SXSW – Day 1

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.

Ze is someone I learned about in college for his witty, weird, spontaneous humor through videos and design concepts. Probably most well known for his “How to Dance Properly” videos. Due to the nature of his off-the-wall ideas, he says he’s always had anxiety over whether or not they’re going to be successful, but that he’d make them regardless of whether or not anyone ever watched them. This only fuels his desire to want to push the envelope, and get his concepts out in public rapidly and faithfully to his viewers. Not only that but he says he strives to do things that have not been done before. He’ll do massive amounts of research and data collecting before starting a project to see if he can be the first one to do it. He deems it a success if you can google an idea and it doesn’t exist yet.

I realize from his talk that I need to pick up my game & brainstorm more.  His ideas are so zany, and so unexpected, that it is a breath of fresh air to hear about, and it leaves me curious to see what else he’ll come up with next. It also reminds me how I can harness that kind of energy to put my own ideas into action, despite any anxiety I might have towards them potentially being too weird, or not good enough. It takes you out of your routine ways of thinking and allow you to start opening up to the unexpected.  For example, when someone asked a boring question about jumping into the freelance world, Ze’s answer was, “I’m a Unicorn!” There is so much to be said for just putting out your craziness into an audience and see what happens.

Later that evening I headed over, DVD in hand, to the Final Cut meet up over at Maggie Mae’s on 6th Street. I immediately met up with one of organizers who was able to show my work on the projection screen and TVs filtered throughout the venue. While it was fun to show work at SXSW to a room full of editors and videographers, it would have been more exciting for me, if it was more of a forum and less of a party. The work on the screens became background videos and we didn’t get enough interaction following up with each artist who showed. For example – there was a guy who showed work before me that almost entirely resembled a brazilian collage animation that I love, yet when I went to ask who’s work it was, the guy presenting the work had no idea. So that was kind of a bust. What made up for it was the $10 raffle ticket I bought, that won me a copy of Adobe’s CS4 Creative Production Premium Suite, worth $1700. I couldn’t have asked for a better first night!

Tags: supermeetup, sxsw, ze frank