The Flame

Last week, us CreComm students had an assignment to create a short video without words. I got myself an awesome actor (big thanks to Kenton Dyck for being so darn cool) and put my mind to developing a concept and aesthetic. Here's what I came up with:

I'm going to leave it up to you to interpret the story and the message, but I will say that shooting and editing was a really interesting experience, and I'm really proud of what I came up with.

That being said, I did fight long and hard with After Effects to try to stabilize my footage. It did get kind of shaky - it was cold outside, and I was free-handing it the entire time. However, after many useless hours and several entirely futile stints in the edit suites, I was left with beautifully smooth, professional-grade footage, completely garbled and mixed up by Premier Pro. So here I am, left with shaky footage.

I hope you enjoy the video nonetheless, and I'm hoping I can get that After Effects / Premier Pro synchronization worked out for the next project.

Poems, Poems

This week we began a poetry unit in one of our classes, and it reminded me of the passion I once had for writing it. So I went to my collection of writings and pulled out a few poems which I hadn't read for some time.

In light of my plans to create a YouTube channel dedicated to poetry reading, I thought this was especially appropriate timing, and decided to revise a few of the poems I had written.

Below are two such poems.


Murder

with a loud voice
     it speaks
and though it has no tongue
it’s wordless cries
     take up arms
breaking the spokes of
     fortune’s wheel
threatening nature
leaving speechless
     the bold winds of time
and halting the
     ebb and flow
     they would bring
          if it weren’t
               for

murder.

The Fog


Our ships depart,
sail the bay
and they leave us behind
as we watch;
we watch them fade away.

You say this is no place to talk,
So I grab my coat and we go for a walk;
Speaking in circles, you lead me on
and I'm a boy
just following his dog;
we come to no conclusion
and lose each other 
slowly
in the fog.

Calm
does not combat the miasma,
does not disperse the cloud
but rather lends unease

Despite all of this I would
ask you to continue
on your path, with me
I feel as nothing more than
a bewitched accomplice;
industrial
but we lend no smog;
we feel no resolution
as we lose each other
slowly
in the fog.