Rock Out

So can you rock as hard as a 4 year old?

Now, time to get some sleep.

Turtle Song

Where did the week go?

Okay, I've been meaning to post about stuff all week. And I haven't even had time to put the pictures and video on my computer. So, I'll talk about work instead. I've just finished a video project for the Southern Tier AIDS Program's 25th anniversary media campaign. It's basically interviews that they're going to incorporate into their new web site for fund raising purposes. I've uploaded most of them to my youtube account as a playlist. Here's one I think turned out fairly well:


Well, it looks like the next moth is going to be fairly work heavy. But my hope is to get a short film done by the end of February. I am getting the score done for "Playing the Fool" next week, then that goes out to festivals. And I need to get a feature script done enough that I can get help with it from an editor.

Oh, well. At this point I just want direct a feature. Nothing epic, just something that runs about 90 minutes. I've got about 2/3 of a script for one done and an idea for another that I just have no idea how to start writing. The video contests (back in November) got me moving back in this direction. So let's say the goals are short film 1 is done and out to festivals by February 16. Second short film done by April 15. Feature at least in pre-production my May 2010.

That is if I don't get this job and move to Australia for 6 months.

Why is the snow burning my face?

So we went sledding yesterday. The first pass was not so much fun or my son. Here's a picture of us before our first run. It's how we went sledding in our backyard last year. But this time we went to a bigger hill and there was fresh powder, the result was a lot snow spraying up in his face. He was very unhappy about it. So the second run, I went down by myself, face first in the sled. No snow in my face, so my son wanted to tray again that way, with horrible results as can be seen in this video.

At this point my son was ready to go home, but I talked in him to one more run, with me sitting in front to black the snow. This went much better and we ended up sledding for about half an hour, or until he was to tired to walk up the hill and I was to tired to carry him up. After we got home we ended up playing outside with the neighbor kids. Then coming inside for some Sunday football. We put on our jerseys, my son's is a Dolphins jersey (#23 RB Ronnie Brown) that was an early christmas present from nana and papa and mine is my jersey from high school.

On a football note I have just discovered that all the Sunday night games on NBC and all the Thursday games on the NFL Network are simultaneously broadcast on the internet. That's right, at the same time. Actually the internet broadcast is better, because it will let you cut between 5 different camera shots of the game. What I want to know is why nobody told be about this earlier. I could have been watching lots more football. Well, at least I got to see a good game last night (good being defined by an exciting finish and the Panthers loosing).

Well, more later. As we're down to 3 days until Santa.

Is it christmas time yet?

So roughly twice a day my son will ask if it's christmas time yet. I think he's figured out that he'll be getting presents when it's christmas. Either that or he's just happy to see his holiday choir come out of storage. Here's a movie of him, well not really conducting, but at lest coordinating the singing:

On a totally different note, I'm trying to freshen up my magic card trick skills. I'm doing this mostly by just carrying decks of cards around with me and practicing the basics. Hopefully I'll have a couple of tricks down by Thanksgiving. Audiences always make it more fun, but I don't want to bring anything out if I'm so rusty I ruin the trick. We'll see.

Finally, I'm reuploading the video to the last contest. Mostly because I went to review it and thought "This looks like a black bear and a puma fighting on a moonless night." Or, in other words, it's too dark to see anything. And though I'm not so happy with the video, much like most of what I do after a few days, I'm just going to fix the brightness and toss it in again. I'm sure I'll re-link to it when the better version is up.

More, after Thanksgiving most likely . . .

Parenting

I've noticed recently that my son, who is 3, is very easy to reason with. It really became apparent last week when he put a piece of plastic wrapper up his nose. At first he was freaking out and REALLY wanted the plastic out, but after one attempt to get it out with tweezers he changed his mind and said he'd rather just leave the plastic in than have the tweezers in his nose. But throughout the entire plastic in the nose adventure, which involved a trip to urgent care and about half-a-dozen more attempts by the doctors to get the plastic before they successfully extracted it, he would freak out if any of the extraction devices came near his nose. But if I told him that they just want to look with a light to see if the plastic was still there (and they really were just looking) then he would almost immediately clam down and become completely cooperative. The whole incident was so surreal, I'd love it have it on film just to see what it looked like from the outside.

I'd say he's becoming more independent decisions, but he's always been as unpredictable as he is opinionated. So, it's always been easier to let him make his own choices.

On a side note, I've entered a clip of him into a Parenting Magazine contest. I don't know if it should count towards my 4 contests in 4 weeks as it's old footage that didn't require any editing. I think I've posted it here before, and since the contest is decided by judges with no viewer tracking, I'll just post the link to his video:
Video Contest

Oh, be aware it will automatically roll into the next kid's video at the end of his. And so on. If you're not careful you could end up watching a lot of kids the someone thinks are cute.

Another Video Contest

So I've entered my next video contest:

Doritos Crash the Superbowl

Click the link to watch my video. Big thanks to my brothers, their wife and girlfriend and my wife for putting up with my directing so I could make this commercial.

I'm a little disappointed by the motion artifacts in the uploaded video, but it already has almost 200 views so I don't want to repost it. Oh well, they say finalists will be asked for better versions of their commercials, so I guess I'll cross that bridge when I'm a finalist.

More later . . .

Happy Halloween

Lots to do, but I thought I'd throw up a clip from my son's Halloween parade at preschool this morning. He's standing with his best friend, I think that they coordinated their costumes. They both picked them on their own and the costumes are a little out of character for both of them.

Big Shot

Okay, I'm way behind on personal projects because of paying clients and the SCA. Paying clients are good and I have some short turn around stuff that has to get done, but hopefully I'll be able get Drake to cooperate with me so I can get some footage of him for a 30 second movie I want to do. Post that Friday if I can get it done.

As for what I have been working on, here's something odd. The guy who owns the event company where I get most of my freelance work right now wants to be on this show called Big Shot Live. So he had me put together a video for him so he could enter. I've tried linking to the video: here, but the site is horrible and the link seems to dump you on a front page where you put in your zip code so it can direct you to your local station hosting the contest. Then it sometimes goes to his video and sometimes dumps you somewhere else. So if your on the wrong video you may have to click over to the TV Host section and find the KMotsko video. Then you have to register before you can vote. Overall, a lot of work to ask of people when I'm not really getting anything out of it.

For the videos, there seem to be two types; the most pathetic and desperate people I've ever seen and people who are already professionals in their field are looking for a break to get into the big time.

But if you're really interested in seeing the kind of stuff I'm getting do to right now (when it's not a wedding, birthday party or school play) here you go:

Playing the Fool Trailer

Here's the trailer for the short film "Playing the Fool" that I'm working on. I know this isn't a new project, but it is a new trailer, and I think the project is just about done. The audio needs a little work, mostly in sync and I'm going to need a score, but I think that the pace and edit are pretty much done.
If anyone wants to see the film as it is right now, I'd be happy to send you a copy as I am looking for input before I start sending this out to festivals.

Drake's Cars

I found some tapes of my son playing from back in November. He loves the movie Cars, not as much now as he did in November. Cars are being trumped by superheroes (see batmite post).

But he still has ALOT of Cars toys, that he plays with quite often. I felt like I needed to do something creative and quick, so I cut the footage of him together to get a three and a half minute highlight real of the movie. Enjoy.
(Note: You really need sound to get the full effect of this clip.)

Bat Mite

So like magic as the year has flipped over, my son has turned from a toddler into a little boy.

I appearance, attitude, communication and imagination. The following is a video from a few nights ago, he has become quite obsessed with superheroes.