Bio

The name's Andrew Gafford and I'm an aspiring cinematographer.  

Me on the set of Under These Hills.

I started becoming interested in filmmaking when I was around ten years old.  A year earlier, my family got an 8mm video camera for Christmas, mainly for family events and home movies.  After a while, the black hunk of plastic would find a home in a closet somewhere.  It wasn't until a cold, rainy day that my brother and I re-found that black hunk of plastic and actually started using it.

Me and that "black hunk of plastic."

My brother Daniel and I started making stop-motion animations with my collection of stuffed animals and Legos.  This very small scale and rudimentary form of filmmaking made the experience fun.  Plus, being like all younger brothers, I looked up to my older brother and anything he was interested in, I was too.  It was fun, but it was also a bonding experience.  Filmmaking was introduced to be as fun and it's stayed that way ever since.  In 8th grade English, the teacher split us into groups for a group assignment in which we read a story and did a report on it.  Now, the report didn't necessarily have to be the standard essay recapping the summary, basic themes and other literary devices.  The teacher allowed more creativity than that.  Some students did plays.  Some drew pictures.  Me?  I got my group together and we made a short film.

WARNING:  THIS SHORT FILM IS BAD.

Now, I'm part of a fairly poor family that can't afford to buy me a tripod or a way to edit.  Everything I shot had to be done in camera.  Everything was shot in sequence and in only one take.  Eventually, seeing that my movies weren't coming out the way I wanted, I became discouraged.  The interest in filmmaking was put on hiatus for a while.  At least, until high school...

After middle school I went to Bartlett High School.  The biggest perk for me about high school was the ability to pick classes, sort of, if it fit in your schedule.  I took a look through the high school course catalog and stumbled across a plethora of film courses.  For my freshman year, I signed up for Intro to Film, a course that spent a semester shooting video and a semester watching and analyzing movies.  It was the class I had been waiting for!  Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier with "if it fit in your schedule," Intro to Film didn't fit into my schedule for freshman year of high school.  Once again, I was discouraged.  

I eventually got in though, sophomore year.  Now, normally, there were two teachers for this course.  One was the head of the Senior Video and in charge of the shooting portion of the class (Coach Kaiser) and the other showed the films (Coach Steinbrecker).  Unfortunately for me, that school year they brought in a third teacher for the course.  One teacher to teach the entire course, separate from the experienced and respected Kaiser and Steinbrecker.  I was placed in the Mr. Cody's class, the newcomer to Bartlett High School and teaching in general.  With a lack of control over the class, students abused their ability to use the campus to shoot short films and he eventually banned us from shooting.  It was an unfair move, especially for someone who wanted to work with some equipment for once!  I did see some good flicks that year though.  I saw Citizen Kane, Casablanca and The Big Sleep for the first time, so at least there's that!

I passed the class (with an A, I think) and junior year I applied for Video Production and Post-Production.  It was the step up from Intro to Film in which we used post-production software like Avid for editing and After Effects for computer generated graphics.  I was always interested in computers and learning how to actually edit the footage I shot would be a valuable asset.  Unfortunately, again, VPPP was left off my class schedule and replaced with Media Concepts with Mr. Eddie Cody, again!  Once again, with a lack of control over the class, we were banned from shooting.  The class became yet another waste of my time.  With senior year approaching, there seemed like no point in applying for Senior Video.  I felt left behind.

That Christmas, though, I asked for a digital camera and, fortunately, I actually got one!  I had a job my junior year and had some money saved up to purchase an editing suite.  It wasn't much, but it was something!  With the new camera, I started experimenting.

I got to college and really felt behind.  Sure, the music video above shows some creativity, but the camera I was using couldn't even manually focus.  I wasn't gaining experience in knowing how to seriously shoot and edit.  Fortunately, my mom worked with a woman who was married to a man who worked at the Center for Multimedia Arts in the FedEx Institute of Technology, Eric Wilson.  Eric produced, directed, shot and edited videos for corporate clients and I tagged along to help as well as do a few of my own.  Through Eric, I got my hands on Final Cut Studio and was actually able to shoot on HD!



Also, Eric loaned me his old Panasonic DVX-100 to use for my own personal creative projects.



I liked making these creative pieces.  I knew going into my relationship Eric that feature films is what I wanted to specialize in.  Eventually, the two of us parted ways.  I was certainly richer for the experience.    But where one door closes, another door opens.  I met a young writer/director and U of M student Sam Bahre from Bolton, Connecticut.  The two of us became fast friends, filled with the same passion for crafting quality motion pictures.  The summer of 2010, I went to his hometown to be DP on his newest feature project Under These Hills.  It's still in the works as scenes need to be edited and reshot.  The two of us enjoy working together and have struck up a relationship similar to writer/director Kevin Smith and producer Scott Mosier, although Smith and Dave Klein might be a better comparison seeing as Klein's actually a cinematographer.

While Under These Hills is certainly a great script and was well shot with the equipment we had, Sam and I don't look for this film to be our breakthrough piece.  Our sights are set towards Fall 2012 when the two of us will be out of college.  Sam's rewriting a script for a film he never finished in high school and I'll be cinematographer again.  It's called I Filmed Your Death.  Basically, this blog is an account of my journey towards that goal of making that film.

I'm still an inexperienced photographer/cinematographer, but my ambition is high and I'm ready to learn. On the way to Fall 2012, I'll be picking up all the knowledge I possibly can about digital photography/cinematography and account for it in this blog.  You can follow along as it happens and I'll be able to look back on this one day.  Hopefully, I Filmed Your Death will be a success and I'll be looking back on myself, proud of all the knowledge I had attained in such a short amount of time.