Agriculture: Emile Vig - The Future Farm

This is a second contribution by producer Emile Vig to Current TV. His first, A Midwest Oasis, was a study of the Milwaukee art musiem. It was chosen by the web community for TV back in April. This latest upload of his looks like it will be taking the same route as it is presently number one in the community picks. This one tells the story of a progressive farm in NY that is trying to be a model for local, sustainable, agriculture.

Saturday Feature: Michael Moore - Farenheit 911

This is Michael Moore's weekend with the release of his new movie Sicko so I thought I would honor him by posting his last attempt at bringing hard information in a world full of distractions and misdirections.

Animation: Colby Buzzell - Men In Black

Colby Buzzell (such a cool name) was a solder who served in the Iraq war and became a blogger while serving, (and I must say he really has good taste in blog templates!). His blog became very popular and, after completing his service, the blog entries were edited together into a book titled: My War.

An Excerpt from this book was illustrated by artist: Christopher Koelle and those illustrations were animated by a studio named: The Law Of The Few. The result is what you see above which was broadcast as a segment in PBS crossroads and also posted on their website as a text transcript under the title: Men In Black.

His book has won many awards and much acclaim. The military has since clamped down on blogging from the battlefield. I wonder why.

Commentary: Baba Ali - Who Hijacked Islam?

Another great commentary by Baba Ali at Ummah Films

Music: Ship of Fools Productions - The Channel 101 Musical.

What I love about this video is that it really goes for a full blown desktop musical with original music and everyone singing on the recording and then acting it out with simple DV production values. In this case it is a little cheezy and "insider" but it is really a concept that could strike a bigger chord if it is done correctly.

Ship of Fools Productions is a project that began in 1999 and it is a collaboration of 3 men: Actor Mike McCafferty who has had some success as a Hollywood actor, Jason Makiaris, who is a collaborator and composer, and Ben Plummier who is a writer and director of photography. Together they have made over 25 short films and counting. There motto is to always be shooting which I think is good advice [YouTube posts HERE]. The above playlist is all 5 parts of an episodic series that was submitted to a web competition known as Channel 101.

Channel 101 is an interesting story in itself. It is a website presenting itself like a TV channel that always has 5 shows running. The shows come from a competition where producers submit a pilot to be reviewed. Not all of them get past that stage. If the pilot is accepted, it is then screened before a large audience that meets regularly to review the submissions. Each show is rated and they are either canceled or greenlighted based on the ratings that this audience gives. If it is greenlighted, it goes on the front page of the Channel 101 website which is what they call their "Prime Time" spots. They then have a deadline to create a new episode which is then rated by the same audience in the same manner except it is competing with all the past winners and new submissions all over again. Eventually the show gets canceled but the trick is to see how long you can keep it running in the competitive bloodbath.

Now, back to Ship Of Fools Productions. Ship of Fools created a full blown musical about people trying to come up with a great idea for a Channel 101 TV show. It was so unique and clever that it became incredibly popular. They did several more episodes and claim that they were the only show ever in the history of Channel 101 to make as many episodes as they want and then walk away on their own terms. Quite an accomplishment.

Article Link: $10 DSL!!

As part of the multi billion dollar merger agreement with Bell South, AT&T must offer a $10 per month DSL package. This is much cheaper than their existing packages. It is also supposed to be rather hard to find that plan through their website. Imagine that. . . The article is HERE. The plan itself can be found HERE. New customers only apparently.

Saturday Feature: The Corporation

The Corporation is one of my favorite documentaries of all time. Created in Canada by writer Joel Bakan and filmmakers Mark Archbar and Jennifer Abbott the movie explores the darker side of this legal person who is no person at all. They have released this movie as shareware in hopes that people may like it enough to buy their own copy. If it has as profound an impact on you as it did for me then please consider buying one or even just making a small donation to their effort through their website. I gather they are still recouping the money that it cost to make which is a shame considering how powerful and important this movie is.

Video Game Filmmaking: Douglas Gayeton - My Second Life

The Submarine Channel sponsors a website called MiniMovies which is beginning to showcase short episodic documentaries by various directors. This one, by director Douglas Gayeton, is shot entirely in the new online community "Second Life" Gayetons bio on minimovies reads:

Douglas Gayeton wrote and directed, together with William Gibson, 'Johnny Mnemonic', the first interactive cd-rom based movie, for Sony Imagesoft. His digital animated series 'Delta State', was named best animated TV series of the year at the 2004 Annecy Film Festival. Gayeton has also created or designed online social networks for such clients as AOL, MSN, Vivendi and Napster.

Flakey Internet

Apologies if the content is not coming in as fast recently. My internet access has been getting flaky this weekend. It was out all day today. I was surprised to find myself online when I got home tonight. I may not be when I wake up tomorrow.

Music: Andy Mckee - Drifting

Andy Mckee is what they call a finger style guitarist. Andy's variety of finger style is basically a mash up technique of two handed tapping, strumming, finger picking and, in this case, also hand percussion accompaniment on various parts of the acoustic guitar body. This makes him a sort of one man band with an acoustic guitar. He has other videos on YouTube and more samples of music, his CD, and tablature are all available through CANdYRAT Records.

I have come across a lot of finger tapping stuff during my research for the production of Stick Man. Even among all that, Andy still stands out to me. Enjoy.