After ignoring the site for a few months I am finally updating it again! It may take a couple weeks, but rest assured, the only reason I haven't yet is because I have been too busy. Always a good excuse.

So I have three months to explain away... where do I start?

First off, I've been working hard at my "for money" job, making sandwiches at Panera. After a couple months of temp and very part-time work, it was great to have a job with steady hours, even if it isn't at all in the field I want to work. Best of all, I love the people I work with their and all of my bosses have been great to me, making sure I get good hours and helping me out when I need to get a shift covered for a video job.

I've been working on the main edit for White Horse, finishing roughs of several more scenes despite a 40+ hour work week with my various jobs. In July we started work on a second trailer which I'll be editing, and I've also been assisting River and Associate Producer Victor Pytko as they arranged publicity work for the film. Sundance is the goal, and I think that the film could be great in a lot of other festivals as well, especially Bare Bones.

Throughout June I did some pre-production work and met the crew of The Wind is Watching, a sci-fi/action thriller that filmed throughout Ohio. When their production period started in July I was fortunate to able to help out for three days, doing grip and PA work on set. Now they're wrapped, but I can't wait to see how it ends up.

Last year I took part in the Cleveland 48 Hour Film Festival with Pictures With Heart/They Hurt the City (we ended up winning Audience Favorite for our screening group!). After having such a good time, I vowed that we would do it again in 2012, so I registered a team (Where's Blake? Productions) and got the gang together again. We managed to finish our film on time and have a lot of fun, but our edit was much rougher than we hoped due to some technical problems. I'll upload the project once we tweak it.

In late July I accepted a position at Lorain County Community College as a Master Control Operator, setting up distance learning with other colleges and remote sites as part of their University Partnership program. I'm in my third week at this job and I've been liking it so far. It's a little closer to my field, and I really enjoyed my tech support job at BGSU so I think I'm going to have a pretty good time at LCCC.

When I write all this out I realize that I've actually been extremely busy (I didn't even mention the 5 or 6 weddings I've done in this time period!). Hopefully that makes my lack of blog posts a little more forgivable. I really do want to stay current with my progress. I'm looking forward to cooling off and getting some relaxation with my new job giving me a little more free time.

One last thing before I go, I know I'm pimping this on my homepage too, but I wanted to spread the word about the Kickstarter project I helped on, The Adventures of Shadow Cat: Video Game Comics. I helped Tamar Medina of J-Lynn Entertainment shoot the promo video and publicity photos for this project in June and July, but I've watched him work on this project full-time for the last year. Tamar is one of the hardest-working people I know, and it's good to see him working on something that is actually fulfilling to him. After working for years in the video game industry, for EA and other companies, Tamar is working on his personal project, an interactive comic book with alternative storylines, an achievement system, and integrated gaming. Their ambitious goal is to fund not just the individual project, but the launch of a company utilizing their patent-pending video game comic system. If you're at all interested, I totally suggest you consider donating, or even just check out the site or consider passing on the word. They're dreaming big but I firmly believe that their goal is worth trying for.

I actually did this a little while back, but here's the Twixtor test footage I shot : Twixtor test footage. I didn't have many warp issues with the background since it was such shallow focus, but since editing this footage in Premier I followed a tutorial for using After Effects to do it which was was much easier and took less time to render. I'll add in a link to that video later.

I also worked on a simple logo build, which is here: They Hurt the City logo build.

I'm hoping to do an entire After Effects reel soon.

I'm finally getting the soundtrack music to White Horse this week! Hopefully we'll finally have the trailer next week.