His eyeglasses reflect hues of blue and gold from the Apple computer monitor as he attentively edits a video from the last event his team covered. Due to his tall stature, he has to hunch over the computer to get a better look. As he peers closer to the screen, he rolls up his sleeves to reveal a collection of tattoo drawings acquired over the years inked onto both arms. Characters bursting with color reside all the way from his wrists to his elbows. He runs his hands through his black James Dean-inspired comb over, as he fiddles with the pen on the back of his ear to figure out what to do next.
With a few clicks on the mouse, he adds some graphic elements with the video-editing software, Adobe Premiere. A few touches and he will have transformed a three-hour lecture into a three-minute highlight reel, complete with elements of motion graphics that blend the realm of reality with animation.
This is the process of movie magic.
A collection of film posters including one with John Belushi from the hit comedy classic Animal House wearing a sweater that boasts, “college,” printed in front and an eery poster of Gotham City in The Dark Night decorate the entire office. Inside the University of California, Irvine’s Student Center, you can find Kyle Aldrich working on one of the many projects he is responsible for inside the Antmedia office.
Aldrich is what many would describe as, “eccentric.” In the office, many of the students he works with have trouble describing what kind of person Aldrich is.
“Sometimes I will walk into the office, and I will be hearing rap music like from Nas or Tupac, and Kyle would be rapping along to it! It’s just weird seeing that because he’s this scrawny tall white guy from Portland. You would expect him to listen to something more tame, like Bon Iver or something,” Giovanni Rodriguez, a student videographer for Antmedia says.
As his title as a Videography and Photography Supervisor for Antmedia suggests, Aldrich takes care of covering the videography and photography portion of events not only hosted at the Student Center, but also around campus and with private clients. If he isn’t in the office editing videos, he is out filming somewhere on or off campus. With his team of student photographers and videographers, they create projects that bring simple or mundane topics colorfully to life.
Aldrich and his crew have been booked for other events on and off campus such as the Beall Center Bash that occurs annually in the Paul Merage Business school, concerts such as Shocktoberfest, and other charity events in Newport and Los Angeles.
“It isn’t just some boring office job where I’m like hunched on my desk all day. We get to go out into the field and meet new people,” Aldrich says.
While some clients ask for photographers and videographers to roam the event, others ask for multimedia coverage on lecturers that speak on a variety of topics that can range from the drought in California to new scientific discoveries in medicine.
With the help of Adobe Premiere and the student videographers on the crew, parts of a three hour lecture on the drought in California can be fleshed out to highlight the important and key points of ideas such as why the drought is an issue and motives people can take to prevent it from furthering. Along with being able to highlight these key points, Aldrich usually creates motion graphics, which are animations that move on the screen; they can be in the form of a label introducing a new topic or even a small monster pointing at key points at the bottom of the screen.
“The editing process can be brutal,” Aldrich says.
Transforming something like a three hour lecture about the drought in California into a three minute highlight video can take hours to days, depending on the needs of the client. It is not uncommon to find Aldrich or one of his student videographers sitting in front of the computer, headphones on, listening attentively to a speaker from a lecture video to try and find out exactly what they had said in order to create subtitles for them.
“The difficulty that goes along with this process is that sometimes the voices [from the audience] are so muffled, you can barely hear what they are saying,” Rodriguez says.
Many of these lectures hold a Q&A portion at the end, and even though the speakers can be heard clearly, sometimes the audience can’t.
“When I can’t figure out what the person is saying, I can always count on Kyle to help,” Rodriguez says.
On other occasions, when it seems almost impossible to hear what the audience member is saying, you can find Aldrich and his team of videographers huddled together in front of the computer screen trying to decipher what an audience member had said.
“There would be a moment of silence, and we would all just look at each other, and then someone would blurt out something like, ‘did that person just say cheese and waffles?’ and we would laugh about it because that’s exactly what it sounds like, even though we know that’s not what they actually said,” Rodriguez says.
When Aldrich took the role of Supervisor eight months ago, he didn’t know what to expect. He had just moved out of Portland into Orange County with his girlfriend, who at the time decided to move to Orange County because of a business opportunity in Santa Ana. Since they did not have kids to take care of, the possibility was feasible. When the opportunity was finally proposed to her, they both decided that it was something that she needed to take.
“I’m from San Diego, but I lived in Portland for a large majority of my life. I would always joke about how I would come back to live in Southern California, but I didn’t think it would actually happen,” Aldrich says.
Born and raised in San Diego, Aldrich recalls spending most of his childhood drawing. From drawing monsters to comic strips, art has always been an important part of his life. Creating scenarios and stories for the characters he made was his favorite thing about drawing.
“Through my art, anything was possible,” Aldrich says.
He described film and animation as something where there are no limitations, no boundaries.
At the end of his 6th grade, Aldrich’s parents wanted a change of scenery. They decided that living in Southern California may not be the best environment to raise their children.
“It was kind of a roundabout, but a major factor was that my parents didn’t want to raise us in the ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ environment,” Aldrich says.
As he got older, he continued his passion for drawing, creating volumes of sketches and drawings over the years. So, when he got accepted to Portland State University, studying for a degree in drawing, printing, and paint-making was easy for Aldrich. However, after he graduated, he had some trouble finding a position that needed an animator.
One of his biggest dreams was to work on 2D animation for Disney, but when he sought out an opportunity, Aldrich quickly found that his chances of getting into that particular field were slim.
“There was nothing worthwhile in my portfolio, so... I went to go get another degree,” Aldrich says.
After some contemplation about his future and what kind of goals he wanted to aim for, he decided that going back to school at Portland State University to get another bachelor’s degree was the best option.
Even though Aldrich is currently in the field of film, it was not something he always wanted to pursue. He even shares that his interest the film industry came about inadvertently.
In the admissions office of Portland State University, one of the counselors he spoke to had actually recommended he study film. He had expressed that he wanted to work in animation because he enjoyed drawing, but was caught off guard when the counselor suggested that he should study film.
“I was confused. I told them I wanted to do animation, and after they said that I should do film, I was like, ‘why would I do that… ’” Aldrich says.
It was then that the counselor explained how components of animation and film are very similar, even expressing how taking some film classes could lead him to a position into being a director.
“So, I basically got weaseled into taking a bunch of film classes from the admissions crew, and after that, it just stuck,” Aldrich says.
He soon learned that the counselor was right about how some components with animation were similar to film. Things such as creating a storyboard first, writing scripts for a story, and collaborating with other creative energies in order to create a single project all fall into part of the same realm that connects animation and film together.
What kept Aldrich so interested in film was that it still held that “story” component, which was one of the reasons he loved animation ever since childhood.
The transition was almost seamless.
After studying for his degree in film, Aldrich was also able to get some experience with both components of animation and film, more so in the form of motion graphics and logo animation. Even though he had lengthy knowledge with After Effects -- a software program that has tools for video compositing, motion graphics design, and animation -- Aldrich spent a lot of his time researching and learning how to work on concepts and After Effect tools for film and animation on his own.
“That was around the time I started making puppets and characters inside that application,” Aldrich says.
From what he learned, he was able to place small characters on with people in real life on a screen; he combined animation with reality through these programs. He described that that experience felt similar to making a monster hybrid.
“After putting everything together, I made like a hybrid Frankenstein monster that I learned how to create on my own,” Aldrich says.
While he could have just gone back to school to learn 3D animation, Aldrich figured that due to time restraints, he could just learn these things by himself. Which in turn, allowed him the opportunities to blend animation in film with the next few jobs he went to after college. He even shares that there were some instances where he was presented with a project he had no idea how to do, but eventually learned how to after,
“I eventually learned how to do these stuff after sitting in my room for like three days straight,” Aldrich says.
After working for a few jobs that needed animation and film skills for commercials and other advertisements, Aldrich found that one of his biggest passions was not just doing film, but teaching it. Before he got his job at the Student Center, he had worked odd jobs in the film industry. However, there was one job that he could not forget.
He worked on this independent film for seven years after college -- something that typically should not take that long for a film -- but there were so many issues in the production of the film that it felt almost impossible to finish.
“There would be times where we would run out of a budget or one of the main characters would quit, and we would have to start all over again,” Aldrich said.
Not only was the production of this film time consuming, but there was nothing about the film that could be guaranteed. In addition to not having a steady budget, they also did not have a regular place where they can film indoors. There would usually be a warehouse or a studio where the crew could film, but due to their lack of a budget, there would be times where they would be forced to film in random locations that did not really fit with the story of the film.
After they finally got to complete the film, Aldrich realized he did not want to spend all of his energy on an unstable field. So, that was when he turned to teaching film instead.
Aldrich ended up working as a film educator for several college campuses including Portland State University, Northwest Film Center, and the Art Institute of Portland for eight years.
“So… I taught at a state funded institution, a for-profit institution, and a non-profit institution. I was all over the place,” Kyle says.
While the opportunity to work for his girlfriend was open, Aldrich was more interested in finding a job that would give him the opportunity to use his passion for film and multimedia, while also allowing him to somehow use his experience as an educator. Thus, when a simple Google search led Aldrich to find an opening for a multimedia position at UC Irvine, he knew he had to take the opportunity.
When he moved to Orange County, he knew that he wanted to work in an environment that revolved around some components of production and film with it. Although, Aldrich was unsure whether he wanted to just focus on a production-related position or to just continue teaching undergrad.
“I found somewhat of a compromise [at Antmedia]. Something that was particularly alluring about this position was that I would be working production, but I would also get to work among these student videographers and photographers,” Aldrich says.
After applying for the position, Aldrich received a call from Brian Petyo who is the Marketing Manager for the Student Center and Event Services at UC Irvine. Even though he had little to no knowledge about UC Irvine, Petyo invited Aldrich to come in for an interview, and since the location was only a few minutes away from his home in Costa Mesa, Aldrich found the job not only to be suitable to what he was looking for, but also conveniently close.
According to Aldrich, one of the best parts about being in the film industry is the interesting kind of connections he makes. After living in Portland for a long time, he became used to what he can only describe as, “the weirdness.” In comparison to Irvine, the Portland film community focused more on executing strange and creative ideas.
On the other hand, the Irvine film community seem to carry a more corporate and marketing energy. Due to the fact that the Portland community is so small, it was easy for Aldrich to meet a majority of the people in the film industry.
Although, he hates the stereotype that people from Portland are seen as weird. He instead, views the Portland community with admiration.
“I mean yeah, they’re weird, but they’re also not afraid to take risks and just be weird about things. You can have a commercial of pigeon eating a sandwhich and it will turn out to be a car insurance commercial, like it makes no sense, but people remember it,” Aldrich says.
It is this creative and weird energy that Aldrich has carried into the Antmedia team. While the Antmedia team mainly focuses on covering events for the Student Center, Aldrich hopes to expand that, and be able to create these fun and weird projects that will allow his student videographers and photographers to gain some creative energy.
Currently, he is working on a project that includes animated monsters and students. While it is still in the process of being made, he hopes to collaborate with his students and create a show where college students can go to for entertainment.
Not only that, but he has been pitching this television idea he has had for years to filming industries. While he did not want to share too much of his idea, in fear that it could be stolen by others, he described it as a sitcom that concerns animated monsters talking to humans; he wants to retain this idea of blending animation with reality in that project and in future projects.
Looking forward, his goal is to teach and share his knowledge on film and animation to his students in order for them to know more of the world and to see more of it from a creative outlet.
“What I want most from this job is to be able to give back my knowledge of animation and film to you guys, the students. That is what would make me the happiest -- to know that film and animation has influenced someone’s life the way it has mine,” Aldrich says.
