Loving Lanka vid

Some recent goodness I have been into:


And then this, for the geeks:


Making Of Loving Lanka from Sebastian Linda on Vimeo.

Behind the Dreams (process post)

Another year at the Y, my 5th this past May. Another Annual Dinner video with a fairly generic theme of "Dreams." This is all I knew about 4 weeks out from the Annual Dinner; that the theme was Dreams. I had nothing else really to go off.

Ok, that's not 100% true. I did have this, via email and a meeting I was not even involved in:

"End of evening video idea: 
Tell the story of the the 2020 Strategic Plan through video. Use Strategic Plan as a guideline.
For Youth Development - possible story about academic performance. Video B-roll of camp, before and after school care, The First Tee, youth programs, etc. Measuring success with on screen measures.
For Health Living - Possible participant story on DPP. Video and mentions about sports, Youth Obesity, health programs and more. Measuring success with on screen measures.
For Social Responsibility - Member story of a recipient of YMCA annual giving or highlight a volunteer or Anthony's Togetherness program. Video B-roll of how the Y impacts the community. Anthony's design team. Measuring success with on screen measures."

My favorite lines are "Measuring success with on screen measures." I have slowly come to realize that I am in this on my own, but nothing says that more to me than that kind of nonsense-talk.

So, I knew immediately that this video couldn't happen in the way outlined above (not only because it makes little sense, but also because we do other videos for financial development that are briefed this way—testimonial-stories). I knew the real challenge was "how to connect a dry corporate document to something visual, inspiring, and dreamy."

Then someone decided to tell me that the CEO had shared and liked this Five Extra Years spot going around (actually from a few years back but I had never seen). I liked it alot and knew immediately it was professional level work. I found out it was a Wieden+Kennedy spot created with Nike.



I had my idea. I would just recreate this for the Y. Nothing new under the sun, right?

The type on screen instantly grabbed me, I had to try that. So I sketched ideas after a chance encounter with strangers running up a hill at Mt. Trashmore. I recreated the shot with my own family (Dylan, Adam, Sarah and Tristan). From there I tried to get as many shots like that as I could for the ending, not totally knowing what the words were gonna be, or how many of the shots would work.

The Preschoolers were all just test shots, hoping some of it would work. The older kids were the same way, I basically spent about two hours at a YMCA after school child care location with kids, having them repeat after me while also asking them, genuinely, "What's your dream?"

Things Learned: You can never start too early. Shotgun mic's shoot in mono and don't work as easily as one would think with the H4N. Only depend on yourself. Stay true to your vision. Don't delete sound files on your H4N until you are done with the project. Don't have a teenager get focus on your DSLR (it will be blurry).

Tech specs: Canon 5D Mark II, 24-105 f/4 lens, 85mm 1.8 mostly. Maybe a 35mm f./1.4.
Edited solely in Final Cut Pro X.

Finally, I think I shot this video in just under 3 weeks and edited it in about 2 days. When you work to a deadline you use everything you have. Below I have attached a screenshot of how the filming went down, etc. I felt like I had to plan it all on a physical piece of paper just to wrap my head around all the filming engagements (I was filming other videos concurrently—mostly short "talking heads" stuff for the annual dinner event as well). *The Annual Dinner was on Feb 5.

Read more about Annual Dinner Videos I have done here.

D Gray

I truly feel I have reached a new level of contemporary adult guy listening to this shit. I still like it though.

TAKE A PICTURE?

i am just looking at vine on the computer since you can do that now and i get excited about it … in general i get excited about things… like pj harvey… and green lights all the way home. and a nd .. well, things that just go right, because in life, things can go very wrong and you have to be grateful for when they go right.

not sure about alot of things but this has been here awhile and figured a good place to dump some frumpy thoughts. 2015

love is a rose. 

Three Boys

Amazing drawing, courtesy of Joe Werner.

Sunflower to the sky

This is a sunflower about 20 feet high. It stands in my neighbors yard. I was aghast at it's sight. Pow! It is drooping now and will probably die. That is all.

Sean Malto, GoPro clip

SEAN MALTO POV KF AND 5050 LINE from Ricki Bedenbaugh on Vimeo.

life is this thing

life is this thing where you share moments now
it used to be felt with and dealt with—more pri-vate-ly.

i've gotten used to it now, but i'm more comfortable with it then.
i could share with you this moment, forever; over and over again

theres all these platforms, theres all these things—
when i used to just lay in my room.

if my house burns down thats why i keep up with it—
these moments would live on happily forever;
we leave these trails when we're gone

occasionally i get th itch. i miss my connections.
i'm tired and i'm lonely but i dont think about it much.

this blog is here because it always was.
i stopped for awhile and it feels good to return
i hope no ones watching now—

so many things are changing; people moving on
this is . . . perhaps, transformative, for some

myself, im lost in the moment, of forever-now
occasionally, i'll drink bourbon and will see through
i hope i'm not myself, two years from now on—

we travel these fields and navigate these paths,
these memories of ourselves, will trail us forever—
informing us of our next, ever-present past.

Overwhelmed

So much has been said of it, what can be said anymore? Well, personal anecdotes that's what!
We all work too much and don't know what else to do with ourselves. It's something that happens, for varying reasons, but after awhile it just becomes endemic. I don't know if that's the word for it but it sounded right. What I am trying to say is that when you are busy as shit for like 2-3 years, thats just the new normal and you have to adjust. Then, say, you have an afternoon to yourself, you are at a loss for how to fill that time. I have experienced this and it is a disconcerting feeling. After all, I have never been one to not know what to do with myself. For years it was skateboarding. I filled my free time with skateboarding. I grew up listening to music in my bedroom. I could just "be." I watched minimal TV. I watched skate videos and read some here and there. Anyway, swaying off topic...

I don't want stuff, I want time.

Here is a recent article, book review, from The New Yorker that really is worth reading; a distillation of the books best precepts and points. Read it here.

One of the many things that stuck with me and keeps me thinking about the value and quality of life and our time (abridged, a bit):

"In the nineteen-seventies, the British, the French, and the Germans—though notably not the Italians—put in just as many hours at work as Americans. But then the Europeans began trading income for leisure. The average employed American now works roughly a hundred and forty hours more per year than the average Englishman and three hundred hours more than the average Frenchman. (Current French law mandates that workers get thirty paid vacation days per year, British law twenty-eight; the corresponding figure in the U.S. is zero.) Stiglitz predicts that Europeans will further reduce their working hours and become even more skilled at taking time off, while Americans, having become such masterful consumers, will continue to work long hours and to buy more stuff. TVs, he notes, “can be put in every room and in both the front and the back of automobiles.”

Sadvertising

More here and here.

Grads film (Google)

To me this is incredible work. It has impact, emotion and depth a million leagues below!
It is (assumedly) 100% culled from the YouTube nation we live in—real video clips from real people. It is a collaged assemblage of our modern life. Online. It fascinates, resonates and reverberates simply because of this.

I cannot imagine going through high school online. I really think it would fuck me up and I have to wonder how fucked up everyone is getting by this new normal. That's another subject entirely for another blog. For now, I really enjoyed watching that above piece, one time, full screen and full immersion. Powerful storytelling.

PBS: Film School Shorts

PBS has some great streaming stuff on their app. Just stumbled upon this great idea for a series...
Film School Shorts

Pretty awesome little effect here. It gets a little much, but I do like it alot. It'd be cool to use it as a transition in an otherwise normal movie setting. I think I am just going to post inspirational, all around goodness here for awhile. Resurrect the blog, part VII.

Best piece of short doc/storytelling I have seen in awhile. Simply perfect.

Heroes

"It's the Heroes among us that keep the Y strong."



Every year, for the past three, I have been tasked with shooting/editing the final video (2-3minutes) at our YMCA Annual Dinner meeting. Each year I manage to do this and each year I have to try to outdo the previous one. This is an overwhelming project, but I always enjoy the challenge. I figured I would make a post describing how this year's video came together (in just under a week!)

Each Annual Dinner has a theme, in 2011 it we started focusing more on Members and their stories. In 2012 the theme was Magical Moments and in 2013 our theme was Heroes Among Us, recognizing the staff, volunteers, members and community partners who enable us to do what we do every day.

It started with research, which I began awhile back. I checked out other YMCAs on YouTube for what looks like interesting or creative concepts in video. It didn't take long until I stumbled on YMCA Canada's Public Service Announcement style, campaign, about "Nurturing Potential." http://ymcapotential.ca/ and I knew right away the direction I wanted to take.




I knew I wanted to move away (far away!) from type on a screen, particularly the number we serve, ("Over 250,000...") since is has been that way for the two previous videos. I wanted to create a more PSA oriented, feel-good piece on the overall message of impact we have.

Sue Fay, our writer for the Annual Report was to write the script for the video as well. I had told her my thoughts (slower paced, PSA, Voiceover) and linked her to the above PSA, but she was slammed with just getting the Annual Report done.

It was getting seriously close to the date, so I decided to write the script myself one morning—sketching it out first thing in the morning at work after visualizing it on my drive in. (**As if this wasn't enough, Coastal VA got slammed with an enormous snow storm; 8-10"—the most we've seen in decades, putting the entire region on shutdown for 2 full days).

I had the introduction ("They wake up in the morning... people just like us") and the closing ("..in his Eyes, Her Mind and Our Hearts ... you're a hero") but the middle portion needed some serious work, as far as the language. While I knew what I wanted it to convey, I knew I had to get the mood right and the tone so it wasn't too corny! So the end result benefited largely from Sue's help.

I shot the opening shots at my neighbors house one week from the Annual Dinner. I worked through the weekend at YMCAs getting as many shots as I could visualize from a roughly sketched "shot list"—and really just resorting to video-portraits when I couldn't seem to stage the shots I really wanted.

The voice over was Andrew Cronin, a long time friend from college. He nailed it in like three styles. I chose "Jim Bob Lite" (folksy, friendly) —we made this up... but yeah, less dramatic more friendly. This saved us $1500 at least. Voice over talent is expensive!!

All in all, I am proud of the final result but I think more time would have made this piece truly awesome. A video never really feels done. On any of the big ones I have ever worked on, I end up tweaking it right up until the deadline. As soon as I finished this one I had all kinds of ideas on how I could have made it better. I feel like it started strong but I quickly fell into a montage of Y moments, instead of sticking to the script. Thankfully, some of the more touching lines at the end helped me pick it back up ending with the shots of cute kids, creating the inspirational shots that a video about Heroes needs.

That's all, just figured I would put all this down somewhere and have it written.

From Behind

Amazing

tragic loss

Beer flights at Cafe Stella

Say what!?

Maury in snow

It snowed and I took a picture on my phone. Here is what that looked like.
2014, I can't get you;
While everything is happening in the now and captured in the now—that something like this is, is lost. Lost to the now. Lost to the non essential. I think this is beautiful. This os a picture from a phone so can it even count? I think so, I guess, but when you are in the now, the past and future seem blurry at best.

I think I should go to sleep. I plan to post more. I don't care.