Not Posting to This Blog

If you have not noticed, I have stopped posting to this blog.

Here are two other pages you may have better luck finding updated content on:

• My online professional portfolio
• My personal thoughts Facebook page called "Havertz Ponders"

Updates From The Last Year

There are a lot of projects I have worked on in the past year. I have been busy creating videos, studying at Weber State, and working on video research. With all that's been going on, it has not been a priority to update my blog. However, I have updated my personal portfolio. Please check it out to see what I've been up to.

Let me tell you some other projects I've worked on in the past year that may not be on my portfolio:

I participated in a 48-hour film festival. We had to write, produce, and edit in two days. We were working on very little sleep, but it was fun to finish.

I've also worked on several class assignments with groups. It can be difficult to work with other students, but overall it was good experience to learn how to work with people, to collaborate, and to get a project done despite any group limitations. Below are some of those projects I've worked on.

• One video we worked on featured the president of WSU.
• Classmates and I created a fun Halloween piece.
• I worked on a Hockey promo.
• I worked on a video promoting free flu shots on campus.

The project I am most proud of is a profile piece I made on a friend of mine with Autism. This piece is on my portfolio. This video received over 2,000 views on Facebook and can be seen below.

First Lyric Video

I didn't think that my class would pick my idea as one of the top three music video choices for advanced digital media. The song I choose was a Christian song and a lot of times the academic world seems to shun anything centered around God. My idea was a mix between a stop-motion-animation lyric video with a story. I was surprised when my song was the top pick in the class.

I filmed most of the lyric video footage. Another student named Austin directed and shot the story portion of the video. I edited it. There was a group of five of us total working on this.

Credits

Music by The Gray Havens: http://thegrayhavensmusic.com/ 

We are not officially associated with them. This was just a fan created music video.

Producer and Editor: Matthew Havertz

Director: Austin Berenyi

Talent: Lexie Albi

First Assistant Camera: Mason White

Calligraphy: Brock Duncan

Our class advisor (he helped with cinematography and production advice): Jake T. Holt

Two Class Assignments

I am now taking a digital media class at Weber where our goal is to make videos. We've only made two videos so far, but they were fun assignments that I wanted to show off.

There are two things things I'm proud of with the video directly above. One) I misplaced my DSLR camera that day, so I just filmed this with my phone and it turned out fine. Two) All of the sound effects were added in afterward. No sounds were kept from the original video.

This one turned out good enough that my mother-in-law, featured in the video, wants to have me make another video about her sewing. This one was meant to be a video slideshow, not an actual video. It was fun and there are a few shots I'm really proud of.

Pregnancy Announcement Video

Well, the news is out! My wife is pregnant with our first child. I decided to use my video production skills in support of our family. I created this video for family memories and to announce our pregnancy to the world. It was well received by both of our families.

If you watch to the end there are two other videos you can click on and watch as well. One is our first ultrasound and the other explains how we came to the decision to have a baby at this time in our lives.

A Music Video In A Parade!

This was a fun video to work on. I was credited as director on this piece, which was technically my title. However, I feel more like I acted as a producer. I assembled the team together. I oversaw the details for the two Saturday shoots. I got a few Director of Photography's to help me out. Jackson Daneluk was one of them. He's going to film school right now and did a great job!

You could also call my position a parade manager. I oversaw the creation of the signs for the parade. I purchased the balloons, ribbons, fabric, shirts, etc. I also managed two other parades which we also did videos for. Finally, I did rough cut edits of all the parade videos before handing them off the Lucas McGraw to polish up. So, was I really the director? I think I was more of a producer or manager. Did I have a blast? Did I learn a lot? Did I have fun? Absolutely! 

First Time Doing Color Correction

I had the great opportunity to be the final editor and color corrector on a music video for the LDS Youth website. I took a cut that another editor had done and polished it up and made it shine. I also did the color correction. Click here to see the video.