This is my second entry into the 72 Hour Film Fest, but this year with a completely new team! Using friends and acquaintances through the Communications Department, Shepherd University, and friends from the “real world”, we composed an epic team of film-makers, actors, and other creative minds.

72 FILM FEST FEST

This year competition was tight, and out of the 50 other professional, amateur, and student teams, we did not take home any awards. However, we received a huge, positive response when screened at the 72 Hour Film Fest, and the viewers seemed genuinely impressed with our efforts.

Sadly, the entire team couldn’t make it, but those who did go had an awesome time. The hosts were funny, there was some really good films, and seeing the positive response to your film being screened is really awesome.

More info about the competition itself is available at www.72fest.com

BEHIND THE SCENES

This is the first film that I was truly the “filmmaker” of, and thus has taken more work than any of my other projects. Though that being said, collaboration was clearly a huge component. Our eight person crew pretty much non-stopped worked with each other for 72 hours straight, including a lot of eating and living together. Things got a bit hectic and stressful during the shoot, which would be largely attributed to lack of sleep and caffeine overload. However, with all the constraints and issues we ran into, things turned out remarkable well.

Here’s just a few issues that plague the movie:

1. Creative direction.
   We had so many ideas coming from so many places, that it was very hard to nail it down to a single, unified idea that everyone agreed on and liked. In the end, this wasn’t really possible, and I had to make some tough decisions. On retrospect, the idea was a bit too simple, and needed a bit more story to it… but we wanted to focus on the technical aspects and editing more than get stuck on the story, which we had spent all night working on (over six hours straight of brainstorming and writing).

   An interesting note is that Matt Embrey took one of our original ideas and adapted it into a rather cool graphic novel. It made me jealous that we didn’t actually make a film around it, as it was a pretty cool concept.

2. Finding talent.
   Though we had the “behind the scenes” guys all lined up and good to go, finding actors and on-screen talent was difficult, even extras. Laura, despite some misgivings about the script and zero acting experience, set aside her entire weekend to help us and was perfect for the role. I was amazed at how well she did with said zero experience. Then, Bryan came out of no where and offered to help us with his acting experience—which he had plenty of! His experience was vital to the entire on-screen performance, which was really quite awesome.

   Another issue was extras. We luckily filled up the party scene with enough extras to make it look real, and they did a great job of getting into their roles in a very short amount of time. Sadly, we couldn’t secure all the talent we wanted. We had to cut the “friend” (that you heard on the phone in beginning). The “friend” was originally supposed to show up to the dinner scene and transition into the party sequence. Instead, Laura and Bryan kind of “show up” at the party instead.

3. The weather = the lost scene.
   We originally had an entire sequence sub-titled “the bench scene” where the Male Actorwould wake up, reflect on the mistakes he made (in the first two), become frustrated, and then time would rewind. However, because it ended up raining on the second day of shooting, we couldn’t film any of these scenes.Instead, we ended on the “party scene”, which kind of changed the dynamic of the film. We wanted this party scene to be one short stop the entire night, which went Bakery Meeting, Dinner Date, Friends Party, and Bench Scene (reflection). Instead, it sort of made the film seem like it was leading up to the “party scene” each time, which was unintentional.
4. Technical failure.
   On the third and final day, my computer suffered a complete hard drive failure. This required almost half my day fixing and getting my computer working a new hard drive, with a new Windows install, while installing all my programs and assets as quickly as I could, and trying to save as much data as I could from my previous hard drive (which all my footage had already been saved on). Luckily, I was able to get everything working, but it set me behind by 8 hours… those were also with 4 hours that I was planning to sleep. Instead, I stayed up all night fixing everything and getting back on track… to only be left with 10 hours to completely edit, sound design, put together an entire film, and render it out.

   This was easily the most stressful thing that could happen to me, and running on no sleep made it three times as worse. However, there’s no excuses in the filmmaking business, so I buckled it down, got the work done faster than I ever though possible, and ended up being really impressed with the amount of editing I got done in less than 10 hours. To put that into perspective, we had over 2 hours of recorded footage.

5. The music.
   This was my largest disappointment and a personal oversight of mine. I was not a fan of how the film essentially felt like a “music video” because of the lack of dialogue and the over-bearing soundtracks (that swapped with different themes). I sort of added a small amount of time to work on music and sound after the movie was complete, and never really considered how big of an impact they would have on the film.The first song (Someone’s heart is broken) that played changed the tone drastically. What was supposed to be an awkward and somewhat shy guy not getting anywhere because he was too timid and the girl being slightly put off… ended up becoming a depressingpiece about a completely out-to-touch person and the girl was downright embarrassed to be seen with him. This entire theme of “sadness” or “depression” was way overplayed.The second song (Clash) was too intense. It worked, but completely contrasted the first piece too much, and the tempo was way too fast. It was too jarring, though it ended up being pretty funny at points.

   The third and final song (Friends Without Benefits) I felt fit perfectly, which is funny because I came across it more as a joke. My good friend Matt Myers is the lead singer of the band The Continuals, whom the song is from. The tempo was nice, it had a good buildup, and it really set the mood nicely. It also ended on a perfect note, and having a good ending is really key in short films.

   In a related note, I’ve actually gone and made a music video for The Continuals song, Friends without Benefits, just because I liked it so much. Boom.

By no means am I trying to highlight only the negatives, but the hurdles that we had to overcome to make this entire film in only 72 hours were quite daunting. That being said, not only was this a huge personal challenge, but it was awesome working with such talented and motivated people. I really cannot thank my fellow filmmakers, actors, crewmates, and everyone who was involved enough, nor could I imagine working with more talented and driven people. These guys are legitimately awesome people, and despite the stresses involved with making a film, I had a hell of a time doing it.

CREW

• Bryan Staggers – Lead Actor
• Laura Bradel – Lead Actress
• Daniel Jones – Director
• Steven Schellinger – Lead Producer
• Stephen Wittkamper – Production Manager
• Matt Embrey – Director of Photography
• Aaron Rock – Creative Director
• Peter Rush – Sound Director

MUSIC

• “Someone’s Heart is Broken: For Fireproof Babies” by SackJo22 (First song)
  http://ccmixter.org/files/SackJo22/33501
• “Clash” by visualgroove (Second song)
  http://audiojungle.net/item/clash/53032
• “Friends without Benefits” by The Continuals (Third song)
  www.myspace.com/continuals
• “Together Tonight” by joymback (Time Reversal song)
  http://soundcloud.com/johnsbd/joymback-together-tonight-100

LOCATIONS

• The Devonshire Arms Cafe & Pub in Shepherdstown, WV
  http://www.facebook.com/TheDevonshireArmsShepherdstownWV
• Shepherdstown Sweet Shop Bakery
  http://www.wvbakery.com/

SPECIAL THANKS TO

• Megan Camilletti
• Benjamin Dyke
• Sage Ober
• Danielle Corsetto
• Brian Filon
• Alex Jones
• Samantha Gough

SOFTWARE

• Adobe Premiere CS5
• Adobe Soundbooth CS5

EQUIPMENT

• 2x Canon T2i
• 1x Canon 60D
• 2x 50mm 1.8 Lenses
• 1x 15-85mm Lens
• 2x 500 LED Lights
• 1x 96 LED Light (portable)
• 1x Light Reflector
• 1x Boom Mic + Boom pole
• 1x Zoom H4N
• 1x Zoom H1
• 1x Rode VideoMic

I’m also finally publishing a bunch of blog posts that have been sitting around as drafts for awhile. They’re somewhat incomplete (there was more stuff I wanted to add to them), but I figure this site needs a bit of a content update, so just getting them out for the masses to enjoy.

In the meantime, here are some big projects I’m working on:

• A new online tournament system built for e-sports events.
• A new, invite-only gaming community that is “friends only” and require referrals to enter.
• A major update to Games Cast TV, making the interface way more modern and hopefully with a few new features to boot!
• My Game of the Year 2011 picks… I never posted anything for 2010! I might go back and do a “quick and dirty” 2010 update.
• An update to Sector Network, including the long-awaited Sector Network Newsletter.

Want to get involved in any of these projects or something new? I’m just an e-mail away. mattc0m@gmail.com.

Cheers,
Matt

This is a short film by Home Video Productions: International, a student group of filmmakers and creative types at Shepherd University. It was entered in the Frederick, Maryland 72 Hour Film Fest. It won the “Head of Class” (Best Student Film) award and was one of 5 nominations for “Best of Fest” out of over 40 other films. More info at www.72.fest.com.

Do yourself a favor, set it to 1080p (or at LEAST 720p), go grab a cup of coffee or pop some popcorn, then enjoy the short 5 minute film.

Synopsis: A young lady wakes up from the repetition of a melancholy life as she rediscovers her past love of art and it shakes her very reality.

Technical Specs: Used 3 Nikon lenses (wide angel, 50mm, and telephoto). Used 2 Canon T2i, Zoom H4N, boom pool, slider, tripod w/ fluid head, and more. Used LED and florescent lighting.

Software: Adobe Premiere & After Effects CS5 for all editing, post-production, animation, and sound design.

Credits:
J. P. Schmidt – Director – http://vimeo.com/user864373
Anthony Bellissimo – Editor – http://anthonybellissimo.com/
Matt Richards – Producer – http://www.mattc0m.com
Ashli Chesire – “Amy Jackson”
John Meeker – “Mr. Clark”
Hans Mertens – “The Gentlemen”
Stephen Wittkamper – Assistant Producer
Thom Huenger – Composer – http://www.myspace.com/thomhuenger
Cody Cheesebrough – Music Producer – http://www.myspace.com/erikgoestogermany
Justin McKenzie – Sound
Joey Diaz – Camera Operator – http://joeydiaz.carbonmade.com/
Zack Shelly – Equipment Coordinator
Sarah Crickenberger – Assistant Screenwriter

The film was created by a team of people (everyone is acting), and every person in the film I had to cast and direct. I acted as the director, sound designer, film editor, and essentially put the entire production together. Sadly, the ending nor beginning was every fully finished. Watch it now:

Tell me what you think!

YouTube Description:
This is a remastered version of a Battlefield 2 action movie I created in 2006 and published in 2007.

Note that this movie contains scenes 3-6. Scenes 1, 2, and 7 were never completed, and thus there’s not a real solid beginning nor end to it. The ending, especially, is very abrupt.

The video was originally created in Windows Movie Maker, with the first remastering using Vegas 7.0. The current version was edited in Vegas 8.0. Music is from the Blackhawk Down Soundtrack.

Some of the footage was recorded with low resolution, so some of the visual are a bit pixelated. This is not my fault as I cannot re-render the original footage, so just bare with it.

To download the crisper (but less visually exciting) original video, use the following link: http://www.fileden.com/files/2/mashtu…

If you enjoyed this film, remember to subscribe!

Thanks,
Mattc0m
www.mattc0m.com

An intense frag video that features fast paced, ultra action packed footage of Team Deathmatch gameplay in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Features a fast paced, in your face soundtrack.

Programs Used:
* Sony Vegas
* FRAPS

Songs Used:
* What You Want (version 2) http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/
* Omen by The Prodigy

Play with Mattc0m and a shitton of other really cool gamers at FPS Gaming Community.

This quirky adventure mixes the irony of psychic warfare in the US army, a tale of self discovery, political commentary, a mix of great actors, and a premise that is guaranteed to be off-the-wall. While this may seem like a sure winner, it stumbles rather than taking flight and becoming a true classic.

Interested in what I’ve got to say? View my review posted at MovieSector. It’s got the full text, screen captures, a trailer, and my final score (you can also add your own score).

The first film is for my Introduction class, and it was all about using as many features, functions, and effects within Final Cut Pro as possible. It’s not really a high quality work, but for a first project in Final Cut, it’s decent!

The next one is far simpler, took less time to complete, and I feel like it’s better quality. It’s a zoning advertising for an upcoming vote in Jefferson county, but it’s just a mock advertising. I think I did a good job tackling it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, and I believe that you, too, should have the experience of watching it.

You read my review posted over at my new website called “Movie Sector.”

Anyway, something I was involved with a couple weeks ago was the Bright it Back Safely CTF Championship, hosted by the leader shoutcast: GreasedScotsman. I was co-hosting the cast, and it was very cool to watch. There was some awesome moments, and luckily they’ve all been captured. GreasedScotsman, the lead shoutcaster and web developer, has put together a brief highlight reel of the most memorable moments. It’s really worth checking out. It’s only three minutes long – and the flag capture at the end of the video is really something phenomenal.

Where the Wild Things Are was a great book, and the feel of the movie seems to capture it perfectly. It’s got an indie vibe combined with sharp visuals, a stunning song, and just a grand feel of adventure. I feel this is going to be one of those great family movies that everyone loves, and provides more than just a good time – but a meaning to it, as well. I’m really excited.

View the full story to see the trailer

Trailer