James Rolfe, best known for his online video series “The Angry Video Game Nerd” is quite the fan of cinematography, the actual process of movie making. While the AVGN online web series is his best known work, and certainly makes up a vast majority of his video production work, James has produced well over 400 films, including a feature length Angry Video Game Nerd movie.
The interesting thing about this work, though, is that his film making career stretches back to his childhood. Backyard films, film school projects, using toys as actors, stop motion, animation, and more, James, as a kid and young adult, tried everything he could to make movies. Sure, they are what you would expect from a kid in the late 80’s and early 90’s doing movies on VHS, but hey, he made them.
I can relate heavily to this. I did the same thing in the mid 90’s myself, but, due to the camera breaking and some other issues, I simply couldn’t keep it up like James did. That’s how things go, and while these days I do run a YouTube channel where I sometimes upload more well produced videos, it’s nothing compared to what James, and many others on YouTube, have done.
In 2008, James did a film documenting his story – it also happened to be his 200th film, so he called it Cinemassacre 200. It’s a rather unique retrospective, and I find it amazing how similar our stories are, how we both did everything we could to take the ideas we had and make them into little videos for maybe us and our friends and family to enjoy. Editing on dual VCR setups, trying to frame things perfectly, and all other random things no one thinks about till they try to make a video on the technology of the time.
Enjoy.