Andrew Gingerich

Filmmaker/Educator

About

Andrew Gin­gerich is a film­mak­er whose work explores notions of fam­i­ly, dis­so­ci­at­ed iden­ti­ties, region­al alle­giances, and the bound­aries of fic­tion. He lives and teach­es in Michi­gan’s Upper Peninsula.

Lighting with less

  • 9 min­utes – HD Video for online course – Color
  • My role: Instructor

Some approach­es to light­ing for film stu­dents who are iso­lat­ing at home with­out access to movie lights, using the sun and a vari­ety of house­hold light sources.

Better sound

  • 11 min­utes – HD Video for online course – Color
  • My role: Instructor

A quick overview of how to improve the qual­i­ty of sound record­ings made with phones, built-in mics, and pock­et recorders.

This is anoth­er online demo for my Film 118 stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, when COVID-19 iso­la­tion mea­sures drove the course online-only. My stu­dents lost access to Uni­ver­si­ty equip­ment halfway through the semes­ter, which meant that many of them had to com­plete the course using only a smart­phone and with­out access to audio recorders or micro­phones. In this video, I want­ed to demon­strate a few ways stu­dents could get bet­ter-qual­i­ty sound from the low-qual­i­ty micro­phones built into their cam­eras, phones, and oth­er devices.

I men­tion a cou­ple audio recorders in the video…

  • The Tas­cam DR-05X
  • The Zoom H1n – They’re closed for Passover until lat­er this week, but as of mid-April 2020, B&H has a great deal on the gray Zoom H1n, mak­ing it com­pa­ra­ble in price to the Tas­cam DR-05X (fol­low this link and then click “Gray” under the col­or options).

Junk drawer camera rigs

  • 9 min­utes – HD Video for online course – Color
  • My role: Instructor

A crash course in life with­out a tripod.

I made this video for my Film 118 stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin–Milwaukee when COVID-19 iso­la­tion mea­sures drove the course online-only. My stu­dents lost access to Uni­ver­si­ty equip­ment halfway through the semes­ter, which meant that many of them had to com­plete the course using only a smart­phone and with­out the aid of a tri­pod. I put togeth­er this video to give them so ideas about how to inven­tive­ly mar­shal the lim­it­ed tools avail­able to them.

Ghost to Ghost

  • 16 min­utes
  • HD video/​16mm/​Super 8
  • Color/B&W
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor
"Ghost to Ghost" poster

An exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary about death, grief, and humor.

It seems that Trasie’s response to loss was to split in two: on Sun­days, she stood in the ceme­tery and wept uncon­trol­lably. The rest of the week, she was the pur­vey­or of a caus­tic wit, and seemed to take gen­uine joy in relent­less­ly jok­ing about death. These loss­es, and the ways in which Trasie did her best to cope with them, still trou­ble Trasie’s daugh­ter, Gladys, near­ly a cen­tu­ry later.

Director’s Statement

The only record­ing of my great-grand­moth­er’s voice is a five-minute long skit about coffins record­ed some­time around 1940, only a few years after the deaths of her moth­er, father, broth­er, hus­band, and son. The record­ing is remark­ably jubi­lant, and notable in its stub­born com­mit­ment to jok­ing about death.

My grand­moth­er Gladys recalls the deaths of her father and broth­er dis­tort­ed by the per­spec­tive of child­hood, and remem­bers her moth­er as a lone­ly, seri­ous woman wracked by wor­ry and grief.

This piece was my attempt to col­lab­o­rate with these two women—one liv­ing, one dead—to pro­vide con­text to this remark­able piece of audio and the grim humor at its source.

Screenings

  • WIFI Film Fes­ti­val – Tope­ka, Kansas
  • UWM Depart­ment of Film, Video, Ani­ma­tion and New Gen­res M.F.A. Screen­ing – Mil­wau­kee, Wisconsin
  • Moz­i­Mo­tion – Hil­ver­sum, Netherlands
  • Young gladys and grass
  • "Welcome to Sugarcreek - the little Switzerland of Ohio"
  • Gladys listens to the tape
  • Gladys with a photograph of Trasie (inset)

Screen­er avail­able — request a pri­vate link!

Beets

  • 7 min­utes – HD video – Color
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

Retired emer­gency room nurse Gladys teach­es her grand­son how to make pick­led beets.

Director’s Statement

It’s often been said that the best cam­era is the one that’s with you. When, one after­noon, my grand­moth­er offered to teach me her recipe for pick­led beets, I reached for the iPod Touch in my pock­et to make this short por­trait of her.

  • Gladys
  • Washing beets
  • Gladys and David

Motorcycle/​Power Sports program video

  • 5 min­utes – HD video – Color
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

Instruc­tors Shane Con­ley and Dirk Bak dis­cuss the West­ern Iowa Tech Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege Motor­cy­cle and Pow­er Sports program.

Building Connections With Students

  • 5 min­utes
  • HD video
  • Col­or
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

Steve Aron­son of Teach Authen­tic dis­cuss­es his phi­los­o­phy of class­room man­age­ment and gen­uine inter­ac­tion with students.

When Steve decid­ed to leave his teach­ing posi­tion to start a speak­ing and class­room con­sult­ing busi­ness, he came to me for help mak­ing a film that would doc­u­ment his teach­ing philoso­phies and class­room man­age­ment style and could be fea­tured on his web­site. The result­ing film is a cin­e­mat­ic call­ing card for Teach Authen­tic, high­light­ing Steve’s per­son­al jour­ney as a teacher, giv­ing view­ers a glimpse into one of his class­es, and show­cas­ing a few tes­ti­mo­ni­als that give us a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how trans­for­ma­tive a teacher’s empa­thy and under­stand­ing can be to his students.

Mujeres Unidas de Candelaria

  • 4 min­utes
  • Video
  • Col­or
  • My role: Edi­tor

A video intro­duc­ing the Peru­vian wom­en’s non-gov­ern­men­tal-orga­ni­za­tion Mujeres Unidas de Can­de­lar­ia and out­lin­ing its mission.

I cut togeth­er this quick video from exist­ing footage and still images for Mujeres Unidas’ web launch. The final video was deliv­ered in both Eng­lish and Span­ish ver­sions for dis­play on the bilin­gual web site.

Coffee With John

John Kefalas is a life­long pub­lic ser­vant who has worked tire­less­ly for the peo­ple of North­ern Col­orado. I helped plan and pro­duce this series of videos for his 2010 reelec­tion cam­paign for Col­orado State House Representative.

In plan­ning this series of videos with the Kefalas com­mu­ni­ca­tion staff, we set our­selves the goal of pro­duc­ing the most sub­stan­tial cam­paign ads pos­si­ble. So much cam­paign mes­sag­ing is based on exag­ger­a­tion and per­son­al­i­ty, but John’s strength has always been his abil­i­ty to talk specifics. To that end, we planned to make a series of short videos address­ing spe­cif­ic issues:

  • Clean ener­gy
  • Edu­ca­tion
  • Job cre­ation & small business
  • Trans­porta­tion

I shot a lot of video for this project. I fol­lowed John around as he spoke to com­mu­ni­ty groups, can­vassed neigh­bor­hoods, met vot­ers, and vis­it­ed local busi­ness­es. John’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor wrote scripts on each of the four cho­sen issues for John to deliv­er to cam­era. In the end, though, we real­ized that less real­ly was more, and that the typ­i­cal “can­di­date address­es the cam­era inter­cut with B‑roll” piece evoked the type of sub­stance­less mes­sag­ing we were try­ing to avoid.

One of the things I find most com­pelling about John as a leader is his lack of slick­ness. He has a ten­den­cy to come across a lit­tle stiff when address­ing a cam­era direct­ly, but he’s deeply knowl­edge­able on the rel­e­vant issues and com­mu­ni­cates very well one-on-one with his constituents.

That’s how we came to the con­clu­sion that the most ele­gant solu­tion was to let John talk to some­one about the issues that mat­tered most to him. So we arranged to stop by a local cof­fee shop (Star­ry Night in Old Town), and had him sit down with my grand­moth­er Gladys for about an hour—no scripts, no fan­cy pro­duc­tion, only an occa­sion­al prompt from me to talk about a spe­cif­ic issue we want­ed to cover.

That con­ver­sa­tion pro­vid­ed ample footage to cut togeth­er minute-long videos on each of the four top­ics, and a longer flag­ship video that cov­ered John’s can­di­da­cy more generally.

John hand­i­ly won re-elec­tion. It had noth­ing to do with these videos, but I think the qual­i­ties that made him so pop­u­lar with his con­stituents are on full dis­play here.