What can I say about a project that came together largely by chance? Early in the fall semester of 2006 I was taking an experimental production class. One of the first assignments we received was to create a found footage project using the old video edit suite at the university. Right away I was convinced that I was going to do this project using my own equipment, because scheduling and planning around the university was continually a hassle - however, and mostly because my friend Tyler and I had discussed editing our projects at the same time, I ended up working at the school.
Not every project can be a masterpiece. This was the idea I had in my mind prior to pulling my project together. I had no VHS tapes to work with, I was completely willing to pull something together using the old tapes in the suite - a true experiment/found footage project if you will.
That night Tyler and I were hanging out in the suite and Tyler was the first to edit his project - which you can see here. He seemed to have a rough idea of what he wanted, but I'm sure he was winging it too. When he finished it was probably around 9 or 10pm, which strangely enough is what I consider to be the best time to work at school. I have a number of memories surrounding late night projects and wandering the hallways in the middle of the night - I also lived at the dorms so part of the wandering was about finding my way home sometimes, haha. Anyway, the point is that the editing became a mix of running for slurpees, watching old Weird Al clips, and catching up with Tyler - who at this point wasn't much more than a familiar face from first year.
Tyler had a copy of The Time Machine, Death to Smoochie and Back to the Future which became the basic elements of my edit. The dread of doing the assignment turned into the excitement of things falling into place. I genuinely had a lot of fun pulling random clips, working on the old VHS equipment, and dubbing audio from old tapes. The whole time machine element seems kind of funny now because this was all before my Buick to the Future series was even a consideration.
While The Other Time Machine is a flawed video, it's always made me laugh. Despite being crude both in content and construction, it was the inspiration behind a lot of other experiments that followed. The most notable being Space Drama in 2008, which was a much more intensive, personally motivated editing exercise. The Other Time Machine is significant mostly for the history and time it marks in my film school career, but I won't make too many promises. Some people love this, some people hate this - it's a lesson directly from Film 100 (or technically Film 400 something). Enjoy!
The Other Time Machine (2006) Found Footage Edit by Luke Fandrich
I think it's funny that this is the second time I've posted a remix video that someone has cut from Disney's Mary Poppins. The first was Scary Mary, the footage cut into a convincing horror movie trailer. This one is perhaps even more brilliant. From what little I know about POGO (or Nick Bertke on YouTube) he seems to get a kick out of remixing popular video content. He has a mix from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one from Alice in Wonderland, and there's several others. This one, Expialidocious is by far his most inspired and catchy work in my opinion. I had to go out of my way to find a ripped mp3 so that I could put it on my iPod. Check it out, you won't be disappointed.
If there is any question than let me crush the debate by saying, yes, this blog is very important to me. It's not just the feedback, the interesting people from around the world visiting, the scrapbook like posts, or the occasional festival/screening offers - no, my greatest motivation from all of this has been the personal guilt. Why haven't you made a new short, why don't you write more often, why don't you take more risks? A day rarely goes by that I don't check in, or that I don't think about trying harder to improve something on this site. The redesigns, evolving content, and numerous projects are clear proof. It's a bit compulsive, but it's also what I always hoped this effort would be. It's a reason to keep pushing myself. It's embarrassing how I get lost in my own posts sometimes, but Editing Luke is a consuming venture that I can't help but love.
Reliving my own experiences through my own words/my frustrations/my successes has to be one of the coolest things - the blog is just a journal, and yet the fact that anyone can read it somehow makes it feel more real, even important.
September 13, 2008.I know the answers I want to hear, and reminders of one's own passion and perseverance seem to require review from time to time. I'm still growing and trying to find a path, while at the same time I think my pursuit might be easier if I were to focus on making and promoting a single series of work instead of this grab bag of variety. One way or another I'd like to introduce new faces to the mix. It's tough to balance, but it is what it is. Like I said at the start of this post, I can sit at this monitor for a long period of time; Long enough to re-edit, review, renew, but more likely, to continue searching for what I'm looking for and challenge myself again.
March 31, 2009. Somehow I've become an adult, somehow I've done things that I wouldn't have imagined I would have by now, and unsurprisingly there's still so much I look forward to doing with the bits of experience I've acquired. I don't think my checklist will ever be complete. Were it not for the sense that our time is fleeting, would any of us really feel pressured to push ourselves harder?
March 21, 2008. I've learned to trust myself and believe in myself, and whether I'm in school or not, I finally understand that I'm beyond what it is to be a film student. Regardless of what anyone else may think, I'm a filmmaker, degree or not.
April 1, 2009.I don't suppose Regina will ever really be as different or as personally revealing as my imagination says it should be. Instead, it'll always remind me of change and the choices that ultimately resulted in the path I'm on - It was a living scrapbook that I was a part of for a few years.
August 25, 2008.I'm just another dreamer, another guy with some hope, Just a man on a leash, tugged by someone elses rope. But from here things look fine, with camera in hand, I'll shoot what I'll see, I'll edit and I'll land.
May 31, 2007. (My first post in its entirety) So Luke's Emporium of Senseless Insanity and Wonder is no more, and here instead is Editing Luke; a blog about filmmaking, movie ideas, projects, goals and so on in the realm of a student filmmaker named Luke and his production pseudonym fandrix. It's been on my mind to do this for sometime, and I've had this blog sitting idle, ready to replace the other, for a few months. Keeping an online journal is work, but ultimately, i think it'll be a good way to focus my ideas in terms of thinking about what I'm doing as a professional career. I use 'student' filmmaker a lot (which i still am), but i feel it's time to start thinking of myself as a filmmaker (or video/media maker if you want to get technical). Whether you read this is clearly up to you, but i hope to use this as an outlet to motivate myself and bounce ideas around. I welcome any and all comments as things get underway (in fact i encourage and love comments), and hope you find some interest in my ramblings. Thanks for checking out the new space.
July 8, 2009.Thanks for helping to make this what it is and what it will continue to become.
What can I say about a project that came together largely by chance? Early in the fall semester of 2006 I was taking an experimental production class. One of the first assignments we received was to create a found footage project using the old video edit suite at the university. Right away I was convinced that I was going to do this project using my own equipment, because scheduling and planning around the university was continually a hassle - however, and mostly because my friend Tyler and I had discussed editing our projects at the same time, I ended up working at the school.
