I'm Luke, I'm Fandrix

Balancing your personal life and your online persona is something that I'm still learning how to do. The goal is to be open and honest, yet it's tough not to be guarded knowing that anyone can check in. I want to experiment with a wide range of projects, and at the same time maintain a certain expectation to keep people coming back. I want to be myself AND I want to enjoy the anonymity of being behind my work - although this is almost impossible seeing that the promotion of myself is key to me succeeding.

This short video, I'm Luke I'm Fandrix, was made months ago and then recently updated to include some of my newer shorts and experiments. It's a brief description of how my channel and blog came to be and a preview of some of the work that has been posted here in the last year. I guess this video was my first attempt at showcasing myself to my YouTube and blog viewers, in the sense that I was actually establishing the context of my posts and uploads as an aspiring editor and former film student. It hasn't been a secret that I've been in a lot of my own work for this very purpose, but until this video I hadn't really up and said (for the sake of people who don't know me) that I am actually 'that guy' in my movies.

I'm Luke, I'm Fandrix

Edits & Re-Edits

I have edited and re-edit some of the footage I have shot over the years numerous times. The most revamped edits being my travel videos. It seems a little time passes and you get a new idea of how you could portray something. Your idea of the trip changes, or your skills improve, or you notice a shot that you never used and it sparks a new idea.

One of my first posts on this blog was about my video postcards, and as of today I have officially re-edited all of the videos that had originally been in that early post. For nostalgic reasons, I left the original South Dakota road trip edit that I made over a year ago uploaded, and thought it would be nice to pair it with the new one. The idea isn't ever to replace those old edits, but refine them. You'll find a lot of the same shots are used again, but the mood is different. That's the thing about traveling, you can take as many pictures and shoot as much video as you want, but it's near impossible to recreate all the excitement, frustration, wonder, joy, anxiety, etc. that you experience while there.

You can decide for yourself what you think of these two edits. I've said it before, but all of my travel footage serves as material for editing exercises simply because there's so much of it. I don't see that changing any time soon, but for now, enjoy the new edit of my 2007 South Dakota road trip as well as the original edit made last year.

NEW South Dakota Video
Original South Dakota Video

Give it Time @ Youngcuts!

I just wanted to pass on some great news that I received today. A couple months ago I submitted my short film Give it Time to the Youngcuts Festival. You may remember that Give it Time was a short I originally made for the Sasktel Video Competition in November of last year.

In the Sasktel competition I put all my efforts into promoting my film the Gizmo Tree, which turned out to be the right thing to do as it won 2nd place. However, I was left feeling like my other entry, Give it Time, despite being in the Top 10 of that contest also, hadn't reached its potential.

Today I received the email saying that Give it Time has been accepted to the 2008 Youngcuts International Festival taking place in Montreal, QC next month. It's an accomplishment I feel excellent about as I've submitted to the festival over the last 4 years, and have only had Keys to Existence be accepted at the 2005 festival in Toronto.

Give it Time is now one of the Top 100 films out of (what they said was) nearly 1000 submissions. It really makes no difference to me if it wins in its 'Best Short Film' category, as i'm just so thrilled that it'll be playing to such a large and diverse crowd.

You can check out Give it Time below: