Treeforms

October 2009 It's finally DONE!

I started this project about a year and a half ago, around April, 2008, in my short production film class. I originally thought that I would finish the whole story for my final project in that class and at UCSB. But at graduation in June I had only about half of it finished and realized that the story I had wanted to animate was just too long for the time that I had to finish it in for my class. I stayed up like 48 hours with no sleep on the couple days before it was due and Tess brought me four shot lattes. God, what would I do without her? Also, what would I do without Casey Fabing, the key character artist, who stayed up for at least 24 of those hours with me drawing and coloring and drawing and coloring and drawing and coloring...

But when I shot the frames that we drew and colored after staying up for two days straight, I just couldn't get myself to show them to anybody. They looked bad. The motion was choppy and horrible. Also I think I fell asleep during some of the shooting because I remember that when I first watched back what I filmed, I had shot some of the artwork upside down and turned over and stuff and I had absolutely no recollection of doing so. Heh...

Anyhoo, I set it aside for a few months after graduation but then decided that I wanted to finish the whole story for myself. SOOOoooo for the last year I have been drawing my ass off to finish this totally hand drawn, frame by frame, animated short video. It's not much, but, eh. It was kinda fun having something in the works that meant as much to me as this did.

...So, well, yeah. Here is the goddamned thing...

Treeforms from Shannon Cecil on Vimeo.

Tap o feelia

I started this video for an experimental film class I took in 2008. Best final I ever had. I was really interested in the idea of scopophilia, which we were studying in my film theory class at the time I think, and I dunno bleh bleh bleh i just was. And then I made this. I don't think that they ended up really relating to one another very much maybe....those two things....scopophilia and tap o feelia....but eh, something was created out of it. WAHEY! CAPITAL LETTERS!

I discovered many things from making this video, but the most important thing that i discovered from making this video is that Tess Mayall is a bona fide movie starlet.

Also, Tap o feelia premiered at the Isla Vista Digital Video Film Festival in Santa Barbara!

Tap o feelia from Shannon Cecil on Vimeo.

Call It What You Want

October to November of 2008 I worked with some good friends in the UK on a rock climbing documentary they were making, titled Call It What You Want. The film premiered at the Kendall Mountain Film Festival in Northern England in November of 2008, and also played at a few others around Europe. I did some intro animation and assistant editing on the film, and was also the voice for the voice over throughout. Ooohh yeeaahhh....Anyhoot, it was a while ago but it was a really awesome opportunity these guys at the SteepMedia Production Company let me help out on, and it was super super fun. SO....check out the trailer to the film, and all the really awesome stuff that SteepMedia is doing at:

SteepMedia.com.

here is the official trailer as well:

'Call it what you want' Official Trailer from Dave Gill on Vimeo.

i mean you could even buy the DVD from them if you wanna......

Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco April 9 2008 Protest

I made this video for a Video Activism class that I took at UCSB in 2008. While my interests now lie mostly on creating mindful deviations from the reality of life through animation and experimentation, this is an important piece to me that came out of what I think is a very important class to have in the film department of a University.

On April 9, 2008 the Olympic Torch timidly passed through San Francisco. Thousands of demonstrators swarmed the streets in protest of Beijing hosting the 2008 Olympic Games because of China's human rights records. Supporters of the nation's right to host the games were also out in full force to defend attacks against China.I attended the protest as an observer with my video camera and created this short video piece focusing on the ways in which the event was carried out and documented through different media technologies and tactics. This video is an example of my own form of video documentation.

sorry for the not so good quality: