Jumping out of Planes

Sunday I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. For the 2nd time in my life.  I was lucky enough to shoot it with a super awesome HD GoPro strapped to my chest! Enjoy!!


Skydiving!! from Brittany Brothers on Vimeo.
Went skydiving this past Sunday, and shot this with an HD GoPro strapped to my chest! Too much fun!!

Location: Skydive The Ranch, Gardiner, NY
Skydiving instructor: Utah Steve!
Song: You Only Live Once by The Strokes

National Geographic Traveler Magazine World in Focus Photo Contest Winner!!!

Can't believe I haven't posted this here yet...

I won the GRAND PRIZE in the National Geographic Traveler Magazine's World in Focus Photography Contest!!!

2010 World in Focus Photo Contest Winners

I won a 10-day trip to the GALAPAGOS!! Plus a $250 gift card to Canson Infinity Media! AND my photo will be featured in Traveler's Jan/Feb issue of their magazine!! I will definitely post a scan from the magazine when it comes out, but for now, here's the winning pic with Nat Geo's little bit about it: 

Mist-ified

"Brittany Brothers photographed herself at Iguazú Falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina. Water flow was heavy due to recent rainfall, and most in the tour group were afraid to walk out to stand beside the thundering falls. Not Brothers. “I snapped this picture mid-run back to the trail after being completely drenched—even that poncho couldn’t keep the water out,” she says. Back at the hotel, Brothers plugged her camera into a computer to view the photos. “This picture instantly brought back the moment.” (GoPro Standard Def Wide HERO digital camera in waterproof housing, 170-degree lens, exposure at 1/13 second, f/3.6)

For the fifth year, Traveler paired its photo contest with that of Photo District News, an award-winning magazine for professional photographers. More than 3,700 avid amateur photographers entered nearly 11,000 images in the 2010 World in Focus competition—our 22nd annual contest. The pictures captured an assortment of the places, wildlife, and people that make our travels memorable, evoking a sense of delight or discovery—or both."

I took the pic with a standard def GoPro Hero waterproof fisheye camera! I mentioned it on GoPro's facebook page and they were so stoked, they hooked me up with the HD version FOR FREE!! 

Here's the e-mail they sent me: 

"Brittany, 

Congratulations on winning the National Geographic 2010 World in Focus Contest. 

We were incredibly stoked to see that you won using a GoPro camera, however, we can't possibly let you go on your trip to the Galapagos Islands without the very latest and greatest in gear from GoPro. 

For your trip we'd like to send you off with a GoPro HD camera, and one of every HD accessory we make. Yep, pretty much the whole enchilada. 

Your fantastic photo captured perfectly what our products are all about, and we're honored that you chose a GoPro photo as your entry for the contest. Now you can capture more of those moments… in HD! 

We hope you'll keep in touch, and send us some photos from your adventures in the Galapagos Islands and beyond! 

Hi5 and sincere thanks for representing our products so well. 

Team GoPro"

GoPro is seriously THE BEST!!! What a phenomenal company!! Can't wait to take tons and tons of video and pics with my HD Hero in the Galapagos!! 

I'm hopefully taking the trip over New Years' this year -- it's through National Geographic's Expeditions, and so they take care of everything and all we have to worry about is the flight! The lucky lady that I'm taking with me is... MY MOM!!  She was the one who took me on the trip to Brazil in the first place, and was also the one who encouraged me to enter the photo in the contest, (and has also had to put up with me for 23 years...), so she was the obvious choice!  I am SO INCREDIBLY PUMPED!!!  

More updates on the trip to come, and hopefully soon, I'll be posting all of my Galapagos pics!!

Fisheye THE DOS

Here's a more final cut of Fisheye!! Almost there!


Fisheye from Brittany Brothers on Vimeo.

Fish Eye

Here's a scored rough cut of my short film from Spring semester last year.  I really love the cut we have now, but still working on some of the sound...  Nick Noyes is the bestest and put this together for me!!  Awesome score by Tom Richards!


Fish Eye from FactorySealed. on Vimeo.


Final Cut soon to come...

Wear Your Heart on Your... Gloves...

For the first (and hopefully not last) time in my knitting career, I made a work trade with a photographer friend of mine, Ariel Kessler! She sent me two fabulous prints and I knit her this pair of 'photographer mittens'! There's a hole in the right glove so you can stick your index finger out to take pics!! To add a little extra warmth, I chain-stitched hearts on the back! :) Just putting it out there, I would love to do any work trades in the future! Absolutely 100% worth it! Especially with miss Ariel... cuz her photos are just outstanding!
   

(My camera is a little beat up...)

Give a Hoot!

I knit my first sweater! Found the pattern on Ravelry... by the talented Kate Davies! I'm a sucker for owls! Almost done except for the button eyes!

Lakers iPod Headphones Cozy

This is my first ever pattern that I posted on Ravelry.com -- a knitter's crack-cocaine! A little different from my film posts, but since it is one of my creations, I thought I would include it here as well!

Lakers iPod Headphones Cozy

Norman

This is not a still... but it could be... Yesterday, I 'casted' the star of my upcoming (narrative) short film, Fisheye! I'm shooting April 10th and 11th (hopefully the weather will be good to me, fingers crossed!). I did some test photography yesterday and then put the photos in a sequence in Final Cut to see what they would look like in a widescreen format. I'm really glad I did that because now I have an idea of what angles/framing I'm looking for, etc. I'm slowly learning the art of being prepared... one of these days I'll get it down. Now, if only I can manage to get that shooting permit.... ah, another day!

Small Dog, Big World

This was a half-hearted attempt at a cinema verité project for my Doc class about the one and only Booger DiMarzio --- coolest dawg on the block!

Über special thanks to Mama DiMarzio!

Small Dog, Big World from Brittany Brothers on Vimeo.

Exercise

No, not the kind that's good for the body, but good for the brain. These are two exercises I shot for my production class with Ed Bowes this semester. While we may grunt and groan when he assigns projects like these, what he really intends is for us to get as many possibilities to shoot as we can, and therefore are able to hone our craft. Most of my production classes have been maybe 4 or 5 people doing the same job all the time on the same sets over and over again, and it's really easy to lose inspiration and motivation that way. Some people wonder why I wander in and out of lighting class, but how many times can you light the same bar set and the same alley way set differently after three years? It's a challenge, certainly, but not the kind that you'll look back on in ten years and think, 'Man, I'm glad I had the opportunity to do that...' Ed's challenges make you look and make you think and don't limit you to one particular space. Everyone gets to shoot. And the end product is nothing short of inspiring --- you were inspired by your own discoveries in your shooting, you were inspired in your editing, and you become inspired by the work of your classmates, because everyone thinks and sees a lot differently than you do.

Anyway, I can't believe I just wrote all of that so early in the morning, but I was, well, inspired --- so I just went with it...

Here is my portrait exercise on my good buddy Kevin Bacon:

BACON from Brittany Brothers on Vimeo.

Portrait of my good pal Kevin Bacon for an Ed Bowes in-class exercise.

Intimacy Exercise:

Gold Mine from Brittany Brothers on Vimeo.

I bet you've never been so intimate with a homeless man before....

Enjoy.

Totally Forgot to Mention...

My documentary class had a show of all of our doc shorts from last semester on March 1st and it was a ginormous success!! We filled 3/4 of SVA's smaller theater (seats about 200 people), which is infinitely more than I ever expected! I'm sure that number had a lot to do with the fabulous poster we had featuring illustrations by none other that the wonderfully talented Stephen Andolino! ;)

The 9 films by 9 filmmakers were: (from top to bottom, left to right)

A Fairy Tale by Brittany Brothers

Ed Wood by Nick Noyes

Al Festa by Michael Williams

Italian by Mike McSweeney

T.I.M. by Keatyn Lee

Creating Cepis by Christina Fontaness

Heart Beat by Michael Davis

Sea Monkeys by Rishi Linley

Sweet Virginia by A.J. Schwartz

So glad I could be part of SVA's first doc class ever!

Fall

Talk about a year of change. Ok, maybe I don't mean politically, but for me as a filmmaker (if I can even call myself after not having made my own film in... about 2 years...), I ventured into corners of film that I never really thought I had the cojones to explore before. This is somewhat of an experimental film, I guess you could say, although not necessarily experimental in the sense that most people think. It's more so a portrait or collage of a world left to the elements. Wow, that took me about half an hour to think of how to explain my feeling about the film. I'm open to any and all other interpretations as well, as I think and hope it will evoke many different feelings in different people. The accompanying poem initially had no particular significance to me other than the fact that it fit the film at the time. The overall feeling I get from it is a sort of a simultaneous connection and disconnection with nature, which is exactly how I feel about the film. Anyway, I'll stop rambling like a hippie and let you take a trip inside your mind!

I Am the Autumnal Sun from Brittany Brothers on Vimeo.

A sort of experimental film that I did for my production class in Fall '09. An ode to nature, I guess you could say. Be sure to watch it in HD!!


Shot and edited by Brittany Brothers
Poem by Henry David Thoreau
Reading by Ed Bowes

Enjoy!

A Fairy Tale

This is my very first documentary, and certainly not my last! I thought I was lost here at film school for a little while, but it turns out there's more to life than narrative film! Documentaries are a ridiculous amount of work -- mostly in the editing as I happened to find out! But they're also incredibly addicting. Real life is addicting.

A Fairy Tale is about a husband and wife -- Ken and Cathy Papuzenski -- who collect Tinker Bell and Mickey Mouse memorabilia respectively. I hope you enjoy!

A Fairy Tale from Brittany Brothers on Vimeo.

P.S. Watch in HD!!