When I picked my daughter up from school earlier this week, I noticed that she wasn’t wearing any of her cold weather gear. Her hat, gloves, boots and snow pants were all neatly packed (read:shoved haphazardly) into her backpack. When we arrived at my car, she complained that her feet were cold. I explained to her that it’s very important that she wear her boots everyday when leaving school so her feet wouldn’t be cold if she had to walk through snow.

She argued, “But you don’t wear any boots Dad!”

I replied, “I don’t have any yet, but I’ll be buying some soon.”

To which she asked, “Online or in a store?!?”

Oh how these times have changed!

I don’t know how it happened, but my wife was finally able to get the best of me! I was trying to sneak up on her and give a little startle…

…then she got me good!

This was our entry into the 48-Hour Film Challenge. In 48-hours we wrote, shot, edited, and submitted this film. A week later we got to watch it on the silverscreen at the Alaska Experience Theatre. It’s one thing to share your hard work with others around the world via the intergoogles, but it’s another thing entirely to see something that you’ve poured your heart and soul into displayed on a HUGE screen.

Matthew O’Neal, Richard Smith, and I are all new to this thing they call filmmaking. Matt is not an actor or at least he wasn’t before Opposite Day. Rich has lots of stories to tell, but we’ve neglected to turn them into anything we’d like to share. And me, well I’ve never really shot, edited, or uploaded much more than silly videos of my family. We are nothing more than a merry band of misfits, but together we were able to make magic!

I had tossed around the idea of participating this year but didn’t really know if I was going to be able to pull it off. I would need the time off work, time off the family, and the help of others. After a gentle push from my wonderful wife I was on my way to competing in my first film challenge. Pulling some strings at work, I was able to get the weekend off (most of it anyway). Next I called on Rich and Matt. Not only did they also have the weekend off, but they were as eager and excited as myself to complete this project.

At 6:30pm on Friday October 5th, 2012 we received our prompts. The title of our film would be Opposite Day, we’d have to include a black t-shirt as some sort of prop, and we’d need to use the line “This is heavy” somewhere in the film. While driving to the prompt pick-up location, it was decided that sometime during the film we would need to include “naked man ass” because “naked man ass makes anything funny.” So when we arrived back at my house, that’s all we had decided. Somewhere during the film there would be naked man ass.

This is where things start getting really crazy.

Warning: If you ever participate in a 48-hour film challenge(or any time limited film contest) of any kind, I would not recommend this approach to anyone.

We arrived back at my house and consumed a fair amount of beer. At the time it sounded like a good idea and we did get some fantastic quotes and ideas for the film. The next day however when our alcohol induced delirium set in we determined next time that beer consumption would need to wait for the wrap party and not during pre-production get together.

After 7 hours of filming we were done. We were spent. We didn’t really want to go forward with the project. But my 20bux was on the line and I really didn’t have a choice. It was do or die time. I was going to pull through and get this finished.

After I get back from my j.o.b. of course. That’s right, I had a scheduled shift right in the middle of the challenge. All we had left was the editing and that fell on my shoulders. Long story short, I finished up with work and started working on the edit. After an hour I was too spent to finish, but I had about a third of the editing complete.

After a good nights sleep, the rest of the editing was a breeze. I’m still new at it but I’ve got enough experience that helped me get through it fairly quickly. With morale support and suggestions from Matt and a viewing from Rich, I got the go ahead to turn it in. Racing down to the turn in location I arrived with 2 hours to spare. Ours was the 5th submission. We had done it!

A week later we got to watch in on the big screen and people laughed. We had gotten what we wanted from our film. We got to entertain people. It’s pretty rewarding when you get to see a large group of people enjoying something that you’ve created. I can’t wait for next years challenge, or any other project that might come in the meantime.

Around the Web

Photo featured on the Alaska Dispatch slideshow

48-Hour Film Challenge Screenings

Mentioned on the Anchorage Press Blog

Oliver is having fun learning how to swim. I think his favorite part so far is the DUNK!

I’m still learning how to use my DSLR. I’m just an amateur, but I’m starting to get some decent results. I understand this photo is grossly overexposed, but with a little tweaking I was able to produce a decent image. I’m trying my hand at shooting all manually to get the desired results. My only problem is that by the time I’m able to get the settings dialed in, the scen I’m trying to shoot has changed.

I’m still learning how to use my DSLR. I’m just an amateur, but I’m starting to get some decent results. I understand this photo is grossly overexposed, but with a little tweaking I was able to produce a decent image.

These are some photos I created with an LED by setting my Camera for a long exposure. I kinda like the results. I know I need a lot more practice, but I’ve gotta start somewhere.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I go to Chuck E. Cheese way more than I probably should. I think I bring the family there about once a month. Before I learned the secrets of the intergoogles, I was spending more money than I should have and always left with a sense that I’d been taken to the cleaners.

The token system they use is very deceptive. Once you have their fancy copper coins in your hand, it’s not money anymore and you’re likely to use more then you normally would if you were required to just use quarters. It’s just shiny little pieces of nothingness that enable you to use to try and win little paper pieces of nothingness(tickets). Then once you’ve collected enough little pieces of paper you can trade them in for a toy that you likely didn’t need in the first place and that you most certainly over paid for.

Anything for the kids to have a little fun though right?

That was a bit of a tangent for what I really wanted to write about today. It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve paid full price for Chuck E. Cheese tokens and pizza. Here’s a little trick I use to ensure I get the best deal for my money.

It may sound a little funny, but the first thing I did (sometime ago) was sign up for Chuck E. Cheese spam with my real email address. I could have created an alternate permanent email address but I chose to use my own for simplicity. This may sound odd (Why would I want more spam than I already get? -and- Why would I sign up for it?!?) but hear me out.Chuck E. Cheese spams a lot! But it’s always with lots of great coupons, so even if I don’t do the next part that I’ll tell you about, at least I’ll have access to a little bit of a discount. Also it’s very easy to set up filters to keep these emails from cluttering My inbox.

The next thing I do is just before I leave for Chuck E. Cheese is register a new account at their site. The new account coupons are typically better than what they send out as the normal spam. Now they do have a policy about having only a single account per email address but that’s not to say I couldn’t sign up with an address from a temporary email service. My favorite to date is mailinator.com. It’s got a unique system that allows you to use almost any (username)@mailinator.com that you can think up without creating an account. This process is very simple and only takes a couple of minutes.

Today it took me about 5 minutes to generate a new account and receive my coupons. I was on the tablet so I imagine that it’d be a little quicker if I was using a computer. Here are some examples of the coupons I could use if I were going today.

Chuck E. Cheese Spam

Coupons sent to blogforchuckcoups@mailinator.com

The deals are very similar, but I’ve now got a much larger selection of coupons that I can use and I’m able to choose more exactly what I want without breaking the bank. Keep in mind, the deals change often and while the differences in this weeks coupons aren’t that great, in coming weeks they could be vastly different. Also even if don’t want to use this procedure every time, make sure that you at least bring some sort of coupons with you. The prices on the coupons are always much better than what you’ll actually pay in the restaurant.

I wasn’t able to make it to the air show this year. It only comes once every two years but I still got my own personal show! Thanks Thunderbirds!