MUFF & Robert Todd

I'm in a class that teaches you how to run a film festival. It's called the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival or MUFF. My duties were to watch submitted films and rate them a Yes, No, or Maybe. There was a lot of Nos out there but it was great to see so many submissions from all over the place like Canada, Germany, Argentina and even Croatia! My other tasks were to find sponsors for the festival. I went around asking for donations in exchange for ad space. Most of the donations were in the form of a gift card because we had a raffle at the festival too. I managed to get River West Film & Video to donate a $50 gift card, Exclusive Co to donate a $25 dollar gift card and Wade's Guitar Shop to donate $100 which we split in half. Half into a gift card and half into our general MUFF fund. Since we are not the most highly funded organization I thought splitting it would be a good idea. I also help put together/run fundraisers like bake sales and rock shows. I got Lord Brain to play for us like I mentioned in my Record Store Day post.

My favorite filmmaker of the festival was Robert Todd who's piece "Cove" screened at our Saturday afternoon program. Here is a clip from "Cove" from his vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/47720198

His style is very beautiful and it kind of reminded me of my own works in progress. His style can even really be pin pointed but I get so engaged with his work and shots that it doesn't really matter. It reminds me of my work because of its seemingly randomness and lack of concentrated characters. It's much more clean though where he is filming. So I may strive to be the dirty Robert Todd. Finding beauty in squaller.

Destruction Coming Soon!

I'm nearing the end of my VHS tape and soon I will be destroying things on camera. The biggest thing I want to break is my old TV. Its a tube television that just doesn't have the brightness it use to. I've watched a lot of good media on that TV but I thought breaking a television and filming it with my VHS camera would look cool. I'm thinking of throwing it off the garage roof if we can get it up there safe. I'll only have one shot to do it so hopefully it turns out to be cool. I'll also have other people filming it digitally so hopefully once we do that (perhaps before Thursday) I can put the digital version up on here. So stay tuned for DESTRUCTION!!

Record Store Day

On 4/20/13 I attended record store day at Exclusive Company near Brady Street. I only purchased one 45 Record which was featured in one of my shoots. It was the green Frank Zappa split vinyl with the tracks "I'm the Slime" and "Montana". On the back it has a quote from Zappa. He says: "Music is the best!" I'm inclined to agree.

There was also live music playing there. My roommate's band Lord Brain played a set as well as one of my other friends band Absolutely played. I took some footage of one of LB's songs and found a song by Absolutely too!

"Cheap Hills" by Lord Brain (2:38)

"Crab" by Absolutely (3:46)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeZg3bwq-yw

Then after listening to all of this loud music, I took a quick road trip to Madison to see another band play. They are called Pissed Jeans and before I post some footage of that show I wanted to post what we saw on the way there.

A upside down cross in the sky! It's like Pissed Jeans knew we were coming to worship them!!

Ok here is one of their songs

"Teenage Adult" by Pissed Jeans (4:09)

This was a long weekend of binging on music and other stuff....Thursday night I saw a show at Quarters in Riverwest, then Friday Lord Brain played a fundraiser show for the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival at Linneman's then it was Record Store Day. Great weekend filled with great music. Rock.

The Rules of Logic

The rules of logic have changed
Who do we trust?
The Mind? Or the Brain?
The rules of logic have changed

Much of what I understood has been shit
I sit n shit and can't get a bit fit
So it's time to get lit?

Perhaps this time around I'll trust my gut
What rut in my butt can't be shut
Time to jump cut?

Follow the heart may be the only way
I stay, she strays with no delays
Fade to grey

I've been arranged to be deranged and now estranged since
The rules of logic have changed
The rules of logic are estranged
The rules of logic have changed
The rules of logic are deranged
The rules of logic have changed
Who do we trust?
The Mind? Or the Brain?

Other Mini Works

I figured since others were posting some quick youtubes they've done in the past on their blog I would do the same.

This one is called "Splorin", a short walk on the beach, my friends and I find whats been lost under the snow.
https://vimeo.com/45762082

This one is called "Dub-eggZ" , an idea mentioned at the start of the video turns to reality.
https://vimeo.com/45762086

This one is called "Ssssmore Ssssplorin", another day at the beach.
https://vimeo.com/51979869

Right Now

So right now I am still shooting as much as I can with the cam quarter still and I wish I could throw some clips up here to show you (I may try again to record some clips with my digital camera while the VHS plays on my TV, it was just a little blurry and has a lot of glare on the TV right now. I hope I can post some screen shots of my recent shoots on here like I did a couple posts down.

Anyways, I have been shooting in the basement again. Shooting the fish tank again (one of the fish recently died so I got some [sad] footage of a floating fish). I've recently tried some new things with the camera too. I've been setting up shots then kind of moving on to something not set up.

For instance I had the idea of my roommate eating a banana with a fork. So I had him do that and had the camera sitting on the table cutting his head off so you only see his hands and the plate that the banana is on. Once he's almost done with the banana I moved the camera over to the burners on the stove and filmed close ups of the flames of each burner. I switched the lights off and filmed them more all the while this really creepy, spacey music (that my banana eating roommate made) is playing in the background. This is probably the most noticeable change up I have made in the project so far because it was set up. The other footage seems more observing to natural things but I don't think that its a bad thing to have shots that are set up because the aesthetic is so heavily "home movies-ish" so it's an idea i wanted to explore. I keep wanting to explore different options like I've been recently trying to not film the entire body or the faces of my roommates because I had a few shots that I thought were interesting with just the feet or just the arms and hands in the shots. Creating shots that have unknown characters that still show character in their non full form is interesting to me. Close interactions with the house and the things in the house gives you real intimate look at these people without being fully connected with their persona is what I'm going for I guess...

My project seems to be gaining more and more potential for from every time I have a day of shooting. I guess I'm at the stage right now where I'm starting to think how I would edit all this data I have collected. The first action I would take before transferring it to digital video would be to make a shot list of every single shot I have on the tape then check off the strongest/weakest ones and go from there.

I'll try to get some stills of my 2 latest shoots and put them up later tonight.

Spider!

Here's a news story that I found interesting....it's a short fluff piece Fox did around Oscar time on the ticket ripper at my theatre: Spider! It's kind of funny since I had this as one of my options for the project. Though I wouldn't take it in this fluffy of a direction it still a great profile on him.

Spider at the Movies