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Meet Robohamster

I got this robotic hamster for Christmas. I had a real hamster when I was a kid, but now I prefer simulated pets. No cages to clean, less poop and only needs 1 AAA battery!

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Me and Christopher Coppola, sitting on a panel, M-O-N-D-A-Y

I was invited by the fine folks over at Social Media Club to participate on a panel about mobile video creation this Monday night in San Francisco. I guess my experience as an “assistant director” on the collaborative Spike Lee movie that Nokia Productions organized is what peeps want to hear about. Also on that panel will be Christopher Coppola, nephew to Francis, brother to Nicolas Cage, and also a director in his own right. He’s got a pretty cool thing called Project Accessible Hollywood that he’ll be talking about. Should be a fun night. If you’re in SF, stop by. Tickets are still available.

Here’s the official blurbage:

This month Social Media Club San Francisco / Silicon Valley chapter digs deep on the subject of mobile video. How it’s created, strategically deployed and consumed. The program will be divided into two separate, but related discussions:

Part one, moderated by Chris Heuer, will feature representatives from Qik, Justin.tv and our sponsor Real Player SP leading a discussion on how mobile video is really being used. Working to go beyond the hype, the panel will be turned, with the panelists asking questions of the audience and of each other. Getting beyond the hype to what’s really happening and what we really wish was happening. Together we could help shape our own future, collectively discovering new possibilities and exchanging stories of how people are really using mobile video.

After a 15 minute break, Jennifer Lindsay will facilitate a panel of creative video all-stars discussing how they are approaching the changing digital video landscape in an always on, always connected world.

During the second half, our discussion will focus on hearing some stories from the front lines of digital video. Eddie Codel is a pioneering vlogger and producer for Geek Entertainment TV. Eddie was one of five (5) people chosen from around the world to work on an innovative film project with Spike Lee entirely shot on mobile phone video cameras. We will hear what it was like to be a part of such a ground breaking project and what lessons he learned that we can all apply when thinking about our next mobile video shoot. We will also be joined by Christopher Coppola, a seasoned film and television director who is also founder and chairman of Project Accessible Hollywood (PAH), a non-profit organization that brings digital empowerment to underserved communities and individuals worldwide. Christopher will discuss PAH Fest, mobile phone films and Cellunovellas and the Latin American market.

Audience members will also be encouraged to share experiences and use cases.

Please note tickets are $10 in advance, or $20 at the door. Tickets are non-refundable, but may be transferred to another guest to attend this event.

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The Atomic Level of Porn

At monochrom‘s Arse Elektronika conference last week in San Francisco, computer historian and agitator of Internet trolls everywhere, Jason Scott gave a brilliant in-depth look back on the early days of computer rendered pornography. From early line printers generating monochromatic pinups with X’s to blocky pixelated 80’s video games with box covers much more alluring than the game play, Jason runs the gamut. Here’s the video I shot of it with Jason’s slides inserted.

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Littlefield Tank Tour + Oilpunk Boiler Bar on BBV

Two more fun videos I had the pleasure of shooting for Boing Boing Video went up recently. First is a tour of the amazing Littlefield tank museum. From BB:

In today’s edition of Boing Boing Video, guest-host Todd Lappin explores a massive collection of historical military vehicles tanks collected by an eccentric Silicon Valley multimillionaire. The recently-departed Jacques Littlefield amassed one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of this type, and his collection is now overseen by the nonprofit Military Vehicle Technology Foundation.

The second video is of Jon Sarriugarte’s sexy burlesque and oil and fire fueled Boiler Bar event. Includes a great interview and demonstration from old school blacksmith Shawn Lovell. The video really has it all: sexy burlesque dancers, fire, steam powered car, blacksmithing w/lots of fire, snail car w/fire and fireworks w/more fire.

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Elektrischer Reporter

I’ve had a bunch of fun watching what the producers of German hyper new media & TV show Elektrischer Reporter have done with the footage I’ve shot for them. It’s all in German so I can only guess as to commentary with their copious English references to Twitter, Creative Commons and backgrounds of retro animated mainframes w/reel-to-reels. Lots of fun clips sourced from the Internet Archive help visually create a nice retro future tech mood. My german speaking friends say it’s really well put together and informative in kind of a hip NPR kind of way.

In this segment on nerd culture, you can see Doctor Popular laying on the nerd thickly with his classic yo-yo moves and some speak-n-spell jamming, all while dubbed in German. Yes, that is the Hat Factory where I shot these frames of Doc.

Elektrischer Reporter – Nerds: Weltretter mit Hornbrillen?

I shot an interview with Pandora founder Tim Westergren for this segment:

Elektrischer Reporter – Vorschlagsysteme: Mit den besten Empfehlungen

For this one, I was hired to shoot an interview with EFF‘s Danny O’Brien at their San Francisco offices:

Elektrischer Reporter – Urheber 2.0: Jeder Nutzer ein Pirat?

I’m guessing this segment is about mobile communities, since those words are in English and there’s plenty of shots of mobile devices, location based services and maps. I shot the interview with Tony Jebara of Citysense at Etech in San Jose.

Elektrischer Reporter – Mobile Communities: Unterwegs und unter Freunden

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Ze Frank debates value of Creative Commons

The Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto based nonprofit research group, held a day long research exchange yesterday titled “The Future of Video.” During the Q&A of the “Authorship, Appropriation, and Control” panel, creative genius Ze Frank responds critically to the utility of Creative Commons for guys like him. Ze feels that others rip off his work, make lesser quality derivative works and profit from them at his expense. Panelist David Pescovitz of BoingBoing and IFTF, argues for CC with counter examples and panelist Alexander Cohen, Professor of Film Studies at UC Berkeley, also argues for the utility of CC for remixing & critiquing society. Leprechauns enter the story as well.

Here’s Ze earlier in the day laying the groundwork responding to Mimi Ito at an earlier panel, on the “fundamental split” he sees between how amateur and professional content creators contextualize their work.