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:
Elite Gymnastics is James Brooks and Josh Clancy. The duo have been receiving quite a bit of national attention for their brand of chillwave tunage. From the New York Post to Pitchfork, these two are getting positive reviews. Minneapolis’ own City Pages had this to say:
…a trance-inducing quality to them, akin to sitting in a darkened opium den listening to ’80s dance hits stream out of a telephone receiver, off in the distance, softly yet persistently.
Check them out for yourself below and if you likey you can listen to more via their MySpace page and/or download their Real Friends EP for free here:
More than 3000 enjoyed the 10 Second Film Festival
A pal was kind enough to capture some of the reaction to ‘Sticks‘ at the Soap Factory’s 10 Second Film Festival on July 4th, 2010 in downtown Minneapolis, including the award for Best Documentary and praise it received from the local celebrity judges and HUGE crowd.
The crowd and judges went cuckoo for “sticks” at the Soap Factory’s 10 Second Film Festival last night – the announcer and the crowd of thousands continued to chant “sticks” long after it screened, especially after I neglected to claim the win (until later) because I couldn’t hear anything! Gee whiz, what can a fella say but thanks to the Soap Factory, Chris Cloud, Dan Huiting, and Kevin Albertson from MPLS.tv, the local celebrity judges Barb Abney from 89.3 The Current, Chris Pennington, and Robyne Robinson. Yet another thousand reasons why Minneapolis is the greatest city in the universe : )
“Lars can eat carrots really fast” was a crowd pleaser, too, and when i didn’t hear the call to claim the award for ‘sticks’ evidently they chose this as the next winner, which i didn’t go up for either because i STILL couldn’t hear anything! : P
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:
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:
We don’t have to ask why we love videos and movies, visual literacy is becoming more important as time goes on.
Produced by Thomas Edison and directed and filmed by Edwin S. Porter, The Great Train Robbery was the first narrative movie ever made.
Thinking about today’s conventions I see in contrast to the silent films of the early years of cinema, the first thing is obvious: there are a lot of talking heads. The cinematic elements that make me love movies, especially silent movies, are mostly lacking, having given way to VFX and complicated dialogue. Cool effects work well in the right places but, as we learned from the great, early filmmakers, a story is best told with a visual, artful use of the tools to lead us to make connections on our own. This is what cinematography is. The American Society of Cinematographers defines cinematography as:
a creative and interpretive process that culminates in the authorship of an original work of art rather than the simple recording of a physical event.
The difference between a good film and a great one is that even with the audio removed a great film stands on its own. The audience can still make sense of the action because the cinematic elements keep moving the story forward.
Silent films didn’t have the luxury of audio tracks to bolster what was happening on the screen. Directors worked feverishly to keep the inclusion of cards with words on them to a minimum as audiences often found them distracting because they broke a certain rhythm to the visual story that was unfolding before them. The fundamentals of editing were more than enough for directors in those early days as they saw a seemingly infinite number of conventions that could be used to craft atmospheres, psychological experiences that led audiences to emotional heights and dramatic lows in response to the visual sequences taking place in front of them.
In contrast to now, when a majority of popular films have so many stylistic choices in common, produced with technology that can shoot high and low, inside and out, leave no stone unturned, no thought of a character unknown, possessing perhaps a similar cultural rhythm about them, too, that can at times make them feel almost like the same movie. Technology has certainly opened up many more options for modern day shooters, myself included. Shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II allows us to shoot cinema quality footage at 24p at a fraction of the cost. However, as in design, there is a time and place for whitespace, which is to say, to not exploit the tools for all they’re worth just for the sake of exploiting the tools for all they’re worth. Does it add to the story? Yes? Keep it. Does it not add to the story? Lose it.
I surely don’t mean to discount the work of the great cinematographers of our age, only to suggest that limitations are what create the opportunities for innovation, not a lack of them. The life pursuits and soaring accomplishments of a legion of great screen directors in the early days of cinema stand testament to it.
So how has the rapid deployment of these new tools impacted our ability to tell a story cinematically? Surely it’s both helped and hindered. A great story is still a great story, regardless of what tools are used to tell it.
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.
This is just the fat trimmed off a project I’m working on: a multimedia installation about people asleep in public spaces called, appropriately, “Asleep”:
Sure, in the end it’s just another commercial. Using this format, however, Stella Artois gives us a glimpse of more than a 30-second spot devoid of any intellectual calories whatsoever.
Have 12 minutes to spare to watch this beautifully shot documentary?
Audience, the latest media installation from rAndom International, is outta sight – as the viewer walks through it, the mirror-fellows track them, making each viewer the “focus” of the piece as they are reflected in each little mirror:
