Gutentag

Good Day Friends and Family,

I leave for Europe tomorrow and thought that this would be another good opportunity to board the shuttle and take another trip to the blogosphere. 2 Summers ago I went to work for Extreme Makeover Home Edition for about 8 weeks. The job description was simple: Fly from the Los Angeles production offices to the build site of the Makeover house, pick up the footage they had filmed that day, deliver it safely to the post production house in Hollywood. Simple. It turned out to be a lot more fun than that. I had an absolute blast and encountered some interesting people and unexpected situations that made for a wonderful, and sometimes hilarious, time.

Since I was gone for so long and was so busy while I was there, I couldn't keep in touch with everyone. However, I still wanted to maintain some kind of connection and correspondence with the people that I love and care about (that's you guys). So I started a Travel blog to document my travels and keep everyone informed of what was going on in my world.

Keeping that blog turned out to be one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done. I wrote about 90% of the blog on my Blackberry Curve. I wrote mostly while on airplanes, in shuttle buses, or in a hotel room awake at 5 o'clock in the morning because my sleep schedule was all banana-sandwich. It turned out to be so wonderful and fulfilling for me that I have decided to do it again.

This Time...... I leave from Knoxville on Tuesday June 8th and arrive in Frankfurt, Germany on Wednesday June 9th at 10:30 am. From Frankfurt I take a train to Nürnburg. I would imagine I will arrive at about 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon. From there I will be picked up (by car) by Michael Underwood. With any luck, Michael will hand me a beer and we will make our way to the village of Ebermannstadt where Michael is from.

Michael is one of the most incredible Director/Cinematographers I have ever seen. His work unreal. He and I will spend the next 3 or 4 days filming and photographing a bride and groom who will be married on June 12th in Ebermannstadt. They are family members of Michael's and as a gift to them he will put together a DVD of their wedding in hopes that one day their grandchildren will find it in a shoe box in the attic and figure out a way to watch it.

Michael has done this for a few other family members and believe me when I say "This Ain't No After-School Special". These pieces he puts together are better than most things you see on TV. I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it and I can't wait to get started on it.

A couple of days after the wedding I will hop on a train in Nürnburg and make my way to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam I will meet my friend Jodie whom I will be spending the next few days with. She and I will go from Amsterdam to Den Haag or "The Hague", which is about an hour train ride. There we will stay with a mutual friend of ours Bobby Bijl (or "The Flying Dutchman" to friends). Bobby and his brothers opened a smoothie shop in The Hague a couple of years ago and apparently it is doing very well. We'll try to get Bobby loose from the shop for a couple of days so we can travel a little, but he's a hard worker and an entrepreneur so it may take some seriuos arm twisting.

I'll leave The Hague on the 23rd and head back to Frankfurt. There I will catch my flight back to the US; where, hopefully, they'll let me back in the country.

That's the plan.

Happy reading guys. I hope it's as much fun as the last time. Love you all and see you on the other side.

Benny

Ben Fields Presents

Howdy Friends and Family,

It has been a while since I've been at the Blogspot.  I have missed it to be honest; and I appreciate all of the kind things that all of you had to say about my blog this past summer.  On this blog I am going to post my film projects.  Everything from what I have done already, to projects that are microscopic ideas now.   I hope you enjoy reading and watching.  Class started in September so we have some catching up to do.

The first two weeks of class we learned the basics of film making.  We learned the foundations of telling a story using moving pictures.  It sounds so simple, but the deeper we dig into the art of motion picture, the more intricate it becomes.  After our second week of class we were handed a super 8 millimeter camera.  The assignment was to take about 50 feet of film (3 minutes) of black and white film , and visually tell a story (No Sound)  of a character meeting an obsticle, and overcoming it.  Pretty simple criteria.  Here's what I came up with.  We filmed this at 1 Washington Circle Washington, United States of Amurica.

Sarah was such a good sport to help me and she turned out to be awesome.   It took us about 2 hours to film the whole thing and it wound up to be a lot better than either of us expected.  The hula hoop was the  one that Lolly gave me before I left San Marcos in September.  I wrote about that in my Benny's Travels Blog I believe.

This week I am in the process of editing a different film.  It's the second of our Super 8mm projects.  On this one, Titled ALONE, I once again coerced  one of my closest peeps into acting for me.  This project was longer.  We had 3 times as much film (150 feeet b&w film) to make a movie around a minute and a half long.  We took an overnight backpacking trip to Paris Mountain State Park in Greenville, SC.  We Hiked about 3 miles down from the top of Paris Mountain to a Reservoir where we filmed this short.  Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

This short should be finished around the end of January 2009.  When I'm done with it I will post it on here.  I am teaming up with a buddy of mine to write original music to this film as well as my next one.

Well so long for now.  Have happy holidays all.

love love