that I would ever be able to keep up with Brandon at a dead sprint so I shot out of Athletics gas powered cart (our electric cart was no match for Brandon’s speed!).

All in all I was pretty happy with the way the glidecam footage turned out and it was actually pretty cool to wear the vest and arm. Although looking at this picture I realize it’s very difficult to determine who the star athlete is and who the camera guy is.

One of the more challenging shots to pull of was this shot that happens at the beginning of the spot where Brandon spins the football down toward the ground to start his workout. I wanted to basically have the camera at ground level looking up at him. Unfortunaly, Ole Miss Athletics was not into the idea of digging a giant hole in the football field for me to get the camera low enough, so we got Brandon as high as we could with the camera below him. We clamped a sheet of plexi-glass onto two tripods just above the camera lens and had him spin the ball right down onto the camera. I think it turned out pretty well and will be a cool way to start the commercial.

It was a fast and furious shoot but I really felt like we got some great footage. A huge thank you again to Matt, Chris, Felicity, and Joseph from MDP and Micah, Bethany, Darrias, and Logan from Athletics for setting up the shoot. And of course, an ENORMOUS thank you to Brandon Bolden for his time, patience, and stamina running sprints on camera for me for 2 hours! Keep an eye out for him this season!! I really enjoy short projects like this because you totally get to flex your cinematic muscles in terms of visual storytelling. Check back soon for the final spot!

– Matthew

Ventress Hall

Our Summer intern Felicity Flesher is at it again. This time she’s set her sights on another beautiful location on campus, Ventress Hall. I challenged Felicity this week to utilize our portable dolly system to add some small moves to her shots. She rose to the challenge and captured some beautiful images of this historic building. Nice work Felicity!

The Lyceum

Check out the new visual profile video our summer intern Felicity Flesher shot on the Lyceum. It’s a great collection of images on the iconic building at our campus.

What about Guyton?

This summer, former Oxford High School graduate Felicity Flesher will be interning with us here in Media and Documentary Projects. Part of her work will be sharpening her skills in shooting and editing. Throughout the summer she’ll be producing short visual profile videos on some of the buildings on campus. This will be a great way to give her experience behind the camera but also provide some nice snapshots of the University. Here’s the first video she produced this week on Guyton Hall, home to the School of Education. Keep up the good work Felicity!

More Pork from York

Last weekend Joe York premiered his latest film at the Big Apple BBQ Block Party in New York. “To Live and Die in Avoyelles Parish” documents the thriving cochon de lait tradition near Mansura, Louisiana. This film is part of a larger project MDP is producing with the Southern Foodways Alliance called “Southern Food: The Movie”

Meet Me in Southaven.

Last week we spent a few days in Southaven to produce a 30-second regional spot for the Ole Miss Southaven campus. The commercial will showcase several Ole Miss students from all walks of life who are earning their degree at Southaven. It was a great chance to use our Red One Digital Cinema Camera and really test its legs in a variety of locations. Special thanks to Karen Tuttle and Matt Minshew for their hard work during the shoot and Pam Starling for producing the spot. Check back soon for the finished commercial.  – Matthew

 

End of the Semester Projects

It’s been a very busy semester for MDP Student Projects.  Included here are the films created by the Southern Studies 534 course that we teach with Dr. David Wharton.  Enjoy the films!

The Beacon. A film by Camilla Ann Aikin, Aristide LeFeve, and Abby Olivier.

Yokna. A film by Field Humphrey, Katie Watson, and Gretchen Wood.

Back in Oxford. A film by Jordan Berger and Houston Settle. Fair warning, film contains “adult” language and subject matter.

It’s That Time Again…..

It’s crunch time again for students in our Documentary Fieldwork class.  Projects this semester include an exploration of Hip Hop and Rap Cultures in Oxford, a look at Yokna Bottoms Farm, a discussion of Tennessee Williams and Cultural Tourism, and profiles on The Beacon and Square Books.  Student groups have three weeps to wrap production and edit down their films for a final screening.  I predict some late nights in the Kinard “lab.”  Check back later for the finished films.

Engineering Anniversary Video

Here’s a video we produced for the dedication of Brevard Hall and the celebration of the 110 year anniversary of the School of Engineering at the University of Mississippi. It brings together some of the notable alums of the department over the past twenty years sharing their experiences and offering insights into why this remarkable program continues to flourish.

Law School History Video

In addition to the retrospective on Robert Khayat, we also produced a video documenting the history of the law school and its many homes at the University of Mississippi. Written and Narrated by John Sobatka. Edited by Matthew Graves.

Robert C. Khayat Retrospective

In preparation for last week’s dedication of the Robert C. Khayat Law Center, we produced a short retrospective video on Chancellor Emeritus Khayat. The video includes testimonials from a few of Chancellor Khayat’s former students and friends and gives a brief look into the incredible impact Chancellor Khayat has had on the University of Mississippi and it’s students.

NAB Day 4

It was another full day of lectures, booths, badge scannings, and brochure snatchings. I’m honestly kind of relieved to be coming home tomorrow if only to decompress my overly stimulated eyes. There were a lot of highlights today as I spent more time in the post production exhibits in the ginormous South Hall.

Here was a cool demo I saw of Black Magic’s DaVinci Color Resolve Color Corrector. It was awesome seeing the control of the look they were able to achieve with their sexy control panel. The software had a lot of bells and whistles but it honestly made me more excited to start working more with our current software, Apple Color.

Sunder asked me before I left to check out Black Magic’s H.264 encoder. As you can see in this awful picture I took, it’s a small device but it seems to be a pretty handy and time saving piece of hardware. This would be perfect for productions going straight to the web. I tried to slip one in my pocket on the way out Sunder but the RED Security guys were still watching me from yesterday. Sorry.

I stopped over at the MAXON booth for a little bit. They were doing a pretty intense demo of their 3D software Cinema 4D, which we have. The main thing I got from that demo was that I know almost nothing about their software.

Speaking of 3D software, I walked past our old 3D platform’s booth, Zaxwerks. Although fairly simplistic, they’ve actually made a lot of updates on their software in terms of modeling and animating so it might be worth a look at upgrading this far more user friendly app.

I couldn’t help but wander back over to the Production exhibits for one last glimpse at a filmmaker’s dream land. Check out this RED ONE decked out in full Steadicam glory.

Steadicam also unveiled their new model mounted to a segway scooter. I gotta say, it looked pretty sweet but the whole time I kept thinking the operator was going to lose control and ram into the next exhibit!

This was a nifty tripod mount that extended the camera up about 8 feet high. Surely we wouldn’t have people blocking the camera when they stand to applaud with this baby.

Today’s award for the product I would least actually buy goes to this gigantic studio boom. Although I do think it would fun to set this up in our studio.

A close second would go to this “little” gem. A lot of companies have unvelieved their version of the portable dolley system. Unlike the CineSlider (which I absolutely love) and it’s compact design that attaches to a single tripod, this ridiculous model basically has you setting up a full track. The only difference is that it’s suspended on two full size stands that must be weighted and balanced. It takes about 5 cases to move this “portable” track and dolly around. Very helpful.

I looked at a few hi-speed cameras today as well including this bad boy from Phantom called the “Flex”. It shoots up to 2500 frames a second at 1080 resolution. I hope we get to experiment with some hi-speed shooting in the future.

My last highlight of the day was finally averting the RED security and actually getting to touch and use the RED Epic. Here, my friends, is a 5K image taken with an iPhone camera. Pretty sweet, huh? Seriously, it’s an amazing image. I honestly didn’t think it was that much better than the RED ONE’s image but the size of the camera is really attractive. It wasn’t any bigger than a 5D with a few accessories on it. It’s amazing how far the technology has come in the past few years in terms of image sensor  and camera size. Pretty soon we’ll be shooting cinema quality images on our phones. I’m sure Zacuto will make a really great rig for that and sell it for $10,000 but I digress.

And so my journey to NAB 2011 comes to an end. It really is an amazing event that they put on and it’s cool to see so many professionals who are equally as excited about production as I am, meeting and learning together. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of options and tools that are being constantly developed and updated. What’s important to remember in all of this is that no matter the camera, rig, equipment, software, or distribution outlet, it all starts with the story. Without that, it’s all just piles of really expensive plastic and metal. Here’s to making it count!

– Matthew

NAB Day 3

Whew! They always say be careful what you wish for. I wanted to see the exhibits and today I most definitely did. NAB can make your eyeballs explode there’s so much to look at it. It’s like a media explosion and the best way to contain it is just to take your time, collect as many brochures as you can stuff in your bag and for pete’s sake, wear comfortable shoes.

One of the main differences from this year to last year was 3D. Last year, you couldn’t turn your head without seeing a 3D solution. This year, the big push was in small form factor, hi-resolution digital cinema cameras. Panasonic’s offering is the AF-100.

The thing I love about this camera is it gives you an incredible image comparable to the Canon 5D but with a slightly larger form factor, it gives you the types of control that are perfect for pro video including XLR audio inputs, zebra patterns, and ND Filters, just to name a few. It also allows you to record extended periods using two SD card slots in the back. This is one of the things I hate about the 5D is it’s limited recording time so Panasonic may actually have the “DSLR Killer”.

Here’s a pic of one of the sets all the camera companies had to showcase their cameras. It’s really fun to get your hands on the camera and see out it performs with talent in a lit environment.

Here’s my first look at the Arri Alexa Digital Cinema camera. It has a great image but honestly I wasn’t blown away by it like I was some of the other models. I gotta say, though, it sure looked nice with this massive zoom lenses attached.

3D wasn’t completely dead. In fact there were a lot more competition in terms of getting 3D into the hands of consumers. Look at this 3D handicam from JVC that shoots to dual SD cards much like Panasonic’s $20,000 model. This one comes in at $2,500 and actually made a really nice 3D image.

This was a cool rig that I’ve been considering trying to mock up for a future production. It allows you to capture a moment from a multiple number of positions. It was made famous in the Matrix films.

If there was one piece of equipment that I really wanted it would probably be this baby. A mini helicopter with a gyro mount for your HD camera. The footage I saw was super slick and let you get into places that you’d never get with a full size chopper rig.

The award for equipment that I would never in a million years want goes to the Zoom Crane. The demo was really bad. The camera shook all over the place as it extended out. Some guy beside me asked the rep if the unit came with a boxing glove on the end. That would have made it a lot more impressive.

One of the big showcases of NAB was the Epic from RED. I’ve been following this baby for a while now and it was really cool to get to see it up close. RED’s booth was crazy. Here’s the line of people just waiting to get in. I thought it was really funny how they had these “Security Guard” around the booth making sure you didn’t breath on the camera too much.

I did manage to snap a shot of our EVF that we’re waiting on. I tried to convince them that we had already paid for one so I could just take this one with me but the “Security Guards” put me in an arm-bar and escorted me to the Alexa booth.

I absolutely love these geared tripod heads from GearNex. They control your pan and tilt with levers and it’s silky smooth.

Another cool rig was this one that utilized the IPad’s video camera on a shoulder mount rig. I also saw rigs that used the IPad as a teleprompter.

This device from SideKick digital is a portable recording device that connects via HD SDI or HDMI and records natively in Pro Res 422. This would allow us to shoot long form productions on the Canon 5D and record files that were ready to edit in Final Cut Pro.

Today was a long and exciting day and I look forward to spending some more time in the Post Production exhibits tomorrow.

-Matthew

NAB Day 2

Day 2 is over. Another day of post production sessions. Today’s highlights included tips on RED ONE Final Cut Workflows. Specifically on importing the high quality footage in it’s native format to make use of the raw meta data in color correction. It also greatly speeds up transfer times. This is something I’m really excited to start experimenting with as opposed to compressing the footage to Pro Res.

Next up was a class on DSLR audio solutions. Not much new here other than some nice demos on a cool piece of software called plural eyes that automatically syncs your video footage and high quality audio that was recorded separately. It’s seems like a huge time saver and a valuable piece of software.

Another class I attended was on utilizing Apple’s audio solution Soundtrack Pro for full mastering. I’ve been a big fan of this software but haven’t been mixing with it as much as I’d like. There’s some amazing tools that I have been in the dark on that I’m really looking forward to adding to my editing workflow including amplitude reduction and compression and EQ techniques.

All in all it was a lot of lectures and sitting so I’m really looking forward to the exhibits opening tomorrow. I promise to upload lots of images showing the highlights of the show so stay tuned!

– Matthew

NAB Day 1

Day 1 of NAB 2011 is over. The exhibits don’t open until Monday so all of today was spent in the classroom where I heard from industry pros discussing new methods and techniques in production and post. I attended a lecture in DSLR  production which was really helpful since the majority of the work we’ve been doing lately is utilizing the Canon 5D for acquisition. I also attended a class in using the color correction software Apple Color. This is a powerful application that can really make your footage look incredible and it’s something that I haven’t really spent a lot of time playing with so it was really nice to see some workflows in the software.

Tomorrow, it’s back to the classroom to attend workshops in Final Cut Server, Adobe After Effects, and Production Sound Design techniques. It may sound super boring, but it’s all tools of the trade that help me make better films.

– Matthew

Viva! – The Sequel

So it’s that of time of year again. The time of year I feel the call deep inside me to come to Las Vegas and drool over all the new gear that the broadcasting world has to offer. It’s NAB time! This is my second venture to the filmmaker’s candy land and I’m excited to see and learn all I can. I’ll update daily on the sights and sounds of the convention so hold your breath and stay tuned.

– Matthew

Mississippi Innocence Wins at Crossroads

Mississippi Innocence took the Transformational Film Award at the Crossroads Film Festival in Jackson this past weekend.  The award is given to the film most likely to transform attitudes and inspire change.  Mississippi Innocence screened to a full house and the question and answer session featured a spirited discussion about possibly opening up additional cases based on the evidence discovered in Levon’s and Kennedy’s cases.

Tucker, Joe, and Andy were joined by Levon Brooks, one of the men featured in the film.

Oxford Conference for the Book

MDP was busy this past weekend with the Oxford Conference for the Book and our Graduate Assistant, Danielle St. Ours was there to record every second of it.  Now she gets to edit 20 hours of footage. It’s what we like to call “training.”