My Schoolwork

I’m well into my second class of my yearlong online digital media skills course, but I thought I’d share with you one of the projects from my first class. We had to create a movie poster based on a self-portrait or some kind of biopic idea. The object was to take a bunch of the Photoshop skills we had learned and implement them in one big project. Everyone in the class went a lot of different routes, which was great to see. Some focused on their military service, or their love of music or nature.

For me, it came down to a couple of potential options.

1. UK Basketball. I was going to create some kind of boyhood dream where I got to don the blue and white and have some kind of stellar career (or suffer some kind of horrific injury but come back in some dramatic way).
2. Gambling. This one was closest to becoming the poster. I wanted to do some kind of homage to “Casino” and “Rounders” and make a poster about me kicking ass at the craps table. This one would have tied directly to my bachelor party in Montreal, when Kelly, Dan, Luke and I went on an epic tear until 5 a.m. winning loads of Canadian coin.

In the end, I went with a third option, marrying to of my loves ... horse racing and bourbon. I decided my biopic would be of a Kentucky boy moving back to his home state to rediscover his roots and fulfill his destiny to make a great bourbon. Yeah, that sounds about right.

My mom took the picture of me (at 8 in the morning, no less, while standing in my backyard in my tan suit but with shorts on), and the rest was all Photoshop magic. My classmates all liked the way it turned out and I was excited about it as well. Now, if only this were “based on a true story.” Alas, maybe someday. Or maybe I'll get that call from some production company to design some movie posters. That'd be just fine by me, also.