Posts tagged I make stuff

Dead Letter Office

Today I created a new folder on my desktop:

In the United States Postal Service, the Dead Letter Office is where undeliverable mail goes. For R.E.M. The Dead Letter Office was an album of B-Sides and rarities. On my desktop, The Dead Letter Office is where never-to-be-seen projects go to die.

My job at Crossroads is largely creative communication - take our given topic for the week and brainstorm about some funny, unusual, interesting way to supplement what our teachers are talking about. I create a lot of videos to this end.

This week we’re talking about relationships and how important it is to own your part of a problem. My idea was to do a Sesame Street style human/puppet interaction. As a kid we learn a lot about relationships from puppets - so maybe it would be funny to create a Sesame Street style video, aimed at an adult audience; surly puppets, adult reactions, that kind of thing.

So, I wrote a script, shot it, and started editing.

Somewhere around the first rough cut it became obvious that it just didn’t work.

The script was okay. The acting by my buddy Caleb was spot on. The pacing worked okay, I think. There was something when you put it all together, though, that just didn’t work. I showed it to someone else. They were very polite and positive about the piece - but agreed that something in it just didn’t hang together right.

So, we pulled it.

It was hard at first because I kept wondering - could I keep tweaking this thing until it got to where it needed to be? Maybe. But maybe not, and then you end up showing something that isn’t very good and doesn’t do the job it’s supposed to do - and let me tell you, having something you made bomb in front of 2,000 people is not a fun way to spend your morning.

So, in the folder it goes. I’m not sure why I’m keeping it. Partly, I think, because it was a lot of work and I just don’t want to delete it yet. Partly because I want to look at it some more and figure out how I could have made it work. And partly because a folder full of never to be seen projects is a good reminder that everybody sucks sometimes. The way you stop sucking is by continuing to do the work. The more you work, the better you get.

As a closing note, beside all the work I put into it, I really hate putting it down because it contained a scene where a puppet throws a bunch of action figures in a blender, and I really really liked filming that.

2011 Reel

So this is a short reel I put together from my professional work over the past year. The only clip I wasn’t paid for was from a Sunday Valley concert, but they asked to use it on their Youtube page and I liked the clip, so I included it as well.

Everything was shot with a Canon T2i and created with Photoshop and After Effects and Edited in Premiere Pro.

Most people put together reels to show potential employers - while I am gainfully and happily employed, I do take on the occasional freelance job (minus weddings. I don’t do weddings) so if you need some work done, feel free to drop me a line at patchdrury at gmail dot com.

Also, there is no Patchworks Films, it’s just something pretentious I put at the beginning. Films…

Death The Halls

Here’s a video we showed at Crossroads’ Christmas Eve services this year.

I am given a lot of leeway, obviously.

I had a lot of help with this one. Besides being a great lead, Caleb Mathis also, stepped in as photographer, grip, and tree puppeteer. My co-worker Jason Koerner did principal photography and another co-worker, Kerry Tuttle was our grip for the outside sequences. A friend, Frank Crabtree, also did some tree-shoving.

The whole process was a lot of fun and I felt like the video got a good response at all four services this year - we even made a little girl cry in the last service. Success!

Gather ye pleasures while ye may

The past two weeks have not been the funnest. This is a small piece of a larger project. Most fun I had today.

Joplin

Last week I went to Joplin with a group from Crossroads to volunteer with recovery efforts and to capture some video. It was heartbreaking, exhausting, and very rewarding. We met some incredible people and hopefully helped a small handful of people regain a tiny bit of control of their surroundings.

Here’s the video that we’ll be playing this weekend at church to encourage people to take part in future trips throughout the summer.

I usually wait until after the weekend to post pieces here on my blog - but this one doesn’t reveal anything content-wise about this weekend’s service, so I feel safe going ahead and posting it.

Plus, it’s not like that many people go to my blog anyway, right? Jerks.

Heaven and Hell

This video was created for Crossroads’ Please Don’t Ask series in which we addressed questions some Christians hope they’re never asked about - like the existence of Heaven and Hell.

This was the second project that intern Cody Guiler helped out with and I’m quickly becoming addicted to having an actual crew - even if it’s just one talented guy.

There are some really bad looking moments in the Heaven sequence because we didn’t think through the whole scene very well. Having a glass table, plate, and wine glass against a green screen bordered on idiotic. I also became convinced that I need a better lighting arrangement and wrinkle free screen before I do any future green screening…

Green screen backdrops

I was contacted by a church in Georgetown, recently, that wanted to start creating weekly announcement videos for their weekend services. They wanted to record them against a green screen and then add in backgrounds and graphics in post. Not knowing exactly how to get started, the church hired me to create some backgrounds and formatting for their announcements. It was a fun challenge. Here, for your edification, are the proofs I sent in for approval. The dude in each of them is just some guy I found on Google standing in front of a green screen, inserted here to show where talent would stand:

I also sent along this cutaway to show exactly what the piece was made up of:

If you need something like this, and can find me, maybe you can hire… me.

21 Hours of Love

In which I try to prove my love to the world in 21 Hours:

21 Hours

This week Crossroads started a new series called 21 Hours. It leads up to Easter. Here’s the bumper video for the series as well as the first video in a three part series: