Category: Inspiration

Escapade :: Frame by Frame

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It’s been a while since I’ve seen a film about the Middle East.  That’s mostly because I’ve been shying away from them as I get tired of hearing about the wars that have been fought there and the depravity that the people live in etc. etc, but this film trailer caught my eye and I was immediately drawn in by the story.

I wouldn’t say that the U.S. has a completely free press – at least not like they do in Europe where everything is fair game until it breaches privacy laws, but it’s a far freer press than other parts of the world where the government controls everything. Completely everything. You don’t appreciate what you have until you see what it could be like or worse, you experience it first hand.

Red Reel

This film is beautifully shot and it has a powerful message: if you don’t have a visual presence on the web or in the news, then you are left behind.  As someone who has always lived in countries with a “free voice,” it’s hard to imagine living somewhere where you could be killed for documenting something on a camera.  We have become so accustomed to taking photos with our phones and other various devices to share our experience with everyone that we know.  What would it be like to not be able to document what is going on in your life? And, what would it be like to live in a place where once a group of people have left, you have the potential to be forgotten by others?

Escapade :: What is Adventure?

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When I was little, I would ask my dad to take me on adventures.  He would always return my request with “what kind of adventure?” and I never quite knew how to verbalize it.  I knew that scaling a mountain or hand to hand combat with pirates was probably not an option for a quiet Saturday afternoon.  But I always had this image of what adventure was.  It was probably due to me watching too many Pippi Longstocking movies as a kid.

That image of “adventure” has never really been realized, even when I’ve been in exotic countries, climbing mountains, sailing the oceans or zip lining through rain forests.  These have been fantastic adventures and I would never trade them for anything but I’ve never gotten that thrill that I was looking for.  I guess I did when I was in a rafting accident in Ecuador but I really don’t want to repeat that again.  So I suppose I just need to appreciate the experiences more as I go through them and not expect something out of the ordinary to happen because I’m probably already doing something extraordinary.  At least for myself.

So while I’m thinking about adventure this month and I STILL can’t really define what that means to me, I came across this video that lends perfectly to my quest:

Kalum Ko

The lighting is beautiful and the images crisp, all while showing off how beautiful the Pacific Northwest is.  Lovely.  Plus, it features my new obsession with stand up paddle boarding, which I have yet to try, skiing and a few other outdoor sports that I love.  So content wise, there really isn’t anything to dislike.  But even more appealing is it’s challenge to the viewer to embrace life and adventure- whatever that definition might be.

So now that I’m all enthused, I’m off for the weekend to try to find some sort of new experience that I can define as an adventure.  Preferably without pirates commandeering my ship and probably without the need of an ice axe, but you never know…

For the Foodie :: Coffee, Coffee, Coffee

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What is a day without caffeine?  I know very few people who can make it through 24 hours without with the addictive substance and what better way to get that shot of energy than from coffee?  I don’t mean any cup of coffee, I mean a tried and true, carefully analyzed cup of coffee to give you that jolt that so many of us feel we need at various times of the day:

Echoic : Music and Sound Design

Even though I don’t drink the stuff, I find this video fascinating.  It’s the one shot method that I find so interesting as its practically a lost art – it’s just too easy to shoot everything separately and edit it together in post-production.  What I want to know is how long that table had to have been to make this all possible.  By using this method the company made what could have been a fairly dry story into something dynamic and attention grabbing.

It gives me a few ideas for future projects… Now to find some caffeine of my own.  It’s Friday and boy am I looking forward to the weekend!

For the Foodie :: The Carrot

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Growing your own garden from a seed is always seems like a miracle to me.  I’m always in awe of how nature can create something so amazing and complex with a seed, some soil and regular sprinklings of water.  It’s even more miraculous when the thing growing is more than a common weed- those things don’t seem to have any problem growing and taking over huge spans of land.

This summer I helped my friends clear out part of their yard and re-landscape parts of it, including a patch of weeds that we planted with wildflower seeds.  Now I know that wildflowers are just another variety of weed, but at least they flower and look a bit more exciting than the common grass.

After spending six hours pulling grass, roots and all, from an 8 by 8 patch of ground, I sprinkled the area with wildflower seeds.  The watering was probably the best part after working in the sun for that long.  After that, all I could do was wait.  Wait for the seeds to start sprouting and hope that I didn’t leave too many grass roots in the ground for them to overtake the patch again.  When I returned about a week later, I found that I had several sprouts of various shapes pushing their way up through the soil and I was beyond thrilled that they had taken root.  I felt like a genius for making it happen when all I really did was mix seeds into the damp ground.  Big whoop.  But I still felt amazing.  I can only guess how this little boy felt when his carrot was served for dinner:

Steve Annis

 

I think this advertisement is extremely clever because it gives emotional connection to all ages- the young gardner, the over looking father, the exasperated mother (when she can’t get her son to come in out of the rain) and the onlooking sister.  We’ve all had some sort of project that provide that range of emotion and it brings back those childhood memories of when something that now seems so small and insignificant, seemed so overpoweringly important.

There’s something about growing your own food that brings great satisfaction to people of every age.  I can see how farmers must feel when they bring in their harvest and know that their hard work is going to feed people far and wide.

For the Foodie :: BBQ Bible

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As the days grow shorter we lose our precious after hours time out in the sunshine and with that, our ability to barbecue without a trusty assistant holding a flashlight.  For those with the right set up, with a nice well ventilated covered area with outdoor lighting to prolong the outdoor grilling season, there are couple months ahead before it will be too cold for parts of the Northern Hemisphere to cook their food outside.

Whether we are heading slowly towards winter or entering the summer season, this video can only make you want to start warming the coals:

Antfood

 

Books have many wonderful features but I believe this one beats them all.  It’s probably the most interactive book that I’ve seen and it doesn’t even sing, light up or have moving images.  It literally creates an event to remember!

The filmmaking is very nice, but I don’t know if there is anything extraordinary about it.  I am going to take a moment to say that I really like the graphics and that the lighting is beautiful.  Food is deceptively harder to light when photographing than one would think.  What really steals the show is the book and trying to figure out as a viewer how the book is going to provide an essential barbecue tool with the next turn of the page.

This video just proves that books can not only share ideas, but be interactive as well.  Who knew that food could interact so well with a volume of pages.

Chef

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Of all the films that I’ve seen this year, this is my favorite so far:

CHEF THE MOVIE

I liked it so much, that I saw it twice!  It’s funny, it’s original and it just makes me happy about life.  Between the colors and the music, it’s a sensory feast- not to mention the amazing looking food.  I’m still looking for a good Cubano since seeing this film.

I think what I like most though is the witty dialogue and the twitter graphics that tie together the spoken word and the cyberspace messages.  It eliminates the awkward cutting back and forth between the actor and the computer screen to give the emotional performance and the tweets simultaneously screen time.  It makes the film flow instead of separating the character from their tweets, reminding us that what we post is a representation of who we are and that our web presence is an ever growing part of how others perceive us.  The film also reflects on how dependent we are on social media to make our businesses thrive in today’s markets.  The film has a wonderful combination of the various elements needed in a good film and it blends them all so seamlessly.

I can’t wait for it to come out on DVD.

Art Meditations :: Cover Art

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I draw to relax but that doesn’t happen very often.  I usually get sucked into watching TV or something just as mind-numbing.  Silly considering I stare at a screen all day at work and usually I’m sick of it by the end of the day.  But its so much easier to turn on a movie instead.

Would I still like drawing if I did it for a living?  I doubt I would have the patience to make that happen and who would want my stuff when there are artists like this out there:

Danny Cooke

Nothing I could ever draw would look this dynamic or detailed, which is one of the reasons why I admire this video so much.  The artist, David A. Smith blows me away with his attention to detail and I love the time-lapse used to show his creative process.

The funny thing is that as soon as I saw this video I thought of John Mayer‘s album cover for “Born and Raised” and after actually looking at the filmmaker’s page a little more closely, realized that the same artist did the cover artwork for both albums.

This video is a lot longer than the one made for The Kings of Leon and I’m not a huge fan of the style used but I think the creative process is fascinating.  It makes me very glad that there are people out there who still use century old methods of creating their work.

DANNY COOKE

 

Feeling daunted to draw something?  I bet you could come up with something pretty incredible yourself.

Art Meditations :: The Great War

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For those living in the US, the Great War is something that we generally skim over in history class- we generally focus on WWII.  For those living in Western Europe, it’s a very different story.  You study WWI for years at a time, at least you do in England, and if you’ve studied it in the last 15 years, you’ve probably gone on field trips to the battlefields.  You’ve stood in the trenches, in crater holes blasted out by bombs and seen the remnant shells stacked up along farmers’ fields- those shells that were never cleared away after the end of the war.  At least that’s my experience of studying the war.  You almost fell guilty for not doing your part even though it happened decades before you were born.

There are reminders of the sacrifices made during that time all over Europe, intertwined with the memories of WWII.  It’s a part of the land and something that you can’t ignore.  There really isn’t anything to compare it with in the US – even Civil War battle grounds aren’t the same.

I found this video a few months ago and in the end, bought the book for my dad as a Father’s Day gift:

ww Norton

 

Most of my studies have come from books, some from old newsreels etc. but this book gives the Battle of the Somme a whole new light.  It makes it into something visual and puts across the magnitude much better than any other source that I’ve seen.  It actually gives the numbers a human element and not just statistics on the page.  This beautiful book is art and fact all combined into one and I love it for that.

I don’t see this book as being about tragedy, although it does encompass that.  I see it as a chance to truly understand something that is beyond our reality and to take in something that is one of the largest world conflicts in history.

Pictures really are worth a thousand words.

Art Meditations :: While You Were Steeping

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How long does it take to steep a cup of tea? It depends on the type that you are brewing, but usually just a couple of minutes. What can you get done while a cup is brewing?

Well, in my case I could probably get a lot done if I put my mind to it. I usually just leave the bag in and begin drinking the tea once it has cooled enough not to burn my mouth. I know, not the way that one is supposed to make a proper cuppa, but I’ve gotten used to drinking it on the stronger side. Mostly out of sheer laziness.

For me, tea is part of every hour of the day. When the weather is cold I tend to drink it from the moment that I get up to the moment that I go to bed. When it’s warm out (like it is now) I drink it iced. I’m trying to make it more ritualistic in that I’m trying to drink it more as a way to take a time-out from work but it’s hard to break the habit.

Now for those who actually brew their tea properly and remove the tea bag/ball/infuser etc. at the appropriate time, here’s a little inspiration on how to use the steeping time:

 

Bigalow Website Team

What’s not to love about this shot little video?  I love the length and that it’s about tea, but more of all I love the camera movements.  Notice how the camera rotates in the opposite direction to the paint brush and other times, it follows closely behind it others?  I love that.  It is completely mesmerizing.  Plus, I love the light shining off of the ink and that there is always movement on the screen even if it is the scene divided into smaller blocks.

I can’t imagine how many times that particular drawing was created that day just to capture all of the different angles and brush motions, but I think it was well worth it.

Cuppa anyone?

Feet Up! :: Dorian Gray

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Part of “putting my feet up” this summer is trying to read a bit more and spend less time in front of my computer.  I sometimes feel like my computer has become an extension of me and would very much like to rectify that and go back to old fashioned entertainment such as reading.  I have a huge list of books that I would like to read and why not knock off a few of those during the long warm days of summer?

So far, I’ve managed to read the following:

And I’m hoping to tackle a few more by the end of the summer.  These long afternoons in the sun are the perfect time to catch up on my reading list while working on my tan.

Of course, I can’t stray too far from the visuals of video and film.  After all, that’s what I do for a living isn’t it?  I found this little beauty a few weeks ago and couldn’t help but share it with you:

Gergely Wootsch

 

It’s been years since I read this book but I remember it fondly mostly because before I read it, I thought I was going to hate it.  I’m not a big fan of this era of literature but was on vacation, had read everything else that I had brought with me and someone happened to have this lying around.  So I read it and I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it and was equally astonished at the themes that it addresses considering the date at which it was written.

I love this little animation because for once the story hasn’t been turned into a corny horror film and actually looks at the social and political stances at the time that the book was written.  It condenses it all into just a few minutes concisely and most importantly, it leaves me wanting more- always a good thing in a book review.