If you’re seeing the site for the first time you may have noticed that there’s a wide range of topics that have been covered in the past. It’s kind of confusing and didn’t serve any purpose other than to talk about my uncontrollable bowel movements and what ever else was going on. Going forward I’m going to use this space to document my progression in film making…and the occasional story about me crapping my pants in public. But mainly just the film related stuff.

To kick things off I want to share some of my better edits from 2011. Overall I really wasn’t satisfied with my progression last year and found myself really unhappy with what I was putting out to the public. I don’t know the exact number of projects I had but I think I produced about 20 offroad related edits. Out of that 20, 6 of those edits I thought were pretty good.

Here are the edits.

1. TJ Snow @ The Sandpits

Last May, I finally have the chance to meet up with local Motocross/Offroad racer TJ Snow. We had been talking about shooting a video for close to a year but never pulled the trigger on a time and place. Finally with the help of Paul Sachak we set something up at a private, no-so-legal, place in South Carolina. Going into the shoot I had no real plans. I was basically going to run-and-gun and figure it out when I sat down to edit. The end product turned out pretty good. I could still nitpick the thing to death but I’m still happy with it overall.

Sidenote: TJ Snow is one of the the best riders I’ve had the pleasure of shooting with. Right off the bat he understood what was needed to shoot a video like this and he would hit sections of the track over and over until I had what I needed. Too many guys think they can just go about a normal day of riding while I use my secret ninja skills to capture what I need as they blast around a 12 mile woods loop. I really don’t want to let the cat out of the bag but I have no ninja skills.

2. 2011 FMF Steel Creek GNCC

This was probably the only race in 2011 where I had somewhat of an idea of what I wanted to do prior to showing up. I didn’t cover as much ground as I had wanted but it turned out pretty good. Plus I used a Deftones track! Deftones!

3. 2011 Tennessee Knockout

Another one of those run-and-gun events. I didn’t know what to expect out of this race and just ran around shooting the areas I thought would look cool. What you see in the video is only a small portion of the track they had laid out but everything else was something you would see at every other offroad event. I wanted to stick to the huge gnarly sections and showcase that stuff.

The edit for me was pretty stressful because I wanted to create a video that would perform well. I knew there were no other web media outlets shooting video of the event and I wanted to take advantage of the possible exposure it would create for digitaloffroad.com. I stressed myself out quite a bit and made various edits of the race. The video you see below was probably the 3rd or 4th edit I tried out. The video turned out to be my best performing video of the year with something like 30k views (YouTube and Vimeo).

This event, really the whole weekend, turned out to be the turning point of my relationship with Hoop and the digitaloffroad.com website. Though it would be a few months before Hoop cut me off (I would say fired but that implies getting paid. Plus ‘cut me off’ better describes the deleting of accounts and lack of any communication.) from the site this was the last video I edited for digi.

Jared Bolton worked the Panasonic HPX170 and I was on the Canon 7D.

4. 2011 Indianapolis Endurocross

There isn’t much to say about this video. I headed North with the digitaloffroad.com crew to check out the event. Jared Bolton and I shot video while Hoop shot stills. This was my third Endurocross event that I’ve filmed and they’re some of my favorite events to cover.

A low point of my year, in regards to filming, came while editing the video. The footage Jared shot on the Panasonic HPX170 was really underexposed and I got really annoyed when I dumped the footage. So much so I bitched about it on twitter and quickly felt like an asshole. This is one of many examples why I’ve cut my usage of social media sites. I found it too easy to turn them into an avenue of venting something I shouldn’t be. Anyhow, after some work I was able to color correct the HPX170 footage. Though it isn’t perfect I really liked the end result of how the video looked.

5. 2011 Maxxis General GNCC

The second round of the 2011 GNCC series but the first round I would attend. Coming into the year I wasn’t very pumped to go the races anymore. Towards the end of the 2010 season I was burned out and no longer saw the point of spending my money to go the races. That attitude carried over into 2011 and I was really only planning on hitting a couple of GNCCs. But after seeing some of the content from the opening round in Florida I found myself getting excited again. I tried to put together a plan for shooting but I got lost in the social aspect of being at the races and ended winging it…again.

I used the Skrillex remix of La Roux’s ‘In for the Kill’. I won’t say I kicked off a dubstep movement in moto videos but I don’t recall many others before this. If I’m at all responsible for the overuse of dubstep that came after this I sincerely apologize. The original edit I did was way over the top with effects and editing that I backed it down for a “cleaner” edit. As always, second guessing myself. But it was probably for the best in this case.

6. Nick Fahringer/Charlie Mullins – Ohio Edit

This came about when GNCC/Nation Enduro racer Nick Fahringer asked me if I wanted to come to Ohio and shoot a video. I’m always pumped when someone approaches me to shoot a video and I quickly said yes. At the time I was shooting with various offroad guys and planning to eventually release a DVD. So I was pumped that I would have a bad ass like Nick to feature on the DVD. It got even more bad ass when Nick called me to let me know that KTM’s Charlie Mullins would be joining us. I couldn’t contain myself….*spooge*.

It had the makings to be ep…super awesome.

At the time I was having some heating issues with my Canon 7D and didn’t feel like I could trust it in the scorching heat of Ohio’s Summer. I reached out on facebook to see if anyone may have a camera they could lend me. Jason Hooper, digitaloffroad.com, stepped up and offered one of his HPX170s. A super cool move on his part. I picked up the camera on my way to Ohio and didn’t have much time to get acquainted with it before shooting with Nick and Charlie the next day. Shooting with those two guys was an awesome experience. Unfortunately with the heat, my lack of familiarity with the camera, and location the results weren’t what I had hoped.

Later in the year I ended up scraping my ideas for a DVD as I realized I have a lot more to learn before I take on something like that. With the DVD dead I decided to put together an edit of the Fahringer/Mullins day in Ohio. We originally shot the video in July and I didn’t edit anything until November. So maybe some of the relevancy was gone. The video performed OK but definitely not to my expectations. I still dig it though!

Later on the following week I went to visit a orthopedic doctor and found out I would need surgery for the bone to heal correctly. They wanted to do the surgery as soon as possible as it would get more difficult as the bone healed. We opted to have the surgery this past Monday as I had obligations on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday’s obligation was to head down to Union, SC and film some of the GNCC race going on. I’ve been doing this at every stop so far and posting the videos on offroadjunkies.com. Filming the race was a pain in the ass as I had to carry around the tripod and camera as I tried to get various spots shot of the race. Not the easiest thing I’ve had to do but I’m glad I pushed through the discomfort. The video I edited is good but definitely not one of my favorites but what can you do. Not every one of them can be a home run.

Here is the recap video of the 2010 Pirelli Big Buck GNCC. Enjoy.

I’ve been spending my time since then getting together with riders and attending races gathering footage for the project. I’m not quite done with filming but I have things in the pipeline and will be finished with filming soon.

The title of the upcoming DVD, being released through my production company Scratch N Sniff Productions, is Dirt Scootin’ Boogie. It will feature off-road riders Charkie Huegel, Mark Fortner, Chris Buzzelli, and others to be named at a later date. The release is scheduled for April 2010, hopefully for mid-April.

I put together a 3 minute preview of the DVD. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The race itself had some awesome obstacles you don’t see very often. Besides the cold weather, I had a great time.

Jason Hooper over at digitaloffroad.com posted the video I edited of the weekend. Check out the link or the video embedded here:

http://www.digitaloffroad.com/2010/01/05/battle-of-atlanta-race-video/

It’s been quite a while since I’ve made any updates and I won’t go into filling in the blanks right now. I wanted to share with you guys a video I put together from this past weekend’s Endurocross race down in Florence, SC. The race was Round 3 of the AMA Endurocross series. I’ve been spending this summer filming motocross riders from around this area for a TV I’m putting together. One of those riders is Charkie Huegel. He invited me to join him for his first attempt at the EX series. I got some great footage and made a short little video.

Check it out!

Also check out the podcast I did with Charkie. Link

Nothing much going on with me. I’m still trying to kickstart some things with myself and figure out my own workflow for getting things done. It’s coming along slowly but that’s better than nothing. I picked up a Moleskin and started keeping a To-Do list of the simplest things. You know like “Wipe butt after going #2″ or “Remember to pee in the shower while water is running”. Nothing is more embarassing than your wife wondering why there’s dried yellow spots in the bath tube. The list has been going awesome! Totally awesome.

What else? What else?

In early March I went to the orientation meeting for Raleigh’s public access station, RTN. I met this guy Tony there who’s in the process of trying to get some comic and animations off the ground. I told him about some of the stuff I’ve done and we hit it off. We’re now working on some projects together, one of them being a short horror film called Mary. I’ll definitely be posting more about the stuff we’re doing. But that’s pretty much it for now.

There are a few other things I want to post about but think they all deserve their own posts. I’ll get around to those soon…maybe sometime this year. Hopefully. Some of the things I want to post about: Atlanta Supercross, Jax Supercross, Canon XH-1A, Suzuki RM-250 Project, Editing, Shooting Guns, Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy (Yes it is).

Something to look forward to.

The biggest change is the site design. I got tired of looking at the maroon vomit of the last theme. Since I’m not really in the mood to work on a theme from the ground up I decided to use one from WooThemes. I put together a simple logo and poof…finished. Nice and simple I think.

The other change was getting rid of Entrecard. For the past couple weeks my interest in the application has been dying off. As much as I like having people reading the random crap that comes out of my mind, I’m don’t want to over load the site with ads. This isn’t something I’m trying to make money at, it would be nice but still isn’t my goal. Plus I don’t think there is much money to make from ads on a diarrhea posting. Then came the recent Entrecard announcement and the stuff that played out on their forums.  Graham, founder of Entrecard, has proven time and time again the kind of person he is. To put it in the nicest words I know how, the guy is a douche bag. No matter what positive things I was getting out of Entrecard,  I’m not going to support and promote a tool (referring to Graham the tool, not the Entrecard tool) like that.  I fully intend to continue supporting the blogs and friends I’ve made through the service. Hopefully, you will continue reading this blog.

Those are the major changes with the site. I did make some other smalls things but nothing worth mentioning.

Ooh ooh ooh yeah

There isn’t much going on in my little world. I’ve been trying to climb out of this rut that I got myself into, only the harder I try the deeper I get. What I’m finding is that once you let negativity into your thought process it becomes a cancer and takes over. From that point on no matter how hard you try, the negativity will corner you in the shower and have it’s way with you. I refuse to let negativity corn hole me.

I’ve developed a nice little tool (Ha! little…tool) that helps me fight off the negative thoughts. When I feel them coming I stop what I’m doing and scream “I am no longer your bitch anymore. I…I say who gets to corn hole me. Not you, you bastard!”. This helps me push those feelings away and it invites the positive thoughts in.

Seriously, thanks to some medication I’m able to see some light at the end of the tunnel. To say it’s been a nice departure from the normal doom and gloom would be an understatement. With the fog lifting, I’ve been able to get an idea where I want to be in the grand scheme of things…professionally speaking (typing) that is. I won’t go into what I want to do right now. I tend to lose some steam on these types of things when I let them out of my head too soon. Hopefully, I will be able to stay focused on the goals and actually achieve them. Man, having a sense of achievement would be an awesome feeling, one that I haven’t felt in awhile. Bring it on!

There are some things I’ve been meaning to post about and I will get those done this week.

Well, I have a client that is having me build them a motorcycle and I ran into some problems on the tank today. I thought that since I was having to repair the tank that I would share a little and possibly help someone else out. First, let me apologize for the blury pics as everything was taken with my cell phone. The tank is an old banana wassel. I do not know if they repop these but even if one could be found it would need to have the tunnel modified for the frame that is being used. Here is a pic of what I started with, looks like a clean vintage tank.

Check out the thread for more information and ton more pictures.