A Snowy Night (from 2003)

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This video is a montage of footage shot on Dec 30, 2003, a night during which Portland experienced a rare snowfall. And rarer still, definite snow-stick. I cut together the video just recently, finishing on April 19, 2005.

The snow that night started while I was inside Ground Kontrol (at its old location) experiencing bleepy bleepy music by the likes of 8-Bit Weapon and Waxin' Wary. The event was called Micropalooza.

You'll briefly see Jon, Megan and Brady outside Ground Kontrol surveying the snow accumulation on the bikes.

TECHNICAL NOTE: This is my first video in Final Cut Pro(!) ... so excuse any excessive crossfading.

MUSIC: Micropalooza artists and ambient videogame sounds (inside) and Coil "The Snow" (outside).

M is for Misako

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Meet Misako, a cartoonist from Japan living in the USA and visiting Portland for the first time. She can't finish a whole plate of food but boy can she rap!

Thanks to Petr Sorfa for notifying me of the event and engaging in squishy butter handshakes. As always, a pleasure to see the truly big time Craig Thompson. He's finally returned after his many months away from Portland promoting his comic goodness. In an astounding rarity of circumstance, Jon and I sat at opposite corners of the table, a position which caused us to be social rather than huddling into one of our endless "SITO" pow-wows.

The tin-foil crab you see Misako holding during her rap is an example of Montage's trademark "take-away sculptures". The servings at Montage are enormous and patrons invariably take some food home with them. Leftovers are lovingly wrapped in foil which is then sculpted into some kind of cutesy object du art.

CURMUDGE: I still don't care for iMovie. I now have use of some better software, so hopefully titling and intercutting won't be such a pain for future installments.

Ditch Cougars

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Here is my first proper video entry.

SYNOPSIS: Too infrequently do I run into my friend Aaron Renier. This time I had my camera and I was able to hear Aaron's thoughts on hunting feral cats and his new comic book, "Spiral Bound". All of this was shot and edited on April 11, 2005. Footage is from Tiny's Coffee in Portland, Oregon. Find more Aaron at his SITO homepage.

NOTES: Still getting used to using iMovie, so this is a rough one. Subtitling is way too small. Need to get my hands on some more sophisticated editing sofware to do what I want to do with crossfades, titles and sound. Final Cut Pro comes highly recommended.

Impetus

Created this blog to host my foray into video-blogging. Vlogging? Videodling? I've been inspired and impressed with the video blogs I've been watching over the past week. First I was just playing with batching them to my PSP, but the more I watched the more I was reminded of how much I enjoy making video. For years, back in Omaha, I would create and broadcast a tv show through the local public-access cable channel. That show, "DDT-TV", consisted of lots of punk music, animation, experimental film and interviews.

We'll see where this new venue leads me, 12 years wiser.

First, a quicky animation to test the mechanics...
Click here to see the Big Time 'title'.