It was the fall 1999. I was looking in the course catalog for some film/television classes. I came across MCOM 430-Media Producer being taught by “White”. The first day of class I meet our instructor Rick White. I was surprised to see Rick teaching this class. You see I met Rick in 1996 when he directed my first winning script Without a Doubt. (You can read more about that at the link.) Rick is a Director/Producer from the local television station that co-produced my script, WMAR TV 2 (in Baltimore). I came in kind of late and he was showing his reel and the opening to my film was part of it. :D
Knowing his field Rick taught us how to be a television producer, showing us exactly how they produce the news among other things. Our final project was to produce our own piece and that brings me to the point of this blog entry. (It took me long enough I know).
I knew this rapper and I decided to produce a profile about him. I shot hours of footage on several different days to get some good footage. One night I met him in the studio and that’s where I interviewed his producer Mark Baltimore.
This was one of the three final production projects I had to complete. I shot all this footage with the rapper and had to edit it down to I think 10 minutes or less. When I started editing I was like wow this stuff with Mark is good. Turns out after all the hours and days I shot with the rapper Mark’s stuff was the best. Every time I showed my piece (and it wasn’t many times) people would like what Mark had to say best. Truthfully even I did and one of Mark’s sound bites closed the piece because I thought it was so strong. If I had the time I might have went back and shot the whole thing about Mark, but I was under the gun. For some dumbass reason I was taking THREE production classes. I was taking Video/Film Editing, Directing For Film and the aforementioned Media Producer. In retrospect, I should have never done it because it was grueling. Let that be a lesson boy and girl film students, DO NOT take three production classes in one semester. It was our final project and I had to finish it. It took me about 14 hours to edit the piece down and I got it down to around 5 minutes.
This re-edited piece is all Mark Baltimore. I combined the “old school” ‘Nother Brother opening with new ‘Nother Brother animation. I threw in some quick transitions to break up what I thought was the best stuff he had to say. Most of it is from the original piece, but I included NEVER BEFORE SEEN FOOTAGE. (I always wanted to say that too.) There really is no clear narrative to this re-edited piece, it’s basically sound bites strung together. I kept the same music and the same “strong sound bite” closes the piece along with the “old school” ‘Nother Brother closing. I digitized the original project and then went and found the original footage and digitized some of that. (Never lose your footage boy and girl film students; you never know when you might need it.) I rushed this re-edited piece also, but before you say some people never learn let me explain. I didn’t want to spend an inordinate amount of time on this because I am still editing The Part . I also wanted to show some of the hard, hard work I did in college. Okay it wasn’t that hard (LOL). You never know, if this gets like a gazillion hits I might shoot an update with Mark.
For the filmmakers, I originally edited this with Media 100 editing software and the new edit was done with Avid. By the way I got a B in the class. :D
Well here it is no real frills just “The Rules”. First, a WARNING the video contains explicit language. Having said that...ladies and gentlemen Mark Baltimore
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