Keone Madrid’s short-film supplement (read after watching)

Since the dawn of the Canon 5D mark II, Digital film DSLR’s were becoming popular. For a reasonable price you can record video in 1080p. Anyone can now shoot high-def, while also having the quality of the “film-look” to your video. YouTube/Vimeo scene exploded. Everyone was shooting DSLR these days. I see music videos after music videos. I see concept after concept. I see everything shot with DSLRs, and its starting to all look the same to me, for example: really cool lights, muti screen looks, and simple cut and paste etc. Even I am guilty of doing all those while editing, I easily got bored of doing it over again. So personally, I had to make an effort to set myself apart. I want my video’s to stand out. I want everything that I envision to come to life in my videos. I guess it all started with watching the Freddie Wong channel (youtube.com/freddiew). He made simple concepts with visual effects. That’s when it hit me; I need to stimulate my audience visually. The programs he uses allows him to create on film exactly what he envisions in his head. I don’t want my videos to be limited to just cut and paste, I want my creations to be limitless. That’s when I started learning visual effects. It allowed me to be more abstract. It challenges the way I view cinematography, and it got my brain to be more active, because I’m dreaming up shots left to right. I still have lots to learn. I’m no film magician like Freddie W, but I want to instill wonder when people see my videos too.

For choreographers, they love to put their choreography in film too. That’s when I knew I have to capitalize on this market, because I know choreographers imaginations are so inventive that simple “cut and paste edits” aren’t going to cut it. My goal is to make everything that a choreographer dreams up come to life. If they want something to look like “this” I better be able to make it happen. If they want something to look like “that” I better be able to make it happen. AND KEONE MADRID was one of the choreographers who challenged me to make his vision come to life.

Keone pitched the story of a guy having the ability to freeze time with an imaginary remote control. I asked myself “How in the world am I going to make a guy freeze time believable and not cheesy.” I didn’t. I somewhat lied to Keone and told him I knew how to pull this effect off, and once he gave me the green light, I would eventually learn how to composite time freezing. It was a big gamble but I was confident I would pull this off.

I feel what makes this film what it is, was the collaboration between director and choreographer. It was a back and forth type of relationship. He threw an idea, then I threw back an idea as well. The brainstorming of this project came together so well, that everything flowed so smoothly. It wasn’t a simple shoot at all; we strategically had to come up with a thorough game plan. We wanted to give the audience the impression of a short film. Not a concept. We were inspired by classic musicals (from the likes of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire) and we researched how they shot their dance numbers. We wanted the dancing to feel like a dance number and not a “music video.” Just like how there are random dance numbers in “Austin Powers”, or like the prom scene in “She’s all that,” we wanted the effect of a big production dance number in our film (the basketball court). Even though there is no singing in our short, we shot the dancing like a musical, hence the genre a dance-musical short.

Everything was planned out shot for shot, from the iPhone battery dying to the baby in the end freezing. All of this was done before shooting. So planning was a major factor when it came to the final product. All the time freezing was of course strategically planned. I had to imagine where everything was going to be while shooting (the basketballs, as well as, the b-ball players in the air). Editing it was a pain, but so much fun. The toughest shot was when Keone froze the two guys right after the choreography outside, and you see Keone cross over. That shot literally took 10hrs to complete, while the final duration of the shot was about 5seconds. Let me be clear, editing this film was labor intensive. Maybe 2-3 months to get the first rough draft done. I don’t have a crew to do this for me, cause I am the only person in my circle of friends who can do this. I need to teach people so I can have people help me. ANY TAKERS? Haha.

One more thing, moments before we shot, Keone and I prayed. I think he felt led cause this project was so much greater than him that he wanted everything go according to plan, and God had the power to make everything happen. The more I look back on his prayer, the more I felt God use me to make all this happen. I mean look, I never dabbled with special effects until now; I didn’t know half the things I was doing; and I only had about 4 days to prepare before we shot. Seeing how things were coming together in the editing room, everything just felt so miraculous to be honest. I mean, remember I didn’t believe I was capable of doing this film to begin with. All glory to God. Now that the film is finally on youtube, I look back and it was so much fun to be apart of something that was very challenging. I’m thankful that I had an opportunity to do it. It gave me an opportunity to learn more about the art of filmmaking. The challenges I came across were learning experiences that I would use for the next video and more to come. In summary, I told myself I wanted my work to stand out from the others. I am not there yet, but Keone’s project helped me become one step closer to it.

(Inside the Epilogue)

After the credits, there is a epilogue, but it wasn’t to bring closure, it was to show what it is to come. If you haven’t figured it out. This is only part 1 of a trilogy from Keone and Mari. Don’t keep your hopes up for more time freezes in the trilogy, cause there won’t be. However, I do feel the playfulness/the cartoony-ness of Keone in the first film will play a key part to the trilogy in my opinion. So a girl is introduced in the epilogue, and it’s played by Mari. DUN DUN DUN!!! That’s it; all you can do is wait until the next vid. I don’t want to give anything else away, but I am also excited to show the next video from this series. GOOD NEWS is the wait wont be long. It will be premiered no longer than two weeks.