Jump Around

STILLS PRojECT from Ben Brooksby on Vimeo.

Here's a little project I did to experiment with still frame images from my Canon 7D. 


The thing can shoot at 8fps which means I can composite great shots like the two pictured here to the right. I wanted to see if I could put them into a timeline and export as video. Found out it was pretty easy. I added some photos I took at the local Draper Days fireworks show where I got tired of the "here's my summer" photos and started opening the shutter for a few seconds at a time and waving the camera around to get a more abstract image.  Anyway when I made them  a video file, they danced around really nicely and I got the idea to lay them over the rest of the video like burnt scratches in film stock. So I did and then I thought, hey why not use some of the shots I've got at 60fps? So I played around with speed ramping those with "optical flow" in Motion. Then I thought I'd add some titles so I did that too and liked it. If you don't like it, leave a comment for everybody to read. Thanks and have a happy day... or night as the case may be.

A Boy, a Bike, a Tow Truck, and What Happened to all the Limeade

Last night Aaron and I attended a little party to celebrate St. Patrick's day.

We spent most of the evening talking to a girl who was practicing for a dialect exam. Its slightly unnerving to converse with someone about their life and interests when they're faking an Irish accent the entire time.

Our hostess was also practicing, but she spent most of the evening on the couch surrounded by eager young suitors. She'd break away every so often, but one of these times some guy who rode over on a huffy and was looking for someone with a truck so he wouldn't have to ride it home, but could still keep it with him decided it'd be a good idea to kiss her on the lips for making a face at him. Ordinarily that'd be a bit unusual since up to this point a date between the two hadn't even transpired, but these are actors, and so the gesture was met with laughter, appreciation, and the compliment that the young man with the bike was a "real man".
Considering the relationships in the room shed an interesting light on this statement. The room was filled with beautiful women. Hovering over some of them were uneasy men. Upon interviewing several of these I found that none of the guys in dating relationships were actors. One six foot something said he didn't have anything against singing and dancing, but that he didn't participate on stage. His significant other tried to pat him on the head for this remark, but settled on the elbow since that's about as far as she could reach.
Another guy was in marketing and admitted he'd never been to one of these. He'd met his actress just before the Holidays at a brother's ward Christmas party. She'd performed some music that made him wonder if she needed of a boyfriend. He went up afterward and found out the position had already been filled. Apparently Christmas didn't go as planned though because two weeks later she was single. His brother did the recon and within two weeks of being single again she wasn't. He told us all this while she competed with four or five other women for center stage. A camera was produced and suddenly every actress in the room rushed for the center to pose for a group photo. Kind of like a black hole really.
As we watched the excited youths try to outdo one another he realized his car was in danger of being towed and had to excuse himself. He didn't resurface for the entire evening. The girl of his dreams held her own with the others for the next hour and a half before realizing he'd gone.
While the hugs goodbye commenced the "real man" with the huffy decided he needed a drink. Despairing that the limeade was all gone he scoured the counter tops of green plastic party cups. To his delight he announced that there was still some limeade left, and quenched his thirst with the remaining left overs. I suppose he considered the statistical probability that the unfinished cups belonged to women rather than men and that drinking from them would hopefully be a bit like kissing every girl in the room. This of course was confirmed when he announced that the red smudge on one of his new cups was in fact lip stick.

How delicious.

The Turtle that Ate up Everybody

Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 2:45am

Ted, a 36 year old bachelor and bank teller was enjoying his first day off in over five weeks by taking his pet turtle Chippy out for a walk. The sight of a thin man in jogging shorts toddling through the park behind a small turtle on a string is an uncommon sight on any day of the week, but on this particular Tuesday afternoon it was exactly what Dr. Silas P. Scrimshanks had been hoping for. He’d been sitting in the park for three days now waiting; waiting for some poor fool to happen by. Ted was too well qualified to miss.
“Excuse me.” Muttered the doctor as he stumbled past Ted dropping the contents of a large cardboard box he was carrying. Books, papers and scientific discourses spilled out onto the sidewalk nearly smashing Chippy. A look of horror graced Ted’s pasty cheeks.
“I’m terribly sorry. How clumsy of me.” Dr. Scrimshanks lifted a few papers uncovering the slightly dazed Chippy. “Hello, and who’s this might I ask.”
“Chippy!” Ted smiled relieved that his only friend in the world was still alive. “He’s a turtle.”
“Yes.” Smiled the doctor with a hint of sinister glee only a passing blue bird happened to notice.
“He’ll be about six to seven months old now I should think.”
“Yes uh…he is- Hey how’d you-“
“I’m a scientist friend. It’s my business to know.” He smiled again and shook Ted’s limp hand. He looked around at the ground apologetically.
“Look at this, I’ve interrupted your afternoon and made a mess of a public thoroughfare! Please, would you be so kind as to help an old man collect his notes and papers?”
Ted quickly obliged and within a few moments the doctor was up off his knees and off again down the sidewalk and across the street. Ted sighed and turned to see what Chippy was up to. It was unlike him to stay still for so long. He nearly fainted as he realized why Chippy hadn’t been pulling at his string. There where Chippy had been only few moments before was an empty loop of string.
“Chippy!” Ted whirled around checking the sidewalk behind him.
“Chippy?!” He franticly checked the grass on either side of the path. No trace. Not even a foot print; although he wasn’t sure turtles could leave footprints in grass.
“CHIPPY!” he looked to the trees.


It had been a wonderfully informative day thought Julie as she walked home from school with her best friend Amber. It had been “Don’t Talk To Strangers Day”, and both girls carried booklets and stickers to remind them of what they’d learned. The back of the booklet featured illustrations of the most popular ways strangers try to engage children in conversation. Offering candy and breakfast cereals from minivans was mentioned but the most frightening by far was the one of a stranger in a park disguising himself as a man searching for his lost puppy. Both girls chattered nervously to each other with this one illustration burned freshly into their young impressionable preservationist minds. It was at this unfortunate moment that a man came crawling out of the bushes on his hands and knees combing the grass franticly with his fingers and babbling to himself. Both girls froze, equally alert at the danger they now faced. Aside from the lunatic Stranger’s startling behavior, his bare thighs reminded both girls of page three in their booklets which featured a man dressed similarly trying to coax a seven year old into conversation aboard a cruise liner. They realized they were already in phase two of an encounter with a stranger. The stranger upon seeing the girls quickly rose to his feet and approached.
“Have either of you seen a little turtle around here? I was taking him for a walk and he’s disappeared. I can’t find him anywhere!” Alarm bells sounded deafeningly in both girls heads.
“He’s about this big.” He raised his hands to show how big the fictional lost pet was. Julie recognized phase three and opened her mouth to scream, but fear had gripped her throat so tightly nothing came out. Like in a nightmare she struggled to scream. She had to scream. The booklet said to. Her head was swimming. She couldn’t breathe!
“Are you alright?” Asked the stranger as he stepped forward pretending concern. Amber’s scream rang out true and clear like an air raid siren.


Ted jumped. His body became a jumble of adrenaline and nerves. He knew that whatever was behind him was either very big or very dangerous or both. What else could make a little girl scream like that? He didn’t wait to find out. He tried to run from whatever must have been pursuing him but something got in the way and hit him hard in the stomach. It was the screaming girl’s head. He fell down hard knocking his face against the pavement. Now the other one was screaming too.


Hanging from a nearby telephone poll Angel Fuentes, a City Power employee, heard the frantic screams and turned just in time to see the pedophile attacker rush the two little girls. He was a thin pale man in ridiculously short shorts obviously driven to his perversion by the lack of female attention in his life, but this wasn’t a time to analyze. Angel was particularly fond of analyzing the little people that passed back and forth beneath him as he worked, but as was mentioned before this was not one of those times. This was a time for action.
Angel knew just what to do. He’d rehearsed it for several months now hoping an opportunity like this one would happen. He smiled a satisfied grin as he pulled a long heavy wrench from a loop on his belt. The metal felt cold and solid in his fist. As if in slow motion, the action played out just as it had a thousand times in his mind. He pulled his arm back and with a steely eyed stare, targeted the perpetrator like a hawk fixed on his prey. Everything went still for Angel. Time had come to a screeching halt. All that existed was the cold balanced steel in his fist, and the head of a man down there on the ground; a perverted sick man trying to hurt children, and then Angel was ready, A satisfied whisper escaped his lips. “You’re already dead.”




“This is Martha Shapiro reporting live from Franklin Memorial Park where earlier today a man tried to molest two six year old girls returning from school when he was stopped by a literal guardian angel.”
Ted’s bruised and confused mug shot was replaced on the flickering screen by a live video feed of an interview with Angel Fuentes. The reporter’s microphone was stuck into his face in time to hear him say, “When I saw that guy tackling those little girls, I knew somebody needed to stop him… so I did.”
“and it was quite the throw!” remarked the smiling reporter as the image changed to the shaky home video footage of a grandmother out videotaping pigeons that day. The abrupt swish pan came just in time to capture Angel swinging his arm and the gleaming wrench flying gracefully through the air. Then there was the lovely jolt the camera made when the wrench made contact with the would-be child molester’s face. They replayed it several times as the reporter praised the accuracy and distance of Angel’s heroic throw. “I used to play baseball in School.” beamed the City Power employee.
“Fotsworth! Turn that off and come help me with the next batch of serum!”
Fotsworth, like most laboratory assistants was short, ugly, and remarkably dimwitted. How he came to work with Dr. Scrimshanks was a long complicated story that boiled down to the fact that if Dr. Scrimshanks was going to finally do what he’d dreamed of his whole life, then he needed an assistant with enough intelligence to follow instructions, but not ask moral questions or consider personal danger.
“It’s too big for this bowl.”
“That’s why we have larger bowls for subsequent batches.”
“Oh.” Replied Fotsworth as he wondered to himself what subsequent meant. He figured it probably had something to do with the subway.
“Now, place our friend in the bowl please.” Dr. Scrimshanks ventilator mask reminded Fotsworth of the alien invasion comic book he hadn’t gotten around to reading yet because he wasn’t used to staying overnight in the laboratory yet and was too scared to look at it. As he put the foot long turtle into the larger bowl he wondered why he didn’t have a mask too.
“I still think we should have done the jellyfish.”
Silas Scrimshanks sat silently concentrating on his display of gauges and graphs.
“It could sting people.”
“Including us you diptherious imbecile. A jellyfish aside from being extremely messy lacks two very important qualifications. Fotsworth waited but the doctor wasn’t forthcoming with any explanation. He lowered the hose into the bowl. Fotwsorth still waited.
“Switch on the pump and release valves three and six please.” Fotsworth flipped a switch and turned to twist the corresponding knobs. The doctor lowered a dark set of goggles over his eyes as glowing green radioactive plasma flowed down into a special chamber in his machine. The room glowed green for a moment. Then the doctor closed the chamber. Tightened a valve and flipped another switch. As a low hum reverberated through the laboratory he removed the goggles and ventilator and continued.
“First, a jellyfish cannot survive out of water. Therefore we would find ourselves with a lot of useless rash generating jelly and a horrible stink.”
It took a moment for Fotsworth to realize the doctor was back to giving his qualifications.
“And second, even if a jellyfish could survive out of water it lacks any form of locomotion.”
Fotsworth tried to nod in agreement, but he was having trouble processing that last bit.
“Legs Fotsworth. It hasn’t got any legs.”
“It’s got tentacles.”
The doctor stood and leaned over the experiment.
“Yes it has.” His voice was soft and far away. His eyes flickered with a wicked gleam.
“Fotsworth… I think its time for something bigger.”