Blarbus

Nova Roma Shooting Wrapped

Hey everybody!

It's been quite a long time since my last post, so I'll try to get you all up to speed on what I've been up to.  A week ago, I wrapped shooting on a short film I've been working on since the middle of this past summer.  The film is called "Nova Roma," and it's set in an alternate history where the Roman Empire never fell.  

It was a big departure from anything I've ever directed before, for no greater reason than the sheer scale of the thing.  I owe the success of the production to Max Silver, another CAMS major here at Carleton, as well as Meghan Hafner and countless others who slaved away for days to make this thing run smoothly.  In addition to recruiting help from Carleton College, Max was also able to put together a fantastic crew of professional twin cities filmmakers who volunteered their time and talent to make this movie a reality.

I owe so much to so many people, namely my production designer, Vanessa Miles, and her art team who spent a month of their lives building and designing sets that I didn't think were imaginable on our budget.  Also my Director of Photography, Eli Ljung, and his Camera/Lighting team who managed to achieve unbelievable images despite our breakneck shooting schedule.  Sheila Heil, Kristen Asp, and my wonderful family toiled away on the amazing costumes and all kinds of people turned out from Northfield to spend a day as extras on set.

But alas, I've started on a slippery slope and I'd better jump off now before I have to name everybody who helped!  You know who are and you have my eternal gratitude.  

Without further ado, here are some pictures from the set!

                         

Via Appia and Wandering

My latest batch of photos, fresh from the Appian way and random city streets.  Today featured the most beautiful weather and sights I've ever seen in my entire life.

ROMA

I am now in the land of Romans!  Here are a few shots from my first week.

This morning we went to what we thought was going to be an Italian Independence parade.  What we found, however, was much more hilarious and photogenic.  Apparently by "Independence parade" they meant "Communist Rally."

  

And here's my favorite slide from our Roman orientation powerpoint:

A Walk in the Parks

Yesterday I took a stroll through Riverside and Central Park:

Times Square: Street Photos

Today we had a workshop with a street photographer by the name of Markus Hartel.  After learning a bit about his techniques and insights, we were let loose on Times Square to see what kind of interesting images we could cook up.  I'm rather shy about taking pictures of strangers (which makes me a horrible street photographer), so I took this opportunity to focus not so much on the compositions and content of the pictures themselves as coming up with interesting ways to process them in photoshop.

   

Also, another little Roman doodle since I'm on a bit of a Roman kick.

NYC Continued

Here be some more photos and doodles.  The great architecture you see is a mixture of Grand Central Station, Grant's Tomb and the cathedral of St. John the Divine.

      

Greetings from New York City

The first week of my Cinema and Media Studies globetrotting extravaganza has successfully ended with a wonderful Introduction to the sights, sounds (and smells) of New York City.  Two weeks from now, I'll be flying off to Rome, and three weeks after that I'll be making my way to Prague by way of Northern Italy and Austria.  Accompanying me on my travels is a group of twenty four fellow Carleton students who all share a love of photography, new media, and snazzy digital cameras.

 

This is the first round of photos I've taken over the past few days.  Some are heavily photoshopped, others not so much.  I'm snapping about 300mb worth of pictures a day, so expect to see a heck of a lot more in the future.

All Things That Are Underneath The Sun And The Sky Dome

This is a fake trailer I put together of an actual short film that Max Silver made during this last term at Carleton.  Why make a fake trailer?  Well, you might notice that every shot in the video is an effects shot.  Basically, I just picked out all of the effects and animations that I had made for Max's film, slapped them together and turned it in as my final project for Advanced Editing Techniques.  Since the requirement was that it be in the form of a movie trailer, I added a few basic titles and a ridiculous voice over.

Don't worry, it's not supposed to make any sense at all (although that doesn't mean that those of you are theoretically inclined can't analyze it and reach unintentional conclusions).

Animated crows and Suns from Alexander Cooney on Vimeo.

The big personal achievement here is the scene with the talking crows.  It's the first bit of extended character animation that I've ever done in either medium, and it's certainly the first in which I've had to lip synch the characters to pre-recorded dialogue.  Lots of time went into that shot.  It took about a solid day's work to model each crow, another to rig it, and yet another animate it.  With two crows, that came to a total of six days in the ole' Scoville media lab for forty seconds worth of footage (I will add, however, that were I to have done this with traditional cel animation, it would have easily taken double that time).

Needless to say, it proved to be a tremendous learning experience, and I'm now confident that I can produce effects and animations that contain articulated, sympathetic characters who can talk and interact with each other in a meaningful way.  Monsters, aliens, animated short films-- they're all possible now.

Spring Break and Such

A few test images I took over break with my brand spankin' new Nikon D60:

I'm still trying to get a hang of all the different controls and image formats, but it's already very apparent that this wonderful little camera is capable of producing some fantastic images.  I'll be bringing it along on my grand tour to New York, Prague, and Rome, so expect to see a fair share of graffiti, skyscrapers, rustic sunsets and intriguing locals popping up on blarbus throughout the coming months.

And another little doodle just for fun:

There's Always a Bigger Fish

My esteemed programming partner Adam Denny and I crafted this piece of software for our final project in Introduction to Computer Science.  More specifically, it was written in python, and it utilized a few very basic graphics modules our professor had created in order to be able to interface with OpenGL.

As you may or may not be able to tell from the video, the fish have been programmed to generate themselves randomly and detect collisions with the borders of the aquarium as well as with each other.  In the event of fish-on-fish action, the larger fish makes a feast out of the smaller fish, grows bigger, and slows down.  This vicious cycle continues until there is only one.  This last fish is often referred to in fish circles as "the one to rule them all," and as such tends to get all the fish ladies.

We had originally planned it so that an even bigger, ultimate fish comes in out of nowhere to eat each and every thing inside the program with one epic gulp, but in the end, this monster fish had to be thrown out the window in order to satisfy time constraints.

Expect to see more of this kind of thing in future posts.