Messing Around

We all have things we like to do. Some of it we do to relax, others to have fun, and still more for the challenges the activity affords.

In the video I've linked here, I think I managed to accomplish all three of those things—relax, have some fun, and actually create something that took more time and work than it's really actually worth, but that I can derive some personal satisfaction from.

Backstory

I was attending LDS Business College in Salt Lake City, Utah. I live in Western Oregon. It's a twelve hour drive, one-way. Needless to say, I didn't commute every day. Thus, the sixteen months it took to get an Associates of Applied Science degree in Social Media Marketing was stressful. Not being able to be around my wife for weeks or months on end was not a good thing. I don't recommend it.

And while there was quite a bit of creativity required for school, it came with the added stress of deadlines, grades, and getting outside one's comfort zone, something that for me at the time (I was 49 then), was the last thing I wanted to do. Just going back to college for the first time in 30 years was out of the comfort zone enough.

So, taking some moments away from schoolwork to just mess around was important to me. I'm sure all students, current and former can relate to that. It had to be something that wouldn't take more than a couple of hours to complete, though, because I really couldn't afford to get behind in my homework.

Summary

This is a 30-ish second commercial I created with the help of an app called Action Movie FX. The app has been around since 2011, and when I made this back in the summer of 2015, the effects weren't exactly HD. They look best on a small screen, like a smartphone. Action Movie FX comes from Bad Robot, which is J. J. Abrams' production studio.

Yes, that J. J. Abrams—Lost, Star Trek (1 & 2 of the latest iteration), Star Wars (episodes 7 & 9), Mission Impossible (3), and a movie favorite of mine, Super 8.

If you haven't clicked to watch it yet, go ahead. I'll wait.

Okay, That's Long Enough

The fun of doing this for me is that it combines quite a few elements I enjoy.

• I like video editing quite a bit, even though it's probably the most tedious of all of it, beyond perhaps, trying to keep continuity. This project wasn't so large that continuity was an issue, but even the smallest of projects can be time consuming when it comes to editing and a recovering perfectionist like me.

• I like attention to detail, but not overly so. The problem with using the app, though, is that in order for the effects to work properly, they need to be framed just right, or they become distracting rather than engaging. And aside from coming off even more amateurish than what will ultimately be accomplished anyway, it will bug the heck out of me if I don't achieve some level of craftsmanship. It just can't feel like work, or I'll stress out over my stress reliever.

As an aside, to demonstrate what I mean—for a yet unpublished and unfinished novel I wrote, I actually took the time to figure out how many acres of beach, homes, forests, mines, rivers, lakes, mountains, etc., a fictitious island I created for the story could have based on set dimensions. I found it actually more enjoyable to figure that out than writing most of the book, even though none of that detail was ever going to make it on a page.

• The app has different kinds of effects, much of which includes some kind of explosion or some form of destruction. Not so keen on that in real life, but in a fictitious action movie, or in the above commercial, it's fun.

• I like Star Trek, so the fact that the app also has some Star Trek sequences is cool.

• I like commercials that keep your attention, but keep you guessing as to what they're about until the very end. Hopefully, I managed to do some of that here, because one of my pet peeves when it comes to commercials is not knowing what it was about. If you can't figure out what's being sold, then the commercial failed miserably.

• I like sound effects, even more than I like visual effects. Growing up during the golden era of radio would have been a blast for me. So, I like the sounds that go with the effects in this commercial.

• I like being behind the camera much more than in front of it. I've done some acting (school, church), but it's pretty nerve-racking to be honest. So, I think it's cool that I'm in the commercial, but not seen. You do hear my voice, though, so if you ever wanted to know what Grandpa sounds like, here's your chance.

• Entertaining myself. I've done this with the couple of self-published Kindle books I've written as well as with virtually anything I do. The project needs to keep my interest, so there's probably going to be some kind of quirkiness involved that only I find cool or humorous. Essentially, the commercial was created to entertain me.

• There's obviously another element I put into the commercial that I really like, too, but I'm not going to mention it here so as to not give away what the commercial is about.

That's About It

I don't have a whole lot of videos I've created over the years, but maybe every now and then I'll post one and then talk about it. And if I get really motivated, maybe I'll even make new ones.

I was hoping my latest quadcopter that I posted about a couple of days ago would give me a chance to do more video, but my feeling is, it won't be the best solution. Even so, there still may be some form of video posted from fly overs I do, if the subject matter is of interest.

_{Video courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen}