Andrew Von Lawrence Presents: Fruit Salad

Chop chop:

In a way, this is my first video to be made on an actual budget (about 8$ was spent on strawberries, kiwis and bananas). The title of the vid kind of says it all, but in case you are curious, it does in fact not contain some sort of deeper meaning or rich and important message. I say this because when I revealed the title of the skit to my 16-year-old sister, she philosophically asked me whether we are dealing with an "inner" fruit salad or just a plain old literal one. I unfortunately had to inform her that this particular salad was quite straight forward and unambiguous in its development and characteristics, but who knows, maybe I will get around to making a more David Lynchian version some time down the road.

Behind the scenes:

In order to make this video work, I needed to have both my hands available and ready to grab, squeeze and move different types of fruit and kitchen equipment at all times. Since I do not own a tripod and had no idea that my stepdad had an old one lying around at the time of shooting, this meant that I had to come up with some kind of homemade installation in order to position my camera in the angle that I needed. Suspending my brand new 550$ camera off of a kitchen roll-holder which was tied to small chair positioned on an upside down basket on top of my kitchen table ended being the solution that I went with, and as you can see in the video, it ended up working out perfectly well. I do not know why I did not take any pictures of this spectacular contraption, but rest assured that it was quite a wonder to behold. 

Changing editing software:

I initially started editing this skit in iMovie, but in the same way that it happened with my first video Mokaface, it did not take long before something stupid took place. Half way though the painfully long and repetitive process of cutting together all the short clips of me shredding different types of fruit into small pieces, iMovie suddenly decided to crash. Thankfully the footage did not disappear entirely this time around like it did with Mokaface, although all the editing I had done up to that point sadly did. iMovie then kept on crashing every time I tried to reopen the program, and after a few minutes of trying, I uninstalled the program and decided to try out Final Cut Pro instead. This program turned out to be much more professional and easy to handle than iMovie ever was, and re-editing the video only ended up taking about two hours, which is just about as much time as I had already spent editing in iMovie. Having to start all over again obviously sucked, but transitioning to Final Cut Pro and discovering how much better that program is almost makes up for it. 

You can find this video as well as a few others on my Youtube channel.

Andrew Von Lawrence Presents: Mokaface

The synopsis:

So this is the very first video that I made with my new camera setup, so naturally, it is absolutely terrible. Making it was quite entertaining though, and I already feel much more comfortable with a camera between my hands than I did just 24 hours ago. The video in itself showcases the dramatic after-school routine of a 19-year-old cinephile, and it deals with classic movie themes such as indecisiveness, addiction, laziness and dreadful singing voices. 

The "production": 

Being the movie-making beginner that I am, I started off the editing process by accidentally deleting all of my footage, which meant that I had to shoot the entire thing all over again. The fact that it only took me about 60 minutes to do so made this slight bump in the road more of an inconvenience than a full fleshed disaster, and a lot of the shots ended up coming out far better during the second round of shooting than they did during the first. I guess this is pretty natural given how little experience I still have, so in a way, having all my clips disappear sort of was a blessing in disguise. As far as I can see, the shadow of my microphone is only visible once or twice during the whole 2-3 minutes of the video, which is pretty damn good if I have to say so myself!

You can find this video as well as a few others on my Youtube channel.

Update #7 - Andrew Lawrence the "Filmmaker"

Source: http://pawildlifephotographer.blogspot.dk/

A quick apology:
So it has been a while since I last posted an entry on this blog, and for good reason. In between schoolwork, visiting my father, toying around with my new DSLR camera and just being alive in general, I simply have not had enough time to sit down and spend four hours writing about a movie. That being said though, I really do want to get back into the habit of blogging, and I have got a great idea about how to do so.

New purchases:

As most of my active followers will have guessed (all three of them), I have an enormous interest in movies and filmmaking in general, which is why I recently went out and bought the camera that I mentioned just a moment ago. I used to make small crappy short films with my friends back in the day, and having been very itchy to get back into amateur filmmaking for quite some time, I have finally decided to do something about it. After many hours of researching the many corners of the vast interwebs, I finally decided to purchase a Canon Rebel T3i/EOS 600D along with a RØDE VideoMic Pro, which is a very good intro-level setup that I have been very satisfied with as of yet. I am still a giant noob when it comes to stuff such as aperture, ISO, shutter speed and all that jazz, but I am having a bunch of fun messing around with all the camera's many features and gizmos none the less. 

The master plan:

Since I am enjoying my new hobby as much as I am but also kinda feel bad about putting blogging on hold, I have come up with an ingenious plan that will hopefully allow me to combine both things into one great basket of internet goodness for you and I to enjoy. I have been posting the videos I have been making with my new camera on my YouTube channel (link), and from here on out, I will be posting a link to these vids here on my blog every time a new one is uploaded. Along with the video itself will be a written description of the process I went through when making it as well as all kinds of other interesting stuff, such as the obstacles I met with different pieces of gear or software, what I would have liked to change or improve, my thoughts on the over all product, and so on and so forth. By doing it this way, I get to keep a sort of diary about my filmmaking process, which I think could be really cool both for myself and for the few people who take an interest in what I do.

Introducing a new segment:
So yea, that is basically it. I truly cannot wait to get this new video segment going, and I think it will be a great counterpart to the two established segments that I already have (Movie Reviews and Lawrence: Uncut). Keep an out out for the first edition of "Andrew Von Lawrence Presents", and until then, thank you very much for reading.

/Andrew

YouTube channel link here
Canon Rebel T3i DP.com review here
RØDE VideroMic Pro link here