I was lucky enough to get into video production by
taking a few courses in video art during my time as an undergraduate
at college. The courses were a lot of fun, I got to play with
some pretty cool equipment, and best of all, they really opened
up my creativity. Some of the pieces I worked on were for class,
so I attempted to be somewhat artistic, while I also snuck some
time with the equipment to do my own personal projects - just
for fun, which were usually a bit silly. The first few projects
I did were pretty bad and I haven't listed them here, but I'm
pretty happy with the rest of them, even if they are a few years
old by now.
Each title contains a link to a few frame grabs of
scenes in the video. While the images are a little grainy, they
came out really well for video scans, and give some idea of the
general theme of the piece. (Plus they look kind of cool and amusing
too!)
The Quest (10:55)
This piece attempts to deal with the
search for truth and defining our image of "reality."
Examining different viewpoints, such as empirical knowledge, the
media, faith, thought and parapsychology, the video attempts to
join all of these things together and make some sense of it all;
finally deciding that we really don't know that much at all and
that we'll have to wing it.
Some of this video is a bit quirky and
even a bit cheesy, but it also has some nice touches to it too.
It's worth sitting through it at least once.
Potato Ice: "Alter Ego" (6:10)
This one was pretty silly. It's partially based on a dream I had where I crossed into a cartoon reality of a favorite TV show of mine. The other driving force behind the video was a long-running joke between some friends of mine, on my alleged (and erroneous) potato fascination. Somewhere along the line, the character of me as a rapping potato was created, and I ran with it… I also got in some digs against Vanilla Ice, who sadly was popular at the time.
P.C. (2:02)
A little piece on political correctness and the thought police. I'm really happy with how this one came out - short and sweet, with lots of energy and satire.
Bench (5:34)
The assignment for this piece was something along the lines of looking at an object and showing different viewpoints of it. I took the idea and ran with it, having people interact with one of the benches outside of the dorm. Pretty silly, but kind of amusing, and the soundtrack provided by DEVO certainly helped.
A Brief Introduction
(3:37)
I wanted to try another self portrait piece (I had done one earlier, but it was very quirky and embryonic). Basically looking at the dichotomy between my left and right-brain tendencies. This has its share of quirks too, but I had fun making it.
War Games (5:24)
Another political piece. I wasn't against the Gulf War, but I was pretty annoyed with how it was portrayed as a giant video game. I think this is one of my better pieces.
Timing X (1:17)
An experimental piece involving video
feedback, which can give some very interesting results. Soundtrack
again provided by DEVO. Be sure to take your Dramamine... may
cause seizures in small children and some household pets.
Superman (3:48)
We were just fooling around with the camera, when we decided to dance around to some R.E.M. If nothing else, it shows how goofy we were.
Time (8:20)
This was a reflective a piece looking
at how we use the time given to us. It seems that besides spending
nearly one third of our lives sleeping, we also spend a great
deal of time doing the mundane tasks of daily life. Even though
we are always saying that we are pressed for time, we also complain
about being bored quite frequently. Also when given more time,
most of us would just waste it watching TV or goofing off. It
seems that no one really knows how to manage the precious little
time each of us are given.
A good piece which reflects the good,
the bad, the goofy, and the boring times at college; also a bit
angstful... go figure.
I also had the luck to find some others to make videos with, and for some unfathomable reason, we decided to work in the horror / action genre, using killer dustbunnies (i.e. large volumes of cotton balls) as the subjects for our productions. And so Gomez Addams Productions, a name based on a silly little quasi-political incident that happened one spring at RPI, was born. Whatever possessed a bunch of college students to run around campus, carrying an entourage of people in ridiculous costumes, an armory of theatrical weapons, and a couple of bags of cotton balls will probably never be known, but the results are (marginally) entertaining.
The Members of Gomez Addams Productions
Will S.
Matt G.
Stephen C.
Omar T.
Jon C.
Anthony W.
If you want, you can take a look at some pictures of the Gomez Addams Players.
The Films
Dustbunnies 1 & 2
Starting out as a project
for a film course, the storyline of the original dustbunny movie
was revisted in its sequel a couple of years later, when some
other friends decided to take the same course. Unfortunately I
wasn't really involved in the production of these films, just
a random extra who died in fits of convulsions as masses of cotton
balls showered down upon me. These films aren't officially part
of the Gomez Addams Productions legacy which started later, and
unfortunately I don't have copies of them on me.
Dustbunnies 3: " The
Covenant of Doom"(12:02)
See Potato Ice in his film debut!
Effected in real-time, using in-camera
edits, this movie was shot on location in the dorms the night
after graduation (yes we had no better way to celebrate). Here
a familiar storyline, of a malicious extraterrestrial using a
hideous monster to conquer Earth, is used as an excuse to have
people dress up in silly costumes, talk in outlandish accents,
and generally run around like idiots for the sake of their art.
Minimalism was the theme of this film:
re-using actors for several roles, laughable special effects,
and the costume for the "hideous dust creature" being
a single sheet draped over the actors head! Also, due to technical
difficulties which we discovered after the fact, the original
soundtrack was not recorded on the tape. We were then forced to
overdub the long-forgotten impromptu dialog to save this celluloidal
triumph. What resulted was (in our minds) a success in cult cinema
with an increase in schlock factor by several orders of magnitude.
Dustbunnies 4: "The
Film of Many Names" (14:08)
Produced the following night with the
sound difficulties in mind, this movie was a piece of experimental
cinema. We decided to stretch our creative spirits even further
by working on a silent movie. Such a novel concept! It still had
the same limitations of storyline, actors, and costumes as the
previous endeavor, but at least this time it had a decent incidental-music
soundtrack.
See the acting debut of Confucius Slime
and also how Potato Ice selflessly lays down his life for the
good and safety of all mankind... there won't be a dry eye in
the house!
Dustbunnies 5: "Dead
Men Don't Fart" (44:00)
In our latest release of the dustbunny
series, we succeeded in coming up with our longest movie ever.
Unfortunately the storyline wasn't increased to cover the length
of the movie. To make up for this, the film was padded with lots
of senseless running shots and a couple of gratuitous dance sequences.
However there are some pretty spectacular (for us anyway) special
effects in this movie which will be sure to dazzle you or at least
bore you into a hypnotic stupor.
Here's a neat trivia tidbit: The title
for this movie refers to the fact that in a couple of scenes,
the supposedly dead bodies were heard to produce audible flatulence
which caused the cameraman to laugh uncontrollably and the need
to shoot the scene over again. Omar jokingly came up with the
title and for some crazy reason it stuck; it seemed like a good
idea at the time...
Coming Soon From Gomez
Addams Productions
Dustbunnies 6: "The
Jurassic Terror"
Work is in progress for the final dustbunny
blockbuster spectacular, which is our most-ambitious project:
estimates of the running time put it at around an hour! This time
there is actually a (somewhat) detailed plot, with such important
elements as martial-arts fight sequences, a car chase using "radical
driving"™, and plenty of gratuitous pyrotechnics. Now
Confucius Slime and General Hawk team up with a new member
to their dustbunny execution squad. Not only do they once again
face off against the Octaurian Overlord, but this time they must
also do battle with a hideous monster: a fluffy and insidious
purple dinosaur, created by the Overlord by using genetic splicing
techniques.
While all of the shooting is done, the
only production that has been carried out is on the preview trailer,
running just slightly over two minutes. Test audiences really
enjoyed the frenetic action of it all, and once we do get to editing
this beast, we hope to keep the movie running at an overall quick-tempoed
pace.
So You Want to Know More?
If you're really that interested in
a bunch of weirdos running around, tossing cotton balls at people,
then feel free to download the ridiculously-long (125K)
Dustbunny FAQ
for more information than you really ever really wanted to know.
I'm making copies of my videos for anyone who's interested. Right
now I have one tape with my early video works, Dustbunnies 3, 4, and 5 and
the preview trailer for Dustbunnies 6, so it fills the full two hours of the
video tape. I can make tapes for people in the US or Canada, you can get copies
of the tape by sending me $4, or a blank tape with money for postage. If you'd
like to take a look my work, e-mail me for
the details and my snail-mail address.
Please keep in
mind that these are amateur productions, so the video quality is slightly
grainy in places, not up to broadcast standards, but still definitely quite
watchable. I'm not trying to make a profit from the sale of these tapes,
just hoping to distribute it to people who might be interested in viewing my
work.