How to Carve a Halloween Pumpkin

Here is a video I made for a class project. While visiting family for my sister's wedding, I enlisted my dad to carve a pumpkin for a training/how-to video assignment. I still don't have After Effects on my MacBook Pro, so I had to create graphics in Photoshop and animate them in Final Cut. I wish I could have spent more time on developing the graphics, but with my sister's wedding (rehearsal dinner, wedding, reception and travel), my deadline was quickly approaching and I had too much to do in a short time. That sexy voice you hear is mine. Please share this with anyone you know who may not know how to carve a pumpkin. It is a great tradition to share with your kids.
Music: Confugium Corvorum by Axis Mundi Actum courtesy of jamendo.com.

Hemophilia PSA: Dillinger

Last weekend I had the pleasure of working with my son, Dillinger, to produce a Public Service Announcement about hemophilia. It was a last-minute visit, so we didn't plan the PSA. It rained on Saturday, but the weather looked good Sunday, so we went to the park across the street to shoot Dillinger's stand-up shots. The footage of him self-infusing I shot in July while on vacation. I also used a photo from a year ago when we had to take Dillinger to the hospital for a bleed in his leg. Dillinger learned his script less than half an hour. He was great. We faced an unusual obstacle in the way of an air show. The only sunny day was the day of a huge air show, so jets were flying by every few minutes and we'd have to wait because it was very loud. Even so, it took us only 12 minutes to shoot the PSA. I am very pleased considering it was unplanned and we were limited by the weather and air show. Dillinger did a great job.

My Life With Hemophilia Video

I uploaded a video portrait of my 5-year-old son, Brandston.  He has severe hemophilia with inhibitors and receives infusions at least every other day.  This past week he received an infusion every six hours.  It was a rough week.  Besides the stress associated with my kid going through all this and not being able to play, I got real sick and didn't get to do something special with my valentine, Amber.  I had originally planned to tell a story from Amber's perspective as a caregiver, but when I reviewed my footage I didn't like the way the interview footage looked.  It was typical and boring, so I decided to let Brandston tell his story about getting infusions.


My Life With Hemophilia: Brandston (Enhanced Audio) from Mark Kenny on Vimeo.
This is a video portrait of my 5-year-old son, Brandston. He has severe hemophilia A with inhibitors and this is just a glimpse of what life is like for him.
The music featured is "Ceremony" by New Order, and is available for download from iTunes.
The audio has been enhanced for the comfort of your ears.
I was inspired by the videos I watched for our silent film projects.  I particularly wanted to use the Joelseph "interior POV" shot.  I liked the way he put the camera in the luggage (and trunk) in his first video.  I decided to do that in this video when Amber was pulling meds out of the drawer.  I also liked the way Jake mixed up his shots in his video, so I used that as inspiration when shooting this project and I ended up with some good options.  I couldn't resist the Rik Dubiel "over the coffee mug" shot that he showed the class in his coffee video, so I used it to look down over the drawer of meds.  As I mentioned, I shot an interview with Amber, but decided that I wanted to depart from the interview-style video and just show Brandston's infusion and let him narrate it.  It is a portrait of his life that gives a good overview of how having hemophilia impacts his life in his (every-other-) daily routine.

Triste (The Final Cut)

I tried to add a white vignette and some filters to give my dream sequence a whimsical feel, but without success. I even created a white vignette as a graphic in photoshop, but even though I matched the pixel resolution, FCExpress cut the top and bottom of it (ruining the blur). The effects were freezing up during playback, so I ditched them. I finally gave up and used a black vignette over a desaturation filter during the dream sequence. I also grouped those shots and cut the guitar, so hopefully it communicates my concept better.
Here is the final cut:

Triste (Final Cut) from Mark Kenny on Vimeo.

A short, silent film (no dialogue) inspired by the lyrics:
My life is endless burning
on a thousand dead desires.
It is about how people dream of becoming many great things in life, but usually end up doing something quite different. I decided to tell it from the perspective of a tree. He wanted to be a bat, or a fence, or even a bench... but he was cut down and burned to ashes instead.
I grouped the dream shots and put a vignette over desaturated video to make this footage distinct from "reality." I also cut 14 seconds... including the beautiful guitar.
The music featured is titled "Love Theme" by Daniel Bautista, courtesy of jamendo.com.