Untitled from matthew matthew on Vimeo.

First things first - Big ups to Matthew for posting this to Vimeo. It saved me the hassle of re-encoding and embedding. Matthew was also the first person to blog about it and his comments were especially inspiring. He and I went to film school together and we were always supportive of each others work. “Best of the year” is the best compliment I’ve received in a very long time, even if it may only be referring to holiday cards.

Secondly, I made this one myself. I know that sounds weird to say, but about every other person I sent this to asked me if I made this/shot this myself. Part of me thinks people have really low expectations of me, or they don’t believe someone would be crazy enough to do something like this without getting paid to do so. One person even thought that it was a generic Ecard that I simply inserted my name into. Nope. That’s about 1300 still frames at 24 frames per second (some of the frames were doubled). I used this as my camera, a crappy tripod and one light bulb that stood on a broken stand that I borrowed from work (fix your equipment, bros). I assembled it in Final Cut Pro and used a USB cable to transfer the photos over. If it looks amateurish, it’s because it is amateurish. The tripod moved sometimes without me touching it and the light stand was bound with duct tape which explains the occasional flickering. The camera was battery-operated so I could only work in 1 hour increments before I had to recharge. Thankfully the camera didn’t fail me (wink wink if you’re in the market for a new camera). I shot this in my work office, so I had to make an effort to get out of bed and drive 20 miles. I was still recovering from a nasty earache. I worked alone.

I started principle shooting on Christmas Eve and shot for a period of 9 days. Mostly 3-4 hour days. I didn’t work New Years Eve or New Years Day because I was drinking and hungover, respectively. I finished it last night and wanted to color correct it, but who knows how long that would have taken, so I sent it out this morning.

All said, I am very happy with the results and am thrilled that the response has been all positive at this point. It really warms my heart. Another friend of mine named Matt, nailed it when he said that he could sense the sadness of the piece, like everyone else was having a Christmas, but I wasn’t and my memories and feelings were coming together. I decided to make the piece primarily to keep myself from becoming depressed. At some point early during the week of Christmas I felt the looming possibility of a massive depression - for the first time in my life I was going to spend Christmas without my family and it was my choice to begin with. As much as this piece was a means to keep myself busy, it’s also a dedication to Mom, Dad and Francis, as well as all my extended family/friends in York, PA. Hopefully I’ll see you guys next year.

Thanks to everyone who sent me nice comments via email, IM, Facebook etc. Special thanks to Liam, Keith, Jacquelyn, Andy, Sonali, Saara, Alexis and Francis who were more than encouraging when I showed them the work in progress.

Extra special thanks to Damon Gough/Badly Drawn Boy for writing one of the greatest holiday instrumentals, ever (”I Love NYE” from the About a Boy soundtrack). Hopefully he’s cool about me using the track, I really didn’t have time to go through the proper channels and I’m not making money off this.

Someone said I made them cry. The bar has been raised. The whole experience has definitely inspired me to be more creative and I can only hope that it inspires y’all.

2009. This year will be ours.

* Feel free to pass the link around (original quicktime or use the vimeo version), re-blog it, send it to your boss, the single ladies and pass them my number.