As always I’ll be updated both this page and other pages with more stuff as soon as I get more projects done. Right now is a little bit of a rocky time due to some things going on. But no fret, there will be more stuff. Until then, enjoy!

A video I made while driving home from seeing INCEPTION. I had the score blasting out of my speakers and was inspired to edit the raw footage together to make a short little nothing video. There’s no story…or maybe there is.

So on Friday night I realized something about myself that was only cemented in last night after looking through some of my old, unfinished video projects: my strong suit for film making is writing. I use to love making movies (i.e. writing, directing, acting, editing) but as the years went by, I started getting frustrated with trying to make the things I wanted to do and ultimately ended up not finishing a handful of projects. These short films are half completed, never getting all the footage I wanted to complete the story I wrote. You would think that being the writer/director would be easy because I would write the story already knowing what I can do, where we can film and who will be in it. But somehow it’s never that easy.

The stories of New Prairie that I created were originally suppose to be movies or short films. But the more often I was unable to finish one of them for some reason or another, the more I leaned towards writing a story version. The thing is that I found myself liking writing the story more than ever trying to actually make the movie, mostly because it allowed me to do things that I would have been limited on doing with live action. I didn’t have to worry about locations, or actors being available. I didn’t have to worry about how I was going to shoot someone or what music was going to be playing for any given scene. (Granted I still make playlists of songs and scores from movies that best emulate the feeling of a story or the city. It inspires and helps me write when I listen to them.)

So this weekend I realized I dont want to make movies anymore. I dont even want to try. I’ll write them. I’ll do Visual Effects work for them. Title sequences. Maybe even edit them, but I dont want to be in charge of actually making them anymore. Someone else can have the fun doing that while I sit back and watch my story be assembled. It’s easier and much less stressful this way.

I think.

Personally I dont care what a celebrity does in their free time, how they act or their views on anything in this world. What matters is the product, whether it be music or a film, that they produce for my enjoyment. If I enjoy what they do in their field, their personal life means nothing to me. I think people get too caught up in what a celebrity does in their spare time and let that rule their decision making on whether they’re good at what they do. Because honestly let me tell you, there is no one with a clean record in this world no matter how “perfect” they may seem or act. Do you judge every single person because of what they do in their spare time? Then what makes a celebrity so different? Because they’re in more of a spot light? Because we have this misconception that if they’re up there on the silver screen it means they should be “perfect role models”? If that’s the case then shame on us for believing that’s the type of world we live in.

And what makes the celebrities of today any different then those of the last 100 years? Actors from the dawn of Hollywood were getting into trouble, beating their spouses, drunkingly crashing their vehicles and sounding off to others because of their opinions. Opinions that are just that: their own opinions. Last time I checked I thought we as Americans lived in a world where we had the right to live and think for ourselves without other people telling us what to do. When did that change? And how does a celebrity’s opinion change the way they perform their talent? And how come certain celebrities’ entire career (read previous works before ‘scandal’) is stained when something they do or say goes public and blown way out of proportion? 20 years of amazing and excellent work is suddenly bad because they voiced their opinion or got caught being human and showing human emotions.

Another question I have is why do some celebrities seem to be “forgiven” after a few years (or sometime’s months) while others never regain a total pardon? An actor can be amazing at what he does, has a hard time adjusting to their new fame and glory, suffer depression, become addicted to drugs, “Oh no! he’s doing drugs! And now he’s in rehab, what a terrible person!”, then 4 or 5 years later do one film, have audiences go “Huh, he’s still a good actor, let’s forgive him and cast him in everything we possibly can!”. How does this happen with one celebrity but not all of them? Is it because we’re so wishy washy in our world that we find ourselves casting judgement on a person too soon without giving them a second chance, only to down the line realize we were wrong and quietly apologize to ourselves in a voice not loud enough for the rest of the population to hear?

We are a stubborn society, filled with people who are afraid to admit when they’re wrong. I will be the first to admit that I have acted this way in the past. Situations have come up that I have misjudged or judged too quickly only to find myself wrong. But I’ve learned from my mistakes in the past, apologized to people for my misjudgment and actively seeked ways to avoid doing it again in the future. Perhaps I’m too forgiving of people.

We all have our opinions and I respect that. We all feel, think and act freely of one another and we should be able to live in a world where we can express our opinions as civilized persons and move on. But perhaps we can just learn to not judge so quickly next time. The only problem with this concept is that it works strictly on a case by case basis. There are certain situations where judgement would probably work better to be casted quickly upon a person for something they did. But these are usually severe circumstances (i.e. killing someone, holding people hostage, etc).

I’m not ranting about any single celebrity when I speak of them in general. These thoughts have been running through my head for the last 15 years of my life as I’ve watched a handfull of my favorite celebrities go through this. Most dont seem to recover from their tainted public image but that wont stop me from enjoying their talent and work provided to me. I am no longer ashamed to admit I like Michael Jackson’s music or watching Pee-Wee Herman movies. I dont care what they did in their free time, all that matters is that the work they produce is entertaining. After all they’re entertainers.

So here is one of those weekends that I seem to be experiencing more and more often as of late. I remember summers and even time in general when I would kill to do something on a weekend but usually found myself sitting around watching a movie. But as the years have gone by, my summers have been getting busier and busier and I sometimes long for the times of doing nothing.

This weekend, while busy, is going to be awesome in so many ways. First off, I’m in a wedding. No, not MY wedding (that wont be any time soon) but one of my best friends is getting married and he (indirectly through his future wife) has asked me to be the best man. I have never been a Best Man before and when asked if I wanted to do a speech of course I jumped at the chance. I use to act in high school and have no problems getting up in front of big groups of people to do speak.

So I sat down to the speech the other night and I realized that I had no idea what to say. I’ve known my soon-to-be-married friends for a long time but I for the first time in a long time was unable to come up with something to talk about. Then yesterday during the day I had a revelation to start off with a quote. I wont go into specifics here but needless to say that one quote idea spawned the rest of my speech and hopefully it will be something that my friends love and are happy with on their special day.

So back to why this is a crazy weekend. Tonight is rehearsal, oh but dont forget about the fact that I work until 3:30 at my daytime job. So tonight is the rehearsal, tomorrow is the wedding (which of course is an all day ordeal), then come Sunday is the 4th of July which we’re doing something for of course. Expect a slew of photographs to be showing up from the next few days sometime during next week when I have a moment to catch my breath from this crazy awesome weekend.

At least I get Monday off…that’ll be nice.