Monday, February 9, 2009

Merit Badge Day

I've had so many gifts and opportunities given to me my whole life -- thrown at me even! (panties, mostly). So, I decided, it's high time I give a little back. Last Saturday, I participated in the Deerfoot Baptist Church Merit Badge Day, where I instructed approx. 20 scouts as their Cinematography merit badge counselor. We discussed terms, rules, and technique for 2/3s of the class and in the last hour we picked a story from one of the class members and shot a short movie. I have uploaded those to youtube and they are now available below:

This was an idea from one of the class members. I think it turned out well.

The video below is a true story. All of the scouts' ideas were a little too complex, or just horrendous, so we went with a story I thought would work. I witnessed this exact event at a merit badge day when I was 15.


I edited all of this on my new iMac, and I don't have After Effects yet, so all the special effects are done frame-by-frame in FCP. I wish I had a motion tracker, but I kind of like the crappy fx.

2 comments:

Mr. Trione said...

Very nice. Boy Scouts = lots of blood. Or at least when they make movies with you. I agree. The low-fi effects were great. Especially the with the dinosaur. You should remake Jurassic Park.

Falcon Steele said...

that is a brilliant idea.