Blog

HEY IT’S ME, I’M ALIVE! And I hope you are too!

So it’s been a hot second since the last update, and since then the world (if you hadn’t noticed) kind of ended in a pandemic. But I’m still here working through every roadblock that keeps shoving itself in my way to get this presentation and project done and ready for your viewing eyes!

So I’ve been in Brownsville at my parents’ house ever since Olaf said “Please go away.” It’s a safe, remote location in the middle of the nowhere that is the Minnesota countryside. Despite the biggest problem being poor WiFi connections, I’ve still been able to continue schoolwork and operate as best I can. While schoolwork hasn’t been the death of me yet, there have been notable challenges about my project. As you know, before getting sent home due to global pandemic, there was one last length of footage Phil and I wanted to shoot before editing the video together, but that obviously didn’t get to happen. So I had to swallow my pride and just accept that I had to work with what footage we had; or I should say, that Phil had. That’s where the biggest problem came up.

A word to the wise, when you have 100 GB of footage on one person’s computer who is 3 hours away, it’s VERY hard to get that footage to another person. As Sequoia or Susan could tell you from a very panicked email I sent the other day, I was nearly convinced hope was lost when the download of the footage stopped working all together. But thanks to my mom’s quick thinking, we headed out to her school classroom and used her school computer to restart the download. And as I’m writing this post, it’s working!

So next on the docket is to get together my video presentation, along with a readable follow-along version PDF for good measure. Fingers crossed that nothing world-ending happens to stop this from finally happening!

Hey kids! Have you been eating your vegetables? Because I haven’t!

Anywho, welcome to another project update where I tell all about the wonderful progress I’m making on the music video. Just this past Sunday, the 15th, I met with Phil, Katie, and Mitch at the Black Dog Cafe in St. Paul to film the second half of my music video! It was a lot of fun to do scenes with my friend Katie and then continue filming my “date” with Mitch, and I have a really good feeling about all the footage we got.

This puts the filming process at about 85% completion, if my math is right. And by math, I mean guessing. The only thing left to film at this point is the actual sequence of me performing my song; actually doing something while lip syncing to the recording and getting that put together with all the other footage we have so far. And then after we get that, which will probably be around January or March, it’s just a matter of editing. I’m excited to have the project almost done, and my biggest hope is that it just doesn’t end up looking like crap. And I don’t think it will! Gotta remind myself to just keep thinking happy thoughts and we’ll all turn out swell.

As you can tell by the header, this blog post is all about the exciting updates in terms of the financial aspects of my video! I can happily share that I’ve started a GoFundMe page for my music video, open to any and all financial helpings anyone can afford to contribute to. So far, things are going really well with the GoFundMe. I set myself the goal of raising up to $500 to adequately pay my cast and crew, but also pay fees like reservation fees at one of my shooting locations. And we’ve been off to a great start! With being live for less than 3 days, I already have donations totaling to $150. And with so much time ’til spring, we have much more opportunities to share.

So as we keep heading on through with this video, my expectations are optimistic in terms of ending with enough money to properly thank everyone who has helped with my video. Additionally, this is a very important thing to get familiar with, as in today’s day and age, crowd funding is a very relevant and useful tool to utilize. I’m learning how it encourages me to reach out to others and actually realize how many people want to see me succeed and help out in that process. It’s really humbling, not going to lie, but don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll go to my head very soon!

So as we approach the deep winter months, it was important that I find a secure my location before we actually need to finish shooting. And after a long series of texts and phone calls yesterday, we have officially secured The Black Dog in St. Paul for filming the rest of the video!

While I’m happy we get to use it, I’m not necessarily excited about having to pay $100 to use the spaces for four hours; that’s $25 an hour for those of you who are bad at math like I am. But it’s a small price to pay for this project! I’m also considering using GoFundMe to get some donations to help cover these expenses and perhaps pay my crew and cast for all their hard work.

I’ll probably create a post for when a GoFundMe is in existence. Until then, I hope you stay on the edge of your seats anxiously awaiting another update. Kisses!

Hello again, boys. While things with my music video are still gearing up for the final stretch of production, I wanted to show off all the new stuff I added to the website for you to enjoy! If you take your sweet time and click around, you’ll find plenty of new things that have been added, and maybe a few things that have been removed.

Firstly, I expanded pretty bigly on the Example Material section to display stuff I’ve created during my courses here at Olaf. While I’m happy with sharing my writing examples for writing and film classes, the music section is a bit limited to what I’ve created strictly within Olaf. Because of this, I’ll happily suggest again that if you want to hear more music examples, feel free to explore my professional website from the Click Me!! tab, and listen to my Soundcloud and Spotify. And is this a shameless plug for my own material? Maybe.

Secondly, I got rid of the “This Takes You To A Useless Website” tab because I thought it was a little too irrelevant to the sight. But the “There’s Nothing On this Page” tab is still there to symbolically represent the ultimate meaninglessness  of life. Also I left it there because hey why not.

Lastly, I added the “Special Thanks” section to give a shout out to all the wonderful people who have helped with my major and my senior project! There have been so many great people involved, and hopefully I didn’t forget to include anyone. Otherwise they would feel a bit hurt. That’s all for this post! Remember to eat your vegetables and vaccinate your kids!

Hello my friends, and welcome to the first senior project update post! I figured I would take advantage of the blogs to keep a nice log of where I am in terms of getting this video out of the oven. SO! Let’s see what’s up!

First, in terms of the video itself, a solid 50% of the video has been shot. Phil, our lovely director, best advised to do outdoor shots before November because shooting in November or later outdoors would be, quote, “a fucking nightmare.” And after one long night of shooting in Minneapolis and St. Paul, I’m happy to say we got all the good shots we needed! Now we’re waiting until mid-December to shoot the remainder of the video, which is thankfully all indoors.

Along the lines of music, i.e. the song itself, an unmastered track of backing music and vocals has been mixed and will soon be sent off to Jake Bruce, our wonderful audio guy, to be mastered. Once this is done, Phil can begin editing our footage and getting things lined up with the song and get closer to creating one big cohesive video. Exciting!

That’s all for this post. Stay groovy, you funky lesbians.

Hey, it’s me again. Benny. I know you wanted me back, so here I am! Let’s add a new page! That’s something everyone wants!