Two things aspiring filmmakers can do to hone up on their skills

I casually follow the entertainment industry, trying to find out how people can eek out a living in an industry that is grossly unprofitable. (Seriously, both George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola have started side businesses to support their film production companies. And if these guys can't make money by only making films, there is no way some visionary with two camcorders and a microphone can lead the good life.)

And if you follow the industry news, you find very quickly that the day-to-day bread-and-butter work is commercial or industrial work. There is very little room for creativity or experimentation. If a filmmaker wants to branch out and do something experiemental or non-mainstream, they have to either do it on their own dime or find someone who will pay for something eye-catching and memorable.

Hence, the music video. I've really become obsessed with some music videos over the years for their no-holds-barred approach to filmmaking. Even if I don't like the song all that much, I can watch the music video repeatedly.

Like this one:



Because of their disposability, the filmmakers can get downright abstract and experimental with the process. Sometimes when I see music videos, I ask myself, "How in the world was this pitched to the financiers?"

Can you imagine a meeting where a filmmaker goes, "Yeah. When I hear your song, I see a single, slow-motion shot of a running man burning," and the music company goes, "Sure, here is $50,000 - make it alive for us!"

Improbable, but, still somehow we wind up with one of my favorite videos:



And there are even stranger ones out there. Can you imagine how this film was pitched?



So that is what I recommend people do to hone their filmmaking skills - make music videos. Because the field is so wide open, and because there are not any real set standards as to what constitutes a "good" one vs. a "bad" one, you can't really go wrong.

If you don't want to do something experimental and strange, you can always draw from the rich visual language of the Hollywood musical. Despite everyone saying the musical genre is dead and gone, I find it turning up in music videos all the time. Like in this one where we get to see one singer play three different vocalists - you can tell them apart because they have different hair color.



And if sensory overload and editing that causes autism in children, epileptic siezures in the sensitive, and ADD in the rest of us, there is always the musical narrative music video. Like this one:



Once again we have a single singer as three different characters - a blonde, a brunette, and a red head. Unlike the previous one, all three apparently fight over some blandly attractive lunkhead. Does anyone else get confused at the bait-and-switch at the end of the video where the brunette is clearly the one who wins the guy, but somehow he winds up with the blonde in a bathroom stall? And who associates romantic conquest with bathrooms these days? As with the rich musical tradition, a willful suspension of disbelief is necessary for enjoyment to begin.

The most fun I've been seeing with music videos recently have been the strange little assemblages of film that people cobble together in their homes. Like this one:



This not only shows the power of good editing, it also offers an insightful commentary on the way media affects people in front of the camera. Frankly, I forgot that Ms. Spears was ever a child star until I saw this footage. Seeing a little girl spout lyrics like this simply reinforce the dangers of exposing children to pop culture.

At this point, I should probably wring my hands and wonder what our culture has come to, with popular pop songs directed towards young teenage girls bastardize a 1940s swing style to include lyrics like "He makes my panties drop," and "He makes my cherry pop." (Of all the ladies I have met who were alive in the 40s, none of them struck me as someone who would talk like this.) Or I should wonder about the affect of videos that show that the best way to have a healthy, caring relationship with a boy is to push his current girlfriend into a Port-a-potty.

Instead, I will offer up the other short film genre that fascinates me: the documentary.

In the couple of documentaries I have attempted to film, the main problem I have found is that no one likes to be on camera. Whip out a camera, and people run away from it.

But if you can establish a good rapport and an air of trust, some great things can happen. Recently, a local paper featured a vintage 70s documentary on Dallas-area carhops. In some ways, it is just as fun and abstract as the music videos. It has intriguing visuals and an interesting narrative.

Here's Part 1:



What I really like about this is how the subjects are so open and honest... and how strange and fun that time was - when people dressed up as marching band members serving people in cars. I'm not really nostalgic for that time and fashion as much as I am notalgic about how comfortable and unguarded about how people are in their thoughts. Like in Part 2, where the one fella talked about a place that specialized in having "fat girls, 10 or 12 of the heaviest girls they could find" carhops - and then they showed it. There was a lot of implicit trust and honesty going on in that film. I don't see that happening very much nowadays.



So there you go. Music videos and documentaries are the key to making yourself a better filmmaker. Go forth and do some strangeness.

Is there anything good instructional design can't improve?

I got this from the Respectful Insolence blog, who in turn got it from three different blogs.

Behold the power of good instructional design!

A Little Something for the Next TIme You're at a Rave

Looks like I'm a funny, funny guy.

Your results:
You are The Joker

The Joker 73% Mr. Freeze 72% Apocalypse 64% Lex Luthor 62% Dr. Doom 61% Green Goblin 61% Magneto 60% Riddler 57% Venom 55% Kingpin 50% Juggernaut 41% Dark Phoenix 40% Mystique 37% Two-Face 37% Catwoman 35% Poison Ivy 29%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...

What is Consumption? Consumption is a disease that plagues artists.

Here is the last of the educational podcasts. This one was fun to edit because I had all of this random accordion music with nowhere to go, and there were so many conversational beats that seemed to perfectly match some of this orphan music.

This was done in one take with Anita reading from a script and Elmo improvising. Several of us had to physically cover our mouths or leave the room or something to keep from laughing during the recording session.

What a fun time we had. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it again next semester or not, or if we’ll be able to top this, but I’m up for it.

Here is consumption.

Surreal Educational Podcast

This podcast is all me.

Like most self-conscious people, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of my voice. And there are parts of this that make me cringe. I also think it sounds a little over-produced in some places.

Having said all that, I think there are some really good bits in this. I like the entire idea of surrealism being presented like it was a monster truck rally, and the echo effect when I say SIGMUND FREUD is pretty cool.

I want to say that the idea behind this podcast is some sort of meta-commentary about how surrealism started out as this interesting thought experiment in the artistic community and quickly devolved into a lowest common denominator form of entertainment which continues to ripple through our culture, destroying the lines between “high art” and “low art” to the point where visiting a museum and going to a monster truck rally are indistinguishable, BUT the truth of the matter is that I can only do one or two funny voices, and the Truck Rally Announcer voice had to fit in somewhere here.

Having said all that, here is the surrealism podcast!

One of the many, many, many reasons why I think cell phones are more of a nuisance than a benefit

Transcript of phone conversation last night:

Me: Greetings, Ms. Wonderifical!

The Missus: Hi! How was your plane ride?

Me: Not too bad. I think I might have caught something. The kid on the row in front of me had a cold and kept coughing and sneezing without covering his mouth. And all day today my throat has been kind of sore.

TM: You’re fading. I didn’t get anything after, “Not too bad.”

Me: (raising voice) I WAS SAYING THAT MY THROAT IS A LITTLE SORE. IT HURTS TO TALK.

TM: Yeah. Didn’t get that.

Me: (practically screaming) I AM NOT FEELING TOO HOT. IT HURTS TO TALK.

TM: What was that? You’re all crackling and staticy.

Me: (actually screaming) I HATE THIS PHONE. THIS IS THE THIRD CALL TODAY WHERE I’VE HAD TO SCREAM TO BE HEARD. THE PEOPLE IN THE HOTEL KEEP BANGING AGAINST MY WALL. I BET THEY THINK I’M SOME SORT OF PSYCHO LIKE JOHN GOODMAN IN THAT 'BARTON FINK' MOVIE. I JUST GOES INTO AN EMPTY HOTEL ROOM AND SCREAM AND SCREAM FOR HOURS ON END. THE NEXT KNOCK ON MY DOOR WILL NO DOUBT BE THE POLICE.

TM: I’m sorry, honey, but you’re not coming through at all. Do you want me to call back?

Me: WOULDN’T IT BE TRAGIC IF I HAD A HEART CONDITION NO ONE KNEW ABOUT AND ALL THE UNDUE STRESS FROM TALKING ON A CELL PHONE LET TO-

*sharp intake of air*

*silence*

*thudding noise*

TM: Hello? Hello? I think the call dropped.

You know, someone can use this as a basis for a dissertation

Which Science Fiction Writer are You?

Looks like I have a new author to read up on, because I've never heard of the guy.

I am: Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs) A quiet and underrated master of "hard science" fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Racism and Regionalism

Everyone hates each other. And there is no one more hated than the people right next to you. It always fascinates me when people act like the world is divided into homogeneous groups (like Southerners, Conservative Christians, or Mac Users) when, in my experience, all of these “homogeneous groups” bicker and constantly threaten to tear themselves apart.

In college, I went to China, and one of the things that continually shocked me was the fact that everyone was so blatantly racist. The people from the Southern provinces hated the people from the Northern provinces. The people from the Northern Provinces hated the people from the Southern provinces. And EVERYONE hated the Japanese.

One of the Chinese nationals even told us how frustrated he was with our group because, after meeting us, he had no idea what a typical American looked like. In our group we had tall and short people, different facial structures, and at least four different types of hair color. It baffled him, because he prided himself on being able to tell you everything about a person based on how they looked. He would point out people on the street, telling our group what province each passerby was, saying things like “That person is Cantonese – he eats dirt and bugs! HAHAHAHA! Dirty, dirty Cantonese!”

And then he would spit.

I chose to find it a cute, almost endearing, idiosyncrasy instead of giving the guy a lecture about how it is what is on the inside that counts, and how you should judge a person not by the appearance, but by the content of character. I do remember this, though, whenever anyone refers to “Asians” as a homogeneous group.

My wife’s former boss is from Queens, and is very dismissive of everything South of the Mason-Dixon line. He is known to call states by the wrong name and follow it up with a, “Virginia, Georgia – what’s the difference?”

To which my wife usually responds, “Queens, Brooklyn - what’s the difference?”

And then she sits back and listens to a 90 minute rant about the difference between the radiant glory that is Queens compared to the festering hellhole that is Brooklyn. Sheesh, New Yorkers are all the same.

When traveling outside of Dallas, it always fascinates me how people think of Texans. (My favorite came from a 80-year-old grandmother of a friend who said to me, “I’ve never met a Texan before… Is it true you kill all your coloreds?” Old people do not have time to mince words, apparently.) Dallas has a relatively low cost of living, so a lot of people new to the country get their starts here. There is a thriving Romanian population and a Laotian population and strong Ethiopian population. This aspect of the city never seems to make it past the city limits.

Dallas isn’t the only city with this problem. I’ve been working in Detroit and found out that Detroit has the largest population of Middle Eastern people outside of the Middle East. Of course, I have not saddled up next to someone and talked about politics with someone, getting a Saudi perspective and comparing it to a Lebanese perspective, but I have had some truly excellent lamb dishes at some Hallal restaurants. And it is always interesting to see Army recruiting billboards written in Farsi.

I remember talking to someone one time about the strange quirk about racism in Dallas, and talking about how most of the bile I have seen seems to be directed towards the Black community and the Hispanic community. People from any other part of the world, tend to get treated nicer. (That’s the entire premise of Borat – people from Eastern Europe are treated very politely in the South, so people like Borat can take advantage of everyone’s good nature to ridicule them.)

“Why do you think that is?” the person asked me.

“The closest idea I can come up with is that we grew up with a certain ethnicity, so they’re like family. And there is no one we feel we can openly hate more than family. Everyone else, we have to treat like a guest.”

So there you go. Be kind to strangers, but hurt the one you love. Sounds like the moral of a South Park episode.

What is the big deal? They think you're a sucker, that is the big deal.

Parental groups are apparently upset about 13-year old Dakota Fanning getting raped in a new movie premiering at Sundance.

To which I respond, “A film about something sexually explicit and taboo? At Sundance? I am shocked - SHOCKED! – to see a film using an unsettling subject for free publicity.”

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but what parental group knows intimate details about a film before it premieres at Sundance? Do the hip, yet ultra-conservative, indie parents troll the internet for scripts from unsigned films? And how many children are there in the Cult of Dakota Fanning? Charlotte’s Web aside, this actress has not made a name for herself in children’s movies, but instead in movies filled with violent and disturbing imagery.

The real story is that this is a non-story. Everything I have heard from people who have actually seen the film is that it is not very good. So how do you sell a stinker of a movie to the public? Invent a controversy about it – get some vague “parental group” to get upset about it, get every media outlet to talk about it and fret about what new low our society has sunk to (despite the fact that it has been done before, several times in fact), and then get enough people to watch it, not to see a cute little prepubescent blonde girl get raped, but to see what the big deal about this movie.

The big deal is that they think they can trick you out of your money. Do the world a favor and prove them all wrong.

New York Comic Convention Finds a New Way to Advertise

I've shaken hands with at least one of these people. And, yes, if interviewed, I would sound just like this.

Sonic Adventures in a Rental Car

I’ve been traveling for work a lot recently, and one of the perks is that I get to try out a new car every week. And, not just a new car, but a new car stereo.

The car stereo is one of the worst things you can subject yourself to. Acoustics inside cars have never been great, and the hum of road noise just makes listening to musical subtleties even harder. I've seen people spend all sorts of money on a car stereo that still sounds crappier than music heard on a $20 pair of headphones.

I am one of those headphone-hugging iPod users, and, in spite of everyone telling me how dangerous it is, I listen to music on my headphones when I drive and forsake the car stereo all together. Those contraptions drive me nuts.

This week, though, I decided to lose some of the ear snobbery and buy some CDs for the rental car. I picked up Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere and the Flaming Lips’ album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. (Brief aside - if I needed proof of how behind-the-times-and-unhip I am musically, this is it. St. Elsewhere was last year’s album and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was from 2002.)

So the first thing I do is pop in St. Elsewhere into the car stereo, all excited at the prospect of new music with a great and interesting, challenging music.

And what do I get?

DOOOOM! DO-DOOOOOM!
DOOOOM! DO-DOOOOOM!
DOOOOM! DO-DOOOOOM!

Seriously, I could not understand a word or hear any of the instrumentation aside from the bass. Potential wrecks be damned, I started fiddling with the stereo settings on the highway, trying to mix down the bass so I could hear those lyrics about how cool it is to be crazy and sing falsetto.

And I couldn’t find a way to do it. The stereo only had a Volume knob. No treble/bass knob. No balance knob. Just Volume and Tuner. Road Rage usually comes when someone cuts you off, but this bout of Road Rage was directed toward all the market forces that made this crappy audio experience even conceivable.

So...

The first thing I did when I got to the office was use my laptop to rip the album to my iPod. Listening to it through headphones, I was pleased to know that DJ Danger Mouse is still a superb sound editor, and all the promise of The Grey Album is being fulfilled with each new release. What a good album.

And then I listened to Yoshimi through headphones. There are some albums designed to be heard with every other sound blocked out of existence and this is certainly one of those. The music creates its own world filled with sonic textures and fun little asides. (My favorite - the cheerleader-esque “Whooo”s on the title track right after the line, “She’s a black belt in karate.”)

Ok, everyone in the world who told me it was a great album – you were right and I was an idiot for not picking this up earlier. There are so many fun little things when you listen on headphones – noises jump from ear-to-ear, strange bits of dialogue float through the background, and crowds that can apparently scream on pitch.

It is easy to understand why people can get obsessed with music like this (or bands like this, for that matter). There is a solid texture to the music, and a strong narrative subtext throughout the entire album. (One Amazon.com review for the album suggest that the “Pink Robots” in the title track are cancer cells, and the whole album is about finding out you are dying – with the first track being about taking some sort of medical test and then all of the other songs documenting everything that follows from denial to anger to acceptance.) I’ve been listening to the album solid for about three days now, and it just keeps getting better and better.

Today, I thought I would plug it into the car stereo to see how this subtle, quirky, elegant landscape would sound when spilling out into my rented vehicle.

And do you know how it sounded?

DOOOOM! DO-DOOOOOM!
DOOOOM! DO-DOOOOOM!
DOOOOM! DO-DOOOOOM!

Love as a Concept You Can Eat

I was at a Sunday Brunch when, after taking our order, the waitress smiled at us and said, “I’ll be back in a second with some scones and fritters for you.”

Scones.
And.
Fritters.

I can always tell when something is good on a conceptual level because my entire being, my mind, my soul, and my body just lights up in anticipation. Scones and fritters, served in a combination on a Sunday morning spent in a restaurant overlooking the ocean, lend themselves to a certain state of bliss which no doubt would be heavily regulated in certain states.

Fritters in particular have a particular place in my heart, because they have a way to make even the most unappetizing childhood vegetable into something special. My grandmother is more than happy to share with us the time I ate a second helping of squash fritters, and how she got me to eat and enjoy a vegetable I deemed, “Barfaliscious.”

And scones lend the entire package that hint of class. We are not just eating piles of fried dough, here. We are having something vaguely British and hoity toity, yet still tasty. Add raspberry jam to the package and you have yourself a big pile of InstaBilss.

I am someone who works much better on the conceptual level than the real-world level, so it is always a pleasant surprise when something so tangible (edible, even) and so thoughtful combine into a single package.

It made my day.

It made my week.

It even made it into my blog.

You can’t get better than that.

Strange, Strange Educational Podcast

Here is the latest in the educational podcasts I produced for an art class. How many have we done so far? 8? 9? I can’t remember. I do remember that this is my favorite one for a lot.

We were into our second bottle of wine for the night at the point when this was recorded. And our Man of 1,000 Voices just started improvising and riffing at this point. There were some verbal gaffes, but we just plowed through them. In other words, this was recorded in one take.

I was looking for an excuse to experiment with some new Reggaeton loops, and this podcast provided me with a great opportunity. On a sonic level, I like how well the voice and music work together with the voice in the sonic foreground and the music in the sonic background. All the podcasts were edited with me listening to headphones, but I didn’t try them out on car stereos or CD players until after they were already sent along. Some of them aren’t as dynamic once you pump them through a non-headphone environment.

This one, however, still works. I really like it and will use it as a portfolio piece in case anyone wants me to produce more podcasts for them. It makes my wife cringe every time I say this, but I work cheap.

Napoleon Dynamite's Helping Hands Crew Reinacts Star Wars - Their Next Project;: Driving Ms. Daisy

Your Corporate Overlords Have Spoken

I have complained about the wonderful MBNA credit card company being bought out by the evil Bank of America credit card company before. So if that post bored you, this one probably will, too. Except this post is shorter.

I got a letter from Bank of America saying that they’ve suspended the account due to ‘unauthorized access’ – all of our cards won’t work. We’re getting new cards with new account numbers, a new web login and password, and yadda yadda.

So my wife called them and it turns out that my hotel stay on a business trip in Detroit set off some sort of fraud alarm. Because flying to Detriot and staying a hotel for 10 straight days is the first thing credit card theives do, apparently. (Note to all the thieves in the world - if this is your plan, don't do it! That breakfast buffet is totally not worth it.)

The Bank of America folks said they tried to contact us (although both my wife and I do not have any voice mails or emails and certainly don’t remember getting any calls from B of A anytime recently), but, because they didn’t get a response, just went ahead with Plan B – shut down everything and reboot the account.

Here is their kicker – Their advice was from now on to call the Bank of America Fraud Department before we leave town if we want our credit cards to work while we’re on the road!!!

To quote my wife’s email to me on the subject:

>WTF????

Indeed.

Because Imitating Kip from Napoleon Dynamite NEVER GETS OLD!

More from the educational podcast exploits.

The Godfather Reads Poems

That is the theory, at least.

Here is a nice little poem called, "The Master."

And, yes, it is one more in the educational podcast series.

How much education can you fit into a podcast? How about one blog post?

One of the drawbacks about podcasting is that I haven't found a way to put more than one .mp3 file into a single blog entry. I am three entries behind in sharing the World Famous Photography Podcast with you, and instead of putting all three in one entry, I have to split it out into three. Otherwise the people subscribing to the podcast feed associated to this blog will miss out on two of them.

Yeah... I've probably bored you out of your mind. This will excite you, though:

Cubism!