I just shot my intros for my posts this week. I’m compressing now.

• Tomorrow: I’m shooting a piece about Firecracker Press, what seems to be a really unique design shop that specializes in doing their own printing on antique letterpresses. Then later in the evening I’m shooting an interview with Pokey LaFarge an interesting talent to say the least–after which I will be shooting his show as well as the Vultures and Johnny O and the Jerks.
• Thursday: I’m getting interviewed by the local Fox afiliate in the afternoon. Editing in the evening.
• Friday, shooting a band at The Wayout Club called Human After Taste, which judging by what I’ve seen of them on myspace, should be interesting.
• Saturday I’ll be editing.
• Saturday or Sunday I’m shooting a piece about Peat Walleagar in his studio for an ad agency in NYC.

WHEW!!

At the end of next week I’m off to SXSW with Podtech.

DOH! Somehow I noticed my wink widget was broken in my sidebar, so I decided to try to fix it, and somehow I broke the entire theme. opps. I guess I’ll have to reinstall that theme. Maybe tonight …

When I first moved to the neighborhood there was a big old Catholic Church near by called Holy Family. The local Archdiocese decided to close the church a couple of years ago and sell off the land. There were rumors that the Church was sold to an advertising firm last year but I never really did find out if they ever moved in–or even if the rumor was true. But lo and behold today I came across an article about the buildings that were left vacant by the big church closing that shuttered the place to begin with and sure enough an ad agency called CFX Advertising has moved in. From the (tiny) photos on their site they seem to have done some interesting things with the place.

Unfortunately, their site suffers from the problems that a lot of smaller design firms suffer from. Namely too much flash and design that seems to be sized for smaller monitors. I think that this has to do with designers coming of age and learning their trade in the late 90’s and never updating their skills. Web design rules are constantly in flux and one really needs to be immersed in them to keep up. In the late 90’s Flash was all the rage. Now most web developers know that CSS is the bomb—not just for fashionable reasons, but also for purely functional reasons too. If you design your entire site in flash, then it’s really hard to be discovered–not to mention the pain it is to redesign or even update. Flash has its place, but seriously it’s best use is not pure web design. Some design firms know this and they have people on staff that are proficient in modern web design techniques but due to lack of time and or budgets or both haven’t kept up with their own sites. Kind of the “Cobblers kids are the last to get shoes” syndrome. I don’t know what the deal is with this place but maybe I’ll take a stroll over and say hi to the new neighbors and maybe I’ll find out.

Check out the sidebar. I am now on Wink. Wink is a social network for social networks. The Wink Widget (see sidebar) seems to be one of the most useful things about this service.

Some Mac blogs in Spain picked up the video I made about Jeremy Mehrle’s mac collection. And as a result several other Spanish language blogs from around the world also reported on it. It’s kinda funny looking at LO-FI SAINT LOUIS’ Technorati page now–one might suspect that I was some new hot Spanish blogger. I wonder if I should expect a second or third round of big traffic spikes when Mac blogs in other languages discover it. Here is the video if you want to see it:

I’ve had a bunch of stuff that I’ve been wanting to put here but the only time of the day I have to do this (most days) is while I’m at work. And I feel sorta weird about blogging at work.

Anyway Podtech wants me to go to SXSW interactive in March, which I’m really looking forward to. I’ve heard that it’s really a great conference, and I’m really looking forward to seeing all my online friends in person again. I’ve never been and hopefully I’ll get to see my friend Doug while I’m there.

All Motion Picture formats up until now have been developed with regards to technological and commercial constraints. The 30 minute Sitcom, the feature film, the half hour news show, the hour drama, the 30-second commercial. All are standard formats that were developed because of a business and/or bandwidth limitations. Now we’re sort of in the dawning of a new age of the short form video. Also developed with an eye toward limitations, bandwidth, attention span etc. But as we move on to where those constraints are lifted, where non-commercial or commercial motion picture content can co-exist in the places where traditionally long form motion pictures have been viewed (namely television sets in living rooms) but now without the constraints of the old business models or bandwidth limits, what new formats are possible? Should we still be thinking in terms of the old formats like sit-com, hour show, and feature film? Do these things mean anything anymore? Should they? Do they serve any other purpose outside of the limitations of (what are likely to be) old business models? What about truly personal forms? The personal video message–meant for one or a few? This is a new format of motion picture constructed mainly for it’s purpose not to fit within commercial or technical limits.

I guess I approach these things by deconstructing them to what they are at their core; Human communication. Human beings communicate by telling storys. And when human communication, or story telling in motion picture form, or cinematic language becomes an available form of communication to everyone to create, when it becomes something more than one to many or a few to many, as it’s been up until recently. Where are we going to push it socially, technically, artistically? Should we throw the old forms out all together? Will they become irrelevant?

These are the questions I think about at night, awake, staring at the ceiling.

No. way.

Too cool.

Bettie Page

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