2004: The Diamond Years

My first experiment involved doing magic tricks with basic camera techniques. Eventually, I put my two oldest daughters in front of the camera to see how they could act. Soon after, I wrote a simple piece for them to act out as two sisters fighting, only to learn that one of them was a witch. This minute long short was eventually dubbed “The Witch Sister”.

Feeling good about the short, I decided to expand on the idea and make a sequel to the short. Like many slapdash ideas I’ve had, I just picked up where the first one left off and decided to allow the other sister to get revenge with the help of her father. The idea was meant to feel slightly bigger and more exciting. With a quick turnaround, The Witch Sister 2 was completed nearly a month after the first. This also marked Stephen’s official on-camera debut as the aforementioned father.

Having already gone this far with the narrative, I decided to expand the story even further and explain the events of the day while pushing boundaries even further with The Witch Sister III. Knowing that I didn’t have a bunch of fancy special effects at my disposal, I did my best to craft a more intriguing narrative and worry about all the special effects stuff later.

After crafting three kid-friendly shorts, I decided to make my next short land on the opposite end of the spectrum. With that mindset, I worked out a short solo piece about a man contemplating suicide. This piece also allowed me to work on my acting abilities, in an effort to really stretch what I was capable of. Suicide Story was finished in May of 2004.

About a month later while hanging out with some friends of mine, we had an itch that needed to be scratched. That itch was to film something. So, we came up with a short film idea one afternoon and scribbled out a working script. That same evening, we filmed the short and had a work print put together by the next day. It was planned to be a silent short from the start, but I decided to embellished it in the edit to give it a bit of style. It was finished in June 2004 and is considered the “cult” hit of my shorts. We seriously had so many people asking to watch it.

Wanting to challenge myself even further, I began thinking about my next short. I had always wanted to dabble in the realm of stop-motion animation. However, I wasn’t sure what my approach should be. I began taking note of my daughters’ favorite toys and began crafting a tale around them. Soon after, I spent an entire weekend filming the toys in various situations, either in stagnant situations or moving through some form of puppetry, with the occasional use of a stop-motion animation technique. After finding the right voices for the various characters, I went to work on editing together all the pieces to create Amy & Poochie which was completed in July 2004. While I wish there was a way to improve the work done here, I am proud of it for being a first pass.

In August 2004, I reteamed with Stephen Foster to collaborate on another project. This time, we were looking to spoof various martial arts pictures. While the narrative of the short was created on the day of shooting, the fight choreography was the primary focus of the short. We wanted everything to feel as authentic as possible, with the humor coming from other elements and not the fights themselves. I worked meticulously to ensure the fights came out intense in the edit, hoping to thrill viewers with the showcase. In September 2004, Revenge for Murder was completed and is considered the best short out of the 2004 era.

With the desire to film still burning hot, I was trying to think of my next experiment. During this period of my life, I had been subjecting myself to more indie films in an attempt to look for inspiration. I knew a big studio-type film wasn’t feasible, but a good story done on a budget could be plausible. I also wanted to do a project with my brother, so I began crafting a story about two brothers. Over time, I decided on the overall narrative of the project and even some artistic choices I had in mind to give it an indie feel of the times. By December of 2004, Will & Bobby was complete and remains one of my personal favorites.

Entering 2005, I wasn’t sure what was next on his agenda. Luckily, my friend William Patrick was directing a new short and needed an editor. Being impressed with my editing skills in the past, William offered me the opportunity to edit his short film Hurt after I took a pass on one scene. The first cut retained every scene filmed which caused some pacing issues. Eventually, various bits were removed, and I even took some liberties to help embellish certain sequences. The only thing the film lacked was a proper ending, which was something that William realized. So, he went back to the farmhouse where he shot a portion of the film and filmed new footage to be added into the final product. This allowed me to finalize the edit later that year. While I wasn’t directly involved with the production, I did enjoy having the opportunity to edit something that was not my own work.

Eventually the desire to do something new came about which led to the split screen experiment, Twins. While it’s nothing more than a technical trial run, it was meant to be the start of a larger project. It wouldn’t be until 2008 when all these shorts found their way onto YouTube for the first time.