Category: Projects

The biggest creative project yet

Today I started working on my biggest creative project yet.

Today saw the public start of the biggest creative project I’ve ever undertaken. It turns out big projects, actually have a lot of planning behind them. I was inspired for the concept of this project back in April while getting lost down the rabbit holes known as Pinterest. I saw a magazine cover and thought that I’ll file that one away.

Last Sunday I got word that we were a go for this project, and the concept was approved on Monday. The downside is that I need to get the artwork to the printers in two weeks time. So today was the only time that really suited the photography side of things.

To put the project in perspective, it’s a church based topic that runs for term 3 called “Better Together”, and what better way to inspire and rally a community around a theme, than to put the faces of the community on the promotional material. The vision was to do a Humans of New York crossed with a fashion photoshot, photoshot. Lights, camera, action, the works.

I realised early on that I didn’t want to be the one pressing the shutter all day. Instead, I wanted a team of people, a camera operator, an assistant, an admin assistant handling release forms, a recruiter to gather and inspire people. I knew it was impossible to fore fill all of those roles at once, I would just fail at all and the project would fall down around my ears. Instead I wanted to have the role of “Art Director” and manage the project from a high level and make sure that it’s heading towards the creative vision. I set out to recruit people, and to get people to recruit others. Now to be honest this didn’t exactly go to plan, how I’d like it to have gone. First thing this morning hit and I felt so lonely, like it was just me and a camera. I had failed to successfully recruit the other talent required to pull off this job, although we are jumping ahead.

If multiple people were going to be involved in this project, I better be sure of the artistic direction and know exactly what photos we want, complete with poses, expressions, props, etc. So I wrote a document to plan out the direction of where I was taking the project, and what we needed to make it work. This included camera angles, how much of the frame should be filled by the subject, the facial expression of the subject, etc. In the end I had 3 photos of each subject that I wanted to take.

After all this planning, and preparing, finally came the day to take a photo. After spending an hour setting up the basic “2 light” setup, I was ready to take the first picture. But hang on, it’s not working very well. Panic started to set in, I’m running out of time and the plan in my head, and the little experimentation that I did is starting to fall down. I’m a failure before I even started. Turns out, it was just a couple of technical issues that compounded together to throw me off what was happening.

In the end, the day felt like a real success, over 1100 frames taken. I’m yet to filter that down, into something more manageable. The goal is to create a collage of faces.

Thanks to the fokes who helped out today, Sally, Buzz, Kev, Katie & Sarah. Your assistance allowed me to focus on the other tasks at hand, instead of trying to juggle everything. Cheers guys and girls!

To be continued….

Awesome Jar

Why did I not think of this earlier? Imagine having the technology to save every great small memory for recall at a later date. Imagine how useful this could be on those times when your feeling a bit down and like life just keeps kicking you in the stomach. This is not some futuristic technology, all you need is some notepaper*, a pen^ and a jar#. (Something to write on, something to write with, something to collect the things that you wrote on).
Either as it happens, or at the end of the day make a list of the awesome things, the small things that weren’t necessarily big things, just things that made today good, or great.    

Periodically dip into the jar of awesome and read some of the past awesomeness.

I’ve been doing this for a few days now. I’ve found it to be a good way to appreciate the day., and to be thankful for the good things that happened.

*any paper that allows you to write on it would work, note paper, scrape paper, toilet paper (unused preferably).

^any tool used to write with is fine, pen, pencil, crayon, feather dipped in ink, etc.

#ok this is getting silly, any jar, container, bowl, cup, mug, glass, plastic bottle that will hold numerous pieces of your chosen paper. 

Thanks to Tim Ferriss’ ex girlfriend for the idea, and thanks to Tim for sharing it.

Early Morning & Personal Projects

It’s that time of the year again when the mornings are rather chilly, and the last thin that you want to do is leave the warm comfort of the bed and face the near zero degree temperature of the house and start the day. But somehow, for some reason if the reason for the early start is a fun personal project, it makes the transition a little easier.

This morning in the two degrees Celsius I dragged myself out of bed to film a local band being interviewed on the local radio. Radio station studio spaces are small at the best of times, there isn’t enough room to swing a cat (poor cat), yet somehow we managed to squeeze in the radio presenter, a couple of band members, and not one, not two, but 4 cameras in the space. It was a blast to film (other than a small technical hitch with an SD card) and by 8:45am we were all over, car packed and all. Most days I’ve barely eaten breakfast by 8:45.

Later on in the day I sat down to start the editing process. {side note, 4 cameras and no slate is a dumb idea for those wanting to try something similar at home…always slate the footage, at both ends if you can.} I spent about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes on it, at least that is what I thought I’d done, I looked at the clock, 2 hrs 15 minutes. Where has all the time gone???

As I’m exploring a raft of personal projects, mixed in with professional projects, I’m amazed at how quickly time flies on the personal ones, yet in the professional ones sometimes I feel someone needs to chain me to the computer just to keep my attention on the project.

This probably highlights something, I should find people to pay me to do the same work as I do in my personal projects, and scrap some of the professional ones. However I wonder if the opposite would happen, like a children’s see-saw, would getting paid to do more small c creative work (photography, filming, design) ultimately mean that the more technical projects I started doing would be be more enjoyable again & I would start to dread the small c creative stuff? 

I’m not sure. 

Would I bound out of bed, no matter the outside temperature? Or go back to being a lazy 10 times snoozer?

Mail Bag: New books

The postman came knocking today with some new books.

Free+Style by Carl Paoli & Anthony Sherbondy & The Roll Model by Jim Millar. 

Why two books on health & fitness? In Januray of 2015 I was at home one day & received a newsletter from the folks at creativelive an it had some rar rar about New Years resolutions, etc. one of the courses interested me, Kelly Starretts, maintain your body. It stuck out among all of the small c creative courses. I watched the free sample intro video and was hooked with what Kelly had to say. This completely changed the course of year for 2015 into a new discovery of health, but not getting strong for the sake of getting strong, getting healthy, making better desisions day to day now, so that the odds of having a functional body for the rest of my life increased. If a knee joint is design to last a century & my sister had to have surgery at age 15, then something weird is going on. Did she just have bad knees, or bad mechanics around how she used her knee & therefore it wore out prematurely?

Fast forward to 2016, my goal is to be able to touch my toes with my hands (with straight arms & legs). I don’t have a single memory of being able to do it. I do however remember at age 10 having a break dance instructor say that some people just have short arms, long legs wen I wasn’t able to complete the feat, it was also a regular test in high school.

Surely I should be able to do such a basic thing. So that was my challenge for the start of the year. One evening I spent over an hour doing a Pilates routine, combined with some extra mobility exercises from mobilitywod & for the first time ever I was able to reach out with one arm & just barely touch my toes on my leg on the same side. A couple of weeks latter I joined the stretching class my girl friend attends. 

8 weeks later, on one of the first wet days of the year I slipped outside & fractured my scapula into a million peices. Not fun. But even worse, all of my work, basically gone. 

Mobility has taken on a new meaning now. I have been spending weekly sessions with a Physio trying to get my shoulder functioning how a shoulder is meant to function. Hopefully the blessing in disguise here is that my shoulders function better than they use too.  

My challenge after touching my toes, a hand stand.

Just submitted my first course to Udemy

It’s taken months to get together, but it finally happened. I have submitted my first course to Udemy, now they just have to review it.

I found that when I submitted my test video I was quite nervous and had thoughts going through my head like ‘They won’t like it, you ummm too much, you can’t speak very proper’ things of that nature. This is a different nervousness. Which is hard to put into words, but I can feel my heart in my chest. A big thank you to James who really pushed this project to the next level. I was going to do a single angle with screen cast cut in shot and he just took it to the next level. Thanks heaps mate!

It feels like such a little project, yet so big at the same time. We have learnt a lot from it. For starters, for the next one I’ll be doing a solid day of practice before filming. I think I’ll also give myself some time to think about additional visuals that we can use in the footage.

Let’s see where this adventure goes. But going back to our questions from day 1.

What is this for?

This is a project to practice putting together an online course of original content. To learn and become more comfortable in front of the camera.

If this doesn’t ‘succeed’ will I still be glad I did it?

Define succeed: In an ideal world, I would like 1 sale a week. That would pay for my internet connection. 3 a week would be great. But at the moment it’s not about the money, as I have a job and it already pays the bills. Instead its about learning the craft of being in front of a camera and putting together content. To this, we have already succeed.

Update: 60 minutes later. WE ARE APPROVED! If you want, check it out at ageek.io