Freedom Tunnel from Charles le Brigand on Vimeo.

Ever since I lived in London I’ve had this wisp of an idea to create art videos comprised of very short shots, edited very fast (as I love to edit) that portray the feelings of the city.  Looking back, I REALLY wished I had done this in London, as it’s such a dynamic, colorful and freaking exciting city, but doing a couple of these for Boston would be interesting.  Right now I have ideas for a day in the life of the city and the 9-5 drudgery.  I want these videos to be short, no more then 2 minutes max, and the main purpose is to make the viewer FEEL whatever the video is about. I love playing with emotions and video…it’s why I got into it in the first place.

London seems so long ago. There’s a lot I miss, especially my art video teacher Hope and Chris, the media guy at ASL. I won an award for art video that year and I feel like I’ve sorta let them down by not pursuing it. But then again, very few types of art actually pay the bills these days….especially in this economic climate. Oh well. At least I have a good job and I work with people I really like!

That being said, I MUST make an effort to do more video. Seriously, Eleanor. You only studied it for five years.

But listening to great music was only one cool part. The best part about yesterday was that I got to help interview Keith Lockhart, Maestro and Conductor of the Boston Pops! This was quite an honor and meeting him in person was surreal. He gave us an amazing interview as well! If you’ve ever done interviews for camera before, you know that it can be quite tricky getting the interviewee to rephrase the question properly and speak in succient bytes that will be good for your videos. Keith. Was. A. Pro. In 30 minutes he gave us some amazing material with which to plug into a couple video promos. Awesome!

The other cool part about last night was that I got to help film two of the performers during the concert! I set the HVX200 we borrowed from Daniel up in the first balcony, and recorded 9-year-old Umi Garrett, pianist-extraordinaire, and Michelle Lee, tap dancing violinist. I used the FS-100, of course, because who wants to record to tape anymore?!

Once the videos are up I’ll link to them so you can see my handywork

Definitely take a moment to check them out – they’re short and sweet and trust me, you’ll learn stuff

YouTube videos

Jodi’s Website

Interviewing with From The Top made me think about what got me into video/media from the get go.  When I was growing up my parents insisted on two things – that I play a musical instrument and participate in a sport. At the time I thought it was cruel punishment – while my friends got to relax at night and watch The Simpsons I was forced to practice clarinet…which I’ve long since given up, sorry Mom.

It wasn’t until I got to London for my senior year of high school that I finally got what my parents were getting at: they wanted me to find a passion, something that would drive me beyond all else, something that would make me pick up and go even when I was battered down to the core. Lucky for me, and thanks to an incredibly talented and passionate teacher named Hope Tucker at The American School in London, I found it: video.

Do you have a favorite movie, or at least TV show?  Chances are, it’s your favorite because of the way it makes you feel – happy, sad, excited, whatever.  And that’s what really grabbed hold of me – the idea that media can make you FEEL something.  And not only you… it can connect you with humans all over the world based on the emotions it evokes when you watch it (or hear it). You can identify with someone who may even speak another language via media, all because it made you both FEEL the same way.

That’s what got me fired up – the idea that I could create something that will make you FEEL.  That is so powerful! And I love it! I don’t mind when I see a scene in a TV show that makes me feel so uncomfortable that I want to get up and walk out of the room (believe it, it does happen to me!) It means that those producers achieved their goal 100% – they are influencing me.  Maybe this isn’t always a good thing, but it’s a real thing.  And that is beyond cool.

Is technology like this the beginning of the end for DVDs?

With more and more people going digital, and technology only feeding our frenzy for instant gratification, I believe it’s possible that DVDs may go the way of VHS tapes.  Now you can instantly stream shows and movies via Hulu.com, Netflix, Amazon, etc, without the hassle of getting up to go to the dang movie store. What does this mean?

In fact, Blockbuster in Porter Square went outta business a couple months ago. Is the glory of Netflix to blame? It’s likely.

I’ll admit it: I love instant gratification. When I want something, I often want it now.  That’s one of my generation’s trademarks.  And corporations are latching on to this idea and going full speed ahead with satisfying our never ending cravings for incredible technology at lightning fast speeds.

I think there are perks to going digital vs buying tons of DVDs. For one, less DVDs mean less environmental waste.  Though DVDs are more hardy than their VHS grandparents, they can still wear out. (Note to self: make DVD duplicate of my very first video project…wouldn’t want to lose that!) But on the flip side, hard drives can crash. Files can get corrupted. Nothing is forever. (This is why I spent the $$ to buy Stanley, my RAID server with redundant back up, so the chances of my losing my video files are highly unlikely!)

The only thing I know for sure is I will definitely love having Netflix on my Wii, and I’m interested to see how this type of technology progresses in the next few years.

The finalists for the contest will be announced on April 19th, which is when public voting will begin. The grand prize winner gets roundtrip airfare to LA and gets to attend a LOST part! ::Crosses fingers::

This exercise was so much fun, and I realized how much I have been missing the really artsy, creative editing that I used to do constantly.  Sigh, thus is adult life – other priorities take over, and the fun stuff tends to get pushed to the side more than you’d like.  From now on, I’m making it a priority to at least play with mashup video once a month!

I’m also going to be doing some editing on a project about Boston University philosophers which should be really interesting!  This weekend I’ll be tearing up the ice in Lowell, MA with some freelance production work for the Colonial Classic Figure Skating Championships. Finally, Daniel and I have decided it’s time to get back into some creative work, so this spring we’ll be working on a short that deals with archetype characters of desire with some sweet CG and motion graphic effects.  More on that soon….

Here’s one of the first videos I ever completed, and it won 1st place at the 2004 Loudoun County Film Festival in Virginia. I filmed it while in London, UK. It’s called “Midnight Catharsis.” Music credit: A Perfect Circle

This vid is called “What’s Your Power?” It’s a fun little short we created for a 48-Hour Film Festival in Fall, 2006.

Finally, this is a super short art video I created for my Field Production class at Emerson.  Entitled “Dishes Suck,” it illustrates exactly what you’d think: why I hate doing the dishes.