Quicktime Video

Nelson and I shot a commercial this weekend in Vermont. This man stopped by the shoot out on the sidewalk in downtown Burlington, and Nelson filmed him for about 6 minutes. This is unedited except for color correction.

Michel Gondry and Robert Stickgold discuss dreams, filmmaking and the scientific method:

I met the producer of this video, Jacob Klein, last night at the Big Screen Little Screen meetup at For Your Imagination, a great meetup where local online video producers showcase some of their work and then answer questions from the audience and discuss the piece. The discussion focuses almost exclusively on content, instead of the technical side of online video that so many meetups I’ve attended seem to lean towards.

Jacob mentioned that he had interviewed Michel Gondry, and I played it cool, but I gotta admit I was jealous and anxious to watch the interview. Gondry is one of my favorite all-time filmmakers, and this interview is amazing.

Earlier this evening, my cohort co-producer Sr. Valdez said:

American Man is blowing up on Yahoo right now. I’d say we’re over 100,000 views this month. Am I suppose to be feeling something?

I’m not sure. When I used to work at Shemuscle.com and I’d publish a new video, occasionally it would get picked up by a few popular porn blogs and our numbers would skyrocket. In our industry, those numbers translated directly to money in our pockets.

In my current occupation, the translation is more subtle.

There are people out there watching what we do, and some of them are really getting into it. They’re agreeing with us. The feeling I get from this is similar to leaving a really good rock concert. 20,000 people just implicitly agreed on everything for about 2 hours. You take that feeling with you when you go home that night, and it stays with you for at least a few days afterwards.

With video, you feel a little electric shiver when a piece gets watched 20,000 times, but it’s not quite as fulfilling as when 10 people send you nice emails or comments.

When I have an idea for a video, the process usually revolves around how to make it funny or interesting enough to entertain my friends. If I think Nick or Nelson or Valdez will like it, I go with it. If not, I toss it. (Unless I personally think it’s hilarious and then I say fuck what anyone else thinks, I’m doing it.)

It’s the general idea behind Wreck & Salvage production: Make stuff that you would want to watch. Since we understand that there is a segment of the population, however small, that agrees with us, then we have carte blanche to do whatever the hell we want. The point is, it doesn’t matter how many people see something just so long as the right people see it.

Alas, when we make a video for a company, they want numbers to crunch. So luckily we can provide them.

It all boils down to the fact that I love what we do. I think it’s just the greatest. If you do too, then thanks, and feel safe in the knowledge that every god damn video we produce on Wreck & Salvage is custom-built from the ground up, just for you.

Premorse: Having the end abruptly truncated, as if bitten or broken off.

e.g.

“As I looked over the water, I saw the isles rapidly wasting away, the
sea nibbling voraciously at the continent, the springing arch of a hill
suddenly interrupted, as at Point Alderton — what botanists might call
premorse, — showing, by its curve against the sky, how much space it
must have occupied, where now was water only.”
Henry David Thoreau; Cape Cod; 1865.

It’s already an adjective as premorse, whereas if you decapitate it you end up with remorse, a noun that’s a full three letters short of its adjective form, remorseful. English is so fucked up.

So why then when I google premorseful I come up with only a few semi-relevant hits? Are people really that smart?

Anyway, all of this came to me when I woke up and looked at my bedside notebook where I had written:

Chirp chirp, premorseful sound of a morning that could have been. But midnight till dawn is the Golden Hour, when the best work gets done.

Makes sense to me, but grammatically incorrect. Oh well.

I see him every couple weeks. I call him “100 Socks”.

Josh Cohen over at Tilzy.tv, one of the two online-video-related blogs I read regularly, wrote a piece about my Summer adaptation series on Rocketboom. It’s great to know that someone is thinking critically about something I’ve made, and insightful commentary is pretty much priceless.

Thanks Josh. “The exhaustion of menial and meaningless work” pays off in spades once again.

A few things:

B. Wordie’s Errata made a “widget“, which must be something like a “Gidget” but with less cleavage:

8a. Met a dude last night who works for Jim Henson’s company, and he showed me this early Jim Henson commercial for Wilson’s Meats:

1. Football starts tonight. I’m cooking chili and watching the Colts, in case anyone cares.

Oktoberfest is a celebration of beer, food, music, and the fall harvest!

WHEN: Saturday, September 29
WHERE: 55 Lexington Ave., Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
WHO: You…you…maybe you…and definitely you
WHY: ?
WHAT: Great German beer, great German food, great German and non-German music

DRINKS

• Lowenbrau
• Cider Beer
• Hot Mulled Cider

FOOD

• Grilled Sausage
• Sauerkraut
• German potato salad
• Kuchen

MUSIC

• The Polka Brothers - (three guys who play German polka, awesome)
• Melina (she played at the official Oktoberfest in Munich last year!)
• The Wasted Talent
• Melonhand

There is limited space, so get your tickets today!

Quicktime Video / Windows Media Video

I took the Amtrak Vermonter from NYC to Burlington last weekend on official Wreck & Salvage business. I love trains.