Kevin Sawicki

Beauty In Industry from Kevin Sawicki on Vimeo.

“Industrial equipment might be dirty and grimy, but if you look hard enough, you’ll find beauty.”

I always appreciated the concept of “stopping and smelling the roses.” Taking the time to enjoy life is very important in my eyes, and with a busy and modern world, people sometimes forget to see the beauty that surrounds them. In the film, “American Beauty,” an extremely famous clip is shown of a plastic bag flying in the wind. Simple trash manages to gain human characteristics by dancing to the wisps of the breeze. Not only does it display beauty in something so typical, it shows that happiness can be found anywhere. The character, Lester Burnham, finds joy just by watching the nimble tugs and pulls that nature exhibits on garbage. I really wanted to film something that is grimy or usually ignored, so I decided to scope out a few locations. After looking at different locations for a week, I decided my Uncle’s car shop would probably be the best choice. With heavy machinery plastered in grease, all showing decades of wear, I knew it would be a perfect place to find hidden beauty. I believe the resulting film displayed the topic quite well. Happiness is everywhere, you just need stop and look a little closer.

Let’s see… where to begin. Oh! Right! My new video, “Beauty In Industry.” So, my uncle has a shop that specializes in converting cars from gasoline to propane. (Yay! Eco-friendly!)0 I called him asking what he was up to and since the shop was a bit slow for the week, I thought it was be a great opportunity for three things. One, chill with my uncle, two, film some cool old equipment in his shop, and three, do an awesome english project.. (—Zoom forwards in time —>) I arrived at his shop, unloaded my new “ZaZaSlider,” along with my other gear and set everything up. The shop was really dark, so I pulled out my DIY filming light and started to shoot. I decided to use my slider in basically every shot. It was more a test video, but really came together in the edit. I shot high and low, left to right, right to left, a few things outside, a lot of things inside, close-ups, mcu’s, ls’s, etc. I really put the slider to the test. After all that filming, I noticed a BIG thing about the slider. I need sandbags! Not only because they are cool and hip, but more importantly, my tripod would tip when the camera was at the extreme ends of the slider. Very, very, very scary stuff. I’ll figure something out and show you how I make them in a later post, cause I don’t buy things… that’d be too easy.

After I got home, dumped the footage onto my computer, and started editing, I had no idea what song to use. I opened up my itunes and scrolled through, listening for the perfect one. I went from Radiohead to Explosions in the Sky, then back to Radiohead, then to Of Montreal, etc… leaving me puzzled. “$hit! There is nothing!” Then, it came to me. “Wes Anderson, my favorite director, should have something for me. I love him and he loves me!” Looking through his soundtracks, I found the diamond amongst coal. Mark Mothersbaugh’s Sparkplug Minuet from The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack. It was perfect and I mean Perfect. Gentle, not too slow, steady beat, cool intro, great build up, awesome ending. Exactly what I was looking for. After I placed it into the timeline, the beginning shot where it zooms into the shop and the lights turn on, and the ending shots somehow worked perfectly! After I finished, my face turned from (-_-) to (O_O). Not because I was frighten, but because this short was so smooth and beautiful. I know, I know, there were a few lot of mistakes. Lighting, graininess, focusing, but my new slider’s performance definitely made up for! ^_^

Now, onto the Slider. It’s really simple to build, but even I had my doubts about ordering it. I’ll maybe make a tutorial about it later. Here’s the site with all the info you need. dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=145701

I made a new group on Vimeo, so join it and post some videos about your ZaZaSlider! Keep a lookout for my videos!
Vimeo ZaZaSlider Group

for 35mm Adapters on the Canon XH-A1 (Can be modified for other video cameras with an LCD screen)

An idea like this,

turned into this.

This isn’t really a true tutorial, but more like a guide. I already built the flip, and took a bunch of pictures. You can modify it, make it better, w/e, but it does work fairly well.

First, You’ll need: