Little Violins

Dir. Evan Hartney

Little Violins-Faux Documentary.  One of three Cinematographers/Camera Operator. Follow the mute boy Jackson, and his fascination with capturing peoples’ stories for documentary purposes. Jackson sets the stage to capture the broad range of emotions that people are willing to share with someone who is only capable of listening.

The God Particle

Dir. David Murakami

God Particle– Drama. A film/theater hybrid. Cinematographer/Camera Operator. An explosion at the LHC may have produced the elusive Higgs Boson particle, otherwise known as the God Particle, but the two scientists attempting to discover it are killed. Using morally questionable tech, the remaining scientists use a machine to comb through the memories of the recently deceased in order to see what they discover.

Cinematic media accompanies live acting on stage.

SDA Capabilities

SDA Capabilities with Peter CashProducer, Cinematographer, Editor, Animator. This video was made as a market value proposition on the research in the Space Defense and Avionics group. A challenge lay in the sensitive nature of the SDA group work, and thus could only scratch the surface on SDA Capabilities.

CSAC Manufacturing

CSAC Production with Scott RassoulianProducer, Cinematographer, Editor, Animator. A video made about the upgraded CSAC manufacturing process. This was made to showcase Symmetricoms ability to produce the proprietary CSAC product at high volume.

Primal

Dir. Joe Bourekas

Primal-Thriller. Director. Writer. Cinematography/Camera Operator/Lighting Designer. Editor. A wallflower of a young man ekes by until becoming the victim of a mugging. Newfound attention and a sense of fear pushes him to listen to the primal call for violence.

 

On the Hunt

Dir. Joe Bourekas

On the Hunt-Thriller. Director. Writer. Cinematography/Camera Operation. Editor. A deadly forest surrounds our protagonist. Lost between time and space, is this a soldier recalling his hunting days to survive, or a hunter struggling to divorce his experience as a soldier from his now civilian life? The only thing constant is the forest.

Dogs

Dogs from Joe Bourekas on Vimeo.

Dogs-Faux Documentary. Cinematographer/Camera Operator. A budding documentarian provokes directionless losers into becoming violent criminals in order to exploit them for his “masterpiece”.

This film required a lot of staging and thinking about how best to seem like a single camera documentary crew, while still providing an interesting film-like aesthetic. The big challenge to this film was finding a way to look like a believable one crew documentary. This meant picking apart the script with the director to find natural “cut points” in the script where the character of the filmmaker would cut to a differnt point in a conversation. To make the video feel real, we essentially had to make each cut feel like something happened between the last cut and the next cut that the filmmaker chose not to show the viewer. The hardest challenge technically, for me, was to find a way to fight my cinematographer instincts and appear to look “professionally homemade”. My favorite shot in this piece has the be the turning point with the gun. The long build up and the character break within the camera really set a precedent for how out of control the narcissistic filmmaker’s project got.

The Good: This piece screened at UCSC for a combination of the classes Senior Exit Narrative as well as Senior Exit Documentary. That means documentaries and narratives were played without a break separating docs from narratives. When this piece played, and the character shoots at a house, people thought they were watching an actual documentary. A funny story, but it also proves I nailed the doc aesthetic!

The Bad: I should’ve gathered more insert shots of the havoc they wrought. This would’ve showcased their progression better, from petty vandalism to real crime. As it stands, the vandalism they do does not look that drastic or grand, and thus makes them look less intimidating.