Jul 242010

Charlie Parr in Minneapolis

Charlie Parr in Minneapolis this morning

I had the distinct pleasure of spending this morning down by the Mississippi River with Charlie Parr, shooting a video for City of Music with Dan Huiting, Chris Cloud, Dave Hannigan and the rest of the MPLS.tv crew. He’s such a good spirit and talented musician.

Amidst such a perfect backdrop for his sound, the morning flew by listening to him sing and play his National down there along the river while we did our three-camera shoot. He has a new album out soon, too, so keep an eye peeled for it.

I’ll be sure to post the final edit here but, meanwhile, please enjoy this clip taken in ‘09 while Charlie played Cheap Wine at the Victoria Pub in Birmingham, UK:

Jun 192010

there was no magic moment when meta and frankie hula met they just became sisters:

pups chillin @ lofto

pups chillin @ lofto

Jun 122010

This one Bergey and I made together:thinfilms 8 dialectic 1024x996 dialectic

Bergey made some things that inspired me to start tinkering with stills digitally and call it pixeliering, which is a meager attempt at adding an element of painting to digital images:

Click on that first image right there to see before and after examples larger and more in charger:antesdespues

This is cool and I like the way the digital mixes together with the analog. These are very time consuming to make so I only have a few of them to show but this is one of my favorites, so far:

no_11

Jun 062010

click here for html5 version

If you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a feature film I could tell you the steps to take to do that, but every working documentary filmmaker I know has gotten there through their own unique path. There is no career path.

Apr 072010

10secondfilms.orgSome think content will keep getting longer and longer until movies are 3 and 4 hours long. That’s fine. OK with us. We also like the idea of not spending 3 or 4 hours to get something out of it.

Like music, there is a time and place for a long song and a short one. We like them both. We do listen to waaay more short songs than long ones, though. This is the reason we love still images more than films. If our house was on fire and we had to save still images or films, we would have to save the stills. We know. Sounds surprising! We work in motion but, like most of our favorite filmmakers, we think in stills. Moments. In a moment, a still image can change our lives. Films take a little longer.

Which is one reason we created and curate 10secondfilms.org. In 10 moments, a film can pack quite a wallop. Some maybe not so much, but are still worthy as friendly exercises in media literacy.

Howard Rheingold called this site “genius, funny, and yes, friendly expression of participation media literacy” via his Twitter account.

Gever Tulley also commented on it using the most appropriate phrase ever: “oddly compelling” – also via Twitter.

Compliments coming from fellas like these make us feel pretty darn swell, to say the least. Thank you, Gever and Howard. You both have our most humble admiration and deepest respect.

This is all just to say that we believe the experience of producing media should be a friendly one for all ages, especially as technology can still be an obstacle to the creative process for many of us. As an exercise in media and visual literacies, the 10-second format is vital. It minimizes the need for complex tools. These moments as movies are gratifying and occasionally inspire larger, more ambitious projects.

Make a 10 second film with any device that captures motion pictures.

No editing — One take — 10 seconds maximum length — Sound is optional.

Have a 10 second film you like?

We’d love to hear about it and perhaps even feature it on the site – click here to tell us more.

Meanwhile, thanks for reading and — keep playing.

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