If I still lived in Virginia, I would so vote for this guy, Brad Blanton. He wrote a book called Radical Honesty that a lot of people say good things about. I am really suprised to see someone from my old home state that isn’t a tobacco farmer, lobbyist, corporate whore, televangelist or some other occuptation that puts them far right of reality. There is hope for Virgina yet. Check out Blanton’s ‘uncampaign’ video.
Pure. Fucking. Brilliance. Ernesto owns you.
The past couple of weeks has been quite the blast. After returning from Burning Man, my new videographer friend from Seattle, Ali and I schemed on some video together. The Fighting Kite GETV episode is the result of such schemeing. Ali taught me plenty of new Final Cut power moves for my arsenal. The pen tool! Who knew? You probably did.
This past week I was down in LA with Irina to capture a bunch of interview material for a bunch of upcoming episodes. Thanks to Micki who got us access to the Revver Hollywood style launch party for the new 1.0 version of their service. Revver is a video hosting site much like blip, veoh or ourmedia with the added benefit of revenue sharing for content creators. They tag on a single still frame ad to the end of your video and split revenues with you 50/50 for all clicks. Popular vlogs like Ze Frank and Ask a Ninja use Revver and do pretty well for themselves from what I hear. Blip.tv is planning on offering something very similar soon, though they’re not quite there yet. The idea of giving video content producers a way to make money, even small amounts of money, is a huge incentive for lots of independent creative types.
Read More “Building Bridges”
On Saturday, cute, bloody and scary zombies were all over downtown San Francisco. I got some video. Scott got some pix.
Last night was one of the best SRL shows ever! Tons of machines, copious amounts of fire, big range, brilliant lighting and weeks of hard work by the crew to produce this 40 minute spectacle. As always, Scott is the go-to man for the best pix.
Yes he is and I got to witness it live tonight and then meet him. I’ve been a fan since first discovering Ren & Stimpy however many years ago. Tonight John K came to the Castro Theater in SF to present a bunch of rarely seen and some banned cartoons that the networks never let him air. The Adult Party episode of Ren & Stimpy was pure brain breaking genius from start to finish. It’s also on the recently released Lost Episodes DVD
3 more shows tomorrow/Saturday. An afternoon kid-friendly show at the Castro, an adult one in the evening and a gig at the Cartoon Art Museum where John might draw you some twisted knowledge. Stay up to date with Kricfalusi’s world on abundantly updated blog.
Yes, today’s the 4th of July and it has some special significance for me. It’s not just because I’m an American citizen that still believes in liberty or that I found a horse on Flickr painted all wrong. My grandfather, who passed away several years ago, and I share the same name and we share today as our birthday. Also, I *heart* my Internet friends who made this. Thanks Susan!
This Memorial day weekend I escaped to the foothills of the Sierras for WineCamp, the latest iteration of BarCamp. These events normally involve lots of wifi and laptops with a minimal of “camping” in the tent & woods sense of the word. This was different. Friday and Saturday were spent 2000 feet up on a pimp ridgeline overlooking vineyards and a sprawling resevoir on the property of winemaker Andrew Ferriere.
Several adhoc self organizing sessions came together to warm brains and foster project collaboration on Saturday. I decided to sit in on one focused on storytelling and the use of video. I learn PixelCorps might be a good resource for video projects and people with skills for projects. I learn of StoryCorps, an interesting project where people are given audio gear and encouraged to document their lives. NPR has aired some of the more compelling pieces.
After the brain warming ended on Saturday, it was time for yummy eats and band provided beats. And wine. Much, much wine. When darkness arrived, chill came too and the firepits were the place to be. Sticks were whittled and smores were made.
Sunday morning, the consumate Sarah Pullman from Vancouver grounded 20+ geeks with a Yoga for Geeks session. Soon after it was time to pack up and take it down the hill to the Stevenot Winery which had brunch and wifi waiting for us, thanks to the lovelies at France Telecom. It was really hard to stay inside the dark cool wine cellar working the wifi when the surrounding green vineyard was photosynthesizing up a storm.
Lunch came and went, projects were wrapped up and the final hour was filled with report backs of lessons learned, things liked and things that could change. Thanks to Tara, Chris and the other organizers who put on this magical weekend getaway. It’s times like this that make it great to be a human.
A few weeks ago, local boggerati master Kevin Smokler invited 20 of his closest blogger friends to cover the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival which is happening right now. I count myself as one of the lucky 20 who were gifted a press pass getting me into any screening, yet I’ve been slacking in my duty to spread to good and bad words of what I’ve seen so far. Putting slack aside, here’s the first update on what I’ve taken in.
The first screening I saw was one I had really been looking forward to, Cock Byte: Masters of Machinima, a showing of the best of Rooster Teeth Productions. If you’ve ever seen the brilliant Red vs. Blue series, you’ll know exactly what this is about. Even though my press pass would have gotten me in free, I was too late to get the coveted freebee press ticket for this one. No worries, this was at the top of my list so I popped for the ticket and slid on in.
My expectations were set by the SFiFF program guide which stated, “This Festival program, a sort of Rooster Teeth greatest hits, will feature the finest moments from Blood Gulch Chronicles and The Strangerhood, rarely seen one-offs, outtakes and new work”. I was quickly disappointed when I realized they were only showing a chunk of the first season of Red vs. Blue. Nothing from Strangerhood. No rarely seen one-offs or outtakes. Nothing new. Don’t get me wrong, RvB is good shit, it’s just not something I hadn’t seen before and what they showed was like 4 years old. For the uninitiated, RvB takes place in the game Halo. The actors are all characters within the game environment where scripts and dialogue are made ‘real’. What you get is mostly comedic & introspective dialogue by soldiers who are too stupid to know what’s going on around them. It’s a brilliant juxtaposition of a shoot-em-up environment used as a setting for human introspection and philosophical exploration. Definitely worth checking out a few episodes if you’ve never seen them before.
The Q&A with a couple of the creators afterward was a comedy of non-information. They wouldn’t answer any of the interesting questions (What techniques do you use? What is your relationship with Microsoft? What about copyright issues? How are you making enough money to live on with this?). They came off like they didn’t give a shit and really didn’t want to be there. Whatever, that’s fine. It’s their work, they can answer or not answer whatever questions they want. We don’t need to like them for their personalities if their work rules. RvB is brilliant shit, but why are we seeing 4 year old work in a 2006 film festival when there is plenty of other stuff they should have shown?
