Catching onto the latest social media trend, some friends in the local Omaha car scene decided to throw together a small little mannequin video. Here's the result. I love some of the vignettes from the street racing scene, to lighting the VHT on fire to even spraying down an engine bay with a fire extinguisher, I think we put together one of the most visually compelling videos in the challenge to date.
This was a wedding I was looking forward to for a long time. When Justin approached me to shoot it, there was no way I could say no. Cars + Weddings? Yes.
Justin drives a built Scion FRS with a dogbox sequential transmission, full aero, and built engine with a turbo best suited for road course racing. His wife, Tiffany, drives an S2000 with an intake and tune fitted with some aero itself. Justin and Tiffany compete in the local NASA club. They're both instructors at the roadcourse nearby as well.
I've attached some of my favorite moments as screengrabs, feel free to take a look!
Shooting Riley and Megan's was an absolute pleasure. I love the Omar Building as a venue, and when we went outside the building, everything was magical. The couple was super laid back and saw my and the photographer, Ash Frantz's vision. Seriously, without an amazing photographer like Ash Frantz this video wouldn't be possible.
Future brides take note: a stellar photographer helps make a stellar videographer.
Tabatha and I were supposed to go out and shoot a model last night, however, due to an accident at the model's workplace, she was unavailable. So, Tabatha took it upon herself to model with her limited experience and she killed it!
The theme is mostly 80s style horror, I wanted to reach outside the norm for this shoot and pull something off visually that we don't see too often. So it's like a bastardized version of classic horror and my current addiction, Mr. Robot.
This car is on another level. Tyler's attention to detail is absolutely insane. Stationed at Offut Airforce Base, you can clearly see where his income goes!
This Subaru rides on airbags to get an aggressive tucked look, but has several other awesome exterior mods including fender flares and a sweet front splitter. Tyler says one of his next moves it to get a big chassis mount wing to finish off the look. The rear seats are deleted for an AutoPower roll cage, and the motor is currently stock with plans to modify it in the future. It's currently running a Stage 2 tune, so the car makes roughly ~300whp.
Exterior:
cosmis S5R 18x10.5 +20
HT auto flares
ISC lower control arms
Airlift 3p management
Airforce struts
Strafe design front splitter
Diffuser
Black aero carbon fiber side skirts
Interior:
Autopower 5 Point cage
Cipher auto harnesses
NRG quick release
Grip royal steering wheel
AEM boost and AFR gauge
Cobb Accessport
Performance:
CNT downpipe
Agency power catback
Grimmspeed EBCS
Looking for a new an interesting challenge, my team and I took on the Omaha Film Festival 48 Hour Film Challenge. For those of you out of the know, a 48 hour film festival is a challenge that gives filmmakers a line of dialogue, a prop, and a genre. They are then tasked with writing, shooting, editing, and delivering a short film within 48 hours. There were tons of challenges along the way, but it was ultimately one of the most rewarding and amazing experiences I've ever had the opportunity of pursuing.
Our genre: Romance
Line of Dialogue: 'Ben knows how to get it done'
Prop: A picture of Steve Buscemi
We were given our challenge at 8PM on friday afternoon. From there, we went straight to the drawing board.
We started throwing ideas around like wildfire. Did we want to do a film revolving around someone falling in love with a picture of Steve Buscemi? No, too obvious. What about some guy that... No, too cliche.
What if we twist romance from person to person to person to drugs? Oh, now we're getting somewhere.
What if he has to battle his love interest and his addiction?
NO! Wait! What if SHES the one who introduced him to drugs but she ends up hating him for it!
What if he kills his girlfriend and turns into a serial killer? No, Julian, we're not making a serial killer film...
That's pretty much how it was written. A room of 5 guys bouncing ideas back and forth until we had a clear and distinct path. It was my call to tell the story in reverse. Show the girl being upset, and seeing this guy's life in shambles only to find out that it was all her doing in the end.
Our next step was planning. Since we all work at a wedding video company, we had to work around everyone shooting weddings Saturday. So we made the distinct decision to place the entire thing at night so we could shoot everything after weddings were done.
We started shooting at 11:00PM Saturday night. I started the night by shooting Lucas walking around a mostly abandoned area lit by a mix of orange and blue lights to get the gritty crunchy feel because nothing says 'BADASS GRITTY FILM' like teal and orange...
After walking around for a while, we started hunting an orange alleyway. I went insane looking for the right alleyway. I kept reiterating we NEED an orange alleyway, much to the dismay of our crew. We spent 30 minutes walking around downtown alone looking for the proper alleyway, luckily, I think we found the perfect one, almost all of my favorite shots from the short are in that alley.
Walking around with a Ronin garners some unwanted attention. A drunken group of bridesmaids going on their bachelorette party approached us asking to be in the film. We gave them the go ahead and had them look at our star Lucas as he walked by with a million mile stare. It really added atmosphere to the last sequence.
Our next order of business was shooting a rooftop scene. Since we had access to an apartment in the middle of the Omaha skyline we thought it would be really cool to grab at least a shot there. All in all, it took us roughly 45 minutes to an hour to get a shot that the viewer sees for roughly 1.5 seconds. But that's filmmaking.
From there, we went to shooting the slow mo sequence. Originally, it was planned to where Lucas would recite an entire sentence, but we found the shot too complicated to pull off in our limited time, so we went with 'woooooow' which in retrospect should have just been silent, but I digress.
We shot a deleted scene by our office of the girl meeting our star for the first time and that ended up being scrapped due to time constraints.
From downtown we made our way to the 'trap house' at roughly 3:00am Sunday morning. Upon arriving at the 'trap house' as we so affectionately call it, we got right to work. I forgot the cupcakes for the birthday scene downtown, so Tyler had to run back and grab them, in the meantime, we shot the introduction of the drug dealer, Ben. The Ben scene is my absolute favorite scene. I love the way the gun is revealed and the play on color temperatures from the dark, gritty, crunch oranges to the clean pristine white of the drug dealer's coke house. Tim was running audio on the other side of the door, and the entire scene just came together, from the cinematography, to the audio, to the acting. I can say that that is one of the scenes I think we absolutely nailed. That door creak is absolutely terrifying.
After we shot the drug dealer scene, we jumped to the kitchen to shoot the drug dealer giving his warning to Lucas to warn him to give him what he owes. We made the creative choice of having Julian lean into an out of focus frame to give it a dreamy look that I think worked well.
We then went to my drunk roommate's room to shoot the girl yelling through the door, that scene was pretty straightforward.
We then shot the first argument scene. The entire scene is improv and took several takes to get, and in retrospect, I should have cut it down slightly, but I'm a sucker for long scenes. After the argument, we popped outside after my drunk roommate insisted we put him in the movie. So we had him work as Lucas's confidant. Originally, the scene was supposed to be Lucas offering him cocaine, but after 7 attempts and dealing with a rambling drunk, he decided to take matters into his own hands and say he had coke, and it stuck.
We popped back inside and shot the cupcake scene. I wanted to bring the contrast of a heated argument back down with a tender moment of sincerity to bring an interesting audio/visual contrast. The brightly lit living room to a pitch black room lit by a single candle showing intimacy.
We then shot the final argument scene, this one took a few times to get right. Whitney absolutely nailed it. Her cold peer pressure plays really well on screen. Instinctively, I did a handheld push on her face as she gained more and more control and you can see Lucas's face slowly disappear off screen. I honestly did not know that I had done that until I went to post.
We finished up shooting Lucas at the ATM down the street and a few closeups of Whitney, then went back to the traphouse to finally shoot lucas searching like a fiend through all the shelves for cocaine. Then absolutely finished up by shooting the 'cocaine transitions' using a Helios 44-2 and freelensing.
We finished principle photography at roughly 7:30am then sat down to write the final monologue. We had thrown around the idea of the final monologue being a voicemail and ending on dead silence, but Tim showed me some of his cinematic sounds and we went with more of a tense ending with pulsating electronic buzzes. It took us about 45 minutes to come up with the final monologue using Julian's buttery smooth voice. After all was done, everyone went home and I got to work.
The rough cut was done in roughly 30 minutes, I posted it on YouTube for the team to review. It was a hit. I slept on it for a little while. 9:00am to 11:00am. I woke back up, graded the footage in about 10 minutes, then made some small cuts. The original video came to 5:19, so I had to find a way to get it down to 5:00. The biggest chop I made was cutting Julian's reveal of the cocaine down to a shot of Whitney's face while he recites the line 'don't get too addicted to this shit, otherwise you'll look like this fuckface right here'. Oozing with visual symbolism...
The final cuts were done at 2PM, and I turned the footage into the Omaha Film Festival crew at around 4:00PM then went to work and edited a wedding video for 7 hours.
We ended up taking 3rd place overall in the Omaha Film Festival 48 Hour Challenge and Runner-Up for Best Cinematography.
I did not sleep from friday night to sunday night, amassing over 50 hours of nonstop work, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Our crew was astounding and good sports. I look forward to our next one.
Male Lead: Lucas Miranda
Female Lead: Whitney Grace
Drug Dealer: Julian D Jackson
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Directed by: Julian Jackson and Kenny McKee
Cinematography by: Kenny McKee
Sound by: Tim Vogel
PA/Grips: Tyler Johnson, Brian Fimbres
Written by: Julian Jackson, Kenny McKee, Tyler Johnson, Tim Vogel, Lucas Miranda
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Gear: Sony A7SII, Atomos Ninja Flame, DJI Ronin, Rokinon 35mm T1.5 Cine, TASCAM, Rode Video Mic
Credit for BTS Photography: Tyler Johnson
This was a small project that myself and the very talented Julian D Jackson undertook for Kinnan-Scaping. The goal of this commercial was to advertise the patio spaces as great family meeting places.
I think Dia was my BIGGEST fan. Her and I conversed about her wedding video for months prior. I was so excited to shoot at Castle Unicorn, it did not disappoint! I brought out the drone for some cool scenic shots. I hope I lived up to her expectations!
This was my first cultural wedding that I've ever shot. These two were awesome, and it was amazing to step a little into the unknown. I learned so much about Paki tradition. An experience that I can only hope I captured.
This one was a last minute call, but I was glad to help shoot the ribbon cutting of a cool space for a local elementary school. You can really see the passion of what these guys do in their quality.
What a gorgeous day! I had the honor of shooting this amazing wedding in Sokol Park just south of Bellevue. Everything in the day just lined up, from the speeches, the atmosphere, and most of all the absolute magical scenery!
I'm honored to have had the privilege to hang out with this team in Mechanicsville, MD and shoot their recap video. This is the beginning of much more work to come!