Penland School of Crafts, Hoss Haley, Auctions and Sculptures

October 21, 2010 / / No Comments

First the video, then the story:

This was an absolute blast to produce and edit, for several reasons.

I’m an Asheville, NC native, so to (finally) be part of the historic Penland School of Crafts family has a lot of personal meaning. Penland dates back to the 1920s and Lucy Morgan’s efforts to both learn native Southern Appalachian crafts and help residents market their wares. It has since evolved into an internationally-recognized center for craft education, history, innnovation and experimentation across a wide range of styles and media. Plus, its location and campus are simply breathtaking.

Penland has a benefit auction every year, with (mostly alum and faculty) artists donating pieces, and the proceeds going to help sustain the school’s mission. I basically showed up to this year’s auction (Penland’s 25th) with gear and recorded nearly everything and everyone I could. Okay, they knew I was coming, but this was a first-time experience for both of us.

The signature work — the art piece that was highlighted on all the promotional and marketing material, and the cover item for the auction book — was “Toric Knot”, a one-ton Cor-Ten  steel sculpture by alumnus Hoss Haley.  Early word was that Penland organizers and Haley himself would be delighted if the piece sold for its retail listing of $20,000.00.

You’ll have to watch (and listen) to the clip to find out what happens, but I believe the video captures a career-changing event in progress.

Haley sat down for an interview the day before the live auction, albeit somewhat reluctantly. He is a self-described taciturn Midwesterner, after all, and talking about himself isn’t on his Top 10 favorite things.

Still, he was a great interview subject — focused, insightful, honest and intelligent. The hardest part in editing his interview was simply cutting down and cutting out a lot of really good material — to let the truly great parts surface.

In terms of style, I also made a choice to reduce the level of polish. Most all of the transitions are simply cuts: direct and straightforward, just like Haley himself. There’s at least one dissolve, but it’s because the transition looked like a jump-cut on its own.

I also played with sweetening his audio, but the result was sterile. The interview itself took place next to a center of activity for the event, and I wanted to keep that energy and enthusiasm as a part of his discussion, even if it’s in the background.

As for the auction itself, it felt creatively “right” to stick to the opening, establishing scene and the closing/conclusion. The audio underneath the quotation cards also let viewers keep up with the progress, and build towards the final strike of the auctioneer’s gavel.

Ultimately, though, the piece is less about things — the sculpture, the selling price, the auction as event; and more about people — Haley, his wife, his real family and his Penland family.

And how on a magical weekend in August 2o1o in the mountains outside Asheville, NC, craft became art, and work became career.

That’s at least my opinion. What’s yours?

Video: Your Online Image Versus Your Resources

September 20, 2010 / / No Comments

First, the video:

Background, thoughts and observations:

I’m biased. I love “Garden & Gun” magazine, and have been a subscriber since their second issue. (And then, only because the first issue snuck past me and managed to sell out on newsstands). As a Southerner by birth and now by choice, I love how they blend a lot of different elements of Southern culture (high, low and all around) into an interesting mix, issue to issue.

The name’s also deceptive, since there’s usually incredibly little about gardening (breathes sign of relief), not so much about guns (awww…), but a lot about lifestyle — music, history, travel, food, drinking, etc. etc. etc.

The magazine also has a decent online presence, and the roots to really flourish from here.

This video is one example:  Justin Townes Earle is Steve Earle’s son, and he now lives in Brooklyn, NY. He hasn’t yet been profiled in G&G’s print version  (it’ll be the Dec/Jan issue), but this type of video profile is incredibly savvy for several reasons:

1. You can push content out far ahead of traditional print schedules. (Now, versus Dec/Jan issue delivery).

2. You can benefit from the work of other people (not just yourself or your staff). Earles obviously isn’t G&G’s in-house musician. And this piece was directed by Tim Sutton, who’s an art director in NYC — although he’s worked on a handful of G&G videos.

3. This external/different work (different aesthetics, different subjects and themes, etc) can bring in different, new, fresh audiences. You never want to be stagnant in terms of outreach, so a foray into music video can make great intuitive sense for a print publication — even though it may not make a great deal of short-term, direct-path business sense.

4. Your site needs a wide variety of content, period. Remember, your website is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It’s like 7/11, always open. And that being the case, you want to offer a variety of content for a variety of content consumers, in a range of media types.

5. Sometimes, you just need to connect with bourbon-drinkin’, chain-smokin’, tattooed Southern musicians. Trust me. (Although you should red-flag any thoughts about a Ryan Adams profile. Again, trust me on this.)

All this said, you should now be thinking about what kind of video profiles might liven up your website.

— If you’re a college or university MarComm rep, you’ve got a wealth of alumni,  donors, faculty, staff, students and community supporters out there. Why not go for some color?

— If you’re in the pop-culture/entertainment-media industry, you should be way ahead of this. If not, call me.

— Even for more traditional industries, there are a lot of great ideas that would be completely fun and help burnish your image while reaching into new demographics.

I’m also willing to hear the counter-argument, from those who might want to play it safer or more traditionally. So let’s hear what you have to say…

Past Video Blasts: “Teardrop”, Massive Attack

August 27, 2010 / / 1 Comment

As always, first the video, then the story:

It took my good friend (and fellow bandmate & awesome drummer) Jeff Arthur years to get me into Massive Attack. I don’t know why I resisted for so long, but the album that did it for me was “Mezzanine” (1998). Probably because it featured more guitar; but damn, that album has some great songs on it. I know there may be purists that scream “Blue Lines!”, but it didn’t take with me back then. (And if “Blue Lines” didn’t cut it for me, “Any Love” and “Protection” had no chance.)

But “Mezzanine”. Damn. I’d basically forgotten how great this is until someone reminded me that “Teardrop” is the House television show’s theme song (basically, kinda, mostly). Which got me to go play “Teardop” again.

The song features lyrics and vocals by Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. And the story has long been she wrote it in memory of her incredibly close friend and fellow musician, Jeff Buckley, who died a year before the album’s release. (So, probably, about the time the album was being created).The two had even recorded a song, “All Flowers In Time Bend Towards The Sun”, but it’s not commercially available…

Even without that backstory, the song is great, truly touching. The video carries the mood, and is equally enigmatic, and was directed by Walter Stern.

Fraser’s no longer participating in Cocteau Twins. She’s been doing a lot of other musical collaborations, and released a solo single in 2009. Word is she and husband Damon Reese may be working on an album.

Director Stern continues to make music videos as well as TV commercials.

And Massive Attack? They released the “Heligoland” album this year, and there’s talk of another studio album next year.

People Kissing To “An Apology”, Future Islands

August 25, 2010 / / No Comments

Another week, another new music video. This one is definitely a labor of love on many fronts, but first:


As you can see, this combines a lot of different visual and video styles (from regular taping to stills, to animation, stock footage, and other variations). But that variety serves to push forward a specific vision, based on a specific (and haunting) song by Future Islands, masterfully voiced by Samuel Herring.

Here’s what director Jerry Stifelman has to say:

“I’d been thinking about how all relationships in life — from human lovers to the way gravity holds us to the planet — are all about push and pull. I think this push and pull is at the root of all ecstasy and misery. And the sweet spot between this, is intimacy. This is what I feel when I hear Samuel Herring of Future Islands sing ‘so far away’ in the song, An Apology. It’s what I feel when I hear him sing ‘Here, in my chest where you burst, I keep the crush and the weight of the world.'”

“The moment where we connect with each other against ‘the weight of the world’ is the essence of this video. To get at this, we focused on people being, uh, facially intimate. Most of our subjects were real couples we found. In one case, we used an actor. And in three cases, we paired people together who had not kissed before. A big part of the video wasn’t just this interpretation of the meaning of the song, but its sound, which feels less like the conscious creation of a group of musicians than something they teased out of the world. It’s like a song found in the ruins of an ancient amusement park where lovers once walked together. To play to this feeling with the imagery, we used a lot of grain and visual noise, actually having images break apart into static, almost like the way nothing lasts in the world. Even the camera angles, were chosen to feel almost impersonal. I kept pretending the camera was actually an alien probe trying to figure human beings out. The distance between what the camera’s not feeling and what the people are adds to both the tension and the sweetness. To help universalize the emotions, we included the stop-motion footage of the wooden figures, along with the dolphins, the pigeons, and the goats. Because, you know, we’re all in this together.”

—–

We’d love to get your comments on this work.

Lost in the Trees – “Walk Around The Lake”

August 20, 2010 / / 1 Comment

First, let’s just get to it. Here’s the new video for Lost in the Trees, the single “Walk Around the Lake”:

Second, some background. This is the latest from our music-video production team, aka Creato-Destructo Imagery.

It’s directed by Jerry Stifelman, and AD’ed by yours truly. Edited by Jerry and Shay Stifelman, with help from Trace Oliveto and myself, and a lot of support and encouragement from Lost in the Trees creative force Ari Picker and his fellow bandmates.

But the REAL story is we shot this in North Carolina, late one January evening, hoping we’d get some great nighttime footage, illuminated by just hand-held lights, lanterns, candles, etc.

Our first set-up was around 6pm. It started snowing about 6:30. And not just “North Carolina snowing” — these were real, fat, heavy flakes coming down in a hurry.

So we thought about that, and discussed it for a while. Our options were to either stop, because there’d be NO WAY to match any snow scene on any other day or night in North Carolina; or keep going that night until we had everything in the can. Yes, continue shooting in a snowstorm.

…So we went for it, with the full support of the band. I believe we wrapped up about 11pm that night; wet, shivering and frozen. But heck, Ari did most of the shoot without a jacket (he wasn’t wearing one during the first scene, so…) , a lot of the band members had to keep holding their instruments (including a very large, cold, snow-covered tuba), and people had to keep running up and down a very dark trail just to keep up with the set-ups. In the snow. Did I mention that?

And personally, I think it looks great. The snowfall looks fantastic and has production values we couldn’t have bought with Jay-Z’s platinum card.

Hats off to Jerry and Ari for making that call and sticking with it, and for the creative vision we now have with this music video.

For even more background, here’s Jerry’s description:

“The concept of is simple — Ari leaves his cabin in the night, walking through the forest, picking up members of the band along the way. Unlike many music videos, this one was as much about mood as concept. We wanted to convey a vibe that was appropriate to the song and the band. There is a feeling of timelessness to Lost In The Trees’ music. We wanted to be true to this by shooting under the light of the full moon supplemented only with candles — and by keeping the band dressed in simple vintage clothing. The idea was to make the “walk” to feel like it could have taken place 100 years ago. This made things hard for band members, many of who had to carry both their instruments and a candles while walking in the freezing snowfall. (This was especially hard for Mark, since he had a tuba to carry around). Another aspect of Lost In The Trees that makes them special is the genuine sense of family. Filming the whole group singing the song was an important part of this, and it turned out so special that we added the live audio of the band singing to backing track of the final video. If you listen, you can hear Ari laughing as he sings. The extreme cold and snowfall made even the most simplest things, like turning cameras on and off, became a challenge, but everyone hung together. Originally, we were going to film Ari actually walking into the lake, but it was so cold, we were afraid he might not come out alive. But ultimately we think the video’s open-ended finish is better leaving it up to the imagination of the viewer.”

“Glengarry Glen Waterloo” presented by the C of A Players

August 9, 2010 / / No Comments

Who doesn’t love them some David Mamet? No one, that’s whom.

This famous “Coffee is for closers” scene from “Glengarry Glen Ross” has been a hit at least three times I know of: when the film version first came out; when the film version came out on DVD, and when the scene made it onto YouTube.

Note that I didn’t say anything about the buzz when the play first premiered.

That’s because the scene doesn’t exist in the original play script — it was written specifically for the movie version, and Alec Freaking Baldwin absolutely nails it.

So, why not take those words, strip them of cultural, historical, and social context, screw with the time period and setting, and see if it holds up? Why not indeed…

Ladies and gentlemen, the Confederacy of Awesome Players present their homage to David Mamet’s most famous scene:

Oracle’s Ellison Pledges Billions

August 5, 2010 / / No Comments

Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of Oracle, has pledged to give away “at least 95%” of his $28 billion fortune to charity.

Oh, and in the same announcement, George Lucas said he’d do the same. But few people ever doubted that Lucas’ heart was in the right place. With Ellison, it was less certain.

During the 1990’s tech boom, I worked for a nonprofit that doubled as both a (free, open) news and information service, and as a service provider to nonprofits — we went around the country teaching 501(c)3 groups of all stripes how to use tech to further their missions (and that covered a lot of ground).

It was a great job — even after 60-hour weeks living in hotels far across the country from my own bed, I always felt my work had helped people in specific, quantifiable ways.

It was also an exciting time to be reporting in that sector, because fortunes were being made overnight. (Looking back, we now know most of these fortunes were only on paper, but still, it was exciting.)

And it was particularly exciting because many of these tech entrepreneurs were giving away big chunks of their new fortunes in very public ways. The attitude at the time was that the people drawn to the tech/start-up culture were more in touch with their core values through their work, more in tune with how social networks can bring real benefits to society, and that the type of people working in that field were driven primarily by the thrill of innovation and discovery; not simply greed and profit.

I believe a lot of these (positive) stereotypes were true, although it would have been interesting to see how these newly rich folks would have held on to their values if the tech crash hadn’t removed most of their fortunes.

But I digress.

I was reminded of that time by Ellison’s announcement. He apparently was motivated by the VERY public appeal by Bill & Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett, as part of their “The Giving Pledge” effort.

And during the time of the tech boom, the three biggest tech bazillionaires that HADN’T publicly pledged much of their personal fortunes (as opposed to corporate gifts and donations) were Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs.

Melinda Gates and Bill Gates Sr. went first, announcing plans were underway to create a massive foundation that would funnel the trio’s fortunes into specific areas of global health initiatives, global development (economic aid to the poor), and tech/access and education initiatives in the U.S.

They got off to a roaring start in 1999, and have grown the Foundation’s outreach ever since.

Ellison, not so much. At the time, he was fairly closed-mouth.

It turns out he has been giving away millions, but in a quieter, far less public way. Okay, there was that little dust-up with Harvard University, where he rescinded a $115 million gift because of their ousting of Lawrence Summers. (But Ellison also stated he’d increase his other giving to medical research.)

The reason he’s coming forward and signing this pledge now is that his example may lead other wealthy folks to give and/or make other commitments to the social good.

“Warren Buffett personally asked me to write this letter because he said I would be ‘setting an example’ and ‘influencing others’ to give.  I hope he’s right,” he stated in his pledge.

Maybe one measure will be when (rather than if) Steve Jobs announces plans for HIS vast fortune, and how exactly he plans to give it away. That should be fascinating.

“#ATTFAIL” presented by the C of A Players

July 30, 2010 / / No Comments

For our first foray into animation, and specifically using the really neat Xtranormal service, we present a brief discussion of Apple’s recent communications regarding the new phone, and their iPhone OS update.

Also, it’s Friday, so we wanted to lighten things up.

YouTube and You: 5 years, Celebrating

July 28, 2010 / / No Comments

Did you hear? YouTube is celebrating five years of dominating the world of online video.

Yes, the company is milking this for all it’s worth, but the extended celebration makes sense: YouTube was founded in February 2005, got their initial big funding in November of that year (from Sequoia Capital, as an FYI to all those start-up folks out there), then “officially” launched in December.

…And ever since has been the premier resource and destination for uploading and sharing video clips online.

  • Quick fact 1: Five years in, visitors log 2 billion views a day. That’s billion with a “b”. Every single day.
  • Quick fact 2: For every minute that passes, YouTube users load 24 hours worth of video. That’s up from 15 hours of video every minute as of last year. So all this uploading is feeding the viewing, and all that viewing is feeding this uploading.

To celebrate these acheivements, YouTube is sharing the fun with the world. They’ve set up the “YouTube Five Year Channel“ and have invited, well, everyone — including you and me — to join in.

That doesn’t mean you can upload just anything and expect it to get posted; but it does mean there are some really interesting, insightful, funny and touching videos already up,  posted by regular people sharing stories about how YouTube has affected their lives.

It’s not just regular users, though. The company has savvily invited celebrities to curate their favorite clips.

This effort is more than just puffery; you can watch his intro below, then check out what Conan O’Brien likes:

And on the higher-art side, here’s some commentary by Spanish director Pedro Almovodar describing his list:

Getting a little abstract

July 19, 2010 / / No Comments

I’ve been doing two types of video projects recently: working as 1st  AD on music videos for the Creato-Destructo team, and helming more straightforward interview clips for higher-education clients, including a Boston-based law school and, coincidentally, a Long Island-based law school.

I’ve been glad to do all of it. Although some of my more creative colleagues suggested my sensibilities have been growing more documentary-like, even more literal and realistic (as opposed, I think, to more poetic and figurative).

First, nice work if you can get the poetic/figurative stuff.

Second, I finally broke out with something completely abstract based on last week’s schedule. Because I could, I did — and I especially wanted to emphasize motion, playing off grayscale and light-dark.

Beyond that, it also gave me the chance to delve into licensing through Creative Commons. The music is “At A Distance” by Matmos, and falls under the Sampling Plus license.

Let me know what you think. Although I’m not pushing ideas with this, more like emotional responses.

Nearly all this was done in-camera, meaning I didn’t add any effects or other post-production features, apart from the title and the music. Even the last “white” piece was in-camera.

And to go full nerd again, the video’s title is a reference to quantum entanglement, which Albert Einstein famously described/derided as “spooky action at a distance”.