Last New Years Eve was quite strange for multiple reasons, one of which was because I was with people I barely knew, my friends being at a completely different party. Despite the circumstances, I was feeling very optimistic. I never make New Years resolutions, but I made one that night. I told myself that 2009 would be the best year of my life thus far, and that I would make sure it came true. I'm going to do a month by month recap of the year to show you why 2009 was such an amazing year for me.
January:
January is always a strange month for Minnesotans. It's the start of the new year, it is in the dead of winter, and there's not really a whole lot going on. My friends and I decided to make the most of it despite the weather. We skated inside a strip mall and in the basement of a restaurant on multiple occasions. Here are a couple montages, appropriately named as New Flavors had just been officially announced a couple months prior.
Another highlight from January was the annual Skateperception Montage. This time around I was able to contribute some footage for it, as did other Minnesota filmers like Joe Clarke, and Tim Fulton. Here's the montage, edited by Julien Strasfeld.
February:
A lot of things changed for me in February. The Dunn Bros. Coffee shop I worked at closed due to financial reasons. I had been working there for two years at the time so it was really hard for me to leave that place. I had many friends that worked there that I may never even see again. With the loss of these friends came new friends. At the beginning of my second semester as a film student at MCTC, I made an entirely new group of friends. We formed a solid film team, naming ourselves "ICP". Don't ask about the name. We would go on to make many projects together, which I will highlight in the following months. The first official ICP project in my mind is the one below. It includes a reference to the movie "Fargo", which our screenwriting teacher Bix Skahill has a small speaking role in.
March:
March was a really exciting month for me. I went to Chicago over spring break with Nick Foy, Tyler Meyer, and Adam Kirchoff, some of my best friends from high school. It was nice to spend time with everybody after not having seen each other since senior year. Here are a few pictures from the trip.
For some reason on the trip we all thought it'd be a good idea to shave our heads. At the time I had never had my hair short in my life. It's always been a little on the shaggier side. Here's how it turned out...
After getting back from Chicago I proceeded to film two throwaway montages for the month of March. Here they are:
April:
In April I was fortunate enough to take a second trip back to Chicago, this time with Max Byers. The main reason for me going was to film his dad's Hurling team play in a tournament, but I ended up spending the majority of the trip filming Max and hanging out with Joe Mellor around the DePaul campus. Here are some pictures from the trip, followed by the April throwaway montage.
In my Cinema Production 2 class, we had a "Mood and Atmosphere" assignment. Here is my project:
May:
May is one of my favorite times of the year because Spring is in full effect. Everything is blooming, people are happier, and skateboarding is possible. This May we took every chance we had to film for New Flavors. For my Cinema Production 2 final, I shot the New Flavors Promo No. 2 on 16mm. I sent the film out to a lab and had it processed and transferred, costing me just around $300 or so. It was worth it though, seeing as how I ended up using a lot of the footage in the final cut of New Flavors. Here's the all 16mm promo:
The beginning of May marked the end of the school year for MCTC students, so the Cinema Division held a film festival where all the students could submit their best pieces of work from the year. I was fortunate enough to have my promo played in the previews, and the rest of my classmates had their work shown throughout the rest of the festival. It was a lot of fun, and the after party was even better. Here are some of the highlights:
As I mentioned before, we filmed a whole lot during May. Here are the throwaway montages to prove it:
June:
June was very eventful. At the beginning of the month was the Familia Video premiere, followed by the Zoo York video and Nike's "Debacle".
In the middle of the month, some homies I know from the Skateperception Forums rolled through Minneapolis on a roadtrip. It was honestly one of the best weeks of my life and I can't wait for next year's trip.
At the end of the month I took a trip to Colorado to work on a farm for a week. It was a lot of fun and I hope to return some day. Here's the monthly throwaway montage:
July:
July was a great month for filming. I finally purchased my own fisheye so we took advantage of every possible filming moment. On my way back from my trip to Colorado, I received a phone call from the manager at Davanni's. I had applied for a job back in June and they wanted me to come in for an interview. This was a huge change in my life, seeing as how I had been unemployed since February. July was a pretty average month otherwise. Here are some montages below:
August:
August was a very crazy month. One of my best friends, Sig, left for college in Arizona. For a few weeks Basti, Peter, and myself spent just about every waking moment hanging out with Sig, knowing that times like this wouldn't happen for quite a while. Our friendship grew stronger than ever and we're all really happy for Sig that things are going well for him out in Arizona. His going away party was beyond epic, which is quite apparent in the pictures below.
Here are the August montages:
Along with great skateboarding, I made some new great friends. I met one of my current best friends, Collette Fahey, in August and it's been really great knowing her.
September:
September is always my favorite month, mainly because my birthday is on the 28th. It's also one of the best months for skateboarding, weather wise. I turned 20 this year which is really scary when I think about it. 20 seems really old to me, maybe because most of my friends are a bit younger. Anyway, my best friends made me a cake with a camera on it, which I was more than hyped on. I spent my birthday finishing a montage and showing the dudes a rough version of New Flavors. What more could I ask for?
I met a lot of new friends in September, mainly from Davanni's. I met my girlfriend Ivy at Davanni's and I'm really glad I got that job. Not only do we both work at the same place but we go to the same college. Speaking of which, school has been really great for me so far. In September I worked on numerous projects with some awesome people. Here are some stills from a few different productions:
October:
October was amazing for so many different reasons. I went to to Arizona with Basti and Peter to visit Sig. That was the best week of my life, hands down, and memories were made that will last forever. We skated all day every day, ate a lot of fast food, and had plenty of bonding moments over beers in the best environment. Here are some pictures from the trip:
Here are the montages from October including my Arizona trip video:
The weekend after I got back from Arizona I took a trip to Brainerd, MN, with a bunch of my fellow classmates to work on a short film. It was super fun and we produced a really quality film. Here are some stills from the shoot:
November:
November was probably the busiest and most stressful month of the year for me. It was the final month of filming for New Flavors, midterms were popping up, and I was working quite a bit on top of that. I also officially started dating my girlfriend Ivy, which helped take my mind off the looming stresses of deadlines.
When I wasn't out filming or at school I was hanging out at Ivy's apartment (appropriately nicknamed Central Perk).
I've become very good friends with her roommates and other friends and have been blessed with the support they've given me throughout the final stages of New Flavors. If you girls ever read this, thank you very much for everything. The only piece of video that I produced for the web during November was an almosts montage. Here it is:
I worked on a couple short films during the month of November. Here are some stills to prove that I do more than just skateboarding videos. I even acted in one!
December:
December was big. Really big. New Flavors was pretty much the main focus of the month for me. I dropped all of my priorities to ensure the video was produced to the best of my ability. Everything from booking the theater, to promoting it, to getting DVD's made was a near nightmare, but in the end everything turned out beautifully. I cannot express how amazing it felt to have my video, which in my mind is just some small little film, on the big screen at Oak Street Cinema with hundreds of people in the theater cheering. It was very rewarding for not only me, but for everyone involved in the video. After the premiere was over I had a bad case of Post-Video Blues, and couldn't even attend my own after party because I was so bummed. I can tell from all of the pictures that everyone had a good time though. Here are the photos from the premiere:
After the video was over I spent a lot of time sleeping and relaxing, mainly watching seasons of Seinfeld in bed. When I wasn't doing that, I was over at Ivy's apartment, dressing up for themed parties, or watching movie after movie.
Here are some videos I posted after the premiere. One is a bonus montage that was supposed to be on the New Flavors DVD but I somehow forgot to add it. The others are Max Byers' part in the video and my filmer part.
New Flavors DVDs are now for sale for $15 at Familia Skateshop. You can also PayPal $15 to kho789@hotmail.com
Thank you everyone who was a part of my life in 2009. It was the best year of my life thus far and I could not be happier. I am looking forward to a new decade, and hopefully good things will continue to come. Peace out 2009.
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