CONTAINER GULCH
Rank: #1 Total Time: 4:35 Overview: Its rare to get complete freedom to make a film, but back in 2023 a client presented me with simple script and said “bring this story to life however you see fit.” I first got to work on the five different characters featured in the story and gave each one a unique identity and backstory. From their I hired a team of voice actors to bring each character to life, and even cast myself as “Expiry Eddie”. To create each of the wanted posters, I used AI to generate each character based on a series of prompts inspired by stock footage that I could pull from Artgrid.io. All told, it took about 6-days to complete the film and when I shared it with the client, they were blown away at how their simple script was turned into a full story in less than a weeks time. Looking back, this was the most fun I have ever had making a film which is why it finds itself at the top of this list.
THE RHODES FAMILY
Rank: #2 Total Time: 59:24 Overview: At the time, it was the most ambitious project I had ever undertaken. The objective was to create a documentary about my parents in celebration of their 50th Anniversary and the plan was to share it with the entire family during a reunion we were having that summer. The problem was, I set a super tight timeline to pull off a project of this magnitude and it nearly broke me. But I learned a lot about myself in the process and it made me a much better filmmaker, editor, and task master in the process. In addition to that, the film isn’t too shabby either.
CATEGORY CREATORS - THE STORY OF VENAFI
Rank: #3 Total Time: 60:00 Overview: I knew my days were numbered. The relatively small company I just spent the past four years partnering with was being acquired by a much larger company and my role was being eliminated. Not surprising since not too many company’s have a Director of Fun on staff. But before I departed, I wanted to make the team one final film to help celebrate our achievement together as a company and give everyone one final gift that would help commemorate the time we spent together. All told it took nearly two months to storyboard, capture and edit the hour long film that includes interviews with 40 different team members, along with +2,000 different videos and images to help bring the story to life. It’s one of the biggest projects I had ever undertaken and one of my proudest cinematic achievements
STATE CHAMPIONSHIP
Rank: #4 Total Time: 8:14 Overview: In 2024 the Mountain View Boys Water Polo team made it all the way to the state championship game for the first time in nearly a decade. With two of my sons in the starting line-up I asked coach Duffy if I could shoot a little behind the scenes documentary about the game. He greatly obliged and even gave me an all-access pass to the team bench, providing me with a front row seat to the entire experience. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be able to document my sons as they played in the biggest game of their lives, and then having the opportunity to share the film with the entire team just a few days later at their annual banquet took it over-the-top. This is was truly a film experience I will never forget.
MY BROTHER’S WEDDING
Rank: #5 Total Time: 6:51 Overview: Let’s call it a miscommunication, but I didn’t realize that I would be filming my brother’s wedding until the night before their nuptials. So with no real equipment on-hand, I ended up shooting everything on my Google Pixel phone and a GoPro my brother had in the trunk of his car. I was able to recruit my cousin to help capture a few shots during the ceremony, but with no real shot list or true second shooter, I had to get super creative, on-the-fly, to ensure I didn’t miss any big moments. Looking back on that experience, it taught me a lot about finding creative solutions to seemingly overwhelming challenges in the face of adversity. In the end, the film turned out pretty good, considering it was filmed on a phone.
BACKSTAGE PASSES
Rank: #6 Total Time: 1:18 Overview: I was hosting a music themed event in Nashville and as an icebreaker, I asked everyone to share favorite concert experience with the group. One of the attendees stood up and told a story about meeting Kurt Cobain from Nirvana outside a sold out nightclub in Dallas back in 1991. As he was telling the story, I immediately thought to myself, "I need to turn this into an animated short". And so I did.
PHISHAPALOOZA III
Rank: #7 Total Time: 29:45 Overview: When I made Phishapalooza III back in 2006, I had a few short films under my belt but was still trying to navigate the vast landscape of the Adobe Premier Pro software. The only problem was, the software was installed on my work computer which meant I could only work on the film late at night or on the weekends. It took the better part of a month to finally piece everything together and once it was finished, I gathered a bunch of my coworkers together in one of our meeting rooms so that we could all watch it on the big screen. I remember it was the first time I actually felt proud of sharing a film with an audience.
AI CHALLENGE
Rank: #8 Total Time: 17:56 Overview: When AI exploded onto the scene in 2023 my client created a company-wide summer project to see how many creative ideas they could flush out. Everyone at the company broke-out into teams and delivered a formal pitch on their idea. My job was to create a video to recap of the process - including showcasing some of the best ideas. The client provided me with full creative expression and so I pulled out all of the stops, including an opening reference to my favorite 80s TV show, The A-Team, to help set the tone.
ALL BY MYSELF
Rank: #9 Total Time: 1:46 Overview: Back in 2016 I worked an event in Orlando for a company called TEK Productions. During that program I met Richard Dunn, a lighting director who was also working the conference. On the final night of the program, all of the staff got together for a drink inside one of the ballrooms and Richard told everyone this crazy story about how a video he just made went viral and racked-up millions of views on YouTube. I had always remembered that story and really wanted to make a short film about it. So in 2021 I reached out to Richard and we met over a Zoom call where he shared with me that crazy 15-minutes of fame story all over again.
FAVORITE MOVIE LINE
Rank: #10 Total Time: 3:15 Overview: I am always looking for interesting ways to frame the screen so that it enhances the viewers responses to what they are watching. One question that gave me a lot of creative freedom was asking people about their favorite movie line. Their responses were then intertwined with the movie clips themselves, resulting in a creative mash-up that was so much fun to make.
HONORABLE MENTION
RHODESIA: This was a fake commercial that I made about my father as a joke to celebrate his 50th Anniversary. The best part is that I got to share it with him in person and see his reaction.
PHISHAPLOOZA X | GRAND CANYON: I made this film over the course of a weekend and delivered it to my buddy 4-days after the trip was complete. At the time it was the fastest I had ever turned a film around.
VENAFI BAND: I just really loved how this story came together and it is my favorite part of larger Category Creator film.
EYE SPY: This is a trivia game featuring high school yearbook images of celebrities. Your objective is to count the total number of actors and actresses featured in the Marvel Universe films.
