As you all may or may not have known, I was planning on doing a zombie survival or hitman runaway scene for my final project.

Apparently, the universe had other ideas- three of my four actors got covid, and my camera decided to die after a decade of perfect use.

This led to me having to get into the true root of the class, especially for our class in “finding joy in creativity” and really doing whatever would make you happy – remembering there are only “happy accidents” along the way. Well, I guess life threw me a couple of happy accidents because I ended up choosing to do a video shoot/trailer of my car.

I chose this because I knew it was something I could do by myself and at least attempt to try and get quality footage off my phone for.

Shoutout iPhone 11 for being able to shoot in 4k/60 FPS because without that I would have been left in a Borean tundra with a toga and a dream for this project.

My creative process for this was to really just try and get as many transitional shots as I could. For all the car content I consume online, these types of shots were always the crowd stoppers and attention grabbers. Therefore, I figured if I was going to try and do this- I may as well dive into the deep end and really try and make my best product.

With this came me looking like a Grade A nutjob – from sitting and walking in circles around my car at the park muttering things to myself holding my phone up to running across the road after parking just to get that “perfect angle” … meanwhile, everyone stares at me as they drive by.

Honestly, I really enjoyed being out of my comfort zone for a million reasons on this project. I have always wanted to be like the people I look up to in the automotive scene and this was me finally pulling the trigger and just doing whatever I wanted and not thinking about what anyone else may have thought of me at the moment.

Getting this great footage came with a caveat, however – I needed to learn how to edit… fast. Turns out getting transitional shots mean nothing if you don’t know how to edit the transition!

…Fast forward to me spending 16 hours learning how to make a 1-minute video. Yes- sixteen.

Hey, at least I can tell you how to speed ramp and blur things to match up to audio and video!

As dumb as it sounds, DS106 has really broadened my horizons creatively and made me more comfortable with expressing myself through mediums I may not necessarily be familiar with. Everyone has to start somewhere – there is almost no way to produce professional-grade work off rip, you need to master it over time.

By no means as professional as some of my friends that get paid the big bucks to do stuff like this, but I am honestly very proud of what came out of this. I feel that this is the start to a long road of enjoyment for me on a path that I should have never restricted myself from for so long.

With all that being said – here it is! :