Super Cali Listic

Originally performed live by dancer Alison Rootberg, and musician Drew Broadrick, “Ophelia” based on the Shakespeare character, explores the character’s psyche through song and dance. I was later asked to adapted Ophelia into a dance film to be screened at Alison’s alma mater Wisconsin University. Being a former ballet, jazz and modern dancer I was thrilled at the chance to tell a story through movement and symbolism. The DP, Samrod Shenassa and I found a beautiful location in the hills of Malibu. We shot there, in a dance studio with a white back drop and in my bathroom. The bathroom shots were very inspired by one of my favorite music videos, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”.

Ophelia

When I came across a video on the web explaining the geddan Meme, I became obsessed and I had to add to the trend. I dressed up as a World of Warcraft fairy, trucked out into the woods, set up a tri-pod and danced around. I had no idea what I was doing was so controversial, but over 14,000 views later I now know 1) There are NO fairies in the World of Warcraft game 2) My geddan does NOT have “noticeable” hip shaking and pelvic thrusting 3) My editing is too slow 4) I did not “defy physics” 5) there is a WRONG way to geddan 6) My video is NOT the right way.

Despite the huge upset I have inflicted on the purity of the geddan meme, it’s one of my personal favorites. I’ll let you be the judge:

After doing a guest video for the YouTube channel “5 Awesome Optimists” I was asked to become one of their regular vloggers. I said sure and asked if I could vlog as my character Andie Mills from Life With Babs. I got the thumbs up and Andie became the “Friday Girl”:

Some of my favorite videos stemmed from real life experiences. When I got called into jury duty I immediately started brainstorming how I could film parts of the experience for my comedy channel LifeWithBabs. I did my time as a juror and I walked away with this little gem of a video about Andie mistaking jury duty for employment.

And of course I had to continue Andie’s job search a couple weeks later with this video about her booking a job as a “high fashion model.”

After a couple of months on YouTube I found myself supported by a community of fellow YouTube users and one of them, Sean Hollick, had a channel called “5 Awesome Optimists”. He asked if I would like to do a guest video to be featured on there channel. So I came up with a video about Andie confusing the word Optimist with Optometrist. I had tons of fun shooting this video, my favorite was featuring my real eye doctor, Mr. Gross (that is his real name and I think he would also appreciate it if I mention that he is actually a ophthalmologist playing the role of an optometrist in the following video).

For my birthday my father-in-law bought me a DigiLife DDV-5120A. I have yet to find something as cool as this little guy as it had a flip screen so I could view what I was shooting even when the camera lens was pointed at me.