I had the privilege of being a part of a team of people that set out to create a brand, or story, that cut to the core issue of life: We all die. But what’s worth dying for? This is the trailer to a longer documentary you can find at the resulting site we put together: www.thelastletter.org

Check out the entire video feed at the Last Letter Vimeo Channel.

I should mention that we worked with some amazing musicians: Albert Kiteck did some of the solo electric guitar tracks, original stuff. And Jordan Martin gave us permission to use his song “Dark Days”. Beautiful work and mucho thanks guys.

I’ve been given the opportunity to participate in the Dali International Photography Exhibition in Dali, Yunnan Province, China this week. Some of my selected work will be on display with others in an exhibition. I’ve entitled this selection of work as “Faith.Love.Hope.” after an important passage of text from the Bible that captures much of my understanding of the world I see through the photographic medium. Paul is the writer, and he is describing how this present world is but a mere reflection of the future world to come, and how our current knowledge and vision of the Creator God is only partial, but will be perfected at His return. The passage I refer to is 1 Corinthians 13:12-13, and reads:

¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I look forward to participation, making new photog friends, celebrating photography in Asia, and exploring the beautiful landscape around Dali for a few days.

A friend asked me to shoot wedding pictures around the old wall in Chiang Mai, so we went for a tour, rode in the tuk-tuk, then did some evening stuff before ending the following day with a morning at the elephant farm outside of town. Let me know what you think.

Going to the Black Sea was an amazing experience. Freezing, cloudy, but to see the black stones take on bashing water, to feel the power of the wind, the chill of the nose, the sweat under on my neck under the scarf, the vastness of the water, was a truely unforgettable experience. To think there were some that didn’t join us because it was too cold … you missed out…

When my sister got engaged, I commited to doing a short documentary about the history of her relationship to John Thomas (JT) English the Third. I learned a lot about my sister and now-brother-in-law. And I learned a lot about filming. They met in a King Soopers grocery store in Colorado, but King Soopers staff wouldn’t let us film there. So we ran down to a gas station at midnight, and the clerk said, “yeah do whatever you want.” So we filmed in the candy isle of a gas station convenience store. I shot the entire thing in 10 minutes, with an average two takes per shot.

I had never done a re-enactment before, so this was a grand experiment, and a mistake actually. I was editing the piece, wondering what visuals (archive photos from their college albums, etc) I might have to use with the finished audio segment I had edited together. Then I got the hot idea to just have them say certain lines from the edited audio, and I would try and sync the movement of their mouths on top of their interview audio segments. So that was the starting point.

Then with the approach decided, I had to come up with a shot list. So I just listened to the audio segment play back, and just started linearly writing down in my head how it might play back. I often do this when listening to This American Life, a radio program that is one of the most visual forms of journalism out there, in my opinion. I digress. So I came up with a linear shot list, and some of the shots had a quote or two that I wanted them to say. I had, for instance, written down on a post-it, “over Macy’s shoulder, get JT coming around isle, checking Macy out.” When we filmed the shot, after two takes, I knew I had what I needed. So editing was super easy, just setting in and out points.

The other cool thing about this was that as a re-enactment, I got to use the real people, and they got really into it. So it might classify as a ‘docudrama’, but hey, whatever the case may be, it was fun, and got some good laughs at the wedding reception.

I have to thank, of all people, the New York Times for supplying some great ideas and inspiration from their series of wedding videos entitled “Vows.”

~Chris.

I served as one of 6 coaches for the UNC-Chapel Hill hosted project Andaman Rising. I helped three students develop their videos. It was one of the first times I’ve been asked to coach in a somewhat academic setting, and I can’t say how much I learned from teaching. Actually, it was mostly asking them the right questions, and then was blown away by the answers ‘my’ students came up with. The pieces I helped coach were Robed In Merit, A Good Son Forever and Anchored In Faith.

One afternoon during the 3-week project at Khao Lak Resort outside Phuket, Thailand, I watched a video tutorial by Larry Jordan about the “film look” and he dispelled the notion that it’s all about 24p, which is what most of the conversations about attaining the ‘film look’ are about. He said what will really get you a film look is to: 1. don’t wash out your highlights. no ‘zebra stripes’. 2. keep a narrow depth of field.

After hearing that, I picked up the camera and started walking around the small “tree house” that served as our editing room. It had windows on all sides. So I made it my visual playground and started taking 10-sec clips of anything. playing with light, keeping things zoomed, trying new angles. doing manual focus moves. I didn’t even have an edited piece in mind. I was just rolling tape, playing around, experimenting. A few things I discovered in the process, coming from a still photography background: most good cinematography is largely telephoto, shot from far away, and compressed, and is much more zoomed in. Part of the reason is that when dealing solely with sequenced shots, you don’t have to get ‘all the information’ in one shot. You build the information linearly through 3-4 shots that build mood. I’m still learning and playing with this…

The next day, I took out the camera for the closest ‘spot news’ event we were going to cover, which was a tsunami evacuation drill that is done twice a year to test all the new equipment and routes in the area. The locals were going to run down the street at the sound of the alarm, and all the students would be running and moving with them. I figured it would be a good day to get the students in action, so I shot a little of that too.

And without much more effort, I slapped some of these clips together, added a few freeze frames of their movies, and then did some low-light shots on the beach, and wala, a little piece that helps give a sense of place and mood as the Andaman Rising project came together.

Forgot. If you use music, especially good music, give rightful credit. Even if it’s a slideshow for class. I checked the Sigur Ros website, and in their FAQ they say using their tunes for small stuff like this is cool…