Chiseling Away

Since I began doing selects for Providence's Year of the Nurse piece, I continued on to edit the entire thing. I think it came together well! I will post it for your viewing pleasure after the chief editor at Chisel goes through it and tightens things up etc.

As soon as I finished my Year of the Nurse edit I got to go on my first location shoot. The shoot was for Montana Lottery--oddly enough Kaelyn's internship. The day of the studio shoot, she came walking down the stairs at Chisel as I was going up, and I was surprised to see a familiar face! I know roughly 3 people in Bozeman, other than my co-workers, so it was great to see someone from school. The next day I worked as a production assistant (although sometimes I wondered if I was just in the way...) and I also helped the art department on two locations for two spots for Montana Lottery. It was really fun to see what everyone on the shoots job entails when shooting an ad, or something that's staged and planned--it's very different from news. But similarly, time is money, and you have to get through takes as fast as possible. We ended up at the first location hours longer than planned, which left us with very little lighting outside for the second location. But luckily we were able to get the shots we needed. The very next day I started selecting the best shots from the shoot so the client could see what we accomplished.

I am fortunate that Chisel gave me the following week off to spend time with my family at my cabin near Thompson Falls, MT. Since I've been back this week, I have been gathering assets (mostly pictures from photo stock sites) for a new website Vanns is launching called BigSkyCountry.com We're editing an animated picture promo for the homepage of their website. BigSkyCountry.com is similar to BackCountry.com, they sell outdoor gear and apparel.

I have two more weeks left at Chisel and then I'll be at, "what am I gonna do with my life?"

Chisel Industries in Bozeman by Sarah Grant

Hello everyone! So I shot some footage at Chisel to edit a little video together for the blog but it doesn't look as good as I planned so I'm just going to write something for now.

This will be my fifth week at Chisel Industries, an award-winning marketing firm that develops video for television and web using film, HD, 3D animation, photography, print and interactive mediums. If you're a nerd like me, watch some of their videos on their site. I'm sure you'll be impressed and you'll also see some familiar videos - some of which include The University of Montana's commercials.

I'll recap some of what I've done so far at Chisel. My first few days I helped out on a studio shoot for Music Villa. It's going to be an amazing commercial when it's done. They used SUPER macro lens on instruments and shot some really beautiful footage. You don't even recognize that they're instruments!

A few days after that I started working on a promo for Hatchfest, which is a festival here in Bozeman in September. But the interesting thing about it is that it's not just a film festival. It offers mentorship for young people (like us!). Renowned filmmakers come to mentor young people and students. So the fest not only features award-winning films, but also student/young people's films! Hatchfest isn't limited to filmmaking. It's for musicians, designers, journalists, architects and more! I think it sounds really cool and I can't wait to go this year. I would advise you all to go too since Bozeman's so close to Missoula! It's great for networking, learning and entertainment... and if you want, submit your film!

Continuing on, I didn't complete the Hatch promo (yet) because I got another assignment. About 4 years ago, Chisel did 60 second commercials for the University of Montana. Just recently, UM wanted the commercials cut down to 30 seconds each, and I'm the one that got to do the job. I say "got" because this was HUGE for me. These commercials are what made me notice Chisel four years ago. I knew then that I wanted to work (or intern) for them! So this was really exciting that I got to edit something that I fell in love with so long ago! And of course, it's my alma mater :) P.S. I'm Chisel's FIRST University of Montana grad.

In between now and then, I've helped out Chisel's two animators. I finished an edit for Keen Footwear, more specifically Keen Kids. The client said there weren't enough boys in the edit so it was my job to edit them in. I also put in a lot of hours photoshopping for the Keen Utility footwear spot. The animators then took those PSDs into After Effects and animated them. I'm hoping to do a little After Effects work myself... I've taken one media arts After Effects class and really enjoyed it, so I'm crossing my fingers that I get to do a little bit at Chisel.

More recently, I've been going through lots and lots of takes for the "Year of the Nurse" video. Chisel is doing a bunch of videos for Providence At Work, the videos are for perspective employees of Providence hospitals. So, right now I'm just selecting the best takes and will ultimately put together the VO. And then I might start editing the piece, I'm not sure what they want me to do next.

I realize this is getting a little long, so I apologize. I was hoping to put this all in my video, but it just didn't look as good as I wanted it to. And, I'm not really finding the time to edit it together! I'll see what I can do. If not, I'll make sure to take some stills!

Sarah