We just finished this :30 commercial for Remington College to help introduce the Medical Health courses to 14 markets. The spot was designed and animated by Shawn Romano from driftminer.com.

He has consistently done excellent work and created a fantastic looking spot that Remington College loved. Once Shawn passed us the animated files, we added the music, versioned the spots out for the 14 different markets it would play in (from Baton Rouge all the way to Hawaii).

This trailer is amazing! I have not seen the movie yet, but if the rules of trailers apply, then great trailers usually mean bad movies. Now, I do enjoy some Michael Bay every once and a while… The Rock, The Island, and even the first Transformers movie was good. However, I think the mistake Bay always makes is going epic. In the first movie, what really captured me was the story of a boy who finds out his car is really a robot. The first 45 minutes was awesome, enthralling, and I was sucked in. Then… other transformers started showing up… and for some reason, the epic story got boring to me.

Now, I’ve heard Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is even more epic, with battles on the Pyramids, and aircraft carriers being destroyed! But I ask… where is the story about a boy and his car who is really a robot? Because to me, that is the heart of the story… and I think Bay missed that again. I’ll find out this weekend!

The initial edit for this project was a 30 minute documentary about an elementary school in Orlando, Florida. Fern Creek Elementary was an F rated school in a low income neighborhood, and the documentary highlights the changes the school went through and how it became an A rated school.

This 8 minute edit was done after the 30 minute version was completed. This is a very condensed telling of the story, using the general arc of the story and soundbites that speak to the overall picture. The 30 minute version is, of course, much more in depth.

My buddy Shawn Romano found this. I saw this and loved it! Fantastic job by Mr. Johnathan Jarvis.

Shawn wrote: “It was created by Johnathan Jarvis as part of his thesis project at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. I think it does a great job of breaking down such a complex economic issue while keeping things entertaining.  There’s a massive HD version available as well.The only thing I’m not too keen on is the acidic bright green that’s used throughout – it’s a bit hard on the eyes. A minor complaint for such a great piece. Check it out!” You can check out Shawn’s blog here.

I found this to be top notch. It’s a really dumbed down explanation, and it leaves out Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac’s involvement, but overall very well done.

Check it out at crisisofcredit.com

I worked with Benji Clyde to edit this project. I loved the freedom I had to do some off the wall style editing;  playing with multiple images on the screen at once; or the same image multiple times using different compositions. I really enjoyed the time lapse shot of the members of the church. We also found some great camera filters which can be used in post; my favorite is the bleach by-pass filter. It’s like salt and pepper to a chef! I usually run to that first because I love the look and texture it adds the footage. Especially if I have some footage that was shot on a pro-sumer camera that needs something to punch the image up a bit.

Overall, the church loved the video and uses it to introduce first time visitors to the congregation and it’s staff.

Awana International approached me about producing a project that  could mimic the feel of a video called “That’s My King.” They were wanting a graphical piece using some text that had a kinetic energy to it and would reinforce a sermon that had been written and needed to be recorded.

Brian Hogan and Shawn Romano came on on board to do the graphics while I produced through the Crawford group. Initially, we had the idea of using newspapers and billboards and various signage as a way of proclaiming the good news; we felt there was a connection there. However, Awana opted for a friendlier approach using majestic imagery to help give the piece weight and an epic feel.

After 4 months of animation, sky replacements transitioning text, and creating the final cloud shot completely from scratch, we found the perfect voice and I scored the piece myself. Overall, we received rave reviews from Awana.

Working full time at the Crawford group afforded me some fun times. One was helping create the trailer for our imaginery feature film “Pixel-Lock.” Set in the future, we find a world where the government controls the media, and is stealing everybody’s pixels from their TV. No one is safe.

As a media company, we take it upon ourselves to protect our great media and hide as many pixels as possible. We used an HVX 200 camera with a 35mm lens adapter to get some shallow depth of field. I think my favorite shot is of Susan opening the brief case to discover the hidden pixels.

The coolest thing is that we actually filmed Benji over a web cam saying his lines that are at the beginning of the trailer. The only effect we added in post was the static; otherwise, it was all in camera effects.