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!

A Sticky Situation

What began as a normal weekend quickly evolved into an extraordinary payoff for some work I'd done in the past. In one of my previous posts, I'd mentioned the WD-40 commercial I was fortunate enough to direct and produce. A few weeks ago, we got a call telling us that we had been nominated for an Addy, which is an award in advertising. It begins on a state level and if it wins, it gets forwarded to the regional level, then the national level. This weekend was the gala for the Utah level competition. We went as a group with high hopes of winning a Gold Addy. As the awards show went on, we finally arrived the our section. And we won gold! We were thrilled. Before the excitement had worn off, we came to the Best of Show awards. Much to our surprise, we won that too! The trophy was a golden dog bone for being the "top dogs." We were so stoked! We continued with the awards and the judges began handing out ballots for the Audience Choice award. We filled out our ballots and waited for the results. We couldn't believe it when they called out our project again! We swept the competition! The trophy for this award was pretty incredible. For the next year, we're the official keepers of an official WWF champion belt, signed by Brett "The Hit Man" Heart, a WWF wrestler. It was ridiculous, insane and so random. Here's a picture of our bounty. I'll also include a link below so you can view the commercial if you haven't had the chance to already.

Good things come to those who work hard!

An Experience with a Stranger, a Coke and an App

So this week we were encouraged to buy a stranger a coke and write about it in our blog. I admittedly bent some of the requirements, but I did so in attempt of making a more interesting blog post. For the past several weeks, I've been hearing talk of a new dating app called Tinder. The app essentially functions as follows: If two people are physically attracted to each other's pictures, Tinder allows for the participants to engage in dialogue. Should the parties choose, they could arrange a time to meet and begin a real life relationship. Or something. I decided that it would make a good story if I got Tinder and used it for homework, which is exactly what I did. I downloaded the app and began to superficially sift through local girls' photos. Within just a few minutes, I began getting matches. So I struck up a conversation with a few of them. In my opinion, one girl was clearly more interesting than the others. We'll call her Annalee. I chose that name mostly because that's her name. After facebook stalking her (a necessary practice to ensure she isn't an axe murderer), we set up a meeting time. Because both of us rock climb and try to maintain some degree of healthy, neither of us drink soda, thereby necessitating the first bending of the rules. I was liberal with my interpretation of the term "coke" and took it down a notch, choosing coke's gateway drug: frozen yogurt. We met and it was chill in every sense. Once the frozen yogurt shop closed up,we decided we would continue talking and migrated to my car. Steamy. Actually it really was. The defrost feature in my car is useless so I had to wipe the windows down once we parted ways. Although this activity was geared toward encouraging charity and brotherly kindness, I somehow managed to contort it to fill my own dating needs. I'm not really sure what to say about that. But I'm sure if you gave it enough though, you could find something that it says about me. Mazel tov.

Brain Saver

Right after finishing my submission to the Student Emmys, I had to shift my attention to the aforementioned commercials class. Although we made the WD-40 commercial over the course of the semester, the professor this semester decided we would be making a commercial due January 22. The reason for this is that the advertising program has a ‘meet and greet’ of sorts with industry professionals in Park City during Sundance Film Festival. The professor realized how valuable it would be for the students to have a commercial in their portfolios to show these recruiters, thus the urgency. This commercial, which is for Brainsaver helmets, was an interesting experience to shoot. The group wanted slow motion footage of fruit exploding at skate parks, but to truly capture the impressive nature of an explosion, we needed to shoot at a higher frame rate than 300 frames per second, which is what the school’s high-end camera shoots at. Luckily for us, we were able to develop a relationship with the BYU Splash Lab, which recently bought a camera called a Phantom. This camera is capable of shooting half a million frames per second, which really messes with your perception of reality. Although the shots in the final commercial are usually only 8,000 frames per second, we played around with the camera and found out firsthand how incredible it is. Hope you enjoy the commercial! https://vimeo.com/84569385 The password is: BrainBuster

A Sticky Situation

Another film project I’ve been devoting time to lately is our WD-40 commercial. We recently found out that this project won an Addy, which is an award for commercials. The Addys work at a state, regional and national level. The gala for the state Addys is this upcoming Saturday and we have high hopes for the commercial. If we win at the state level, we’ll automatically be forwarded for competition with other winners in the region. I was fortunate enough to make this commercial through a commercials class in the Ad program here at BYU. Every semester, they recruit directors from the film program to assist in the production of the commercial. Having these commercials is a significant asset in each of the ad students’ portfolios. I was fortunate enough to get paired up with James Taylor, Brian Shaw and Brandon Robinson on this project. As a general rule, I’m skeptical of advertising students. I’ve just had a lot of negative experiences with several advertisers. However, I was able to develop a really great friendship with these three gentlemen during the experience. Hope you enjoy the commercial! https://vimeo.com/80596323

MCOM 320 Introduction

Hi there. My name is Nick Dixon and I’m honestly not really much of a blogger, which is why I’m recycling a blog from a previous class to do this assignment. I may not be much of a blogger, but that doesn’t mean I won’t have a little bit of fun with this assignment. I honestly don’t anticipate I’ll blog after school requires me to do it, but I can honestly say that I don’t hate blogging in the slightest. I just don’t necessarily get it either. But maybe I will after writing a blog consistently this semester! You’ll notice that this blog post is about a month late. There’s a sort-of-good-but-not-really excuse behind that, which segues beautifully to the subject that I’ll be devoting this blog to: my film life. January 14 was the deadline for a draft of my capstone film, Without a Rope. It’s a 20-minute piece about two brothers. Porter, the older brother, is an experienced rock climber, while Rick struggles living up to the example his brother sets. When they get in a plane crash on the way home from a climbing trip, Rick has to decide between waiting in safety to get found and climbing out of the valley (without a rope) to save his brother before he bleeds to death. To prove that I’m not just blowing smoke up your skirt, here are a few screenshots of the film. We’ve been working on it since the submission so we can submit an even better version if we make the first cut. Hopefully I’ll be writing more about this in future posts!