New and Exciting things

This week has been a crazy one so far and its only nearly half way done, To start off I can not wait for snowboard season to start I'm already trying to figure out ways to buy gear, what mountains I want to board, But what I think I'm excited for the most is filming snowboarding/skiing this season.

This past week I completed two agreements, One with Ice Coast Headwear to film and photograph them throughout the '09-'10 season Skiing. I have known the companies owner Evan for the past year or so through Kick Boxing I'm extremely glad to be working with him and helping his company grow. and the second agreement was with America's Best Defense to film and photograph there Final Black Belt Test. In the past I was enrolled and employed at ABD, Having experienced the tests first hand through not only taking place in them but also assisting and filming them. I'm glad to be back to film the test again to keep the tradition going.

To keep the business talk flowing I have partnered with Abraven Designs to add a Video and Photography department to there already successful design business. I believe with my added services to there already existing ones Abraven will grow to heights beyond what was originally imagined.

Yesterday I purchased a new camera to add to my arsenal of film and photo beasts. I bought a Canon Rebel T1i, this camera primarily for Photography and minimal HD filming will be a great asset to add to my films, and clients. and especially used along side my other regulars such as my Sony HDR-SR10 and my ever faithful Flip MinoHD.

I seem to have run out of things to blab about, so bye for now.

Winter Film/Shot Goals

This is a quick list of shots I wish to capture over the corse of the winter, I has a blast of ideas and I wanted to write it down before I forgot.

3-2-1-GO:

1. Cloud and or Sky time lapse on the top of a mountain.

2. Ski Lift and or Gondola time lapse from the bottom of a mountain to the top.

3. Ski / Snowboard Footage 3rd person view.

4. Ski / Snowboard Footage 1st person view.

5. Time lapse of road trip to mountain.

6. Falling Snow time lapse.

Hm.. I wonder what else I could come up with?

Back to the swing of things

Well,

Its been a long while since I updated this blog and I would say its about time I have. Just some quick background about what's been going on with me for the past couple of weeks... I've been working my butt off at work trying to adapt to a newer system of doings things. My style of film and editing is more reality based with little to no visual effects, However the way I want to head and the way my work is heading is into a more graphical style of video editing and effects driven media which is good for both myself and my workplace! Paintball season for woodsball at least has come to an end and it was another well fought season with my team, I ended up walking away with three awards the "Points Leader of the Year Award," the "Perfect Attendance Award," and an "Event MVP Award." I'm Extremely excited for next season we are talking with a bunch of new companies about representing and sponsoring us for the 2010 season and seasons to come.

Check out a video project I finished up today by Clicking Here

Dear MacBook

For the last week i have been doing a series on twitter titled "Dear MacBook" Its of all the events that have taken place or were going to take place about the death of my MacBook Laptop. On thursday night my Macbook laptop stopped working and i heard a loud clicking noise coming from within my laptop - and then of corse it froze. Doing as any computer owner would do i hard booted the laptop expecting it to just turn back on like normal however that was far from the case, I rebooted and tried everything the manual told me and nothing worked so i went to bed sad In the morning when i woke up depressed thats when i started the "Dear MacBook" Series.

Entry One, Friday May 1st 2009:

Dear MacBook, Won't you please come back from the dead?

After a long day of trying to just keep it off my mind how my computer wouldn't turn on i tried to think of all the things that it could be simply maybe a power failure or a wire melted or something - I scheduled an appointment for the next day with an Mac Genius at the Apple Store in Providence place Mall and all i could do was wait.

Entry Two, Saturday May 2nd 2009:

Dear MacBook, Hang in there! the Doctors will do all they can.

So the Saturday appointment at noon rolls by and i take my Mac in for the guy to look at it. Long story short my hard drive broke amongst other things. Apple said they would pay for all the repairs despite not being covered under warrantee but i would lose all my data unless i looked into data recovery. So i said okay ill look into it the guy removed the broken hard drive and i left the apple store.

Entry Three, Saturday May 2nd 2009:

Dear MacBook, The Doctors removed your brain and i have to send it to California, I hope they can fix you.

Entry Four, Saturday May 2nd 2009:

Dear MacBook, Are you truly worth a $1500.00 Data Recovery fee?

Entry Five, Saturday May 2nd 2009:

Dear MacBook, I'm sorry but your memory will be gone, it was nice knowing you - i hope the new you will be as nice as you were.

So after i made me decision to not pay the boku bucks to recover my data or at least for them to attempt to i took my mac back to apple for them to fix it.

Entry Six, Saturday May 2nd 2009:

Dear MacBook, Apple Repair Will treat you nice, don't worry you'll be back soon with all new hardware and cosmetics.

After only about 4 hours after i got home i received the phone call telling me all the repairs had been made and that i could go pick it up. However i waited until the next day.

Entry Seven, Sunday 3rd 2009:

Dear MacBook, they called me today and said to come pick you up, Ill get you around 2pm

So i picked it up and checked it out - its completely bear like a brand new mac. I miss all my data and I'm not sure what I'm going to do about my iphone i guess I'm going to have to call them about it tomorrow.

Entry Eight, Sunday 3rd 2009:

Dear MacBook, I miss you already, the new you is so empty.

Getting Settled.

When someone moves from there home to another home there is a period they go through that is relatively tough - they experience things such as losing friends because of the distance, they experience new challenges in there new surroundings and they usually fall away from there beliefs as they try to "get things back to normal." As when i changed my job of 4 years to completely be taken by faith and trust that God would provide i felt myself worried about all the things "movers" experience. Working at a single place for as long as i had i had grown friendships with people i was around every single day and because work was so demanding these people were the only people i had time to hang out with. After the change despite all the discomfort between why i left and my worries of losing all my friends and being honest of not knowing what was going to happen to me - I moved completely on faith.

A Month into my new position at Living Waters Church has truly been a renovation with myself and with my faith. Not only have i become closer to the one i have been effortlessly trying to grow with (God) but i have seen his work in many ways since my shift of life. My friends and I still hang out and in fact in ways more then others because we can relate experiences instead of the same talk about the same job every day. And as for not knowing where I am going - I still don't. All i know is that the more faithful you are to God, the more Faithful he is to you.

Ecclesiastes 11:5

"As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mothers womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things."

Recent Work

These last two weeks have been kinda hectic in the life of Mike - between meeting deadlines and finishing up jobs. Here are some of my works I've done in the month of March, Enjoy.

Team Brute Force

1. "It's a Warzone" - Filmed and Edited

2. "Practice Makes Perfect" - Filmed and Edited

3. "Just the Beginning" - Filmed and Edited

Living Waters Church

1. "Myths that Make us Miserable Part One" - Edited

2. "Myths that Make us Miserable Part Two" - Edited

3. "Myths that Make us Miserable Part Three" - Edited

4. "Myths that Make us Miserable Part Four" - Edited

Gods Path

Its interesting - they say that the more faith you put into God the more he gives back to you and in this case thats just what i have done. I let my faith take over when i was let go from America's Best Defense, I just had this feeling that there was something meant for me. I donated my time to Living Waters Church editing there services to produce a DVD, i also began concepting and creating productions with Chris for the opening of services and today i had an interview with Tim - the Pastor at the church and it looks like i will be turning my time i spend there into a paying job! God sure does deliver!

God's Deadlines

I have had such an extremely busy weekend. All week i have been involved in a production that had people lip-singing to the song "Shadowfeet" my job was to receive the footage shot by my co-worker and edit it into a short cut. However this short cut involved long render and export times and complicated shots, cuts, and edits. Timing was difficult to achieve between syncing the actors to the words. Also the Render time was killing me with having a 40 minute clip time lapsed into 30 seconds. Now all of this could have easily been done in a single day of working. But I learned of what i had to do Friday night, and i had a paintball event all day saturday which left me with Saturday Night to fully edit and export the film. After pulling an all nighter i finally finished and met my 7AM deadline. I finished the video at 6:30AM.

Paintball however rocked with having the entire team out there player all 9 active members!!!

New Stuff

For the past few weeks i have been settling myself into working at Living Waters as a Film Editor for there new Video Ministry. My responsibilities are to soft edit the footage of the services to add in sub-text of the scriptures, and manipulate the footage to make it look professional and clean. Also I am to prep and export the footage to get it ready for DVD and webcasting. But now i find myself doing more advanced projects. This week Chris and I are working on a video for the beginning of service on Sunday. Its a music video involving green screening - Were filming members of our church lip singing a song in front of a green screen. From there I plan on taking the footage and cutting it up so the people interchange while lip singing to a song. The green screen will be replaced with footage from the city thats out of focus - the overall look and feel of this video is going to be sweet. I'll see if i can post it when its complete.

Changing Things Up.

Life as i know if has completely flipped upside down. Usually i am open to change and take any obstacle i hit with a positive attitude and keep moving forward. I have been recently "let go" from America's Best Defense, and whether or not i was fired or laid off i have no idea - originally i was replaced, but there seems to be a new person being trained for the job position i was told wasn't open. I'd rather people be forward to me instead of trying to let me down nicely or act like i don't know what's going on. No disrespect because I love all of my former co-workers at ABD and i always will - and truthfully i don't know what's happening. All i know is i was not needed or wanted there and that means it was time for a change. Since the change i have been dedicating a lot of my time to Living Waters Church as a Film Editor, its not every day i get to do something i love and know that its changing lives and bringing people closer to God. I hope one day i can become paid for doing this - Film is definitely my future. In the mist of all the confusing stuff going on i do have some Victories! I am now a Licensed Driver, I have released a few videos for my paintball Team, and Megan is still and will always be as incredible as she was when i first met her over a month ago!

"When God leads you into darkness - he is testing your faith in him, Put your Trust in him and he will lead you back to the light."

I also have been doing some designing lately, check out these two designs for T-Shirts i came up with.
Back:

Front:

Megannn

Church today was really good. I haven't heard Pastor Geyzer speak in a long time and i forgot how scary he can get! When he preaches he gets really emotional to the point of yelling and screaming! and being in the front row with a huge headache doesn't work to well but i fought through it! After church i had Megan over and we just chilleddd and watched TV Shows on my Mac, we watched Pushing Dasies (AKA fav show of all time) and she showed me some highlights of this show shes trying to show me lol weird showw!! She had dinner over and then left around 8:15ish I've seen her 4 days in a rowww its going to be tough going back to school and having to wait a whole week to see her again! I'm a mess i know ill deal :)

Smile for the Camera

I loved how today went! Work 8-11AM and then filming from 11AM-1PM which was decently fun seeming how i absolutely love film. We filmed a DVD for Martial Arts for Excellence just about the students and how to run a proper karate class - the filming with the 12 or so 6 year olds went remarkable well. After filming my grandparents showed up to hangout with me and since i had to make a trip up to one of our paintball sponsors they helped me out. I had to get 10 Cases of paint from our sponsor for next weekends Paintball Game saturday - Its going to be a blast! After that i headed over to Megan's Work at like 3PM and hung out there until they had to close, In fact i got a jump on editing the footage for the DVD. After 5PM we headed to her house and just relaxed the rest of the night watching House I love that show!

See, it was a good day!

Rough Ending, Good Day.

Woke up today at 7:00AM and snoozed until 8:00AM until i finally got motivated and got up and out of bed to get ready for work. Pulsone picked me up at like 8:30AM and my day started. Camp was fairly simple today we had a ton of kids but all they seemed to want to do was play video games which is fine by me - We had then doing brain teasers like "26 L in the A" and "3 B M (S H T R)" some were pretty challenging for the but most of them got them with little help. Once noon came around i headed home and was pretty board, Cameron came over and we set up the compound for the first time. Its pretty spacious I'm going to be excited to use it at events! and then i took a nap until 4:00PM. I had more work from 4-7PM and then i headed over Megan's house which was pretty awesome! although her dad was pretty upset with me because i was 10 minutes late leaving her house? I don't know, it just bothers me. Oh well!

Tomorrow is going to be a long day, Work 8-12, then going up to my sponsor to grab 11 cases of paint and then hanging out with Megan at night again hopefully... I really hope so!

Work and Fun

Todays work was actually pretty fun, We played some intense Duck Duck Goose, Capture the Flag, and of corse more and more Dodge Ball. Then i got to start Work part two, running the front counter, i really hope i don't get laid off. Any who i got out at 7, and then soon after i headed over to Megan's, i loveeeee spending time with her, we watched 300. What kind of girlfriend REQUESTS to make her boyfriend watch 300 psh perfection!

MLK Jr. Day

So today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, no school was a nice gift he gave us. Any who I'm pretty much exhausted from sleeping on couches all weekend over Fellini's house. Although his new couch was okay i still prefer my bed any day. So today i decided to start a new film series, and its going to be an on going one - I call it "Me Right Now" which follows after Blake Witmans blog he posted on Vimeo asking us to post a video about what were doing right then. I Liked the idea so much I plan to incorporate it into my future so today i uploaded 2 videos to Facebook, "Me Right Now: January 1st, 2009" and "Me Right Now: January 18th, 2009" The first ones about when i was in missouri with my puppies, and the second one was sunday with dan power sliding in the church parking lot. I plan to purchase Vimeo Plus so i can upload all my videos to one place and plus i love the HD part!!

So i have school tomorrow I'm so going to bed, - Night!

Weekly?

So apparently i suck at keeping up with a daily blog. so I'm going to try to do a weekly one, 52 sounds a lot easier then 364.

This week was pretty simple in fact it was very stress free. Well accept sunday and monday where i attended a funeral for one of our students. Jack Crosby which died of a heart attack during Kick Boxing last wednesday. It really touched me when Master Garcia presented him with an America's Best Defense Black Belt with his name on it. But after monday the week went back to normal with school, work, and etc. Although my positions and jobs are shifting around which is slightly scary but I'm liking the changes. So now i assist in running the pro-shop at ABD which i seem to enjoy, i like dealing with people and being helpful so filling orders and answering questions seems to be an okay job for me - i hope it works out there. At MAFE this was our first real week of business and even though we didn't receive any orders i have a feeling we will next week. Yesterday (Friday) I released a new Films Website which i like the look a lot better then the old one. (www.MRevFilms.com) also I took Sarah out to dinner and had a pretty much awesome time - I always have a good time when I'm with her.

But now I have a meeting to go to at 1:15PM at Living Waters to go over film stuff and help chris out with a video he's making. After I'm hanging out with fellini and possibly sleeping over his house. And i hope we'll be able to hang out with Sarah and Liz and them later on tonight also.

Well see.

365

You know today wasn't that bad, a tad bit on the boring side but it was still pretty awesome, i guess the saying a day is only what you make it is kinda true. I definitely made my day a better day because i choose too. It took me a very long time for me to fall asleep last night and i just don;t know why, maybe it was the hum of my laptop i left it running to download some footage i forgot to download, but when i woke up this morning i forgot to turn off my auto turn off so i have to re download it all. which I'm currently doing as i type this - good news only 2 hours 11 minutes and 15 seconds left! Oh and I'm listening to coldplay pretty much my heros when it comes to relieving stress! After school today i had a driving lesson and i had Ron, i haven't had him since my first ever lesson he's a pretty awesome guy if i do say so myself. After driving around with him for two hours anyone would be ready for a nap. gah I'm wicked tired. Anyway i took on the task of creative a 365 film. a 365 film well at least the one i choose to do is to take one profile photo of myself every single day for the next year, only 360 days left. After i take a photo every single day i will edit them together creating a shutter film of myself changing over the year! i think it will be kinda neat.

I'm bored, I'm gonna see what there's to eat in this house.

Back on Track

It sure has been awhile, but I'm back - well at least for now. I'm going to try my best to be dedicated to my blog but i still doubt anyone is really that interested in my life to follow it.

Life Recap,

Christmas was pretty good i got to see my sister which i haven't seen in a very long time and all my little cousins that i see like 4 times a year. Christmas Dinner was fantastic as always. I mainly just got some money for christmas nothing real to special although one of my christmas gifts was an IPhone 3G which i absolutely love!

On Saturday December 27th, i left for Missouri to visit my dad (I actually made a video about it and its on my Vimeo Acount) on Jan 3rd, i came home. It was a pretty good trip kinda low key but i needed just some nice relaxing time. Seeing my Dad was good i miss seeing him i really just want to get to know him better but I'm not sure how to go about that.

When i got home from Missouri last night the first thing i wanted to do was see sarah - So she came over and we hung out which was nice i really missed her while i was away.

And now today - i pretty much just sat around and did nothing. Fellini came over and we just pretty much hung out and talked about Paintball Team stuff.

Tomorrow i go back to school - Ick.