Recent Video Projects

Here are some snippets from a couple projects some friends and I did. I shot it on my Sony EX1. There are a couple of Glidecam shots in each one as well. The one called Queho is only a rough cut with only the first couple of minutes. I threw a test color grade on it as well.

This happened last year, I just never got around to posting it :)

The second is a teaser trailer of an independant TV pilot I shot in the New York area, again with the EX1. Quite a fun experience!

Queho 1st 5 minutes w/ color grading from David W on Vimeo.

"Hope Falls" TV Series Pilot Teaser from David W on Vimeo.

My Wife, Writer & Potty Trainer By Day, Dance Instructor By Night

Jenny is such a good writer, you would think that she'd do blog posts more often. Alas, that is not the case. She sent me an email this morning recounting some of her adventures. It was not only a great story, but so well told that I had to post it here!

Aaron woke up with a dry diaper as I jumped on the chance to potty train him fully aware of the risks I was undertaking. Fate confirmed my decision by not providing any diapers for me in his bedroom. I allowed him to wander amuck, bladder full, without any protection. My easy morning of casual cinnamon roll baking and egg scrambling immediately became a race against the bladder clock.

Aaron turned down my suggestion to pee in the boy’s bathroom toilet. Frankly, I don’t blame him. That filthy place looks unsafe to me and I have peed in a bailer bucket on a slimy fish boat in the middle of the ocean. Noting the need to clean the toilet I scurried about trying to find the one of the 3 potty training toilets that Aaron might actually be willing to sit on. The one seat that has proven most popular was luckily stored closest. I pulled it out, reassembled it and wandered about trying to find something with which to wipe the dust off of it. In my effort to find something, anything I could use to polish the mini-toilet to a tempting gleam, I located and generously used the toilet bowl cleaner. I found a misc rag, beautified the lil’pot, and presented it to Aaron like it was a fancy new toy. He accepted his fancy new gift. Whew! He sat on it as though he were sitting on a theme park ride. But a key safety feature was missing. The hunt began again.

Meanwhile, a frying pan was heating to a scorch in wait for the bowl of eggs that sat tempering nearby. The butter that yearned to smooth out the frying pan congealed on the counter. The freshly baked cinnamon rolls cooled to a sweetly iced rock. The bleach in the toilet perfumed the whole upstairs all while the bladder bomb continued to tick, tick, tick. Checking and rechecking 3 bathroom cabinets, I discovered many lost things that I could’ve used last week, but the pee guard to the mini-john remained hidden like a nasty little leprechaun. A stroke of inspiration hit me, I found the beast and his pot of gold.

Aaron, still sitting on the mobile pot & enjoying cartoons, now had a barricade protecting my poor, abused carpet. I turned the fan on in the bathroom to consume the bleach fumes so I didn’t poison my family and ran downstairs to save my perfectly planned delectable breakfast. Breakfast complete!! Plates prepared, rolls cut into wedges, I headed toward the stairs to check on my little adventurer. The smell of food drew him away from his tv trance and he abandoned his new throne for my feast. I ran to see what frightening cleaning I may or may not need to do upstairs. (Bathroom fan still sucking up bleachy toilet cleaner fumes). I examined the pot…nothing. I carried the toilet downstairs and set it in the kitchen with an eerie feeling of déjà vu sending shivers up my spine. Breakfast continued. With my plate half assembled on a counter, we said a blessing.

Aaron said it using his sweetest most sincere words. “Heavenly Father in heaven, thank you for dis day. Gwateful for JJ and Weston. Bwess the food. Jesus Chwise. Amen”. With a feeling of pride and contentment, we began eating. I got up to prepare my plate when I heard an explosion of water spraying on my kitchen floor. I leaped out of the kitchen to see Aaron spraying the kitchen table like an elephant on a hot summer day. JJ said “Aaron spilled something”. I pulled him to the mini-trainer toilet and told him as non-chalantly as possible “We go pee pee in the potty, not the floor”. He sat on his throne again with a look of surprise and confusion. Breakfast immediately dispersed when the boys realized I was cleaning urine off the floor and table rather than juice. Thank goodness the boys had eaten a plateful of food before we managed to give it a blessing. My hope now is that the sacrifice of the kitchen floor was enough to generate a couple more synapses in Aaron’s brain in regards to toilet training. But more likely, I will tire too quickly of the constant state of emergency and we will retry this business sometime before Aaron graduates from high school. Now there is one thing left to do…scrub that bleach perfumed toilet upstairs.

Saved By The Bun

This is my junior year film school project from the mid-90s. I just ran across an SVHS transfer of the edited 16mm film, so I thought it would be fun to throw it on the computer and re-attach the sound (including original music by Eric Whitacre). It was great to see it again! I hope you enjoy it as well.

Stars host of friends from my music major days at UNLV. The lead is played by Peter Clark.

Saved By The Bun from David W on Vimeo.

Holiday Portraits, Just In Time!

I pulled out the old strobes, bounce card, and umbrellas and took some family pictures:

Night of Choirs

Full Scale was invited to do two numbers at a multi-denominational music event hosted by the LDS church. Choirs from all over come and perform. They seemed to like us there. Below is a recording of the numbers we did.

Another Website Completed

I just finished up another client website, which went live today. It's pretty slick, if I do say so myself! Check it out here: bunkerdancecenter.com

Another Full Scale performance

We were invited to perform in a concert as "guest artists". We did a version of Trashin' The Camp from Disney's Tarzan. We had a great time doing it, and even got some participation from the choir director...

A Musical Fireside on Sep 20, 2009

A person in our stake named Kevin Love (great name, eh?) was one of the founding members of Vocal Point, an acapella group from BYU. Ever since then, he's always wanted to start another group like it. Well, he did just that a few months ago, and I had the fortune to be a part of it.

We have rehearsed A LOT in the last few months because our goal was to present a program for a stake youth fireside on Sep 20. We put together 6 songs as well as 4 messages to go in between them. It's pretty amazing what we were able to accomplish in so short a time and being a brand new group.

We used our own sound system and each of the seven members used individual mics. Here is a live recording from that fireside of one of the songs we did, Nearer My God To Thee:



We hope to do a lot more performing. After much deliberation and tons of name suggestions (like Kevin Love and the Lovetones), we're calling our selves Full Scale.

A Blast From The Past

Behold, the Clark HS production of Pirates of Penzance from 1989! Here's just a clip to give you an idea of the craziness.

Clark High School 1989 Pirates of Penzance from David W on Vimeo.

Introducing - the pImPhone

Say your iPhone has been developing cracks, some "naturally" developing and some caused by the unbending principals of physics...what are you options?

1. Try to get Apple to repair it under warranty (just make sure your phone hasn't been through the washer and dryer. They'll notice that).

2. Live with it.

3. Pimp it!

I chose option 3. The cracks were in the back shell of the phone, so the only way to fix that is to replace the entire back of the phone. That involves dissassembling the entire phone because everything attaches to the back. So that's what I did:

These are all the little pieces that magically come together to make an iPhone. And most of them, especially the screws, are tiny!

Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard to take apart.

Now that phone was taken apart, time for a new back! I found a company in Hong Kong that made backs in different colors. I chose a blue one which, upon arrival, turned out to be much more purple (it even looks more blue in the picture right below). And thus was born the Pimp Phone!

Everything went together pretty smoothly, and when I buttoned it all up, wa-lah! it still worked. Don't you wish you had a pImPhone too?

I realize now why I thought the new back was blue. When I tried to take a picture of the finished phone, it came out blue, which must be what happened when the site I bought it from tried to take a picture of it. I adjusted the camera in my second shot so that it looked more like it really looks to the human eye. The material must be such that it photographs blue. Weird.

New Client Website finished, well, 99%

I am just about wrapped up with my latest job, a website for a law office: www.lesstovall.com. Also a first for me, it's "powered by WordPress", giving them the abilty to make their own changes as well as make blog posts, just like this one...

7th wedding anniversary - a documentary

I've become very lazy about posting new things, but this one is fun. We hiked 7 miles to camp on the bank of the Colorado river. Nearby are the Arizona Hot Springs, which we visited (why go to hot springs on a 108 degree day? Not quite sure myself). We had a great secluded camp site, and though we barely made it out alive, it was fun.

Hiking & Camping for our 7th wedding anniversary from David W on Vimeo.

iPhone 3G vs Washing Machine

Ever wonder what would happen if your precious iPhone 3G went through both a wash and a dry cycle (so that's what the loud banging sound was)? Wonder no longer! Mine did just that. At first, it wouldn't turn on. Then I decided to try plugging it into the computer via the iPod cable about 6 hours later. It was a Christmas miracle: up popped the little Apple logo. It was booting! Sure enough, it still worked. There was clear evidence of liquid under the screen as you can see by the photos. After a week or so, all traces of the aforementioned incident were gone. The screen is perfect again and it's like it never happened. And the win goes to...iPhone!

Cooking Show

Jen's present to her nieces and nephews was a treasure hunt that culminated in 3 dozen cookies. We video taped it and here is the result:




Our Little Cooking Show from David W on Vimeo.

White Christmas for us

We went to Cedar City for Christmas, as is our tradition. It snowed, which is big for us desert rats. Below is the evidence...

My favorite present I gave

I made my Mom and Dad an end grain cutting board! It was a fun project and tested my woodworking mettle. It's made from Rock Maple and an exotic South American hardwood called Purple Heart. I'm pleased with how it turned out. Here's a picture of it with it's new owner:

Lower cabinets are so NOT useful

I took some scraps from the garage and made some shallow trays and mounted them on full extension drawer slides in the island. Lower cabinets are a pain because you have to crouch down and reach way in to get/see what's in there. Not any more! These trays pull all the way out, giving you full access to what's in them. The slides are rated for 100lbs too.

Halloween 2008!

Here are the requisite Halloween pictures of the family!  Every year Jennifer comes up with our family costume theme (and does most of the assembly & design work).  This year's idea was heroes and villains.  The boys were all super heroes and we were villains (that is more or less what the reality is anyway, right?)  Hopefully, you can guess who everyone is:

JJ makes Mommy breakfast

JJ loves to help with cooking meals and other baking related things. One morning, he decided he would make breakfast for Mommy:

The stemware (his choice) shows a certain style, doesn't it?