Happy New Year, everyone. I know I’m a bit late, but it’s still January and I haven’t wished one to you all this entire time. I have set some ambitious goals for myself for 2012 and I hope to accomplish them all… and then some! I currently have some projects in line for Robin Hannibal, SiairaShawn, and Eric Lau, so definitely keep an eye out. The music videos for Siaira and Eric are especially special to me as these are going to be their first music video releases! Also, I am working on a live performance of Jose James at The New Parish and that should be out soon.

I know I haven’t been releasing as many pieces lately, but as you all may know by now, grad school has been keeping me very busy. As it gets closer to the graduation date (June ’12!), my presence will be more and more scarce, but I hope to still be able to put things out in the minimal free time that I have.

Thanks for staying with me and watching me grow over these past couple of years. It’s a great pleasure to read and see people’s reaction to my work. Thank you for your continued support and I hope to be able to share more of my videos with you as I continue to grow and develop.

Here’s a short piece I put together of a recent trip to Monterey of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I didn’t make it to the seahorse exhibit, but I hope the jellyfish are enough to hold you over!

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I’m still not certain how I feel about this piece as I’m a bit out of my comfort zone with this one. As a way to push myself, I’m trying something new by incorporating narration into some of the future videos that I put together. I found a really nice quote by Bob Marley and was inspired to try and set some visuals to it. Originally, I had planned to shoot this at Golden Gate Park, but it was your typical beautiful day in San Francisco (cold, windy and grey), so I decided to put together something quick at a friend’s place.

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Though I love almost all aspects of film making, my favorite part is cinematography. As I produce more videos and short films, I push myself to create more complex shots through unique angles and movement. Although, when executed correctly, the final product is elaborate and something I’m proud of, the road to getting there is trying and difficult, and most of the time never works out as I had originally planned.

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It’s been a while since I’ve last posted an excerpt from “What They Don’t Teach You at Film School,” but here’s the latest piece I’d like to share. This excerpt resonated with me because I’ve been working on my second short narrative script. I started writing it around late summer of last year and it has been through multiple revisions since. There are times where I am able to spend the day with the script, making huge edits and changes, and other times where it sits open in Word for weeks on end in the background of all of my other tasks. I believe everyone is familiar with the feeling of not wanting to do something, especially when it comes to sitting down, breaking out a pen (or opening a word processor), and formulating a coherent script. I think that it is important to stay dedicated and focused and continue writing, or revising, even when it “hurts,” even when all you can do is produce a sentence, or two. All steps, big or small, are ones that lead towards progress and completion.

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A friend recently told me about the AMC series, “Breaking Bad,” and shared this really cool clip with the show’s Director of Photography, Michael Slovis, as he breaks down one of scenes from an episode. I enjoyed watching this because I love to hear the decisions DPs and cinematographers make as they aim to evoke certain feelings, set tones and moods, and create images which are visually engaging.

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Yesterday, I came across some interesting books while spending time at a thrift store: the screenplay to ‘Pulp Fiction,’ ‘Marilyn: A Biography by Norman Mailer‘ (which has such amazing photographs), ‘Photography and Language‘ by San Francisco’s Camerawork Press (with photos from the 1930s-1970s) and the book mentioned in the title of this post, “What They Don’t Teach You at Film School.”

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Another day with my good pal, Ed Lover. The weather was amazingly beautiful, so we decided to head to the park nearby his spot to chat and take in some sun. We sat near a patch of flowers and I picked a dandelion and told him that blowing it might make for a cool shot in slow motion. We tried, unsuccessfully, to determine the direction the wind was blowing and ended up missing a bunch of the dandelion seeds in action. Next time we’re packing a wind vane.

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A Saturday morning. Not to be confused with any other morning.

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I received the following comment on my YouTube profile page and just had to share it.

Raymint has posted a comment on your profile:

You make Hip-Hop look really sexy. I was introduced to it through douche-bags, street-cunts, talentless artists and so hate it. But you … you’ve made Hip-Hop fuckable.