Thursday, June 28, 2007

Road Trip for the Fouth

I'll be heading back to the land of my People... Kentucky.. for the fourth... follow Thomas' and my travels here.... LIVE!!... sort of..

Friday, June 01, 2007

Memorial Day, a little late...

I meant to post this on Memorial Day but as we're fast approaching the D-Day anniversary... this is fitting as well. A few months ago my son Thomas created a movie for a school assignment. He read a book that chronicled the wartime service of a fictional WWII soldier. Thomas then chose to create a video that would both demonstrate things learned from the book and from other sources he sought out after reading it. Now, before I get a lot of comments about how much I did or did not help, let me spell this out... All the creative work, script, titles, was ALL THOMAS. I did act as as technical adviser and when Thomas didn't know how to achieve a certain effect, I would show him how. My hands were on the keyboard and mouse only when we were doing the sound reloops and final sound editing. Let me explain a little further.... Thomas' vision exceeded his bedtime. He had chosen some very cool ideas at the last, including the final dedication of the film. I thought they were important enough to allow him to put it in. I ended up placing and cleaning up the voice over. I also encoded the final movie sequence as doing all this put me past my bedtime. As a good parent, I was sure to make this clear to the teacher as well with the final DVD that went to school. I wanted Thomas to get credit for the work he did which I think speaks for itself. I'm not going to gush on him as if he's a future Spielberg but I think the whole project shows not only did he have a vision but also learned a lot about WWII, and just a little about movie making. In the research phase, Thomas ended up reading several other books on WWII and a few movies that I hand edited for his watching (ie hand-over-eyes) including Saving Private Ryan, Band Of Brothers and the Great Escape and many old news reels. Ok.. the Great Escape was more for me than him! ;)

During the production it was noted by Thomas that he needed his own production company and of course, logo; hence, Future Productions was born. The "parent" company Fort-Knight productions is noted as well and look for yours truly in a cameo as the yelling Airborne Captain.

Enjoy.

Here's the movie.