Morgan Dusatko's Portfolio

[morgancoe]

Hello

Hi. I'm Morgan. Good to meet you.

This is a portfolio of and brief introduction to my work as a vidographer, photographer, designer, and writer.

Please use the links above to peruse the catagories. You could scroll down too, and see almost everything that way. But it might be better to just use the links.

I genuinely hope you like my work.

[morgancoe]

Photography

The lion’s share of my photography has been done in my position as the multimedia producer at the Office of Admission. Over my time there I have developed a strong sense of what makes a still image work. I really like shooting portraits. I also have a strong sense of the still image post production workflow and have a lot fun taking images from great to "stunna" using all the tricks I’ve learned over the last year.

[morgancoe]

Landscapes

Sometimes I have to take pictures of buildings or nature or things that aren't people. Here is that.

[morgancoe]

Student Portraits

When I first started at the UW I was very nervous that I had work with students. I was worried that they would be insufferable: privileged, short sighted, rude. Basically I was expecting to walk into the nerd version of the Jersey Shore.

I couldn't have been more wrong. It is really nice working with these young people. Almost to a person they are hard working, charismatic, fun, and very smart. Spending time with them is a pleasure, and I hope that comes through in these photos.

When capturing portraits I walk around with the students and try to get them to do stupid things (please refer to the photos). As we walk around we talk, and I take photos of them. Most of these photos are junk because the student has their mouth open or is looking away. But when I do get a good photo, you can see the connection that we are attempting to make in their eyes.

My hope is that the people who see these photos see a little bit of what I do and see the vigor, good-heartedness, and excitment that UW students radiate.

[morgancoe]

Design

Design is one of my supplementary skills. I’ve always been interested in design, and have done it when I haven’t been able to hire or collaborate with someone who has more extensive training. I’m interested in the challenge of doing more design. Like in my other visual work I’m interested in visual metaphor and composition.

[morgancoe]

Like podcasts? Me too. I used to have one. This was the business card I made for my cohost and I to pass out when bragging about it. I wish I had put the address to our Facebook page on there, too.

[morgancoe]

Are you familliar with All Star by Smashmouth? If you were unfortunate enough to be near a radio in 1999, then you have this horrible song tattooed somewhere deep in your reptilian brain. When things are dark for me, I listen to this song and think, "at least I didn't write the second worst song of the 90s." I made these three infographics so that people who haven't heard the song could have all the pertinent information without having to subject themselves to actually listening to the song.

[morgancoe]

Sometimes my girlfriend makes muffins and we have some leftover, and when I leave a note in the breakroom encouraging people to take one, I make sure it's branded.

[morgancoe]

Video

I was trained as a documentary film producer / director. As I’m thinking about a video, I look for a strong narrative first, a style second, and interesting likable characters. I generally use interviews, shot in a relevant location, mixed with strong cinematography and tight sound.

[morgancoe]

Video from the Student Perspective

My favorite kind of video to make is from the student persepctive. In this series we created videos that had a strong sense of place as a prototype "virtual exerience" of campus.

In recruiting, it's important that the prosepctive students can relate to the current students. Most often, in recruitment, we focus on numbers and stats, but the data is clear... Students are much more likely to attend a school where they have a made a personal connection.

Beyond that, I think that our students are our greatest asset, and showing off their hopefulness, vigor, humor, and smarts is one of the best things we can do to put our best foot forward.

[morgancoe]

Video From the Perspective of an Organization

I made this video for the Watershed Company. They needed a case study they could put online and take to trade shows. I proposed a video that had a strong narrative, that put that presented the Watershed Company as mediators and heros of the creek. They rejcted my first prposal because of conflict was at the center of the video, but didn't offer much guidance as to what they wanted. I found this text (presented here as voiceover) and decided to make the video around this. Although I wouldn't have structred it this way, I was able to make a very servicable video that showed the important work that the Watershed company was doing. I'm especially proud of the cinematography which was done with a consumer grade DSLR with inexpensive lenses. Also take note of the audio quality in the voiceover (done by my dad!) and as the mayor of Kirkland speaks on that bridge.

[morgancoe]

Documentary Storytelling

I am also a documentary filmmaker. This film was made in 5 days and made for the Internation Documentary Film Challenge. We won "Best Use of First Person Genre."

I am especially proud of the mix of styles here. We had many challenges during the making of this film (we were a crew of two, and one of us is in almost every frame of the film) but we overcame them with creative flair.