TORONTO URBAN FILM FESTIVAL: A CANNIBAL VIDEO

If you've ridden the Toronto subway system in the last few years you have probably noticed the large monitors that hang from the ceiling on every platform. The screens display train info as well as news headlines etc. They also serve as the venue for the Toronto Urban Film Festival.

TUFF is an open call festival for videos. It has only two restrictions: A 60 second length limit and due to the venue (a subway platform) they have to be silent.

I enjoy the 60 second time frame; I tend to be more creative when I have restrictions. Sixty seconds is actually a long time, most TV commercials are 15 or 30 seconds and pay attention to the amount of information packed into one of those.

The silent thing intrigued me as well. I've never made a silent video. So much of my personal style is tied into using music as an important expressive element in my videos. I enjoyed the challenge and it also bypassed the issue I often have of needing to create music to which I have licensing rights.

Content wise the festival really didn't have any restrictions, the only guideline was to create a video that would "appeal to an urban audience" Um, right.

I quickly realized that I had a work in progress that may be suitable for this festival. I've been working on a video, ostensibly for an architectural film festival in Argentina with an emphasis on the city. That deadline is still a couple of months away so I've been taking my time with the video, basically creating a love song to Toronto. That seemed to work for the TUFF; the original video currently has a running time of just over five minutes but I thought I could probably use it as the basis for a one minute silent video.

So I cannibalized that longer video for this one. The original video has many layers of audio; voice overs, ambient sound, sound effects, music. It also has a lot of keys, that being titles superimposed over images. I knew I had to ditch the audio of course and I knew I had to be careful with titles as well. People standing on a platform waiting for a train aren't going to be inclined to do a lot of reading so I knew I had to keep any titles short and to the point.

A lot of my work is cut to a beat or more precisely, cut to a rhythm. You don't need music to appreciate a rhythm. Or at least that's my theory. This video has a rhythm or perhaps it creates a rhythm, without music, at leas that's the intent.

Now for the purpose of this viewing I have striped in some music, part of the soundtrack from the cannibalized video. There is a part of me that just needs to do that I guess. If so inclined it may be interesting to watch the video once with the audio then watch it again with the audio off, as it would be shown on the subway, if it gets that far

NEW YORK CITY: ALIVE AT NIGHT

When we went to New York City I brought the handycam to record out holiday there. Now that I've posted those videos as a series that begins with this one I'm looking at the footage with a different perspective in mind.

I like having stock footage of New York City that I of course have total license to and I'm sure I'll be using it in ways I never anticipated in videos that I never knew I'd make ... if that's confusing think about how I feel. That came out of my head

I love cities at night. I have a lot of night time footage of Toronto but nothing specifically shot to be turned into a video. Let's put that on the list .. damn, that's a long list

The footage I shot in New York wasn't really what I would have chosen to shoot for a video that reflects that city's incredible night life. Well some of it is but I would have shot more, and different angles, and would have brought an tripod; I would have shot more detail shots, more extreme close ups that I like to use to contrast against wider shots

Still, I was happy with the footage I got. Most of it was shot at ground level in Times Square, 42nd Street and the Broadway area. Then we were up on the Empire State Building after the sun went down, some pretty strong shots I think

So I decided to cut together a little video of night time in New York City. I don't have specific plans for this video, I was at one point going to enter it into the National Geo Traveller Storyteller contest so license free music was a necessity. I chose another video for that competition but I decided to stick with my own music, just to have something on the shelf I could enter into contests

As I tend to do I layer a lot of audio here. Ambient audio is the sound associated with a shot, so when I put in a clip of people in Times Square I kept its audio. But I also have wild audio here to; wild audio being sound recorded on site but not necessarily belonging to the shot. So I have sounds of sirens and traffic from another clip that I stripe under the Times Square footage. I use pre recorded sound effects too; I have some open license studio sound effects of generic traffic etc that like to bed under the ambient and wild sound, keeping the volume low but using it as a deep background

I definitely need some new original music. I'm continuing to try to build songs in Garageband and Soundtrack Pro; they are great tools but I'm no musician. And I'm spoiled. I'm used to using songs from the best musicians in the world to cut to and use as background. May be time soon to start begging

At any rate, here is New York City: Alive at Night. Feedback is always welcome

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC STORYTELLERS COMPETITION

This is a competition hosted by National Geographic Travellers magazine and their corresponding online presence. Obviously the emphasis is to be on travel and "telling a story" The competition has several categories including Video, Photo and Blog. Naturally I decided to submit a video

For an earlier competition I had created a video that contrasted the stone and water environment of Georgian Bay Ontario with that of Iceland. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the outcome, partly because I had to tailor the video to the specifications of that competition

But I liked the original idea. Both areas are defined by the interaction of stone and water; the Canadian Shield of the Georgian Bay and volcanic rock of Iceland. In both cases one is impressed by the power of water that has carved and shaped the stone of thousands of years. This is the story I wanted to tell

I already had the shots I wanted so I fiddled around with the structure of the video. At first I was thinking of traditional travel videos that use narration to tell their story. I wrote and self recorded some voice over but was not satisfied with the result.

I have always been about, when possible, letting the visuals tell the story and use music as the structure. For a competition like this one must have the rights to the music you use; and although I think Moby is a terrific guy and he was generous to permit some of his music to be used for the Vimeo competition last year, I didn't want to test said generosity. So I created my own soundtrack in Garage band

Music bed goes down, video gets edited to it; nothing terribly complex here, just contrasting the two locations. But it still needed a little something. So instead of using narration I just created a few simple title cards: White lettering on a black screen. I decided to work with a black screen instead of superimposing or "supering" the titles over video. I wanted to keep a good pace to the video, I wanted to keep it moving, and white on black is less distracting, the titles can be quickly and easily read without disturbing the rhythm of the music.

The soundtrack is more than just music. When not using a voice over, I always feel you have an opportunity to layer the audio, to use that soundtrack as a kind of narration. So along with the music I have ambient audio, that being the sound associated with a clip, like the sound of the waterfall. I also striped in (an old old video editing term that means inserting sound under a clip) audio not tied to a clip; there are boat sounds and general water sounds recorded elsewhere that I blended in with the song itself

I was not satisfied with my first interpretation of this concept but I'm happy with this one (as happy as I ever am with a video) I have no idea if this video will be successful in the competition. I know they will be receiving thousands of entries and frankly I find the brief of "tell us a story" to be incredibly vague. So when I enter something like this, I just try to make the best video I can by my own standards within my interpretation of the brief.

Officially entered now, we'll see what happens.