Nicolas Hinman 8/19/25 Nicolas Hinman 8/19/25

The Nerve

Overview

The Nerve is a 18-20 person murder mystery I wrote out around May 2024. This is the process I went through to create it.

Someone’s task was to take polaroid photos of every guest. They passed.

My friend, Zak, was turning 30, and one of his favorite things is games. Any games. Board, DnD, card, corn hole. Anything. The plan was to have a weekend retreat at a cabin in Montana with a big group to celebrate. About a month before, Zak’s wife (Kacie) reached out and asked if I could be in charge of finding/hosting a murder mystery we would do on Friday night.

Now, the easy thing to do would be to find and buy a boxed game, read through it, set up the puzzles, and play it as a group. Two problems with that: 1.) there aren’t very many (if any) 18-20 person murder mysteries and 2.) they weren’t good. I mean, I’d love to make my own. I love story and complex characters, but that option takes a lot of time, and I’m pretty busy right now, so the other option was set in stone.

Then I was let go from my job.

Well, I have time now.

Planning

I knew the more I thought about things, the more indecisive I’d become. Because of that, I committed to play off instincts than the illusion of “the best thing”.

Main Story

The plan was to have a fancy dinner party with cocktails and horderves, so I started to build off of the question: Why were these characters at the party? What brought them there? After a few different ideas, I decided on company celebration party. But what was the company and what were they celebrating? Let’s do a tech company. The tech would be nanochips. Like human tech? Yeah, a brain chip. What does that chip do? Eliminate pain. Why would someone need that? What if they were allergic to pain medication? (This is my thought process. Question/answer.)

Characters

So, a nanotech company (let’s call it Nurotomics) who are celebrating two successful test subjects who recently received and healed from the chip. This was the more painstaking part, making 18-20 unique characters for people to play. I got the guest list of people who would be there, people who I knew would play certain characters really well, others I didn’t know. The hope is that everyone would be involved and have fun, so with each character, I made a short bio of their side of the story, an objective, who they knew, and a motivation. I sorted these people up into three tiers of people:

Main characters were players who had big impact roles. They were people who would commit to the parts, be invested in the story, and would know what to keep close and what information to give away. These characters ended up being the detective, murder victim(s), murderer(s), and accomplices to the murderer(s). They had higher risk and more complicated tasks, knew more about the other characters, and directly effected the night.

Secondary characters were players with supporting roles. They usually knew one or two people at the party, and they had more suspicion of characters than backstory. I thought of them as the “rumor spreaders”. They were friends, co-workers, and +1’s. Their goals and motivations didn’t really impact the story, even if they thought it did.

Extras were people who helped with the atmosphere of the night. They had pretty easy and minimal roles and tasks. This worked really well for people who were (practically) in charge of the bar, food, or photos. They played some aspect with everything, but they didn’t have a lot of context to what’s happening. These were event staff and employees. These were the roles that were cut in case people had to bail.

I also broke people up in three “factions”: Nurotomics employees, friends of the test subjects, and neutral parties. This helped with writing out motivations, who they know, and (if there’s overlap) who’s side their on.

Murder

Here’s where I’ll get deeper into the story, so if you want to do this party with people, probably stop here because spoilers ahead. With so many people, I wanted some sort of chaos to happen. More than that, I wanted to be the one to be murdered (mostly so I could watch everything happen). My character was Adam Newts (all character names were from a mash-up of two ChatGTG prompts of “give me 20 names” and “give me 10 unique names”. Thanks AI). I also wanted to be redundant and foster competition, so I made two murderers and a backup plan.

Murder #1 was by poison. This person’s objective was to put a pill in my drink without being noticed. I formatted the story to where pain medications would short out the chip and kill the person. It’s something I’d want to work out more, but instincts over best.

Murder #2 was by stabbing. This person had to get me alone and mark me with a sharpie, showing they stabbed me. This as with the backdrop of revenge and psychotic thinking (again, instincts over perfection. I wish I developed it more).

The back-up plan covered if neither person followed-through. Remember how I said there were two test subjects? Well only one is at the party. Francis (the other test subject) was killed as well outside the party. If Murder #1 or #2 never happens, the focus then goes on who murdered Francis (since the same person that murdered Francis is at the party).

After about a month of writing, revising, and dialing in, the time came for the party.

How it went

I packed everything up, and we drove up to the cabin. At one point, I sat down and sorted out who I’d want in each role. For Murder #1, I attached a pill to the paper and a sharpie for Murder #2. I handed people their roles with enough time to read their bios, 8:00 rolled around, and we were off.

I got a glass of wine and started to chat with guests around. Pods started to form and people were starting to achieve their goals. Asher Moon (played by Martin) had the goal to get an interview at Nurotomics, which he secured by talking and making a drink for Ducan (CEO of Nurotomics, played by Justin). Murderer #1 was Jason, who played his character like a borderline deranged Swiss Scientist (not in the bio, so props to him). Kacie played Murderer #2 who, at one point, pulled me a few feet away and said “can we chat in a few minutes?” before being interrupted by her accomplice. There were multiple times I gave both murderers time to win. At one point, I left my wine glass on a shelf and went to the bathroom. I came back out, took a sip, and looked at the bottom. Now, realistically, if you were to try and be discrete, you would crush up the pill before putting it in the drink, right? Nope, in the bottom was the whole pill, white and hanging out in the bottom. Close enough. Time to die.

30 seconds later, Seraphina Moon (evening host played by Emma) called for a toast and speech. I gave a short one, acted drunk, set the wine glass with the whole pill on the counter, and fell dead right outside the bathroom. One detail that I added was the need to be alone after being poisoned (both when I died and before Francis died, as told in Sirenna Hunns bio). This is when things got fun.

Post-death

The first person to find me was Nurotomic’s bodyguard (played by Wes) who asked “are you dead?” “Yes” I responded, trying to act dead. “Oh… What should I do?” I remained dead “I’ve never been in this situation before… ummm.” “Is he dead?” Ryan (character of Benjamin McGuff) said, joining around my body “I…. believe so”. They talked about what to do for about 2 minutes. Then Kacie (Murderer #2) came over and suggested we move the body. She took one of my arms and marked the sharpie on my wrist, signifying I was cut, so technically, she achieved her goal. That’s when undercover detective, Orion (played by Zak) blew his cover and started taking control of the situation. He told everyone before the murder that he was one of the sales people for Nurotomics to keep his cover. Zak waved around his badge, telling everyone to get back, and threatening them. After it cooled off, I told Zak that I was dead, with no signs of physical harm except a slit on my wrist.

Zak told everyone to sit down and started interrogating them. This is when Zephyr (Sirenna’s young son played by Wes C.) started following Zak around. Zephyr was a wannabe detective, so Wes C.’s goal was to be around Zak for at least 30 minutes. He kept saying “you’re Batman and I’m Robin” while “helping” him on interrogations. Meanwhile, I was staring at the wine that was slowly dissolving the evidence of my murder not 10 feet away from Zak. He never looked in what I was drinking. After about 30 minutes, we called it and all sat in the living room.

Wrapping up

Zak went through what he learned and called out who he believed the murderer was. His assumption was it was Seraphina Moon who murdered Adam on behalf of Apollo. He was close, but he didn’t achieve his goal of guessing the correct murderer. We opened it up to everyone else and people guessed it was Declan, Marlowe (Adam’s ex-wife), and Nova. I explained the story and got the wine glass.

Murderer #2 is Sirenna Hunns. She was best friends with Francis and was there with both Francis and Adam the whole time they were recovering. When Francis dies, Sirenna believes Adam murdered their friend, hence the revenge on Adam. In reality, Apollo (Murderer #1) tested acetaminophen on the test subject, and it fails the chip, killing test subject #1 (Francis). With shipping deadlines of the chip pushed up, this leads Apollo down the “kill one person to save millions” route.

What I Learned

I think what I took away from this is how to better do “red herring” moments in a story. Things that sound like the solution, but they end up leading away from the objective. I should have gone lighter on them and looked from on outside perspective. People who don’t know the story as well as I do.

If you’re wanting to plan a murder mystery, contact me and I’d love to give any tips/suggestions!

Nicolas Hinman 1/28/23 Nicolas Hinman 1/28/23

Creative Breezeway

We all have a process to get into different mindsets. Here’s mine.

In my last post, I talked about how I was setting up a pathway to minimize distractions and to get me in a creative mindset. This post, I want to talk about how I’ve been starting that process called the “Creative Breezeway”.

“Why title it as a breezeway?”

A breezeway is described as “an architectural feature similar to a hallway that allows the passage of a breeze between structures to accommodate high winds, allow aeration, or provide aesthetic design variation”. This symbolism went well with what I hope to accomplish this year. High winds (or as i saw it, aerodynamics) referring to create without resistance, aeration for this process to be refreshing and not a burden, and aesthetic design variation being that I want it to look good and be proud of what is produced.

The SWOT analysis

My main goal is to create and distribute one project per month. I started a SWOT analysis to process what would be strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that would effect this goal. Here’s what I came up with:

Strengths

Natural creativity
Perfectionist
Love & care for people
Story-teller
Flexible with various artistic mediums
Single (able to delegate out my own time)

Weaknesses

Lack of creative motivation outside of work
Self-doubt
Perfectionist
Being busy
Start a lot of things without finishing (we’ll get back to this)

Opportunities

Accountability
Creative growth
Break lazy habits
Ambition
Better focus on projects

Threats

Creative laziness
Burnout
Life changes
Too much time setting things up, lose creativity (troubleshooting)
Loud roommates

As you can see, one of my threats was that my creativity is slowed when there’s aspects of troubleshooting. Now, coming from someone who loves tech and finding solutions to tech issues, it’s not the best when getting into a creative workflow. On the opposite end, one of the opportunities I saw was ambition (or inspiration) to do this. With that was breaking lazy habits. It’s easy to get home from work, sit down, and watch a movie (or 20+ YouTube videos about woodworking… they’re addictive). At the same time, a weakness and threat is business and burnout. I know I work well with rhythms in life, so that was another aspect I needed to tackle.

Troubleshooting, daily rhythms, and inspiration. Here’s how I’m working towards all those areas.

DISCLAIMER: This is what works for me right now. I live with roommates, I rent out a room in a house I don’t own, and don’t want to go into debt buying a whole bunch of gear. If what I do works for you, sweet! Copy away and live your full creative potential! If it’s not: you’re creative. Take some of the ideas in this video and make them work for you.

Inspiration

Let’s start with inspiration, since this solution affects a lot of other aspects. I wanted a portable set-up. I get inspiration from being out and about in different environments. Not having to adjust a whole bunch between a coffee shop and home would require the least amount of troubleshooting. I also plan on traveling a lot this summer and don’t want to feel like I’m compromising away from home.

So a laptop or an iPad, right? Well… here’s the thing, I hate doing most things on an iPad. I’ve owned a Gen 3 Pro for a few years now (the one with the Bionic chip before Apple decided to create something entirely new… we’ll get back to that…). I have the Adobe suite since I run just about all the apps. Here’s the rundown and thoughts of the Ipad:

For video editing, Adobe Rush is trash and I’d need an M1 iPad for the next Davinci Resolve app.
Illustrator, Photoshop, and Lightroom are pretty garbage on Ipad.
There’s no InDesign.

After months and months of trying to get the IPad to work, I gave up and just decided to get a Macbook (the iPad will come in later). Now which one? In an ideal world, where money isn’t an object and strangers at a bus stop sing show-tunes, I’d get the 16” M1 Max Macbook Pro with 4TB SSD and 64GB memory… but I’m not wanting to drop 5k on that. More than that, I don’t need all that power. So what are my needs? At least 16GB RAM, Mac (because of compatibility with my other devices), and a decent battery life. Along with a ~$1,000 price tag I hoped to pay, my options were limited. As I searched for either a Macbook with the last compromises, prayers were answered. I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and ran across a Macbook Pro for an absolute deal… Something’s wrong… So I messaged the guy to see if I can check it out. We set up a time, I got ready with all the diagnostic codes, and get ready to turn it down. The guy was insanely nice, solid, trustworthy dude, and the laptop was in AMAZING condition.

So, by absolute miracle, I’m working on a 16” 2019 Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM and an I7 with a dedicated AMD Radeon Pro 5300M 4 GB graphics card that was an absolute bargain. Now, why did I get an almost 4 year old laptop? Yes, in 4-5 years, it will (more than likely) be obsolete. But for what I paid for it, what I want to accomplish with it, and how new Apple’s M-series chips are and how they’re still improving them (going back to the Bionic-chip in the Ipad), I’m good with getting a new laptop in a few years.

I also want to tell you, if you’re wanting to get a computer to get into any creative medium, you don’t need the best. Even if you’re starting in After Effects, you don’t need a behemoth of a computer. That’s part of creativity, making what you have work until you can’t any longer.

Now, as for the iPad, I’m using the sidecar function as an external display. This gives me a.) a tablet type option for Illustrator and Photoshop, b.) a separate display for premiere for source content, and c.) just more screen real estate. Overall, the full set-up is powerful, portable, and gets the job done!

Daily rhythms

This is the newest problem I’ve had to address. How should I balance my time and energy for my physical, mental, spiritual, creative, and social health? It’s a rough template now, but I’ve started to spend time on a bulk of the No Holds projects every Friday and Saturday (my two days off). Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are usually my meetings and social days, and Mondays and Tuesdays are my creative days for work. I also have a prayer and Bible devo rhythm every evening (or morning if I have plans that night), a running rhythm (right now anytime it’s dry out, and hoping that changes soon this summer to every other day), and social rhythms (hanging with friends, phone call check-ins, and trivia).

My hope is to eventually overlap these areas in as many ways as possible. For example, a run club that covers social and physical health or a creative project hangout that covers social and creative health.

Troubleshooting

As I mentioned in the inspiration section, I needed a portable set-up to reduce troubleshooting time between idea and execution of that idea. There’s a few things that i’m still working on with this (like a music set-up and portable studio).

The first part has to do with templates. I needed to be able to open up any program and RUN with my creative thoughts. I didn’t want to open illustrator and have to create the artboards, set up a Wacom tablet, or update a thousand things. Just open and go! I created templates for each Adobe app I use often (Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, and Lightroom… Basically all Adobe).

The biggest lifesaver so far has been Malinote. I have it always open in a window on my computer. Malinote is the perfect blend of left and right brain. It’s messy enough to get my ideas across and organized enough to understand those ideas. Honestly, it’s the most important aspect of my whole workflow. I have all my projects and ideas on boards, an overall No Holds focus and organizational flow on another, and even branding on a separate board.

One of the things I’ve started to notice of myself is that I like to start a lot of projects and, right now, I need to execute them. Since starting this month, I’ve started PNW Parks Card Deck, New Tattoo Illustration, and Car Camping/Portable Kitchen boards. I’ve worked on all of them the same amount. Didn’t I say something about an opportunity of better focus on projects???

Wrapping it up

There’s a lot of aspects of creativity I love. The Breezeway is my hope to better capture those ideas and mediums. I’d love to know how you get creative and stay in that process! Let me know your ideas in the comments or shoot me an email. Love y’all, and see you soon!

Nicolas Hinman 1/2/23 Nicolas Hinman 1/2/23

No Holds Creative

As we closed this year, I started to look back to see what I accomplished in 2022. For one, I started to noticed that I’ve grown a lot in my interpersonal skills. How I deal with feedback, tough conversations, and communicating my feelings and needs (as odd as it is to put a benchmark on progress) have improved. I picked up a passion in cooking. My love for people, God, and myself have deepened. Lastly, I noticed better emotional and mental health. What’s funny is that none of this was due to the pandemic. In all honesty, because of my introverted nature, the pandemic really settled my mind with the alone time. I started to notice the shift when life started to pick back up. It’s like thinking you’re in decent shape, then going to a cross-fit class. I’ll go more in-depth at another time.

All of these are amazing things that I’ve been blessed with this year! As I looked at my creative outlets, I realized I haven’t done that many creative projects outside of my job (beside a senior photoshoot every once in a while). I mean, the last time I posted on my NH Media Instagram was a Lawrence concert May 2021.

It’s easy to brush it off and say “I’m creative at my job. I can just relax and do chores/life in my free time” which, as valid of a statement as that is, is crap. I’m a creative person. I create. The question came to mind How can I push myself creatively this next year? I have resources available. I have friends (both creative and logistical). I have platforms to post to. So how do I make this doable? How can I set myself up for success? Enter Malinote:

Malinote from Nov. 20th. It’s been updated A LOT since.

Yes, I like plans. Yes, that’s contradictory of usual creatives. Yes, Malinote is my merging of my left & right brain. Heck, I even put a SWOT analysis in there. I love it.

The main goal is to have one project every week that I’ll post on a platform. The secondary goal is to post an update three times a week. I know I have the skillset for it, and I’m setting up a “creative breezeway” for it. What is that you may ask.

One of the weaknesses I identified in the SWOT is that I’ll lose creative investment when set up is required. I’m in process of setting up a fast and effective creative workflow that minimizes the need for set up/tear down. This is where the breezeway comes in. A way to set up the least amount of stuff to maximize creative bursts.

This first month, that’s going to be my big project. Creating an effective breezeway for the next few months. There will be a few tests, failures, and experiments to get this up and running (again, mix of my left and right brain. I love it). I’m excited for this next year and what it will bring up in me!

Nicolas Hinman 12/20/19 Nicolas Hinman 12/20/19

Nic's 2019 Wrap

Well, it’s the end of the year.

Well, it’s the end of the year/decade. I’m going to go through the year as briefly as possible and (in my opinion) the best way, which are bullet points. So here we go!

Started off the year in full work mode, as I was helping heavily at Eastpoint with a multitude of Worship Arts things (honestly, the first half of the year was kind of a blur).
Started taking part in a creative collective (which sadly disbanded after a few months… still fun while it lasted)
Moved out on my own (and in June, moved from there to a house with my best friend).
Saw Young The Giant live (such a great concert!)
Was the cinematographer for a 50 Hour Slam film
Shaved my beard off and got an actually great haircut (thanks Nick from Morning After. I actually look good now.)
Easter 2019 chaos (so much fun, so exhausting)
Took pictures of LADS
Ran a dolly cam at the Collide Conference (again, so much fun)
Started the music video saga for Mountains In The Sea (you best check out ALL the videos!)
Turned 21 and was able to go into 21+ venues (oh, and also drink, i guess)
Due to financial situations in the church, I was let go from Eastpoint
Transform Kids Camp year 2!
Went to San Diego
While in San Diego, I signed up for year 2 of Music Video Jams, not thinking I was going to get in (I got in), and was randomly paired with Mountains In The Sea, where we made a baller music video (didn’t win, but it was a lot of fun)
Took more photos, did graphics, and collaborated with various people.
Music video 3 with MITS (with a collaboration with Frances Minigan. As always, so much fun)
Celebrated my 1 year at CPPS

So yeah. This year has been an absolute roller coaster. Everything from absolute joy to heartbreak, less time seeing old friends and more time with the new ones, absolute victory and defeat, and so much more. Overall, this year was a year of growth. Growth in relationship with others, growth in talents, and most importantly, growth in character. I honestly have no idea what life is going to chuck at me next year, but let’s get it!

Also, I don’t really show myself in front of the camera, so here’s some of those photos.(Photo credit on the first photo to @Zeroni.

Nicolas Hinman 9/16/19 Nicolas Hinman 9/16/19

Long Way Home BTS

This past month, I entered a competition called Music Video Jams, which if you follow all my things, you know I did last year with Kaylee Goins. Music Video Jams is a filmmaking competition where one band is teamed up with a filmmaker at random. From there, the filmmaker and musicians have two weeks to collaborate and shoot a music video with one of the bands songs. A few weeks later, all the competitors get together to watch each others music videos, and a winner is chosen.

Some BTS from last year with Kaylee Goins

This year, I entered it on a whim when they posted saying that one of the filmmakers had to cancel last minute. Not expecting to get in, I got in. Leading up to the initial kickoff event, I saw one of the bands I worked with before, Mountains In The Sea, was in the competition as well.

I shot them a quick DM and mentioned how great it would be if we were on a team together, to which they were confused until they looked at the recent Facebook post announcing they were in the competition. So we waited a few weeks and saw each other there. The decision process was a “pick a name out of a hat” style of decision. They went around to each musician, and one by one, other people were chosen. It felt like a pick up game of football with less choice. It came down to the last two musicians and filmmakers, to which both Mountains and I were in. They pulled a name out, and it was me. What chance. We hugged and got down to business. One of the challenging parts that came up quick was that they were out in LA for the first 5 days, leaving us 9 days to get everything done. “That’s not so bad” I thought to myself. Boy was I… right actually… that’s a first.

PRE-PRODUCTION

I spent those 5 days researching, story boarding, and listening to their song over and over. Our plan was to film that Monday, so I did weather research for the location, and it was supposed to be sunny with a few clouds. Perfect. The Sunday before shooting, I felt confident and ready to go. Due to budget, the plan was to use my Canon C100, their older Nissan, and open property so we wouldn’t have to pay for a location. The day before the shoot, I was able to get my hands on my father’s FDA licensed drone, and they were able to snag their friend’s ‘72 Chevy Nova (quite the improvement). Great pre-production leads to an easy production.

PRODUCTION

The shoot day started at 9:00AM at the Starbucks on Pines. We spent the first hour catching up and planning out the shoot day. At 10, we were off to our first location, which we got to around 10:20, and were set up for first shot at 10:30. We filmed the first scene when they’re stuck in traffic. This was achieved purely by parking my car next to theirs and over exposing the background. After we get a couple of different angles, we got some video of them driving, which was challenging. Yes, the car was shaky, but the biggest struggle was getting the angles we needed in a low budget. I get some of the shots I needed, then we proceeded to the drone shots. I’ve only ever flown a drone a few times, but it was really easy to get the hang of. We shot on the DJI Phantom 3 Pro, which flew like a breeze.

The plan for the shoot was to shoot the breakdown scene. The plan for that was that Phil would pop open the engine while Angela was in the car singing the bridge of the song. Towards the end, Phil would kick the car (not actually) out of frustration, which would result in more shots of them driving. On site, we decided that we should switch it up because at that point, it would make it more about the car rather than about the song (which is a love song talking about taking a detour to spend more time with someone). That’s when they made the joke of just abandoning the car and sprinting down the road, so we ran with it (pun intended). Looking back, I was so glad we made that decision because it massively helped with pacing and story. Since we didn’t have a stabilizer (more at the end on that), I used the drone to get a majority of the shots in that part. The end was a bit rough for that location, and I decided to try the “auto land” feature on the DJI, which resulted in their heads almost getting chopped off… didn’t use that feature any more.

Being as I was sure just about any location in Freeman would suite the feel of the music video, we went out to the high school, where just a quarter mile down the road, we found our final location. We set up, got into position, aaaand my C100 battery was almost dead… this was a problem. So being fast, we set up the area of the song we were filming, and got 4 quick takes in a relatively short amount of time. As we were packing up, Angela asked if I wanted to use the drone, and I said “Naw, I think I have enough”, which I caught myself and remembered that if I think it’s “enough”, it’s not enough. I popped out the drone, and sure enough, I needed those drone shots. #thanksAngela. So we shot the band on the car, getting in the car, and driving down the dirt roads. For our last shot, we had to go into town to get an in traffic shot, the opening shot of the music video. So we headed back to the Starbucks, I got in their car, and we drove up and down the streets until we were at a stop light. We luckily got the last shot, and my camera died. After a few “just in the NIC of time” puns, we got back to my car, exchanged gear, hugged it out, and I headed out to edit.

POST PRODUCTION

Do you ever have those shoots where you wrap, and you can’t wait to edit. This was one of those shoots. I got home, imported my footage, and started splicing away. After a first cut, I applied a rough color grade, and looked at the clock to see it was 9PM. I was astonished. We filmed, edited, color corrected, and had a rough grade in the span of 12 hours. I was hyped!

I spent the next few days not looking at the video to get a fresh look at it a little later. Once I did, I was just as happy of it as when I first cut it. By the end of that editing session, I was almost finished with a final edit. Problem was, I still had THREE DAYS left. Oh, I was not finished. That’s when I decided to do the “zippy zappies” in the video, which was a 3 hour commitment. I sent a copy to them, showed it to a few other people, and listened to all the feedback. The day before turning in, we had a finished product! I exported it and sent it in to CMTV the next day.

The actual viewing was about two weeks later.

Everyone came into the tiny room that’s called The Bartlett, and we watched each others films. Ours was the second, and it was met with extremely positive feedback. There was a guy who was confused about the “zippy zappies” that I mentioned earlier, but everyone else loved it. After we watched all of them, we came to the scoring. There was a crowd vote and a judges score. After they tallied up everything. The winner was Ray Badness and their music video (which was amazing and absolutely deserved to win). As soon as the winner was announced, one of the people I met and talked to, grabbed my arm, yanked me over, and said “you should’ve won that!”. Other people were more in to our “should've been” victory than we were. Regardless of victory or not, it’s always great filming with Mountains In The Sea. Look out for the next music video we might do!

Nicolas Hinman 3/11/19 Nicolas Hinman 3/11/19

I'm re-doing my website!

If you’re one of the VERY rare people to read my blog, you would have noticed my website has changed a bit. I realized that I wasn’t using it very much, and I asked myself why. If I’m paying $16 a month to keep a website that I don’t use, why keep it?

Upon thinking about it, I came to the possibility that the lack of updating is because of the amount of “professionalism” I put in this website. I looked at it as the holy grail of my “brand”. So because of that, I’m being un-professional and more me. This means more random music (making the new page right now), random photos and videos, and (probably) more blog posts about random things!

With a new style, there’s also a new purpose for the website. I want this to be more of a “about me” website than a “go buy my service”. I don’t feel like there’s a lot more to add than that… so yeh. Give me time. I’m hoping this will give me a new inspiration to create and post more!

Nicolas Hinman 1/6/19 Nicolas Hinman 1/6/19

2018 Wrap

After weeks of procrastination and laziness, I’ve built up the motivation to write about this past year. Let’s start with events that took place:

Started my job as Worship Arts Director at Eastpoint Church
Took a memorable trip to Colfax and took some baller photos

Graduated From SFCC with a Digital Media Production Degree
Trip to Seattle with some friends
Played Bass with an awesome crew for a Kids camp
Built a bass
Shot a music video with an amazing musician that took 2nd place at a competition

Decided not to go to Eastern Washington due to 3 more years of school

Shot another music video with the same amazing artist
Got a job for Bella Baby Photography (and found out that it wasn’t my forte)
Soon after got a job for CPPS for the production team (which is my forte)
Shot on one of the most expensive cameras to date (Panasonic EVA1)

Built a guitar

This past year was full of new people, photo and video shoots, starts and ends, excitement, sorrow, and growth. I have absolutely no idea what this next year holds, but I’m excited (and scared out of my mind) for what’s ahead. How did all of your years go? Let me know! I hope to see each and every one of you at some point this year!

Nicolas Hinman 7/10/18 Nicolas Hinman 7/10/18

It's been a while...

Hello! I haven't posted in a while! Here's what I've been up to (in list form!):

1. Graduated from Spokane Falls Community College (next stop, EWU!)

2. I created a short film (check it out on Vimeo!) (Also, yes, that's me acting. Not Nicolas Cage.)

3. I left Spokane for the first time in a while and headed to Seattle with friends

4. Photoshoot with an amazing couple!

This past month has been a lot of recouping and relaxing. When you go Mach 5 for two years, you need a breather! While I missed out on some opportunities, it was much needed. I feel more creative and energized than I've been in a while! Not only that, but it's opened up some new doors! Exited for what the rest of this summer holds! What have you been up to? Let me know!

Nicolas Hinman 5/26/18 Nicolas Hinman 5/26/18

DON'T SQUANDER CREATIVITY

This past week, I stopped by Tom Sawyer Coffee to interview people about the shop. I can't remember this baristas name for the life of me, yet I remember chatting about how her daughter is a photographer. She was so proud to explain how great she was getting. I remember a point in the conversation when she mentioned, "She loves her camera, but she's thinking of spending $2000 on a new one, and it doesn't even come with the lens! (Insert jaw dropping open)". I said that, yes, photography can be an expensive hobby,
However...
It doesn't need to be.
No matter what profession you're in, there can always be better gear. If you're a guitarist, there's always a better guitar. If you're a fisherman, there's a better rod, and yes, if you're a photographer, there's a better body. I feel that sometimes, better equipment can squander creativity. One example of this is a short film I shot a few days ago. I had all the gear to create it, but it turned out awful
Like, really bad...
I'm not saying newer gear is bad (in fact, I'm needing a new camera body soon) or that if her daughter bought a new camera, she would then begin to suck at photography. What I'm trying to hit is: If we focus too much on the WHAT we use, we lose sight of the HOW we do it. Not only that, but when we say "I'm not able to do that because of A, B, or C", we eradicate the possibility of creativity.
What are your thoughts?

Nicolas Hinman 5/25/18 Nicolas Hinman 5/25/18

Fun Little Thing

A couple of weeks ago, I messed around a little with some composites. I mashed together some photos from the past year, and I'm kind of a fan of how it turned out. What do you think?