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Thank you for taking the time to review my body of work. I’m starting off with a few things that are very personal to me, and then will focus more on non-profit and client focused work as the portfolio goes along :)

 

Ben's Animation Reel

https://vimeo.com/331516904/a897b98cc7

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Over the last four months, I have been teaching myself illustration and animation. I use an incredibly laborious process to do this where every single frame is laid out in a sequence with absolutely minimal control over frame rate, etc. - every fade, movement, or variation of any sort is completely composited in the frame. It’s been a blast and I’m thrilled to be able to do stuff that looks pretty great! Some of what you’ll see here was created exclusively for the IMA application - particularly the introduction and ending of the video. The bulk of the video are promotional videos, or prototypes (ie. moving storyboards) of videos that I am directing, but using a more professional team of animators to render final versions of. (Note: I learned so much while making the original parts of the reel that I've updated the link to a more recent reel that includes work I've done since I first put it together).

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The immediate next step for my animation practice is to learn vector illustration and to begin animating in After Effects - but I wanted to make sure that I could make something cool using the very most basic tools - essentially a photoshop knock-off for the frames themselves, www.gifmaker.com to animate everything and export them as .mov’s, Garage Band with a built in computer mic for the music/dialogue, and iMovie to add the soundtrack to the .movs.

 

Massive multi-camera, integrated media live performance video

https://vimeo.com/303142338

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This is probably the most significant multi-media undertaking of my life. In 2018, I launched a new music project called Sincere Gifts, and started off with a huge performance at St. Peter’s Jazz Church in Midtown East. I secured the perfect venue, oversaw arrangements of all my music for string quartet, vibraphone, and percussion, while a frequent collaborator was slated to provide a lighting crew, camera crew, and to oversee the direction of a live 4k capturing of the event. Unbelievably, this person dropped out of the production not even 2 weeks before the event was slated to happen - ironically, because she felt uncomfortable directing video of something that was not scripted fiction (her medium of comfort).

 

While I had always dreamed of making a “magical realism” piece of non-fiction filmmaking, I never imagined that I would do it for the first time with only a week and a half to put together a crew that included 6 shooters working with 4K cameras, overseeing camera rentals and borrowing equipment, hiring and directing a lighting designer, designing a stage set from scratch, and coming up with a plan for editing the whole thing. All while being the “star of the show” so to speak, and trying to stay engaged with the audience even though my mind was thinking about all the technical aspects. Amazingly, the event went off without a hitch and I learned a LOT.  I hope you enjoy this - it really encapsulates my aesthetic of capturing real-life non-fiction events with a kind of mystique and magic that I actually don’t think is easily replicated in fiction work.

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Web Design​

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  • Sincere Gifts music website - www.sinceregiftsmusic.com

    • I’m very proud of this website - although it is still in development, you’ll get a sense of the visual feast I have in store! The website loads very quickly for a page with a lot of dense animation, mouse-over shenanigans, etc. The idea is to really bring the viewer into the world of this band. It is built on a very highly customized wordpress frame, and I designed the whole thing top to bottom. I’ve had to pause fixing some glitches in order to focus on this application, but the site is basically ready to go!

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  • Sun Bear Media company website - http://sunbearmedia.com/

    • I operate professionally under the guise of Sun Bear Media, offering a full range of social media page administration, graphic design, video creation, branding and strategic consulting, soundtrack composition, and audio post-production work (...not using Garage Band, hehe). Later in this portfolio, you’ll see some work I’ve done under this banner.

 

 Integrated Digital Marketing

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  • Yarn Heroes promotional campaign

    • Yarn Heroes was a massive charity campaign that I designed and implemented for Lion Brand Yarn Company just as I was beginning to offer my services with Sun Bear Media. I brought together over a dozen of the internet’s most popular yarn bloggers and worked with each blogger to develop a “Super Yarn Hero” personality and costume - I worked with Lion Brand to develop a central website to act as the hub for this ambitious campaign, coordinated with various charities, and coordinated projects with each individual blogger. The campaign spanned videos, a central website, 64 individual blog posts from all the bloggers, massive play across and millions of views and thousands of interactions across Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and niche knitting websites.

    • Websites for Yarn Heroes: I did not develop this website, but I did use the existing framework set up by Lion Brand for a different type of product page, and worked with Lion Brand’s web developer to make a section of their website which was unlike none they had ever released! http://www.lionbrand.com/yarn-heroes

    • Videos for Yarn Heroes:

 

Video Media Created for

The City Reliquary

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  • After the debacle with my first video project for The City Reliquary (where I squandered 14 hours of priceless footage that I had shot with dozens of musical instrument makers from NYC), I was able to make a few others! I shot and scored everything you see here, but I worked with the same editor friend to create an edit to my specifications.

 

Exhibitions and Conservation Work

at The City Reliquary

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  • I am very proud of the conservation work I did collecting and preserving historical artifacts from our city’s history. My major pieces included famous signage from historic music venues, major neon signs, a rooftop finial from the original Madison Square Garden designed by Stanford White, a hand painted protest flag from the New York shirtwaist strike of 1909 discovered behind a wall at Tammany Hall (currently undergoing reservation) and, my favorite, hand-painted little kid ride from Coney Island in the 1920s. You can see some of these at the following website:

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Short Film Scores

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Thank You!

 

Of course, there’s a lot of other work. Some has to do with in-development work for clients, but a lot has to do with my past musical projects, including music videos which I played a large role in producing. I think I’ve listed about as much history of my work as I could possibly ask you to spend the time to check out!

 

With tremendous appreciation,

Ben

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