Happy New Year all! I apologize to any of you who landed on my page recently only to find an outdated SXSW post from March as my most recent update. The dates seemed to have gone haywire on my posts and I’ve just fixed the issue. Dates & posts should be in order now.
Two days ago I just returned from an adventure I will never forget. My brother, his girlfriend and my boyfriend trekked out to Ecuador for the turning of 2011 into 2012. It was an adventure of a lifetime.
I’ve barely been home long enough to unpack my suitcase let alone absorb what I have experienced in an articulate story to share, but as I sort through the 3000 photos that we captured and 70 video clips we took, I’ll be stiching together and mapping out our adventures and post them here for you.
I just wanted to say a very quick happy new year to those of you who swing by regularly. I’m very excited to start this year with fresh eyes and optimistic outlook. Feeling full of creativity & love and excited to start 2012 off with some sparks….
In two weeks I am heading off to do something I have never done before – I’m hopping a plane to San Francisco to participate in the city’s annual foot race, Bay to Breakers for their 100th year!
The race starts at the north east end of the downtown area adjacent to San Francisco Bay, and runs west through the city to finish at the breakers of the Pacific coast on Ocean Beach. The complete course is 7.46 miles (12 kilometers long) and is not a traditional race by any means.
Participants are known to dress up in all sorts of crazy costumes and some have even run it naked! This year for their hundredth they are enforcing some rules that they haven’t in the past. No alcohol, no floats and no nudity. We’ll see just how much the public abides. There will be 50,000 runners this year!
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Mar 25, 2011 |
Inspiration,
travel,
vj
While Day 5 was technically my last full day in Austin, and the interactive conference was over, it was also the very first day of the music festivities! I know – I timed this terribly! I could have easily stayed for the rest of the weekend, seen a ton of music and continued to party happily in the sunshine. However, 3 months prior to my Austin excursion, I bought tickets to see one of my favorite musicians, AIR, at Terminal 5 back in NYC. I’ve wanted to see them play for years, so when it came time to leave Austin, I had to go. Although I weighed the pros/cons pretty heavily right up until the last minute! Ultimately it would have been too expensive to stay, plus all the hotels in Austin were entirely booked, or over $300/night.
Regardless, Day 5 was epic!! I woke up bright, early and stoked to finally see my first round of films! Spent so much time in the interactive sessions that I hadn’t seen any despite having a 5 day film badge! Plus it’s hard for me to sit in a dark theater when it’s 75 and sunny outside. Today I made the effort. I drove over to the Alamo Drafthouse theater and took my seat at the narrative shorts showing. I forgot how much I love that theater! The seats are cushy, and they will deliver beer & food to you while you sit back and watch. The narrative shorts ended up being hit & miss. I liked 3 out of 8 films.
OK, so the one’s I enjoyed were:
Equestrian Sexual Response (TERRIBLE NAME!! – but well made film)
Pancake Breakfast (ANOTHER BAD NAME and I’ll tell you why – Due to misreading the guidebook, I thought this was announcing that there WAS a pancake breakfast at the theater!! Ha! I was actually disappointed to learn that it was the name of the film! Regardless, this one was funny, I wish there was more to the story.)
Lastly, Girls Named Pinky (Good simple story, shot & acted well, with a twist!)
The last film dragged on for so long. The audio wasn’t mixed and my ears were bleeding, I nearly left.
I was also late to approach my next item for the day – seeing Broken Bells downtown! Former frontman for the Shins in collaboration with Danger Mouse! However… due to Austin SXSW traffic mania, I got to 6th Street pretty late and had to make a choice. It was 12:40PM – Do I race to find a spot, find the venue and wait in line to see Broken Bells who were going on in 20 minutes, or do I take my time and head over to see Tobacco play at Emo’s at 1:30? After seeing all of crazy long lines at each of these venues, I nixed my plan of racing to catch Broken Bells. Oh well. Next time! Tobacco gave me all the excitement that I needed. There were THREE Emo’s venues to scavenger through to find the right one, but I made it just in time. He played a pretty cool set, although he had no stage presence whatsoever. I snagged some video & some photos and happily strolled up the sunny street in search of lunch.
Tough day!
This year in Black Rock City, my partner in crime, Jeff Schram, decided to document our adventure with his flipcam. The resulting video is very low-fi, spontaneous and fun, just as you’d expect from a drive to Burning Man. I started working on editing part two but it hasn’t made it out of my studio yet. It seems that we spent more time filming the trip on the way in than getting footage while we were out there enjoying it all. Nevertheless I still plan on exporting Part two sometime in the coming months. I swear!
Hi guys!
I am gearing up for my annual romp in the dust. That’s right, it’s my yearly visit to the Black Rock desert. Â By all means if you are attending, please let me know so there is a chance of meeting up outside of the digital realms. I’ll be staying with my friends, Camp Monkey Business at 4:30 & G this year – and once again I’m bringing my VJ gear and would love to meet up with other VJs out there. Right now I’m deciding which equipment can stand to be in those desert conditions. Â I’m also lining up my VJ performance schedule right now and hope to nail it all down before arriving. Once I arrive, anything goes!
So here is my current schedule & VJ lineup for the upcoming week:
Saturday – (Aug 28) I arrive in Reno to collect my supplies/bike/tent etc. out of storage & take care of biz..
Sunday – Buy whatever supplies I need, food, water, etc.
Monday – I arrive on the playa – early morning! Â Set up -Â Possibly VJing at Nexus in the evening hours.
Tuesday – Â VJing the False Profit party (4:30 & Esplanade) – Timing TBD
Wednesday – VJing the Apres Ski Party – (3:30 & B) – Sundown til late night.
Thursday – Â VJing at Nexus (10 & Esplanade) – Sundown til 11pm
Thursday Late - Possibly VJing at the Phage party after Nexus party (4:30 & Esplanade)
Friday/Sat/Sun/Mon – Â Anything goes ~ Possibly VJing on the Robot Heart Bus on those nights.
Tues/Wed – (Sept 7/8) Wash off the dust & travel home
That is the good word on all my latest news. This week is for collecting gear & packing..
See you the other side my friends!…..
I just got back from the onedotzero motion fest up in Albany, NY in the beautiful experimental media & performing arts center (EMPAC) Â last weekend.
Pix & Reviews to come!
After every trip, I am immediately fueled into an active wanderlust, longing to go somewhere else…
I always come up with the most visual ideas when I’m outside my routines and experiencing different cultures, conversations and vibrations of people in other places. Traveling is something I became obsessed with years ago when I first started designing. Having only been back in town for a week, I can happily say that Austin sparked a new light for me. It’s the beginning of spring and the beginning months of my studio. There are good energies all around, exciting shows on the way and hopefully more travel in the near future. New visuals on the way!
By Day 3 I was hitting my stride and in full information-absorption-networking-documenting mode! I trekked to the convention center with my laptop & I began my day with a panel called Real Time Video Blogging led by the makers of Rocketboom, a witty, successful NYC-based daily video news blog, and Amanda Congdon of Sometimesdaily.
A lot of the session seemed pretty common sense to me, but there were good tips to remember. They suggested that if you are interested in starting your own documentary style blog series, to first and foremost, always get a lawyer involved and make sure you are legally contracted, no matter what the project big or small. Find your personal niche to write about, create a mission statement and figure out who your audience is. Then get involved with larger projects that attract a similar audience so that you can attach your name to them and generate threads of new contacts back to your site.
A great site for copyright free stock video material to use in your blog if needed: archive.org. I’ve known about them for years, but haven’t yet put any of it to use in my own work. Personally I think they need a more organized website to be useful for my needs, but there is a tremendous amount of free material on there.
Video blogging in itself is something I’d like to try my hand at, but have never been good at turning the camera on myself or interviewing people at random. Those are two things I’d like to work on for future documenting practice. After this experience at Burning Man, I promised myself I would learn how to speak in front of the camera properly!
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On Day 2 my number 1 priority was seeing Michel Gondry in person. He is one of my all time favorite visionary heros, who has inspired me endlessly in creative projects. I waited an hour to see the man and get 4th row at his seminar. Gondry echoed a similar practice to something Ze Frank had mentioned in Day 1′s panel. The emphasis to pay attention to every single off-the-wall idea that you have. Don’t dismiss it out of fear or logic. Pay attention and put energy into them. Give them breath before you kill the idea. Test it out and reinvent each step of the way to be as open as possible to all concepts.
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I finally have a quiet moment to myself to digest, decompress and formulate information. I have an overwhelming amount of data swarming through my head and need to transcribe it all along with the words scribbled throughout my trusty notebook.
Day 1 began when I left the windy rainstorm that took over NY, as I departed Laguardia at 6AM. I was on 2 hours of sleep and on the cusp of delirium. Somehow in that state of mind I thought it’d be a good idea to upgrade my flight to first class since the self-check in machine asked me if I wanted to. The big shiny button was too enticing not to push. Plus it was 5AM and I was feeling claustrophobic and sleep deprived. Though for the most part I just really wanted some decent space to set up my laptop and do some editing. Yes – Editing at 6AM! I was in the mood for some god awful reason. Most likely motivated by the fact that later that day I was aiming to hit a Final Cut “Supermeetup” that would allow me to share my work with a group of editors. I had to cut down a reel into 10 minutes, so I spent that morning cutting deliriously before the sun rose.
This is my 4th trip to Austin, and yet only my first experience at SXSW. I organized my schedule to reflect over 95 panels during the course of my 5 day stay. Saturday I arrived, just narrowly escaping the hurricane behind me, and got in just in time to catch a conversation late in the day with Ze Frank.
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