2007

Neosupervital- "Alternative Day"

This is the music video I directed for the Irish band Neosupervital's single, "Alternative Day." I made it as part of NYU Tisch's semester abroad in Dublin, where I studied music video production. This was the first time I made something in HD, and the first time I made something that was actually broadcast on television. To date, it is still the project I am most proud of. I love music videos and for a while dreamed of directing them, but right after I finished this program I realized that the industry was slowly, slowly dying, and that music videos were no longer made as works of art, but solely as promotional tools. Today, I focus more on screenwriting and producing.

Music Video Assignments

These are four one-minute assignments I did for my music video course in Dublin, Ireland. Each was designed to teach us a different aspect of music video production: Portraits, Inanimate Objects, 3 Second Cuts, and Lip Sync. We were allowed to set the videos to a clip from any song we'd like, and were given free reign in terms of creativity. Some of the ideas I came up with here actually appeared in the video I directed for Neosupervital, namely projecting images on the band. All in all I think they give a good picture of my editing skills.

Blood and Pixels

Documentary filmmaking is hard. Coming up with a subject for, and then shooting a documentary in a matter of weeks is even harder. This is why the projects in Sight and Sound: Documentary at NYU Tisch vary in quality, and often focus on the documentarian themselves. I didn't want to make a movie about me, because that seemed indulgent, but I couldn't think of an amazing subject, so I decided to take a more "Super Size Me" kind of approach, where I incorporated parts of my own life into the subject itself. I'm an avid gamer and have always found the violent videogame issue a bizarre one. Why does violence in games strike a chord, and why is sex still abhorred more than murder in our nation's media? I knew I wasn't going to be breaking any new ground- it's a school project after all- but I do think I managed to make something entertaining, and make some valid insights in the process.

2004

The Gunslinger

This is my first color sync film, shot at Universal Studios, Burbank for the New York Film Academy's six week Advanced High School program. It was a great program- we had amazing professors, and got access to some of Universal's props and wardrobe departments, as well as the Universal backlot. Kill Bill, Vol. 2 had reinvigorated my interest in spaghetti westerns and I had recently watched the entirety of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy, as well as Once Upon a Time in the West. In hindsight, I could have spent my time at Universal making something more original, but when I realized I had the opportunity to shoot on a real frontier set with real cowboy costumes, I just couldn't pass up the chance to make my own spaghetti western. Dialogue and plot were of little concern to me on this project- I crafted a version of your basic western revenge tale, with a little twist at the end my professor suggested. What I was really interested in was making my film as authentic as possible- I made sure the framing, color timing and music (which I "borrowed" from Ennio Moriccone) had that spaghetti western feel. In that respect, I think I did an excellent job. And considering I was only seventeen at the time, I think I made a pretty impressive first stab at a film with sound. Plus, it's gotten over 60,000 hits on Youtube.

2003

Ape

Sometime in the early 2000s I decided I wanted to be a computer animator and/or artist. I loved the Lord of the Rings series and decided that the coolest thing wouldn't be becoming a writer/director, but being the guy who creates all the awesome creatures and explosions behind the scenes. Turns out it wasn't for me. I took a four week course at the New York Film Academy's program at Harvard University, which was a lot of fun. I made some cool friends and had a great time, and left with a pretty decent first stab at computer animation. But it's incredibly tedious work and I decided it just wasn't my cup of tea. Unfortunately, I just generally ran out of time at the end, thus explaining the slow moving coconut and the lack of trees in the final shot. Regardless, here you can continue to see my persistent obsession with monkeys.

2002

Porselaniphobia

This is the final film I made for the New York Film Academy's high school program at the Dalton School. I was inspired by the protagonist of the "Monkey Island" series, Guybrush Threepwood, who in several installments expresses an irrational fear of porcelain. Unfortunately, being a student film, the DP and/or AC didn't notice the film had run out and kept rolling while we shot the ending sequence. I was forced to reshoot with the lead actor (also a TA), but an original ending, in which the porcelain people close in on him until he accidentally falls to his death down a flight of stairs, has been lost to time.

Gorilla Joe

My second movie shot on film, Gorilla Joe was a simple exercise that I think ended up being pretty successful. It's a little underexposed at times, which is unfortunate because the awesome gorilla suit I procured is difficult to see. It was a fun movie to make, and I liked pulling a double-Hitchcock and appearing twice in the film- that's me getting tripped, and me in the gorilla costume. People actually thought I was handing out free samples, but in truth I got the chicken from Popeye's.