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Commercial Success

Speaking of video, my animator/filmmaker friend Jonah Tobias is currently moving steadily up the ranks of a video-mercial contest. He and a handful of local photographer, under-employed actor, and writer friends threw this together in a mad caffeinated marathon of movie-making over a few days. He wanted Terri to be an extra in it, but she couldn’t take time away from a mad dash to a deadline of her own. (More of which, later.)

Jonah’s first break into the almost-big-time was doing all the animation for the independent documentary Supersize Me (link to trailer). The film won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance, and was nominated for an Academy Award.

He does the stage and A/V graphics for many of the TED events, and for several years has done all the concert animation graphics for Tim McGraw’s live shows.

These projects are the tropical islands between which he must swim, like all freelancers, through a barren ocean of no-work. Life jackets and bits of flotsam that keep you afloat take the form of commercial work, things you hang onto just to keep from going under. He has an impressive list of clients for everything from pharmaceutical info-graphics to environmental advocacy.

Anyway, this new adrenaline project is a crowd-sourced commercial contest for Doritos (interesting junk-food connection we’ll let slide). The top couple of winners get their commercial aired during the upcoming Super Bowl. Oh, and that’s Jonah in the commercial as the mad scientist:

 

 

If you are so inclined, give it a view and a rating. Send the link to friends. If he wins, he gets to go the big game. I don’t think he cares for football, so that will be an entertaining twist. Almost torture for him, entertaining for me.

 

 

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Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

As someone inured and enamored with words, I have followed John Koenig’s blog Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows since it’s early days.

He just posted his first video “definition” and it’s really, really well done.

If you’re a word person, enjoy:

 

Sonder | The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows from John Koenig on Vimeo.

 

 

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Sound is Time Tangible

Justin Boyd: Sound and Time from Walley Films on Vimeo.

Justin Boyd, Department Chair of Sculpture and Integrated Media at Southwest School of Art, shares his connection with sound and how he uses it to create original works of art. Inspired by his sensitivity to sound at a very young age, Boyd has been recording and working with sound and music since the mid 90s. Boyd actively captures field recordings for integration of sound with found objects. This documentary was produced in association with Southwest School of Art. Learn more about their BFA program at http://www.swschool.org.

 

Sound seems one of the few ways to experience time. A semi-conscious, second tier sense, drifting along the margins – shadow, not light. The soundtrack to our film, as it were.

Like most semi-conscious senses, it’s tapped directly into memory. I remember the squeak and bang of the screen door of my grandmother’s house, always the same one-two rhythm.

I remember the sound of our mothers calling us home for dinner in the evenings, when I and my buddies were out fooling around in the twilight up in the mountains of the Carolinas. It was like a call to prayer at dusk. Each of us was tuned to a different call, but we knew them all.

I remember the metallic chimes of the ice cream truck, three blocks away.

Crows.

Whippoorwills. And Quail.

Fiddle music, long after dark.

 

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Cat’s Paws

Steve Earley in Spartina 

 

A long time ago, when I asked why puffs of wind coursing across the water were called “cat’s paws,” I was told it’s because the wind makes patterns on the surface shaped like a cat’s paw. Sounded reasonable.

Well, obviously, this is wrong. And clearly an explanation made up by someone who never set foot on a sailboat once their whole life.

Continue reading “Cat’s Paws”

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MASCF 2013 ~ Race Day and Sunday Sailing

 

Video from the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival
clips from the race and sailing with the girls on Sunday

Wrapping up posts from the festival with clips shot during the race on Saturday. We were late leaving the dock, and wind was very light, so we were about 100 yards back when the starting gun went off. No worries, had no intension of competing; just wanted to be in position to take good pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a little more wind on Sunday, though most folks cleared out early. Too bad, as it was a fine day to be on the water. Emily took the tiller again, and got her first taste of what it feels like when a puff comes along and makes things more exciting. I think she was hooked.

When we got back to the dock, which was all but cleared out, there was a smartly dressed couple waiting for us. Robert Benic and his girlfriend Tania had driven out from DC hoping to see some Melonseeds. Robert began building one back in Spring of 2012, and is now working on framing and interior, and doing a great job. It’s his first boat build, ever. We really enjoyed talking with them, and they got to see the boats in person they had come to know on the web.

On Saturday, we met a father and son who had been building a Melonseed together, and are on the downhill side of the project, and very excited to finish. They, too, had come out to see some in person. They had come to know all the other builder resources on the web, just as I did, and knew Aeon and Caesura now, too. It was fun for them to see the boats in real life. You could see that seeing the boats in the water, in use, was recharging their desire to finish, already imagining themselves in the boat sailing. It’s what keeps you going.

One of the really nice things about sharing is you get so much back. All the builders who helped me through my project are still well-known to me, and some are now good friends. It’s a very supportive group, and it’s nice to be able to pass that same spirit along to others, and share in their challenges and enthusiasm again. That sense of accomplishment when you finally work through a problem is really rewarding. No doubt they’ll do the same for others that come behind.

Great seeing everyone. Next year.

 

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MASCF 2013 ~ How to Shuck an Oyster

 

Video from the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival
Clips from Friday and Saturday.

Back when the Depression hit (the one in the ’30s) my grandfather, my dad’s dad, hitched a mule and plow to a fence post in a field in Arkansas. He walked into the road, thumbed a ride with a trucker, and left home and never went back. According to his brothers, this made his father – who was known across three counties for epic rages – mad as hell.

Besides lying about his age to get into the army, among other things, he believed he could scrape together a living if he could play music. He taught himself to play fiddle and started a band. They travelled all over the country playing dance halls and pasture parties full of Oakies and other desperate displaced persons. When he noticed saxophone players were getting better-paying gigs, he taught himself sax and learned to swing. There was a faded black and white photo of him on the wall in the house, wearing a suit and a skinny tie on some stage in a barn in the mid-west, a framed playbill next to it.

By the time I was 12, he’d forgotten how to play most of the songs from those years, and most of the guys who knew them had died.That didn’t stop him and some local buddies from trying, though, after a they’d had a few beers. Eventually, there were only about four songs they could play drunk with a fiddle, a guitar, and a gut bucket. Sitting up with them late at night I learned them all.

“Goodnight Irene” was one of them.

 

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Boats and Bikes ~ Canoeing Lake to Lake

 Paddling to Lake Oseeta 

 

A narrow channel connects Kiwassa Lake with Oseeta Lake. The entrance on Kiwassa was not far from the lodge. One evening we borrowed a canoe and paddled down it from one lake to the next. A beautiful, easy passage, like gliding through a water garden.

 

 

Some cabins tucked into the woods, a few well-kept boats docked along the shore, a few passing through on the way somewhere. Wildlife.

Hard to beat it.

 

Continue reading “Boats and Bikes ~ Canoeing Lake to Lake”