No Holds Barred

Much like GreaseBoard, I got a call saying a cable reality TV show needed an opening sequence made.  I'm happy to do such projects.  In fact, I usually prefer working with actual footage over pure animation.

The director of this sequence is a good friend of mine.  He and I made Mr. Bellpond, a piece that won two Student Emmys back in 2012.  This TV show is essentially a play-by-play breakdown of UFC fights.  The fighters can talk about what was going through their minds as they duked it out in the cage.  It's pretty cool if you're into that kind of thing.  I had to do a lot of research to figure out a few things about the culture.

For this piece, I pulled inspiration from two pieces:  the opening sequence of Breaking Pointe and the opening sequence for The Contender.  With these two in mind, I've been crafting this.  Keep in mind that it isn't finished yet.

Password:  HulkHogan


NHB Draft 10 from Nick Dixon on Vimeo.

GreaseBoard

The great thing about the world today is that everybody needs a video. Small businesses realize that they can't compete without a strong video force. For freelance filmmakers like me, this is great news. Doing videos for these small companies is my bread a butter. For example, take a look at the makers of Grease Board. These experienced football coaches wanted to make a technologically enriching experience for other coaches, so they invented an app called GreaseBoard. GreaseBoard is essentially a digital playbook in which coaches can build plays, email them to other coaches or players, keep rosters and take extensive notes. Pretty shiny stuff.

For a freelancer like me, the process is typically like this: I get a call saying that a commercial needs to be made. I go in and make a proof of concept, which basically showcases the style of animation or video I'd like to execute. Once that gets passed off, I build assets. In this video, for instance, I had to model the iPad in a 3D application called 3DS Max. Once I model it, I texture it and shade it so it looks and behaves like a real iPad would. I then insert screenshots or videos, which adds more life to the piece. I can then add text, lighting, narration, or whatever else needs to be added. Take a look at the video. It's not finished, but it's pretty darn close.

 The password is: GreaseBoard
GreaseBoard --- Draft 6 from Nick Dixon on Vimeo.

Stance

I've mentioned before that I'm involved in a class that produces a spec TV commercial every semester.  This semester, we're doing two commercials.  This is even more of a challenge, but our portfolios will be even better because of it.  Each group picks a brand and develops a concept to follow it.  One of the groups this time chose a brand of socks called Stance and pitched a concept to a group of directors, of which I was a part.  I wasn't blown away by the ad or anything, but I did see potential in it.  They continued developing it and within a few weeks, they had a concept that I ended up loving.

The commercial follows one character who simply stands out.  Since he was a kid, you could tell things were just different with him.  He never tried to be cool, he just is cool.

This tricky thing about this commercial is just how much producing there was.  There are six vignettes, but most commercials only had one scene.  So already, this was six times harder.  We had to find three actors, six locations, several props and a ton of different socks.  In spite of all the challenges though, I really do think it turned out quite well!  Take a look for yourself.  The password is:  uncommon.

Stance Spec Ad --- Draft 4 from Nick Dixon on Vimeo.

Final Cut Film Festival!

It's that time of year again!  BYU's Final Cut Film Festival is upon us.  Every year, hundreds of student films get submitted, but only a few get chosen to be shown in BYU's annual showcase.  Final Cut started in 1992, but died out after a few years.  I was lucky enough to be part of a small crew of students who brought it back in 2011.  Since then, we've managed to keep the festival afloat, giving students an opportunity to show off their films.  We've also made the festival a networking opportunity.  Every year, we invite film alumni to come to a gala right before the festival to meet the students and recruit them for their upcoming projects.  This gets them kids with talent to work on their projects, as well as jobs for the kids.  Everybody wins!

Every year, we also bring in judges to judge which films stand out above the rest.  The best commercial, best animation, best documentary and best narrative are all picked out from the 30-40 films that are chosen.

I'm part of the board of students who decide which pieces get in the festival and which ones don't.   I have to say that this year shows a lot of promise and will likely turn out to be a great festival.  Here's a trailer I cut together using the pieces lined up for this year's festival:

BYU Final Cut Film Festival 2014 Trailer from BYU Student Film Association on Vimeo.

Without A Rope

For nearly three years, I've been working on a passion project.  I wrote the first draft of the script back in October of 2011 and continued tweaking it through January of 2013.  I pitched it as a senior capstone film, which is a pretty difficult thing to pull off in the first place.  Only four capstone films get produced every year, so it's an exclusive and prestigious honor.  The film I wanted to make is a rock climbing movie, which brought with it several challenges.  When I pitched it to the faculty the first time, they immediately rejected it, saying it would be far too dangerous to produce.  After a lot of research and time, we were able to convince them otherwise.  In March of 2013, we began shooting.

Nearly a year later, the film is FINISHED!  It didn't quite turn out how I wanted it to, but you can't really expect phenomenal things when you're dealing with a $7,000 budget and a crew that has to balance school, work, significant others (if they're lucky), church and life's other demands.  Here's a trailer for it, which highlights some of the reasons this project seemed to be impossible.  It really was a total miracle that we pulled this thing off.

Without A Rope -- Trailer from Nick Dixon on Vimeo.

A Sticky Situation - Part Deux

As you may remember, I directed and produced a commercial in November for WD-40. We submitted the commercial to a few competitions and have seen an incredible response! The first competition we took it to was the Utah Addy Awards. Basically, all the commercials produced in Utah are pitted against one another. Judges from across the country fly in to judge the Utah-produced pieces.

The commercial was put in the student section since we are all students. We were hoping to win a Gold Addy, which we did. What we weren't necessarily expecting, however, was the we ended up winning Best of Fest for the student section. So that was a pleasant surprise. The trophy was a spray-painted dog bone mounted on some sort of platform. The festival's theme was something along the lines of 'Dog and Pony Show' and they kept throwing the phrase 'Top Dog' around, so I suppose that makes sense. One of the judges actually told us that he voted for the commercial for Best of Fest overall, but the officiators told him that since we were in the student section, we couldn't win overall. Bummer, but I'm still honored that he thought it was good enough to win overall.

 We sat back and watched the rest of the commercials, grinning at the new golden trophies we'd won. Then they got around to sending ballots around for the audience choice award. We, of course, voted for ourselves. It turns out almost everybody else did too. Just a few minutes after the ballots had been turned in, they walked out and awarded us this awesome WWF belt, which was legitimate. It was signed by a few WWF wrestlers even. We get to keep the belt for a year as a trophy for winning the audience choice. Pretty unique prizes at this thing, I must say!

 

Profoundly behind

So I'm obviously profoundly behind on my blog posts. I've thought about posting to the blog literally every single day since my last post and still have managed to avoid posting once. As I was driving back from Colorado today, I was thinking about why on earth it is so hard for me to write blog posts. Frankly, I hate talking about myself. If somebody asks me a question about myself, I'm very happy to give a better-than-adequate answer, but I won't really elaborate and exploit the hidden parts of my own life. You'll probably notice that every post up to this point was all posted on a single day. I seriously hate posting things about myself. I don't feel like my opinions on anything are worth people reading about them and I don't feel like anybody will be reading these. Shayne, if you read this, prove me wrong and write me a comment. In spite of the fact that I haven't been posting regularly though, I have been writing regularly. I try to spend a certain amount of time every week working on a screenplay of some sort. I have a few I just finished up and a few more in the works. I'm trying to get a feature-length film written pretty soon here, but I need a creative partner to collaborate with. But I cannot for the life of me find the motivation to write about myself. I just don't feel like the things I do merit writing about! In a society that's plagued with narcissism, I have such a difficult time making myself do this. I totally understand that there are a lot of desirable things that come from doing an assignment like this. More coherent writing, the ability and desire to write regularly and a grip on social media are just a few of the benefits. But I still. Hate. Writing about me. I don't remember who said this, so I'm just going to take the credit. So I once said "There are two types of people. Those who write history, and those who make it." I'm not saying I'm going to make history. But I am saying that I'm trying!