guest speaker - Mr. Norwood Cheek

normally guest speakers come in and preach to your class with that fake, cheery, you-can-take-over-the-world-if-you-get-an-education-and-work-hard attitude, that bothers me because all i can think of is that everyone is going to school now and everyone (for the most part) is on the grind to get where they want to go.  You can't just explain your success story to a bunch of scared undergraduates, who doubt themselves every day and wonder what it is that is going to be the next step, and expect everyone to be like "ohhhh, so that's how it works?! i had no idea!" But the other day, we had a different breed of guest speaker come talk with us, yes i mean talk, He wasn't condescending or even an advocate of our college life as the right path.  He came to be real with us. When i say real, i don't mean that He wasn't positive and encouraging, because this dude definitely was! What i mean is that He had this genuine outlook for our development as well as an understanding of our tough environment as future filmmakers.
He told us of his past in school and about how He studied French because if He was "actually going to learn anything from school" it might as well be useful and language was something He understood as such.  He also talked about His creation the Flicker Film Festival as well as his current work with music video production.
so who is this man you ask (if you haven't looked at the title already)... Filmmaker Norwood Cheek!  His work with making videos for bands like Squirrel Nut Zippers and She & Him is amazing!  He showed us a few of His works, and the visual themes corresponded to the mood of each song perfectly.  He also told us that ultimately it is what makes the band happy that is important.  i thought that statement was really reflective of His personality in general because it told us how He views the process of making a music video, in that it may be His creative vision but the whole product needs to match and reflect the image of the artist(s).  Mr. Cheek's attitude inspired me to stick with my initial thoughts of entering music video production.

After listening to Norwood tell us about His experiences, and His questions he has for the future of film in general (ie will there be any use of actual film after the next 10 years? will there be any original ideas or will each new movie be a remake of some earlier classic), i left class that day reassured and thinking "wow okay, this is right. i'm supposed to be here"

(this is one of his videos he showed us! She & Him- Thieves )
ps if you were wondering if i intentionally capitalized every pronoun associated with Mr. Cheek, the answer is yes. yes i did.  He is that cool.

music video shoot

for the music video shoot i was excited about being the director of this group assigned project, but as i thought more about it and our shooting date approached i became a bit apprehensive.  director! .... director. .... director? .... okay yea director. 

we all came together for pre production planning and for the most part unanimously agreed upon everything with ease.  then on the day of the shoot we all arrived on time and ready to rock with everyone bringing things to transform the location of this old historic, ghost inhabited house into this dysphoric, restless space for our main character to dance around.  we cut out shapes of stars and diamonds out of aluminum foil and decorative paper and taped them to clear fishing line and the fishing line perpendicular to another fishing line to two wooden rods.  we had one person hold up one rod on a step ladder and another person on the opposite side of the room holding up the other rod to create a bouncing light reflecting set of images of childlike craft time stars around our erratic moving dancer.  (it sounds confusing because it is haha) 

another scene which our group worked hard at creating great art direction, was when we had the dancer slumped out on the couch and we had the furniture and home decor move closer to her as she herself folded up like a piece of crumpled paper.  the idea was to make the space around her move in a claustrophobic manner which we will accomplish in the editing process by means of stop motion animation.  

overall the shoot went really well and everyone worked as a team to get the project executed following the vision we wanted.  we are now in the process of editing and i'm excited to see how it's going to turn out!

inspiration for music video project

contemporary alternative rock music videos that influence my ambition to go this path in school

the kills-black balloon

the klaxons-magick

reptar-context clues

the cults-abducted

the cults- go outside