Jonathan’s Videos:
Below are a few videos I’ve made in the last few years. Many are simply experiments, but a few, like the “Realistic Bite Mark” and “The Hunts” promo were for professional use.
The Hunts promo was commissioned for a book as a sort of quick storyboard. It wound up being used as the actual promo. The author, Natasha Usher, gave me a jacket description and the first chapter. Being low on funds and requiring a quick turnaround, she used eLance to submit for bids. I created absolutely everything in this short video, including music and drawings using Flash (basic scene-to-scene animations), Final Cut Studio 2 (editing), Photoshop (fix colors and such), Soundtrack Pro (music), and Quicktime (to assemble single frames as video). Ms. Usher was very happy with the final product. This is one of those projects I’ve always wanted to re-do once I had the time and money, but that hasn’t happened yet.
The Realistic Bite Mark is my most popular video on my site with over 6000 views to date. It was created during production of a spec project with Melissa Bankzak which never saw the light of day. For the project, I was doing a number of special effects, including casting, makeup, etc. One effect involved an actor who was to be bitten by a sort of infected person (the actual explanation is much longer, but since the project will never see daylight, the short version is fine). Melissa asked me to write down what I did (she likes to do things herself) so I made this video one afternoon with some free time and a cheap JVC miniDV camcorder with bad audio. I did the voiceover with a condenser mic later.
“A Monkey Tale” was my first go as writer/director/producer. Since I knew others with more writing experience, I let them drive the writing so I could focus on getting actors, props, equipment, etc. going, though I offered feedback and made changes based on location (we had to get this to 1 or 2) and pragmatism. We shot on Melissa’s DVX-100 (I still love this camera – its soooooo easy to use) and in my friend’s house while she was busy with other things. We didn’t win the final for the 48-Hour Shootout, but the experience was invaluable. My friend Steve provided music by coming to the house while I edited the video, fixed audio, etc. He was great at making the doctor’s office-type music and sound effects.
There are lots of videos here, but have a look at “The Cordial Dead” (when the world is ruled by the undead, it’s important to be cordial…). I was approached by Rosie to direct this one. The story goes like this: Natalia “wrote” this in storyboard form a few years back. She wasn’t happy with the version that was made (I saw it and agreed). She wanted to re-do the project to show off her makeup skills. She approached Rosie who approached me. Ba-Zing, here we go! I made a number of changes to the storyboards to make it a more coherent story. We auditioned actors and actresses and found Erin who also has an incredible voice. The day of the shoot arrived, all of the actors showed up for the long makeup process (I even got a chance to do a few zombies – my first film experiences were doing makeup and effects on good old 35mm film!). We were to shoot outdoors in a storage facility in Tucson. Local news anchor Guy Atchley even showed up and shot some amazing photographs. Long story short: though the weather said no rain, we got a deluge and had to move inside. There was no way we could get the zombies and other actors together so I had Ray set up the camera and start shooting. I basically re-wrote the script right there on the spot and then got Erin to come back one more day to shoot the rest of the outdoor stuff with just one zombie. This video is the result. Incidentally, the Mission Creeps were nice enough to let us use their music for this one. Oh, this has since played in several festivals and it’s unlikely we will ever recoup what we put into it, but the experience was, again, invaluable.
Check out more of Jonathan’s videos below:
