Yeah that's it!

That logo means video!

Are You Ready

Defeeters! Lake Oswego Soccer Club State champions! The parents surprised the team with the video at party celebrating the teams success. Please to enjoy all the videos and watch this space for more.

Think about video for your website. Low cost product demos, training  for your clients or employees or a "how to" segment educating your clients and the public at large. Produce from your ideas and footage or start from scratch with a production company. Video is not something "extra" when thinking about a website it is as vital as your logo and your contact information.  It does not have to cost a lot to look cool. Think about your clients and what they need. Think about your product or service and create a video that will illuminate, educate, entertain and inform. Create. "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." Linus Pauling said that and he's from Oregon! You can even put a monkey in the video!

On the Verge

We are on the verge of something, of what we are not sure. Starting a business during these economic times is daunting at least and challenging at best. My timing is questionable but I have to say in my darkest times I feel secure in the fact that I won't be laid off. The dynamics of being self employed are well known, the employees are lazy and the boss in an asshole. The journey has been one of self discovery, educational, enlightening and what the fuck was I thinking. I am wearing three hats, technician, manager and entrepreneur. The problem is I have just the one head.

A new favorite product has been Keepsake Videos, photos and video put to music for anniversaries, birthdays and the general celebration of life set to music. I have enjoyed the compilation of milestones and signposts of strangers' lives and my unique ability to manipulate and elicit, I hope, some emotion with these short stories. Sorting through stacks of snaps and slides, digging through digital archives of the past. A voyeuristic endeavor that satisfies the entrepreneur and the technician.

The L.E.S.T.A. project has been mired in red tape and bureaucratic. I long for guerrilla film making, stolen locations and signed releases after the fact. I shall overcome but I am still looking for ideas, any suggestions?

What I am reading : “E Myth Mastery By Michael Gerber
What I am watching: Art of Making the Schedule
What I am listening to: Cable Company hold recording...

Fitting

It's only fitting I post now pledging to post more on this blog o' mine. It seems to be the thing, regurgitating excuses for not blogging. I should start a blog about not blogging.

As I begin my 51st year I ponder the things I know, have forgotten, and simply ignored.

We have been efforting to produce a documentary recently. The project hit a bureaucratic roadblock with a local school district when we requested permission to shoot on school property, I blame the reality TV industry for creating this faux market place for a possible "reality" series. Everyone is positioning for some kind of production deal on The Learning Channel. We will get it done and Jon and Kate Plus 8 be darned.

Here is a brief synopsis.

" The L.E.S.T.A. Story" (working title) is the story of L.E.S.T.A. and Cyndi Turtledove. LESTA’s mission is to engender creativity and discipline through Theatre and all the Arts. To develop and implement projects to help different kinds of community organizations share Spanish and English language learning, cultural exchanges, and social interaction by bringing Latinos and Anglos together. This film examines the process, successes and the challenges of bilingual language and arts education.

It's going to be a lot more fun than it sounds.

What I am reading : “Lush Life: By Richard Price
What I am watching: A New Zealand Childhood
What I am listening to: The whir of the scanner

Holiday Onslaught

I have been inundated with video transfer this holiday season. We have been snowed in with 7 year old twins and that has added a new dimension to the work at home dynamic, to say the least. The snow daze looks as if will continue into the kids holiday break extending it to three weeks. I am in my bunker of a video studio dodging the flak of the skirmishes outside my door. Not entirely successful I might add, I have the scars to prove it.

Some observations on home movies. There is a theme that runs through our lives documented in our home videos. Decades of summer water skiing videos (I mean hours), dance recitals, the endless opening of presents at Christmas and birthdays. The table setting at Thanksgiving and Uncle Leo talking with his mouth full. I too am guilty of this complete lack of imagination when it comes to home movies. I vow to change this and document more of a cinema verite of everyday life and the way we live and the times we live in. Not just some forgotten gifts on Christmas morning, something rich, deep poingant and fulfilling that will be a revelation to those who transfer my home movies onto some future format, 3D, holograms?
Enjoy the pictures of my kids playing in the leaves

Paul Newman

I have been trying to come up with something deep and poignant to say about Paul Newman. What he means to me as a film guy, as a guy, as a little boy, as a man, as a human being. I didn't know him, just his work and how that work communicated with me.
My friends and I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid conservatively 30 times in the theater, no tape no disk, just film. We imitated action and dialogue ad nauseum. Cool Hand Luke was a revelation, probably to this day colors my aversion to authority. "What we have here is a failure to communicate..." Man, I keep running a film obituary in my head over and over. I have a stack of Paul Newman moves I can't seem to bring myself to watch quite yet, Hud, The Hustler, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof The Color of Money,has any actor had the balls to recreate a character like Fast Eddie and improve on it?. I have watched these films countless times and yet I still revel in the freshness and authenticity of Newman's performances. If you haven't seen Nobody's Fool, do so, that is how a true artist grows.
Like I said, I didn't know him, but the work will be with me always. I am happy for that.