After the success of my animated comedic short, How a Square Becomes a Triangle, I was asked by Meg Hammel and Erik Gunneson to produce the animated intro/sponsor trailer and TV spot for the 13th annual Wisconsin Film Festival, the largest campus based film festival in the nation. Previous film festival trailers and TV spots had run the gamut of creative ideas, from experimental shorts to 1950's tourism ads, and this year Meg wanted to focus on simple, elegant, and pared down animations of the festival logo, a mandala designed by swink. The goal was to give focus to the pattern and interplay of the entire mandala, rather than animating individual elements in separate instances. The pattern was key.

With the creative assistance of Erik Gunneson, I crafted the trailer and TV spot to reflect just that. Using the wonderful psuedo-3D power of after effects, we keep the structure of the mandala but explore the individual parts through depth. Simple color schemes animated in time explore the possibilities of the Mandala's patterns, and as one audience member put it "get you ready to watch a movie".

Above is the festival trailer, and below is the festival TV spot. The TV Spot aired throughout south central Wisconsin, and the Trailer played before all 200+ films shown at the festival, and was shown in 35mm, HDCAM, Blu-ray, and DVD.

The first of two short films created by the advanced motion picture production class at UW-Madison, A Super Story is a story about a young boy who envisions him self a superhero to cope with the realities around him. Much of the script hinged on exploring the differences between the two realities that Noah, our protagonist, creates for himself in the school yard.

This film was a huge learning experience for the entire group. The film was shot on 16mm, in the dead of winter, with children as our main actors. While we were familiar with 16mm from previous projects, the addition of children and the cold conditions led to some serious cuts and changes to the script, which ended up altering the possibilities of the project. Despite these challenges, we managed to pull through and create an end product that evoked the Batman cartoons of the 1960's and celebrated superhero culture with pizzazz.

How a Square Becomes a Triangle was born in the business building on a scratch piece of paper. It is vaguely centered on the ideas of conformity and structure, disharmony and nature. This piece is pure Dylan, silly, odd, and fairly lighthearted. It follows the adventures of a nameless square on its journey to becoming a triangle in the forest. This project was a labor of love and joy, and through it, I gained a sincere appreciation for the power of after effects, and the extreme work ethic that is required to create "moving" motion. While every project is satisfying to complete, this was a project that I truly felt like I accurately accomplished what I set out to do, and learned a ton in the process.

The piece was not completed in time to be submitted to the Wisconsin Film Festival. However, the 2011 Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Fest found it a satisfying fit in its animated shorts program. The short was well received, and it led to some wonderful opportunities for me, including my work on the Wisconsin Film Festival sponsor trailer and TV spot for its13th year.

Above is the short film itself, and below are stills from the animatic and early renditions of shots.

This is a short film (extremely short) that pretty much speaks for itself. The inspiration came mostly from the media we used to create it, namely discarded Adbusters, Newsweek, and People magazines. The heart of this project was to explore analog, tactile animation, and to become familiar with the 16mm to digital workflow in with animated forms (I had previously explored 16mm with "Night Shoot" and "Light Journal"). An unexpected joy was found in creating the sound design, which was composed entirely from creative commons sounds at freesound.org. The result is a lighthearted, Monty Python-esque animated short.

This is a simple camera test of the AG-HMC150P, and I just happened to be testing on a beautiful day. Most camera tests remain internal, or go into the recycle bin, but I felt that this showcased some of the power of that camera, and I was pretty fond of the images I captured. The HMC150 is a wonderful camera, not quite up to snuff with the Holy Grail that is the 5D Mark II, but it has a lovely depth of field and image sensor. Another bonus is its ability to capture at 60fps (at 720p), which you can then conform to a 30p or 24p timeline with compressor for a true slow motion output. Not quite the same as a 1000fps Phantom HD, but those on a budget have to dream don't they?

This was a test of my early lighting abilities for a cinematography class at UW-Madison. The scene I was tasked with shooting was entirely at night, outside, and we had one night to film it. Filming at night is both a blessing and a curse, as you have total control but you end up needing more light (or a faster film stock) to compensate for their being no natural light. However, my gaffer (Bobby Gryzynger, whom I would do later work with on "Just Breathe") and I worked out a wonderful plan and actually ended up with a fairly well lit and believable scene. What was most highly praised was my hand held camera work, which due to technical difficulties (no batteries, new batteries weren't charged, rain, jammed film in camera - we pretty much ran the gamut here) almost the entire scene was shot handheld. And anyone who has shot with the SR2 knows that this isn't a small camera to be bouncing around with. The end result was selected for the end of the year showcase at UW-Madison, and led to a number of other projects and work (including Just Breathe and the Wisconsin Film Festival Trailer.)

This is one of my favorite projects, as it was completed entirely analog, nothing was digital about the project (except for the telecine to capture it at the end). The film was shot entirely with a Bolex and edited (laboriously) by hand with a film splicer. The goal was to develop a tactile sense of how film and photography worked before digital, and to gain an understanding and familiarity with that process. Of course, a consequence of this was that I will never, ever curse at my copy of Final Cut Pro again. For all its quirks it nothing like editing by hand.

Beyond the technical process, I found that approaching a 16mm B&W experimental film to be extremely freeing. I essentially found myself wandering campus looking for instances of playful or interesting light that caught my eye. The film truly is an amalgamation of my adventures with light over the course of three weekends, strung together so that we move from light to dark, from richer exposures to slivers of light.

My first foray into the documentary form (I have not produced anymore myself, but I have worked as a PA and Boom-op on several upcoming Docs), Market Memories is my ode to the wonderful Dane County Farmers Market, held every Saturday during the summer around the (now- infamous) Madison Capitol. According to the organizers, it is the largest out door, producer-only farmers market in the nation. Here fresh veggies, fruits, sustainably and humanely raised meats, and all sorts of other wonderful items can be found, all produced within 150 miles of the Capitol!

I took on this project because the farmers market is what made me fall in love with Madison. Yes the college and the Badgers were there, and the students, but the farmers market was a part of Madison that didn't rely on the campus (although, like everything, it certainly benefitted from its presence). This is where I learned to eat well, and where I learned to value sustainability, localism, and organic food. The sights, sounds, and "smells", as well as the people in this short doc, are my memories of the market, shared with you. Don't watch it if your hungry or homesick for Wisconsin!

This is an oldie but a goodie, from 2006.

Phat Al Productions was a collaboration between high school friends, and mostly we produced comic improvisations for school projects and for fun. But, perhaps this is where it all started. This 24-hour film festival piece was our first foray into something that needed to stand-alone and entertain not just us, but an entire audience of strangers. It was a chance to prove that we could make something bigger than ourselves, and do it in a short time period. That is the thing I love about 24 or 48 film festivals, the intensity of the deadline propels every participant forward and multiplies their growth as filmmakers.

The festival submission rules were:

1. No sync Dialog
2. Must be B&W
3. Must make reference to a French film made before 1968
4. Must depict a cigarette being smoked indoors
5. No longer than 5 min.

For our efforts we were rewarded 2nd place.

Phat Al Productions was: Alex Youngen, John Whitehead, Mike Haase, Dan Leinfelder, and Dylan Wilbur