Life and Film
When
I was around twelve years old, growing up in a small town in Ohio,
the majority of my activities were derived from imagination. My
friends and I would wander around the forests surrounding our
neighborhood, we would walk the railroad tracks, and we would create
worlds to reside in. One of my good friends had a small camera and
that is all we needed to transform our play into purpose. The most
vivid memory, of one of the stories we created, was a World War II
movie. The movie was set in the middle of winter, a season which our
playful creations were imperative in getting us through. The first
shot was a series of boots running through the muddied snow. We
didn't have many props and absolutely no special effects but we tried
to create a story. The story was about a group of American soldiers
fighting their way out of a harsh season and a fight that was brutal
as well as foreign. To this day I am not sure what happened to that
movie, it may be tucked away in some cardboard box in one of my
friend's parent's basements, but the memory is forever with me.
Two
summers ago, I finished working the salmon season in Alaska and I
went back to Ohio for a vacation. I arrived with a small treatment,
a storyboard, and a DSLR camera, all products of my time in the
North. The same group of guys that I have known since I was eight,
welcomed the idea of shooting another movie, and taking ourselves
back to a world we enjoyed when we were young. After two weeks of
mid-west humidity and summer thunderstorms, I left Ohio with a series
of shots on my memory cards and a heavy dose of nostalgia. Once the
editing on the short movie was completed, I was moved in discovering
that myself and my brothers were able to construct a visual piece
worth being pleased with.
The
major which I am applying for in the School of Media Arts and Studies
is Integrated Media. I wish to take the knowledge and experience
that I have been acquiring and apply it to making independent feature
length films. One of the biggest lessons that I took away from my
Evolution of Media class was; there are always new inventions in the
creative fields and it continues to evolve. The world of film
production has gone from simple Lumiere cameras to advanced 3D rigs
in just over one hundred years. Seeing the trend in technology
advancing both excites and scares me. My biggest wish is to make
films with the same style and tools that our forefathers made some of
the biggest masterpieces in cinema with. Although the new toys and
the fast paced action in large budget mainstream films is
entertaining, I would like to focus my efforts on not just
entertaining but on revealing more about the world around us. With
the base in film production that Ohio University has given me, I long
to create worlds on screens, bring dreams to the waking life, show
the past as it was, and imagine the future in whatever it may become.
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