Brendan Doms

• Work Done: February 2006 - February 2006
• Released: February 28, 2006
• Roles: Video and Music Producer, Virtual Cameraman
• Program Used: Adobe Premiere 1.5 Pro

I had to read The Art of War for a class, and was given the option of again doing something creative instead of writing a paper. Counter-Strike: Source was a decently popular game at the time, so we used it to make a video that demonstrated some of the principles talked about in The Art of War. Since the explanations were live voice-overs, the meaning is lost and the video just becomes some comical gaming moments put to music. It was my first delving in machinima, which is a medium that is pretty fun and easy to work with and where I want to do more.

• Work Done: October 2005 - November 2005
• Released: November 04, 2005
• Roles: Director, Producer, Co-Writer, Cameraman
• Program Used: Adobe Premiere 1.5 Pro

Dean and I made this movie as part of an act for a school talent show. CORe is the governing body at Olin, and we combined promoting that with the Jarhead trailer that had recently gone online. So, we made our own spoof of the trailer and showed it at the talent show. Admissions actually asked us to repeat the act when potential students were on campus, and we were more than happy to oblige.

• Work Done: May 2005 - May 2005
• Released: May 19, 2005
• Roles: Co-Director, Co-Producer, Publicist
• Program Used: Adobe Premiere 1.5 Pro

I heard about the Contagious Media Showdown and got my college friends Sean and Dean on board. We didn't have much time so we made the video over a single weekend. The concept was simple - play off of the hype of ninjas while offering something new - in this case, why they weren't around anymore. Sean put together an original music track and we all helped film and cut the movie. It didn't do very well in the competition, but I still think it's a fun 30 second video to watch.

• Work Done: May 2005 - May 2006
• Released: May 12, 2006
• Roles: Guest Director, Writing Consultant, Casting, Cameraman, Extra
• Program Used: Adobe Premiere 1.5 Pro

This movie is actually an independent student film that two alumni from Olin made their senior year with its own website and IMDB page. I participated when I could. Primarily, I helped them write the movie, helped cast it, worked with actors on character before shooting scenes, and stepped in for directing, holding the camera, and being an extra when they needed it. This is the largest movie project I've worked on, and I was happy to see and be a part of independent student filmmakers achieving the goal of producing a feature length film.

• Work Done: September 2004 - December 2004
• Released: Never
• Roles: Co-Director, Co-Writer, Casting

A friend of mine at college, Sean McBride, shared an interest in making movies, so we got together one semester to write a comedy about the college admissions process. The script we wrote was over 20 pages in length, but we didn't finish it until close to the end of the semester. We cast the movie and started filming a few scenes, but ran out of time before a significant proportion of the movie could get done. The break between semesters killed our momentum (as did some of our cast going on away experiences), so we did not continue the project. I think we could still have a decent go at making this movie, it's just hard finding the time to convince many people to do it at a busy college of only a couple hundred students.

Just to give you a taste of some of the high quality humor we employed, here is my favorite set of lines from the movie:

FATHER: I think you should consider all the pros and cons of your choices before you come to a conclusion [about where to go to college].

SON: But I know I want to go there! All the buildings are brick and the library has so many books! Come on, dad, you always said that reading is good and bricks are fireproof: don't you want me to have more books to read in a safe place?

• Work Done: March 2004 - September 2004
• Released: Never
• Roles: Writer

John and I had plans to do another movie together. This one was codenamed Project Bifrost, and it would be more serious and longer than anything else we had done. We were hoping to make a full length feature over the summer after freshman year at college.

The idea was to write a story about something that we knew really well. Make it dark, disturbing, and push boundaries in order to get noticed as an independent film. The setting became obvious: we knew high school really well, and school shootings were an issue that had seldom been explored in recent movies. With the basic concept in hand, we went to work.

Throughout all of the spring semester we communicated plot ideas back and forth. I wrote the entire script by myself, with John advising during that time. When summer rolled around we had a nearly 30 page script ready to go (although this wouldn't get us to feature length, we decided to scale back our expectations). I even had some people in mind for the cast.

The problem really began when John's dad made him get a full time job for the summer. When that happened, I knew that we certainly wouldn't have enough time to finish production over the summer, but I held out hope for at least shooting the thing. I could do that without John, if need be, and we could work on nights and weekends when he was available. Unfortunately, everyone that we had previously worked on movies with us had discovered how much time was required to make a movie of this magnitude, and wasn't willing to commit. I found a couple people I could maybe convince, but it wasn't a large enough pool for me to pull a good enough cast from. In the end, we decided to hold on to the script, and not make the movie that summer. We're still waiting for the right time to do it, as since then we haven't been in the same city for a long enough time to do anything. Though, I am confident that it will get done, some day. Until then, our shot at a feature will have to wait.

• Work Done: October 2003 - November 2003
• Released: Never
• Roles: Director, Producer, Cameraman, Actor
• Program Used: Adobe Premiere

Another random night when most of my friends at school were occupied lead to making one more music video with a couple of girls. This time I acted in it a little as well. Although happy with the final result, the other actors wished to remain anonymous and to not have the video distributed.

• Work Done: June 2003 - August 2003
• Released: August 18, 2003
• Roles: Co-Director, Co-Producer, Co-Writer, Cameraman, Actor, Publicist
• Program Used: Magix Video Deluxe

Summer after graduation, John and I wanted to take a break from school and any real jobs before heading off to college, so we decided to make our longest, most complex movie yet in the form of a spoof of The Matrix. We re-wrote the script, got a cast made up of our friends and started shooting. We used a lot of airsoft guns for props and even bought the official costume for Morpheus. We project that about $1000 went into the making of this movie. The hardest part was motivating actors without compensation, and several scenes (including a great bit we had for Neo visiting the Oracle) were cut simply because the actors didn't show up or refused to shoot more.

John and I wrote the script together while watching the movie and we shared in directing and producing, though as with "Exodus from the Inferno" I leaned more to the directing side and John did more for production. We were able to accurately mimic several classic Matrixesque effects: slow motion, Neo's fist blurring, and Agents dodging bullets were some of the things we included. That was the really exciting part - that we could, as amateurs, get close to effects used by the pros.

This wasn't for a school project, but John and I and the cast had all put in a lot of time and effort, so I made some fliers and distributed them to friends and family for a debut showing of the nearly half-hour final cut at the end of summer. Overall I think something like 50 people watched it then, and many more have seen the DVD's distributed later. As for those DVD's, I did all of the art and packaging for them (including a full size cover for the case and chapter listing insert) as well as the 2D art for the DVD menus. John authored the menus and finally burned and shipped the DVD's.

A testament to the quality work we did on this movie, which both John and I consider to be the pinnacle of our efforts together, is this little story. Three years after we made this movie I lent one of my DVD copies of it - case and all - to a friend at college. He lost it, but months later I happened to find it randomly in the trunk of another friend's car. Not being a Matrix aficionado, by just looking at the package she had actually thought it was just another movie in the real series! I was surprised, but also complimented by this moment.

• Work Done: April 2003 - June 2003
• Released: Never
• Roles: Director, Producer, Cameraman
• Program Used: Pinnacle Studio 8

Late in my senior year of high school there was some random night where it seemed that most of my friends were occupied and couldn't hang out. I eventually got a hold of one of them, and she said that she just felt like making a music video. We rounded up everybody else that was free (two more girls from my grade) and shot this version of the 90's classic.

• Work Done: April 2003 - May 2003
• Released: May 22, 2003
• Roles: Director, Writer, Cameraman, Actor
• Program Used: Magix Video Deluxe

At just under ten minutes, my previous movie, "The Odyssey," had been my biggest undertaking ever. When my friends and I decided to re-unite the next semester to make another movie we knew it had to be bigger and better. While "The Odyssey" featured almost no post-production effects, "Exodus from the Inferno" used them in a very high percentage of its shots. It was also closer to twenty minutes, doubling the length, and thus requiring more time for filming, editing, and rendering. In the end I consider it a great success, but it took a lot of work to get there.

This movie was actually the first time that I had help on the production side. My friend John got so excited about films and movie making during "The Odyssey" that he got his own digital camera and starting playing around with it through the winter. When the time came for this project, he offered his new camera and his work as a producer. As the director, I helped him make the production decisions, but most of the actual work there was done by him. It was the beginning of a great partnership.

The premise was simple - Dante has made it to the innermost circle of hell, just as in The Inferno, but instead of continuing on through purgatory to paradise, he must return and go backwards through hell (we had read The Inferno, but not the others and didn't want to just make the same story as the original, so we made this up). For some extra originality, although Virgil was his guide in, Shakespeare's Ariel from The Tempest is his guide out. The two encounter all manner of frightening creatures and Dante even has to duel the Minotaur at the end.

We actually started pushing some boundaries with what we could do with special effects here. There was a blue screen effect in nearly every shot (well, look at modern movies like Sin City or the new Star Wars, this isn't uncommon in Hollywood) and several times we wanted to teleport different layers away at different times. Being amateurs, it took a while to figure all this out, but we had a great time doing it.

The day came to show the movie to the class (on a VCD again) and John was late to school. It turns out that he had stayed up the entire night getting the movie to render and burn properly. We had both put in a lot of hours and I think he just wanted to see it get done right. Luckily, we had finished the packaging for the VCD case earlier. It was the first time I had done packaging, and let me say that it really adds an aspect of professionalism to any home movie project. When John did arrive we showed it to our class (the first hour of the day), and the students and teacher liked it so much that we returned at the beginning of all that class's hours to get the movie started. Having demand for something you've made is a great feeling.

I found out about a year later that the movie had been continued to be shown after we graduated as an example of what students could do with technology for classes. Our work was being used as the poster child for getting the faculty, administrators, and board excited about giving computers and technology a higher budget and more weight in the curriculum. I can't be sure what actual impact our movie had on any decisions, but showing it to people at the school after everyone who made it left shows how desperately they needed something like our movie. Glad to be of service.

• Work Done: October 2002
• Released: October 17, 2002
• Roles: Director, Producer, Writer, Cameraman, Actor
• Program Used: Windows Movie Maker

When your English teacher says that you can suggest an alternative project to writing a paper and you have a hand itching to hold a digital camera, then the choice is clear. Two other classmates and I made this short concerning a student who falls asleep and dreams about The Odyssey, and himself as Telemechus. The middle third was put there to fulfill the requirements of the assignment for actual content, while the beginning and the end are us experimenting and having fun. They're really the parts of this nine and a half minute movie I think are worth noting.

The opening is that student (my friend John) running throughout the halls of our high school in a sort of surreal instrumental music video. It's energetic and kind of pointless, except to show that this high schooler has no real interest in class and frame his dream about the epic poem - and, maybe, as a foreshadow to the ending.

The end is also a pseudo music video, this time to Taking Back Sunday's "Cute without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)." There were some surface level lyrics about a gun, so we got out an air soft rifle and ran around. We justified it by saying that Telemechus, as a representative for young students that are not yet adults, was running from his impending fate (having to grow up) and its responsibilities. Artistically, we had an old deck that I knew was coming down soon, but the grunginess appealed to me, and I wanted to capture it. So, I had them run down the stairs of the deck a couple times before the climax, where fate catches up with Telemechus - I hit John with my car. This is everybody's favorite part of the movie (including our Professor). I don't think it's because it says anything, rather, there is just some sort of good rhythm between the sound and the movement.

This was the first project where we worried about presentation and had to worry about handing the movie in. Nobody had a DVD burner, so we resorted to the next best thing - that's right, the long forgotten and underrated VCD! We got to show it to the class and some of them were actually impressed. We were encouraged enough that we would do it again.

• Work Done: November 2000 - November 2000
• Released: Never
• Roles: Director, Producer, Cameraman, Actor
• Program Used: Studio DV 1.04

The next logical direction for my film making to go in was music videos: they're short, pre-defined, and easy to get potential actors excited about. This particular one was filmed on Thanksgiving when I had relatives visiting. My basement was out of commission from a recent flood, so we threw together what we thought would pass for a band setup (that cymbol is tupperware on top of a music stand), put on somewhat matching clothes and shot the thing in half a dozen takes. I edited it by myself the next day and transferred it to a VHS, but because of space on hard drives in those days I never kept a digital copy, and the VHS disappeared somewhere.

Sometime in 2002 I wanted to re-create the music video for posterity sake (while I still knew where the source material was) so I re-edited it. I tried to keep most of what I remembered from the original feel, but also wanted to improve a couple things, so there are now more close-ups and better sound matching. For my first music video, it was quite a fun time.

• Work Done: August 2000
• Released: Never
• Roles: Producer, Cameraman
• Program Used: Studio DV 1.04

When I first got my digital camera I brought it over to my friends' houses as if it were a toy. We enjoyed making silly improv shorts and then watching them again. In this case, we successfully planned something that would require a modicum of special effects. So we took about 10 minutes to shoot it and then I added in laser fire frame by frame. It doesn't look good, but at the time just the fact that we could make something like that with our equipment and software at home was very exciting.