Flight

Since forever, I’ve been hooked on flight. In planes big or small, balloons, anything that flies, goes fast and is otherwise in direct opposition to the side of me that believes strongly in being safe by observing best practices at all times. I once lived in Juneau, Alaska and used to watch paragliders from my…

Not the Dentist!

From a selection of 29 individual storyboards, we drew two scenes randomly and made a short screenplay from them. Then, using resources immediately available to us, we made this short film in one day on location @ Tinkering School in Montara, California:

Tinkering School: Day 8

Go cart design, assembly and testing by the inimitable Team Tinker with snippets of boat model design and other moments of singular, whimsical tinkering mastery. Thanks to Moby for his song, Porcelain.

Down to the River

As I mentioned earlier, last weekend I went down to the river with a bunch of gear to help Dan Huiting shoot a music video featuring Charlie Parr for City of Music and the video is premiering this coming Monday on the site. See more stills from the shoot and read the article in City…

Charlie Parr

I had the distinct pleasure of spending this morning down by the Mississippi River with Charlie Parr, shooting a video for City of Music with Dan Huiting, Chris Cloud, Dave Hannigan and the rest of the MPLS.tv crew. He’s such a good spirit and talented musician. Amidst such a perfect backdrop for his sound, the…

Beg Steal or Borrow

There’s no video in that there below thingy but I like it just fine with only the new single that plays from Ray LaMontagne’s forthcoming self-produced album, God Willin’ & The Creek Don’t Rise, being released, well, like it says, August 17: So your home town’s bringing you down Are you drowning in the small…

Elite Gymnastics @ the Medusa

thinfilms is teaming up with MPLS.tv to shoot Elite Gymnastics while they perform at the Medusa tonight. Elite Gymnastics is James Brooks and Josh Clancy. The duo have been receiving quite a bit of national attention for their brand of chillwave tunage. From the New York Post to Pitchfork, these two are getting positive reviews….

Life is but a Taco…

MPLS.tv created the credits for the Soap Factory‘s 10 Second Film Festival and did it so well this opening credit won the award in the ARTHOUSE category, and features the Mayor of Minneapolis, Chris Cloud:

‘sticks’ at the 10 Second Film Festival

The crowd and judges went cuckoo for “sticks” at the Soap Factory’s 10 Second Film Festival last night – the announcer and the crowd of thousands continued to chant “sticks” long after it screened, especially after I neglected to claim the win (until later) because I couldn’t hear anything! Gee whiz, what can a fella…

dialectic

This one Bergey and I made together:

pixelier: antes y dispues

Bergey made some things that inspired me to start tinkering with stills digitally and call it pixeliering, which is a meager attempt at adding an element of painting to digital images: Click on that first image right there to see before and after examples larger and more in charger: This is cool and I like…

Maria Montessori

In 1896, Maria Montessori gave a lecture at the Educational Congress in Torino about the training of the disabled. The Italian Minister of Education was in attendance, and was impressed by her arguments sufficiently to appoint her the same year as director of the Scuola Ortofrenica, an institution devoted to the care and education of…

Today’s Solar Wind Forecast

While living in Alaska, I had a heavy habit of checking this every day: a groovily-nerdy resource provided by the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute:

Arcade Fire: The Suburbs

That’s correct kids, the new album is finished and nearly in our warm, fuzzy little hands – click, drag and listen! it’s just like a real record player! weeeeeeeeee!!! A. The Suburbs AA. Month of May

The Music of Conrad Praetzel and Clothesline Revival

The best music you may not have heard of comes from the imagination and inspiration of Conrad Praetzel, an archaeologist-turned-musician living in Northern California, who makes soulful music under the moniker Clothesline Revival. Collaborating with great musical forces in the world, including Charlie Musselwhite, Sukhawat Ali Khan, Robert Powell, Rounder Records, the field recordings of…

Plastic Bag

Ramin Bahrani-written-directed-and-edited, Werner Herzog-narrated and original soundtrack by Kjartan Sveinsson of Sigur Rós?

Goodbye Solo

Every now and then a film moves me, lifts and tosses about my sense of the world, of knowing myself and my own culture, let alone the cultures of others and where mine fits in. Then, it sets me down gently, back in the place I was to begin with. Only then, the place looks…

Cinematography: We’ve come a long way?

We don’t have to ask why we love videos and movies, visual literacy is becoming more important as time goes on. Thinking about today’s conventions I see in contrast to the silent films of the early years of cinema, the first thing is obvious: there are a lot of talking heads. The cinematic elements that…

Ken Burns on filmmaking

If you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a feature film I could tell you the steps to take to do that, but every working documentary filmmaker I know has gotten there through their own unique path. There is no career path.