Hole Hunt

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns caused drastic changes in the way we work. The work-from-home order made it significantly hard to create videos for DCC. Even if I were allowed to work from campus, all of the students, faculty, and staff were home, struggling with remote instruction. I couldn’t go that long without making a video, so I began brainstorming ideas that I could complete by myself.

During the spring of 2020, I was walking my dog through one of the small patches of woodland in my area when I noticed several holes that had been dug by some kind of animal. It made me think of an old sketch from the absurdist comedy show Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job called “Hobby Holes.” In the sketch, a nature show host played by Fred Armisen examines holes in the ground and shares silly factoids about holes.

The sketch that inspired “Hole Hunt”

Unlike “Hobby Holes”, the holes in “Hole Hunt” were not dug by a production crew, but rather real animals in nature. I was curious about what kind of critters might have made these burrows so I made a frivolous purchase: a borescope. By using the borescope, I could peek inside these mysterious holes and (hopefully) find out who might be living in them.

Down the Rabbit Hole

One goal of mine was to incorporate more 3D animation. I wanted the title sequence to be a worm’s-eye view through a winding and twisting tunnel. I knew there was no was I could accomplish that using practical effects, so it was off to Blender! Additional 3D animations include the did-you-know sequence, “Know Your Hole,” the overlays that appear when measuring the holes, and the recreation of the Discovery Channel logo.

I take great pride that nearly all of “Hole Hunt” was created with original content - no presets, stock footage, or music. In fact, all of the music was written specifically for this short. The pounding drums and trilling strings were inspired by Phil Collins’s soundtrack for Disney’s Tarzan and the tense strings and winds paid homage to the countless scores written by John Williams. As a nod to my short-lived attempt at being an YouTube Let’s Player, I incorporated a melody I wrote for the channel intro.

From HD to SD

Capturing the look of an old VHS was a vital part of the final presentation. There’s no shortage of VHS overlays, tutorials, and presets, but they never feel authentic to me. Those methods always make me feel like something’s missing. They might not get the sound quality reduction quite right, or the tracking lines are not random enough. I needed to do the real thing - put this video on VHS - but I found it was incredibly hard to get a modern HDMI signal to VCR. The way I got there was a but of a journey. I tried burning it to a DVD but the only playback device I had was a Blu-Ray player which uses HDMI, so that wouldn’t work either. Instead, I put the video on a USB thumb drive, plugged it in and played the video back on an Xbox 360, and used a composite video cable to run the 360’s signal into a VCR where I recorded it onto a blank tape. So now I have it on tape, but I need to get it back to the computer so I can share it on the internet. So I plugged the VCR into the a capture card and recorded the playback. Now I had a juicy 480p video with that sweet, sweet low-quality mono audio.

Dig It

“Hole Hunt” is one of the projects I am most proud of. Sure, it’s silly and non-sensical, but it’s one of the first works where I composed a score and created custom 3D animations.

Wormo

For a solid month my life was centered around a fuzzy, blue worm on a string. It all started, like many great ideas, at a brainstorming session for something completely unrelated. We were planning out a comprehensive social media campaign to promote the college’s counseling center and somehow our attention shifted to the late 1970s toy turned cult internet icon, worm on a string. My student worker, Kiera, and I began developing outlandish and absurd scenarios that we could insert these adorable little worms. I knew we had to do something with them. Luckily it was early March, and I knew the perfect excuse-erm-reason to make this happen.

Meet Wormo

The main idea came to us easily - Falco, the College’s official mascot, would be replaced by Wormo and, in a fit of jealousy, Falco would conspire to get rid the usurper and regain his title. Coming up with this idea was easy, but executing it was far from it. The number of moving parts for such a small video was surprisingly high. We needed to identify students actors, film product-video style videos of the worm, recruit extras for group scenes, and capture man-on-the-street interviews.

Making It Real

In order to really sell this video, to make our audience into thinking it’s real, we couldn’t settle for anything less than the highest production value we could muster. Without access to a studio with a cyclorama, we had to think creatively. By utilizing my connections with faculty and staff in the Performing, Visual Arts, and Communication program, we were able to borrow a 9-foot roll of white paper, as well as large stagings block. Our two “marketing professionals” were filmed against the white backdrop, which convincingly made it appear that they were in an infinite, white void.

Fake it till you make it

By making the most of our small “studio” space, we were able to fake and infinite white cyclorama.

Wormo’s product shot sequence presented the most challenges of the production. It felt like no matter what we did, we could not find the Goldilocks solution. For example, if we filmed on a table, we could get the lights high enough due to the low ceiling. If we filmed on the staging block, we couldn’t get the camera low enough. Solutions of involved trying plans B, C, D, all the way through G and beyond.

One particular shot that I wanted to get was an orbit around Wormo. A shot like that would normally involve a rig the allows a camera and a backdrop to rotate 360 degrees around a small platform, but like many projects there was no budget. I could not afford to purchase one of these rigs personally so I attempted to build my own using a slider, a Lazy Susan, and some brackets. While this MacGuyvered contraption had potential, it suffered from some pretty serious shortcomings that prevented it from being used in the final product. For example, the platform that the object sat on needed to be held in place with a c-stand, which prevented the camera from making a complete rotation.

You Spin me right round

The first attempt at a spinning 360 rig was far from pretty…or stable.

It wasn’t all difficulty and headaches. One part of the product shot sequence that came out particularly well was of Wormo crawling out of the letter “O”. To achieve this shot, I used the font chosen for the video as a stencil to cut out a hole in a piece of foam core. I then covered the hole with green paper so I could mask and key out the background so just the worm was visible. Since I already mocked up how I wanted the text to look in After Effects, I was able to position the camera so that the hole matched the rotation angle of the text.

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Lessons Learned From A Worm

Producing this “Wormo” video was incredibly enlightening and personally fulfilling. I learned a lot about the limitations of our equipment and space, and how important experimentation is. Wormo may not be the official mascot, but he’ll always be the best mascot to me.

DCC's Greatest Hits

The end of a year is often a time of reflection. It’s chance for us look back at all the worldwide events, personal milestones, and changes we’ve experienced over the last 365 days. In the recent years, it has also become an opportunity for brands and institutions to highlight all of their accomplishments over the last year. Dutchess Community College accomplished a lot in 2021 and I wanted to showcase all the things we did in a special year-in-review video.

DCC opened two new facilities, launched two new academic programs, and welcomed students back to in-person instruction. I wanted to create a video that was moved beyond just a simple montage. It wanted a theme that to run throughout the video and give it special identity. I brainstormed several possibilities, but kept coming back to the idea of a music, specifically that of a “greatest hits” album. Why in the world would I pick something so antiquated as vinyl in an age of digital music and subscription services?

From a practical standpoint, an album lends itself well to video. Large, tangible items are easier to film than close-ups of digital displays. An album also has a very physical end. When the needle reaches the end of the a side, it lifts up, returns to home, and the record stops spinning. I felt that this would be a great visual metaphor for the end of a year.

I wanted to make a DCC-themed parody The Beatles’ iconic album, Abbey Road, but it was too late in the semester to recruit students for the photoshoot. Finals had ended a few days prior and nearly the entire student body had left for winter break. I was left with the option of compositing separate photos of the mascot, Falco, to recreate the iconic image. I grew dissatisfied with the final result, however, as each “clone” of Falco ended up being connected at the feet like a paper doll. I needed to move on to plan B.

Plan B for the album cover project was to recreate the cover of Queen’s second album, Queen II, using a similar compositing method. I made arrangements to use the TV studio where I knew I could keep it dark and set my light source high enough to capture the same dramatic lighting as the original. The head of the Falco costume was mounted on a hand truck and placed on wooden boxes at different heights. A tripod held the camera in place so its position would remain consistent throughout the shoot. A student worker volunteered to wear the costume arms. The final image was a composite of 5 different photographs and several layer of noise and textures to give the album a weathered look. It was printed out on heavyweight paper and glued covered an sacrificial album (don’t worry, it was a duplicate).

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Creating props is turning out to be a one of my favorite hobbies and I look forward to what I can create in the future. Hopefully fun “year-in-review” videos like this one will evolve into a tradition at Dutchess Community College.

Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?

The Mystic Oracle

One of the things I enjoy the most about my career as a community college video producer is injecting creativity into established traditions. One particular tradition that my school has is creating a yearly Halloween video. Historically these videos have been montages of the college’s mascot, Falco, wandering around campus in costume and handing out candy to students. I wanted to shake things up for 2021 and try something new - an original short narrative film.

I wrote a script about a group of students playing with a Ouija board and being startled by a surprise visit from the school’s mascot in 2019, but I wasn’t able to turn it into a reality due to time constraints. I tucked the idea away on the metaphorical shelf but never forgot about it. When late September rolled around, I proposed the idea to my boss, who gave me the green light with the only caveat “don’t make it too scary.” 

The next step was, in my opinion, the most crucial step: I had to find student actors. I paid a visit to the students in the TV Production Club, pitched the video to them, and gained their enthusiastic support. Five students volunteered to act, and two volunteered to be production assistants. Now that I had the actors, I needed to secure a location.

I originally planned to shoot the film in a student’s room in the residence hall, but I discovered how small the student rooms were in the two years since writing the first draft. I had a few ideas for alternatives - a student lounge in the fine arts building and an empty classroom - but none made thematic sense to me. That’s when I remembered that there was a student lounge in the residence hall. I paid the visit to the lounge and got a sense of the place. Immediately I identified a problem: the lounge had floor-to-ceiling interior windows that faced the hallway. The students are supposed to be startled by a sudden knock on the door. The scene would lose all suspense if the students could immediately see who was on the other side. Also, the light from the hallway would undercut any attempts at dark, atmospheric lighting. That’s when I had an idea that would address both issues. I purchased several plastic tablecloths in colors appropriate for Halloween from the dollar store and covered the windows. The tablecloths helped control the light from the hallway and even allowed me to get a silhouette at the door.

Filming took place over the course of a single evening. I knew I would have problems scheduling everyone for a second night, so I needed to use the time I had with them effectively. I prepared storyboards and a shot list to help keep things organized. The time I saved by having pre-visualized the whole video was invaluable. We were able to complete filming in less than four hours.

Post-production did not take very long at all, thanks to all the preplanning. I had the rough sequence assembled in less than an hour and spent the next couple of days writing an original score. The film was released on October 29th and received a positive reception on the college’s social media outlets.

Producing and working on this video with students was a terrific experience. Not only did it help me build relationships with some very talented students, but it also showed me that I have the skills to run a complex production. I look forward to the next time I get to do a project of this scope.

The TWRP Iceberg Explained

On March 1st, 2021 I released my most ambitious project to date— a 50-minute video essay that explores the history and impact of the Canadian synth-rock band, TWRP. The TWRP Iceberg Explained utilizes the popular iceberg meme to explain everything from the most well-known facts at the tip to the obscure, forgotten trivia at the bottom. The video, which spent four months in production, was an exercise in file management and long-form editing in Final Cut Pro X, an application that I had used previously for short projects.

I aspired to create a video that stood out among its contemporaries both in terms of content and production value. To achieve these goals, I devoted a significant amount of time talking with long-time fans and researching long-lost interviews, blog posts, and social media posts. The result was over 65 distinct trivia entries with the most accurate and up-to-date information available at the time. I combined footage of performances and interviews, photographs, and screenshots from social media to tell the most comprehensive history of the band.

Most iceberg videos follow a similar formula — the video creator narrates the video and is accompanied by photographs, screenshots, and videos. I took this a step further and went all-in on the nautical theme. I donned a captain’s hat, beard, and pipe and recorded live-action vignettes used to introduce sections of the video. The footage was then composited with the interior of a submersible rendered in 3D.

Designing the submersible might have been my favorite part of the whole process. It allowed me to flex my 3D modeling and animation muscles in ways that they haven’t been before. The original idea for the submersible was to have it resemble a traffic cone or pylon, similar to the original headpiece of the band’s keyboardist, Doctor Sung. While the idea sounded good in my head, it did not translate well on paper and wouldn’t make much sense as an underwater vehicle. After some more brainstorming, I came up with the idea to make a submersible that looked like Doctor Sung’s keytar, the Roland AX-Synth. After the first rough sketches, I knew I had struck gold. The design processed continued on with more sketches of the exterior and the interior. With the final drawings in hand, I began to work on the 3D model in Blender.

Modeling the submersible was a challenge. I wanted the ship to look cute and cartoony, but also like it was a serious piece of equipment. Countless images of submarines, submersibles, and SCUBA equipment were referenced to get the details just the way I wanted– from the struts holding the exterior tanks to the rivets holding the portholes. Inspiration for some elements of the design came from movies, such as the periscope inspired by the Yellow Submarine and the ironwork window bracing from Atlantis: The Lost Empire.  The interior of the sub presented me with even more opportunities to reference other media. Several of the control panels in the sub were modeled after musical equipment that the band has used, such as an 808 drum machine and a Moog synthesizer. I also paid homage to one of the greatest space vessels of all time and included the control sticks from the Millennium Falcon.

Convincing a random visitor to watch a 50-minute video dedicated to a costumed indie synth band is a hard thing to do. While it has not achieved the viewership levels as my other videos, “The TWRP Iceberg Explained” has made waves where it matters most: with TWRP fans. The comments that I have received from new and old fans alike have been heartwarming. It brings me immense joy to hear that someone learned something new about one of their favorite bands. 

I don’t know if I will make another Iceberg in the future. This process taught me that I don’t enjoy managing long-form content in Final Cut. Although I didn’t enjoy it, the experience was valuable. It improved my competency with the software and even surprised me at times with its capabilities. If you get a chance, I highly recommend you give it a watch after familiarizing yourself with some of TWRP’s music.

As TWRP says, you gotta roll with it.

-E