Detroit Wildlife by Florent Tillon

I love abandoned places. Old buildings, ruins, and pieces of history left for someone else to discover seem to tap into my imagination - who, what, why? Detroit Wildlife by Florent Tillon is a teaser for a feature length documentary, in which we're able to play eye-witness to the sparse and evolving landscape of Detroit. 

What once was an industrial mecca has since become an extreme example of corporate colonialism.  The GM headquarters remains downtown, but the bulk of manufacturing has disappeared leaving empty shells of what the city used to be.  It's a fascinating look at urban evolution and explores just where the city might go from here - and in a broader context, how the American landscape is destined to face similar challenges.  

So good.

Creating Vintage Filters

Filters can be the exclamation point to an edit or be the tipping point that unnecessarily complicates the finished product.  I've always been proud of the experimenting that I've done in trying to enhance the style and look of my work, and I've had a lot of fun in the process.

Vintage filters are particularly interesting to me.  I think my goal has been to pay homage to the style I wanted to recreate digitally, while still keeping in mind that fully achieving an aged look is best done by using aged equipment.  Keep that in mind.

One of the early projects that I played with vintage filter effects was, Silent Shoppers.  I was in film school and wasn't experienced enough to fully escape the automated options of my software yet, but I did experiment with Photoshop to create a more uniform border around the video.  What I mean is that I wanted to recreate the look that a projector gives off by having it lighter in the centre and darker around the edges.  I created a frame in this style, reduced the opacity of it within my timeline, and then incorporated it into the digital 'old film' effects available.

I improved on this simple strategy when I created a short trailer to promote the project on my blog.

In another short, Siblings 2, I played around with creating a holga effect for the first time.  Holga cameras are cheap plastic toys that frame the edge of your images with a soft dark border that blurs out from the centre.  Mixing this style with some heavy handed color correction and tinting, I had a look that suited the nature of the comedy - the joke, by the way, makes more sense if you watch the first part HERE.

While I've followed up with a lot of random edits that play on various styles and formats, one of the most recent examples I've created was for my Newport Beach edit.  I was fascinated by some of the home videos that my parents had and how some of them gave the illusion that you were actually looking through a viewfinder.  By adjusting my borders and adding a softer glow, I heavily saturated a golden filter to enhance what might be a stereotypical California day at the beach. 

Through all of these experiments the goal has been to create looks that are more dynamic than those pre-packaged with your software and that define a certain style both in my personal editing and in the period I might be inspired by at the time.  My vintage filters haven't been created to fool anyone that the footage was legit, instead it's been used as a nod to the viewer to make them draw the line between old and new - to give greater context to the theme.  

The continuous borrowing and reinvention actually keeps things looking fresh and perhaps most importantly, broadens the scope of choice available in a digital medium.  I find experimenting has not only kept my editing sharp, but I also look at it as great inspiration for a wealth of projects that I've yet to make.

Inside the Cabazon Dinosaurs

As far as tourist traps are concerned, the giant dinosaurs in Cabazon, California kind of became symbols of our 2009 and 2010 road trips through the Coachella valley. Providing an ample mix of shock and awe, the road side landmarks are cool for their novelty but are still so overtly campy, given the creationist views in the gift shop and exhibits, that you can't help but laugh about where you are.  I can't talk about the spot without mentioning the Wizard or Pee Wee's Big Adventure either.

The gift shop is inside the Apatosaurus which is free to enter, but you have to pay to go inside the T-Rex.  A concrete stairway in the tail leads up to a metal spiral staircase to go into the head.  From there you can look through his teeth and enjoy the breeze.  It's generally not that busy of a place, so we just chilled in the T-Rex for a bit before heading west to Palm Springs.  

I should also mention that we ate at the Wheel Inn before all of this - I think it helps to complete the Cabazon dinosaur experience. Click here to see why exactly.