Life is all about patterns

Life is all about patterns and right now, i am in a pattern of not really having time/feeling like blogging. I will put up like 10 next week. :)

For now I will randomly pick a picture I have taken from my mac to show the world.

Just A Little Fun

Friday Afternoon

There's something to be said about loving your job. But being able to have creative freedom combined with an office that is open minded and fun when it's appropriate and business when its business time, is pretty damn rad. Having a beer is more of a metaphor for the feel that we have in our office every day. Hey you know life is good when you are excited to go to work in the morning.

Editing WSF movie "The Butcher"

So tonight Tyler (Producer/Director) and I decided, what the hell, lets edit this whole damn video. And we did. It felt great. And now I am home and its after 2 and I am blogging :)

Everything went well! I couldn't have really done anything differently on this project... with exception of a few more lights (a whole new kit would have been amazing...).

Here are some screen grabs... Tyler is gonna kill me...







The videos will be played throughout the band's show on September 10th at Midwest Skate Park (with Four Letter Lie) in Rochester, MN. I will be shooting at the band's next few shows and the final product will be a 45ish min film called "The Butcher" (working title) and will be submitted to many film festivals, including South By Southwest in Austin.

Some Screen Grabs from WSF Day 1

Of course everything will be in black and white...

When Skylines Fade Photoshoot

I am doing a video project with this band and I thought since I was there and we had the lights and wardrobe part done already, I would snap some photos with my Nikon D50. I don't really see myself as a professional photographer, but I take stills every day, and I light subjects every day, and I frame, focus, adjust exposure, etc etc on a video camera every day, so I figured what the hell... Here are a few of the results.

When Skylines Fade Part 1

I have been working on a project with a band called When Skylines Fade this summer. It has been a challenge, but after looking at most of the footage, I can safely say it should be worth it. I will describe it a bit more in the next couple of blogs as the post production process progresses, but for now I will say that it is a project combining film (video), music, performing arts and finally, history. The film is basically a 1930's mob movie. I am shooting on my Canon XH-A1 with my SG pro 35 mm adapter and Nikon prime lenses. I shot most of it with a Nikkor 50mm lens that is about the oldest one I could find. That along with my 35mm I got on KEH.com and just looked for the oldest ones possible so that I could achieve a look that could be similar to that of an old film camera from that time. Also, I saved money on the lenses since they were so old ;)

The film was produced and directed by the band, primarily Tyler Diekman. the lead singer. The actors were all fantastic. Most of them were friends, but all were very talented and experienced in stage acting, but they did really well in front of the camera.

In my next blog I will post screen grabs of the shoot, and then a clip or two if its ok with the band. For now, here are some photos I took with my Nikon D50.

Garden

DSC_0180
Originally uploaded by Xtopher365

We put in a little perennial garden at our new place. It was probably the hottest day of the year on monday when we did it... I cracked open a cold beer and it was warm on the first drink. Thanks to my dad who owns a perennial garden center and he sent down the plants. He is coming later this summer and we are going to wrap it all the way around the front of the wall.

Late Night With Dustin

My friends/co-workers Dustin and Bailey did a fun screen test and the backstory I gave them turned out to be pretty funny :)

Cleaning

We closed up shop at 3:30 today at work cuz it was so nice, but I spent 6 hours cleaning my house and trying to mow the lawn until my stupid mower broke.

I am pretty stoked to stumble upon Emery's purevolume and find out that they have a new record coming out on tuesday! They are obviously my favorite band... I named my son after them ;)

Stoked for a warm weekend even though I have like 20 HD videos to export....

Good Night to a Good Night

Went to see a couple bands tonight, one old friends, one new friends. It's funny how the years go by and some things never change, like a good old fashioned rock show. Good times.

Oh, and I reaffirmed an old opinion, musicians are hilarious to watch playing sports.



OLD FRIENDS

NEW FRIENDS

Scooter.

i am hopefully having a buddy look at my scooter today! It stopped running for some reason, it just makes a weird grinding noise when I try to start it... I need to ride, its so nice out!!

Network.

I am thinking about starting a filmmaker group/club in Rochester, hopefully I will find some other people in town that can collaborate and network and just talk about filmmaking, editing, etc. I am blogging about it so that maybe people will search and find this on the web :)

My Pic Made it to Fail Blog Voting!

FINALLY a picture I have sent in made it to Fail Blog's vote page! It's doing well so far, hopefully it makes it to the main page!!


more fail, owned and pwned pics and videos

More Testing....

I have been having some problems with my SGpro 35mm adapter... basically the red light on the adapter would be on signifying that the glass was vibrating- but when looking at the footage, it looked as if the glass was off (ie; com/2892189). It worked better once I put a new battery in and it took me a few more tests to realize that was the difference... stupid, I know. Here is a quick clip with a brand new fresh battery!


SG Pro test from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

I finally figured out what was wrong with my SGpro... low battery. its always the last thing you check. I think it looks pretty good now.

I am posting because Rhett made me.

Check out his first tutorial (of many) on Digital Juice, I am very proud of him!

More Fun At Work

Loving your job is one thing, but being able to see it's evolution is pretty cool... I will be bale to look back in 20 years and see all of the things I did at work just by watching a video! Pretty heavy huh?


Setting Up from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

This is us setting up an interview set :)

Facebook/YouTube HD Embed Test

I want to see what it looks like to embed a Facebook video here... You have to change the size to 400 x 225 for blogspot, but other than that it's pretty nice!  I wonder if it works on an iPhone?  I will try it on my touch in a little bit.



As for Youtube, it doesn't seem to be in HD by default when embedded... Looks like it wasn't a waste to get Vimeo Plus (see my embed from yesterday below). Apparently there is a workaround by adding some code, I have done that below, but can't tell if it just sets it to HQ by default or HD... I will have to play around a bit more... this site was a great help.

Dance. Dance. Dance... 100 times

This is great! Why didn't I think of it?!


BOOMBOX from Ely Kim on Vimeo.

DIGITAL DEATH

I finished my spoof movie just in time for the DTV transition date. the only thing is that apparently they changed it to June now!!! Oh well... its out there, hopefully it will get lots of hits from scared people who aren't into technology and want to find out about the change... it would be great if it contributed to their fear!


Digital Death from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

The End Of Last Week...

Last week was CRAZY... we had a really quick deadline at work to finish a promo video for the commercial side of the company. This is what I really want to do so I was pretty pumped to make a good promo video, I think it turned out really well considering we did it in less than 36 hours :)

www.ashdown.tv


Ashdown TV Promo from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

24 and counting...

Life seems so short when you step back and look at it. I would rather just take it one day at a time and enjoy every second of it! it's my birthday and I am off to Minneapolis to see my favorite band Owl City tonight and party like a rockstar!

Its Windy Day!

We were on a shoot out in the middle of a field in Southeast MN.  The weather today was quite warm for a Minnesota February, but the wind was crazy!  I swear it was like 50 mph winds out there!  The nice thing is that the clouds were moving fast, so I got some good timelapse shots for B Roll of this old church we were at.  I was planning on using my SGpro 35mm adapter for this shoot since I haven't had a lot of time to use it on other stuff, but I forgot a piece for the tripod :(  I also didn't have time to shoot the scene for my movie that Betsy is going to be in, so that sucks.

Here is me, shooting in the 500 mph winds!

Fastest Day Ever

Today flew by for some reason, it's not like I was really doing anything special, just editing and I shot a green screen intro for a DVD we did last week. I was actually quite surprised at how good it keyed out, as I was only using my 3 light kit for the screen AND the key light on Betsy. I undoubtedly will be able to get a better key in the future when we get our whole light setup in there. I will post a clip first thing in the morning.

Worst Spoon Ever.

I just made a spoon in Cinema 4D... pretty horrible, you can judge for yourself:



In my defense, I didn't spend any time on it and when I wanted to be done, I tried to rush and make it perfect and ended up screwing it up a lot... oh well.

I Didn't Drink Enough Water Today

I have now lost 19 lbs in under 2 months.

I just realized that I haven't even posted pics of my new office! I have some from my cell! I actually have a window now! Also, I am just around the corner from all my whole job, the studio.



I will be shooting the final scene to my disaster short tomorrow!

I will also be putting up a funny green screen short tomorrow!

Finally, we are meeting with a mortgage consultant tomorrow, so we will be learning a lot about what's going on with our future house buying situation. We are at a point in our lives though, where we don't HAVE to buy a house, it would be nice, but if things don't pan out, life is still good :)

Finished Or Abandoned?

I finally finished this video that my friends Scott and Todd and I made last July... We sort of gave up on it because it was just us screwing around with an HVX200. There was actually a lot of tedious editing in this one... we were really just trying to get something done that day. I thought it would be nice for at least a couple of people to see it since we made it. We were very inspired by The Parent Trap on this one.


i swear to god i will kill myself from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

Old Projects Die Hard

Tthe trailer for my documentary is picking up some momentum on Vimeo as well as getting close to 100,000 plays on YouTube! I should probably finish it... :)


Its a Hardcore Life Documentary Preview (Hardcore Dancing) from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

My Office is not "The Office" but it is "An Office"

My boss wanted to make a little video about our USA office to send to the UK office to help them see what's going on over here! I had a little fun with it, but didn't want to spend too much time editing...


The (Ashdown USA) Office from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

Click here to view the Podcast feed

The Brave Little Stapler

I am going through a training series for Maxon Cinema 4D and today I made a stapler! I am so awesome. Pretty soon I will be animating the new pixar film, "The Brave Little Stapler." :)

This guy has some good points...

I was browsing Vimeo today and saw this guy making some statements that actually make a lot of sense. I hadn't even thought of some of these things... Even though his demands will never be met, our government should spend time coming up with ideas like these and spend money on programs of the sort instead of giving billions and trillions of dollars to rich guys.

To see the text of this video click this link


Obama Public Works, Just More Pork? from Richard Haskell on Vimeo.

Mr. Obama is On Vimeo!

As I sit here and eat my lunch at work, I was browsing the Vimeo HD channel, as I do most every day while eating lunch, and I realized that the whitehouse is on Vimeo! We all know that President Obama has embraced the Internet as a medium for communication with the American public and it was also a huge part of his campaign and victory in that campaign. He has been on Youtube for the most part, but now it is excited for us dedicated Vimeo users to see Mr. Prez on Vimeo! I will most likely be watching every weekly address from now on!


01/24/09: President Obama's Weekly Address from White House on Vimeo.

The movie poster for our the short we shot last weekend! This should be rad.

Another day on the job...

Within days our studio has turned from an empty cement floored barn to a pretty rad looking building.

Random Trips To The City

I took a picture of the Foshay Tower, an art-deco skyscraper downtown that has a rich history. I remember going there as a part of a family vacation as a pre-teen with my family. We went to the top on a tour and it was one of the most fascinating things to me. I had never been so high (no pun intended).

Short Film Saturday!

Todd was here so i had my cousin Elijah come over and act out a little script I wrote this week! I still have to shoot the news reporter stuff with a co-worker of mine who actually used to be a news anchor, so that should be legit, we will see how it turns out!  

My setup was pretty simple, I wasn't trying to be creative with the lighting since this was the first time I had used my light kit, which I was pretty disappointed with upon opening the box. It was cheap though, so I can't complain.

From Blogger Pictures

This is my 19" HDTV from my kitchen, I use it for a monitor just for focusing, not for color, I don't have it calibrated yet. 

From Blogger Pictures

This is Todd (Right) and Elijah (Left) sitting in their positions as i set up the lights and camera gear.

From Blogger Pictures

I.  Am.  A.  One.  Man.  Band.  

From Blogger Pictures

We took movie poster Photos!  :)

Below is a funny thing I whipped up of Elijah screwing around in between takes.

Sexual Donut from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

Long Week, Long Friday, Short Weekend!

Today was a looooooooong day...  One on location shoot and two in the new studio!  I am fearing the worst for the audio as we have done nothing to improve the acoustics in the room.  My boss approved the shoot based on the test shoots though, so we will see how it all turns out when I get to editing next week.  I took good pics, but they are on my Mac at work so I will put up one from my cell.

I am PUMPED because two of my best friends from College (St. Cloud State University) are coming down for the weekend!  Todd and Liz are a great couple to hang with and our tradition always used to be that we would watch Lost every wednesday night, ironically the first time we see them since we moved in August, is the week of the Lost season premiere!  We have had it sitting on our TiVo since Wednesday!  I can't wait to see where the island moved to...

I am Also excited because in college, Todd was pretty much the only person who I ever had act in my films... He had zero acting experience and actually became a pretty good actor as the years went by!  Tomorrow we are making a short film and I am pretty excited about the script, because it is making fun of the absurdity of the hype that is going on about the DTV transition... OMG you can't use bunny ears anymore!!!  Cry about it.  Below is what I think, one of the best films I worked on with Todd in college.  It is pretty poor quality, but hey what can you expect, we were learning! 

A Little Part of My Work Day

I shot this timelapse of myself tearing down after a shoot on Tuesday.  We shoot in this house-turned-studio about 3 days a week.  The setup is pretty simple.  I do a two camera setup with Sony HVR-Z1U cameras and a Lowel DP core 3 light kit.  I definitely need another 1k DP flood light (center) so that I can light each subject separately, I should be getting this soon.  On this shoot I switched from what I normally do and used the Rifa softbox as the key and the DP flood light as the fill... It really doesn't matter at this point though, because they are both sort of just pointing at both subjects...  

Two of the sites the company I work for are BeadTV and DollshouseTV

Striking The Set from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

Below are some stills from the shoot.

Our new studio is almost done!

"Parking" Tickets Are For "Parking!"

I just got done shooting for work downtown Rochester, MN. Both myself and my Producer got "parking" tickets for having expired tabs! Mine were only expired in Dec, what happened to having 1 month grace period???  Also, why should a damn meter maid get to give me a ticket for not renewing my tabs!!  Where does that money go?  Not to the registration tax I am sure!

Ughhh... anyways...

The shoot was in a really small space, I could barely fit all of the lights and both cameras in there with myself and the producer.  I took some pics with my cell phone (EnV2) cuz I forgot the Nikon D50 we have at work and usually bring to shoots!  (I also own this camera at home).

The Cart Crusher 5000

i was at the mall last week and saw this cart!  It looks like the incredible hulk crunched it up and used it as toilet paper!  How did this happen??  I really want to know!

It Starts With Droppin' Phones

I dropped my phone in the snow this morning...  It is dry now.

I ate my favorite fast food sandwich at the mall food court with my cousins ike and izzy.  The sandwich is the Arby's chicken salad... I got a wrap this time, it was ok.

I finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point Last week and now i am reading Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People for the 4th time in 5 years.  It is a book to live by, but I need to keep refreshing myself of the points the book makes.  It is easy in the world we live in to be mean to people, to lack a loving heart and to go out of your way to be genuinely interested in someone.  I used to be better at it and I really believe I have gotten much of the opportunities in my life based on the principals in this book.  Every new adventure and new situation I get into requires the finesse that is taught in the book.  

(note to future self:  Read this book once a year... or listen to the audio book.)

I have lost 12 pounds in the past 5 weeks!  I am doing research for a new documentary idea that I have on how to lose weight.  So far it is working, but I have sort of hit a plateau due to -20 weather here in MN the past week.  I should have been out playing hockey, but instead I was sitting inside watching Woody Allen films.  I watched 6 in the past 10 days.

At work today I was in the middle of shooting and the director of our office busted into the studio with the rest of the staff and said, "cut!  we are watching this inauguration!"  I was pretty stoked because Obama is one of the most intriguing speakers I have heard.  It is always an inspiration to watch him, I really hope he lives up to his promises because he made some good ones :)

It is Skyler Stone's Birthday Celebration tonight at the improv in LA!  Someday I will live in the LA area and get to go to his shows at the Improv and take advantage of his comp tickets.  Show him some love!