I went down to my grandparents house in Monmouth for Easter on Sunday to spend some time with the family. In my grandparents living room there is a window that points to lovely field with a hummingbird feeder in the foreground. You can see the bird zipping around the frame, I slowed it down in the key points to accentuate it’s movement. Its edited over Herb Alpert record playing in the background. Don’t get me started on that, but I’ve been on a Herb Alpert kick lately.

This was shot entirely on a Kodak Zi8 camera on April 4th 2010

I recently attended and filmed the second installment of You Who, a Portland concert series for kids and their hip, music loving parents. It’s the type of event that makes you appreciate the creativity and breadth of Portland’s music and art scene. The lineup has been as impressive as any concert series in recent memory with Quasi, Explode into Colors, the Builders and the Butchers gracing the stage. You Who is a variety show of eccentric proportions, a mix of music, theater and custom-made animation. Plus it pulls in a crowd of 600 parents and kids on a Sunday afternoon, which is an impressive feat. The show is curated by a couple of creative folks including Chris Funk of the Decemberists, who always seems to be breaking new ground in rolling out new projects. Mr. Funk was also involved in curating the Burn to Shine series, which had a formative affect in our conception of the Penny Jam.

We filmed most of the show, and I’ll likely roll out more in the near future but here is the first installment. It features a band called the Cardboard Songsters, who perform with a cast of large painted cardboard creations.

This video is featured on the You Who website under “videos.”

When I got back I put together a half hour variety program that was aired as an episode of my public access television show on MetroEast community media. Check it out!

Episode 8 of Truckerspeed in 3D

Aside from a lot of filming and drinking I popped into as variety of Interactive events, my two favorites being a presentation by Gary Vaynerchuck and a smaller engagement with Bob Boilen of NPR. Mr. Boilen was the director of the NPR show All Things Considered and is the current host’s and the creator of NPR’s online music show All Songs Considered. The section he hosted was about using video as a marketing tool and primarily a series that he started called Tiny Desk Concerts which places bands in Mr. Boilen’s office for a song or two.

Considering I also produce a web video series, it was a fascinating panel. I was introduced to live performances Thao Nguyen and Shearwater, both quite enjoyable.

Episode 7 of Truckerspeed in 3D

Prior to production I set up a greenscreen studio in my basement where I’m now filming all of the interviews and whatnot. This picture is before I got crazy amounts of lighting in there, currently there are 9 lights similar to the one shown. When the lights are on and the white sheets are hung on the sides it really does feel like a studio.

Producing the series (in addition to working full time) has resulted an an acute lack of sleep – In that way I’ll be thankful when it’s over. I’d consider doing something like this again – but only with the help of a consistent crew – although I do have to acknowledge Jon Manning and Sean Whiteman have been helping out a heck of a lot with the filming aspect.

The show is titled “Truckerspeed, in 3D,” which is somewhat related to a website that I write for and design called http://truckerspeed.com that focuses on music, film and culture. It’s a work in progress it has been a fantastic creative sandbox for both myself and creative collaborator Sean Whiteman. Anyway, the future is promising, we have a couple of secret, awesome segments coming up on the show. If you’re in Portland Oregon you can watch the show on Monday and Wednesday at 9pm on (Comcast cable) Channel 21 and on Saturdays at 10pm on Channel 11.

It’s not exactly a masterpeice, just something I did over the course of a couple hours with a Wacom tablet sitting in front of Flash, rotoscoping some low res video. What is awesome though is that I am one of the 2 people in said video. My friend Rob Yee and myself were practicing the fight scene as part of an assignment for an Effects and Compositing class at the University of Oregon and just happen to record this on his digital camera.

In the course of uploading it Vimeo gave me this:

This video is the result of some wacky codec malaise. I’m curious to see if I can reproduce the effect with a longer clip.

To clarify, the reference to Instant Rimshot was part of a list of “50 reasons to have (Actual) (Legitimate) (Genuine) Hope”

It clocked in one place ahead of the “miracle of life” and one place behind kiva.org.
I guess it must have been a slow month and someone decided a list article was a good idea. Anyway, pretty awesome!

So with a little development time, along came headsethotties.com!

One fun little sidenote is that the background image I used on the header is actually a pic taken by Joe Mansfield during the most recently released episode of the Penny Jam (see previous post.) Click here to see what I’m talking about.

Traffic has been good (about 12,000 unique visitors in 7 days) and it’s been mentioned in some hilarious situations online.

My favorite comment thus far is from Jeffrey Zeldman in his Wednesday Link roundup. Zeldman says:

Burned. Oh well it’s still flattering.

After a couple of weeks I’ll probably write up a synopsis of the greatest hits of such occurrences. In the meantime, if you come accross any Headset Hotties in the wild, send them my way!