#stephenaldridge

[videosbystephenaldridge-blog]

Every year, the Utah Film Commission hosts a competition to make the best commercial advertising Utah as a potential filming location. I've always wanted to win it and in 2013 I got my chance. At this posting I'm a student in the BYU advertising program and as such I get to work with some of the most talented ad students in the country. This spot was written by Camille Hansen Trent and Chase Hilton, edited by Alex Bennett and shot/directed by myself. It was a great experience to make and I was thrilled to be a part of it. It was the grand winner of the competition and was screened repeatedly at the Sundance Film Festival and other places. One thing I love about it is that it barely shows Utah at all! Sometimes the best ads are the ones that don't make a big deal of the product and one thing the commission kept telling us was that all the judges unanimously agreed that this was the best spot that year. And in case you're wondering, I provided the voiceover.

[videosbystephenaldridge-blog]

A friend of mine owned this beautiful car and gave me the opportunity to make a film of it. I quickly discovered that cars are my single favorite visual subject matter. Especially classic and exotic cars (of course.) The best compliment the owner of the car had for the film was that I had "perfectly captured" everything about the car that made him fall in love with it in the first place.

Cars today are very toned down. The only cars that really stand out are either heavily customized or too expensive to even look at. The owner of this car doesn't like to buy any car that was made after 1967. For a variety of reasons he feels that cars reached their peak then.

This film was shot in one morning and two evenings. It was shot with a Canon T3i, using a variety of lenses and a 36 inch cineslider. All audio was recorded with a Zoom H4n. If you have a classic car and want a beautiful film like this one to show it off, please contact me!

[videosbystephenaldridge-blog]

Here's a video I made for a client. He was referred to me on linkedin, the first time that's ever happened. I was thrilled to work on a video of such a great product from a great company. I was also thrilled to have a good budget and be able to afford things like the wonderful Uprise Films that provided the aerial photography.

[videosbystephenaldridge-blog]

This is the first comedic video I ever really tried to make. I was asked by my boss at the time to write a video for a "hobbit" that could be used to promote BYU's new learning management system "Learning Suite." Most of my videos don't have a script and although this video takes the form of a documercial it is completely word for word (except for the "I'm single, I'm gemini and I'm a hobbit" which was an adlib by Jonathan Wright.)

BYU is very conservative and I didn't think this script would get approved. Afterall there's references to smoking, drinking tea and alcohol and he's walking around in bare feet. All of which are not allowed on BYU's campus. But it did get approved and after the administration saw it they asked if we could get Gandalf into the video. Our actor had graduated and moved to California so I had to figure out how to get Gandalf in the video without the hobbit  but luckily I had the bit with the hobbit talking into the computer, using one of the features of Learning Suite. It was my pleasure to reach out to the very talented Rick Macey and ask him to play Gandalf for an afternoon. Unfortunately our hair and makeup department was underfunded and he ended up looking more like Saruman than Gandalf but whatever. He was majestic! Gandalf's office was entirely built in the little office/studio where my job was. We borrowed the desk and the chair, positioned the book cases all around and then we went to the LDS motion picture studio and borrowed all kinds of props. The idea being that if Gandalf was a BYU professor he would be surrounded by old things. I don't pretend to be a good art director or production designer but I'm very proud of that set and the video as a whole.

[videosbystephenaldridge-blog]

I left Diamond Ranch Academy to return to school but I was hired to make a few videos for them during the winter break of 2012. This was the headline video I made at that time. Their new facility was spectacular and I was thrilled to get to film in it.

[videosbystephenaldridge-blog]

Just before I got married in 2009, I was looking for a job and I was blessed to find a company in Southern Utah called Diamond Ranch Academy that was looking for a full-time videographer. They knew when they hired me that I would be leaving for a couple of weeks to get married but my boss asked me to make something before I left. (I think it was so the powers that be would feel confident that hiring me was a good decision.) I asked if I could make a video about the football team. They said yes. I asked if we could take the football team out to some red sand dunes. They said yes. The friday before we shot the sand dunes part I drove to Mesquite and filmed one of their football games. That was all the material I had but this video set the tone for everything I would do at that job. My boss took photos while I shot video and he hung one of the photos from this shoot over his desk and I always thought of that photo as a great vote of confidence from him to me.

Diamond Ranch Academy is a school for troubled youth and I will always be proud of the work I did for them and the work they do.

[videosbystephenaldridge-blog]

A wedding teaser I made for my good friend Corbin and his lovely wife, Brittany. They're both a lot of fun and I had a great time making this.

Technical Details (for those who are wondering.)

I used a gopro and a Canon T2i dslr for this shoot. The opening shot was achieved by placing my GoPro Hero in a fountain and then having the couple walk up to it. We even used a nearby plant holder so that the gopro wouldn't have to sit on the very bottom of the fountain. The GoPro Hero at the time had a curved lens which made the image out of focus underwater by I really liked the effect. I also used the gopro for the timelapses in the video. The one by the pool is one of my favorite timelapses ever. And during the dancing the wonderful, slightly overexposed backgrounds were due to the clear plastic walls on the tent; the lights shined through and just made this wonderful bright glow. Perfect lighting for a wedding. I had to crank up my ISO a bit so the image is a little noisy during the dancing but I love it. The lights also had pink gels on them and for a couple of minutes it looked really terrible and I wasn't sure what I was going to do but I went into the settings on the camera, desaturated the image quite a bit and changed the tone. If you had been there you would probably agree that I did a good job at capturing what it really looked like but for some reason the normal settings on the camera just couldn't handle the color very well. The transition shots were achieved by shining a small fluorescent light through a glass candy dish and rotating the dish while I filmed it and then playing it back faster than I shot it with the composite mode set to "screen." It made for a lovely transition.

[videosbystephenaldridge-blog]

My first attempt at a "beautiful" romantic short film. Even though I thought they were very pretentious, I really admired the beauty of perfume and cologne commercials. That's what I was going for here. A story with no dialogue, good performances and simple, elegant visuals. As with a lot of my films the end product wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I had to adapt a bit since I was not very good at writing my plan down. There was no script for this, just a few images in my mind and some very trusting actors. The actors are Magarin Hobson, who had significant screen and stage experience and Lauren Spurgin (Beck) who had some stage experience. They never met each other until the day we shot this. My original plan was to stop right before they kissed but once we got to the scene they were willing to go through with it and did a great job. Even though the kiss was the biggest moment they both told me later that the "hand flirting" part was the most awkward.

I wanted to capture the fear that a lot of people have about relationships. The moment when she taps her foot and he runs away is him being afraid of commitment or losing freedom. The moment when she runs away was from a fear of being hurt. Of course, they both eventually overcome their fears and just go for it. For me a kiss  has always been a very significant symbol of commitment (probably why I didn't intend for them to kiss in the first place.)

The film was shot during the course of one morning in downtown Salt Lake City. The camera was a Canon XH-A1 tape-based camera shooting 1080p at 24 frames. I used only a monopod for stabilization and my friend Alan Seawright helped with a little handheld bounce in a few shots. at 1:09 there's a shot of Lauren watching Magarin walk away that was achieved by using a DVD as a reflector. I wanted to do more with it but it was kind of shaky. It was kind of a shame making the film black and white since a lot of the lighting was so beautiful. The moment when they kiss was especially lovely because of the beautiful pink light that was reflecting off of the nearby Deseret News building tinted windows.