Man’s Best Friend

Raise your hand if you’ve ever read Garth Stein’s, The Art of Racing in the Rain.  If you have, you’ll know that it’s a story told from the point of view of a dog, Enzo – devoted in every way to his humans and often frustrated with his lack of opposable thumbs and too large tongue preventing him from sharing his observations in a succinct and audible fashion.

If you liked that book, you’ll love this little short about a dog named Denali:

FELT SOUL MEDIA

We never had dogs growing up, despite my sister’s ardent pleads and strategies to convince our parents to change their minds.  We had too many allergies and we traveled too much to make it possible.  Somehow you just don’t have the same relationship with your goldfish as you do with a furry canine.

The best part about this video?  The story.  We can all identify with the strength that we get from other’s support and the grief that goes with losing them in one way or another. It’s too bad that dogs have a much shorter life-span than most of their owners because a lot of people would really say that they are their best friend.

Bringing Back the Light

In the midst of a summer full of wildfires, residual smoke and horror stories of parched forests being consumed by hungry flames, it’s sometimes hard to believe that the fire season will eventually come to and end – or at least we are all hoping it will.  Beyond the terrors that these widespread flames bring to homeowners, the idea of losing our forests is what really scares me.

I’ve always taken old growth trees for granted, I mean living in an area where trees stand hundreds of feet tall and have witnessed more local history than we can even imagine, well if trees could talk… right?  What would happen though if the future generations didn’t have monster towers of wood shading them or recycling their carbon dioxide back into oxygen?

I don’ want to even speculate and hopefully logging and wildfires will slow enough and allow new growth to take root. Thanks to people like those in the video below, we may not have to face a treeless reality:

MARK WYATT

My favorite part of this film is the beautiful and sweeping views of the forests and the use of the autumn light.  Autumn is my favorite time of year to film outside – there is a soft and warm quality to it that you don’t get in summer (the sun is too high), winter (the sun is too low) and only sometimes get in Spring.  Usually in the PNW, it’s too cloudy in the Spring to know what kind of light is filtering through.

Although we still have several weeks of Summer left, I can only hope that the fires slow and that our old forests can continue to bare witness to future events – and bask in plenty more Autumn light.

Skate Art

I am by no means a “skater”.  I think I’ve been on a skateboard once in my life and I felt like I was going to fall off and end up with a completely scraped and bruised body.  Yes, I know that it has a similar feel to a surfboard in the way that you steer etc, but there is something about coming in contact with concrete that scares me.  I prefer to go plunging into water even if there are hidden rocks and the possibility of carnivorous predators lurking below.

However I enjoy the artwork.  Not necessarily the graffiti look that is often associated with skating and urban jungles (although I do like some of it), but what I really is the combination of materials and the simplicity of the shapes such as in the work of Geoff McFetridge:

MONSTER CHILDREN

Yes, I enjoy the art but more importantly I like the way that the film was made.  An interview of this kind could be considered rather dry but with the quick camera movements, which admittedly I usually don’t like too much, and the movement around the studio, it actually works.  And on another level, it gives me confidence that there is a future for artists, even with everything moving into a digital culture.

Thank goodness for some things that just work better off the screen sometimes.

I’ve been working on…

There are several difficulties with keeping up with a blog:

  1. There is finding content and the time to post the content.
  2. The perfect timing to share what you’ve been working on yourself and
  3. Actually getting the nerve up to share your recent work, or at least in my case there’s a lot of getting up nerve.

I know, point number three seems completely ridiculous as the reason for all of this is to share my portfolio and to share what inspires me but somehow sharing other people’s work seems to so much safer.  I’ve always been someone that prefers to work behind the scenes, never wanting to draw attention to myself.  I rather like being a kind of ghost in the creative process – have some exciting role, but then when it’s time for recognition I get cold feet.

I’m trying to be better at putting my work out there – otherwise it’s rather useless actually producing it in the first place, right?

So this is what I’ve been up to:

HFOBD Banner emfirno wide

www.humanfaceofbigdatafilm.com

  • Yes, admittedly I’ve been working on The Human Face of Big Data for a while, but the new part is that after several weeks, there is now an official website with the trailer, official screening dates and bios of all the major contributors!  Check it out for details on upcoming screenings – yes, this film could finally be coming to a theater near you in the next few months… This is a  very long awaited release of the film and I hope to announce the official dates soon.
  • You may have also noticed that this site has a slightly different look and format in the last month or so.  I’ve finally had a chance to do the major overhaul that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now.

    What do you think?  Comments? Anything that you think could be better?  I’m all ears.

  • The film, Crazywise, is moving forward in post production!  I’m still doing the odd research, but mostly helping with keeping things running on the post production front and keeping their project manager sane.  There are so many moving parts that it definitely takes a team!  For more information on that film, be sure to check out their Facebook, Twitter and Blog for updates.  The Crazywise team is pretty amazing at keeping their followers up to date on the progress of the film so be sure to check them out – there are some amazing interviews on their blog already and they are always adding more!
  • And last of all, I’ve been working on pitches for several new projects and getting ready to start another promotional film for one of my clients.  However, for now I can’t share the details but I look forward to sharing updates as everything moves forward.

Enough about me today and back to my usual posts later this week.  Happy Tuesday!

Coawabunga – from the air

Something very strange is happening here in the Pacific Northwest.  We’re actually having summer weather and have been for several weeks now.  So much so that several people I’ve talked to are already prepared for Fall weather and the land is definitely ready for some rain – these wild fires are just plain scary. I don’t think that will be happening any time soon so for now I’m trying to enjoy it as much as I can.

As anything in water sounds fabulous right now:

Steven Briand

I love all of the moving arial shots in this video – it almost makes me feel cooler even if I am sitting in 90 ºF weather.

Grilling everything in site

With Summer officially here – and having been here for a while, it seems that grilling every food in site seems to be the thing to do.  For one thing, it keeps the heat out of the kitchen and it means more time outside and soaking up every last summer ray possible.

To get us all into the mood for this weekend, the Grilling Everything Burger:

Claire Thomas

Happy Weekend!

Time Speeding By…

Growing up, I was warned that time would speed up as I got older.  Now that I’ve been out of school for a while and making my way in the world this warning is all too true.  I wish it weren’t the case.  For instance, it’s already the end of June and I have no set plans for the July 4th holiday – mostly because I thought I still had plenty of time to figure out my weekend.  I can’t quite figure out how it snuck up on me so stealthily.

Thinking about this the other day made me think back to my days when I was able to travel frequently for pleasure and the days seemed to stretch on forever.  You might say that the long days had something to do with me sitting on a bus for 19 hours to get to my next destination but I don’t think that was the only thing.

Then I came across this little beauty:

Kenny Laubbacher

Could Jed’s theory be exactly the reason for the time warp that I’m sure I’m stuck in?!

Raincoats still available!

I can hardly believe that Sonja Silver’s raincoat Kickstarter is complete!  If you remember, I made the campaign video and we’ve been fundraising ever since the completion.  This has been the least stressful campaign that I’ve ever worked on – woo hoo for people with an online following and a great campaign team!

In case you were hoping to order a coat or any other items but didn’t get your order in in time, you can still get your name in before they run out.  There are 94 coats still available and Sonja is willing to take fill orders over the phone.  Please contact me if you’re interested.

And in case you haven’t heard about this fabulous coat that I’ve been involved with, check out the video below:

Thank you for everyone’s support and for all of those who have contributed!

Statistics – Motion Graphics Style

It’s been a while since I posted something that inspires me.  I’ve been swept up in a whirlwind of film screenings and getting other projects underway, and thus, had little time to share some of my findings.

So during a break the other day,  I came across this little beauty:

Neil Halloran

Now it may not be the most uplifting of topics but it’s informative, visually interesting and even better, the visuals enhance the message.  Sharing such devastating statistics and making it interesting would have had me puzzling over how I would even begin to tackle this project for all of eternity.  Well probably not, but because I’m tired as it’s the end of the week, it would seem like all of eternity if I attempted it right now.  It certainly wouldn’t turn out as cool.

I have always had an appreciation for good motion graphics but have become even more enamored by the really good stuff since having to do my own for my last project, A Raincoat by Sonja Silver.  I doubt that I’ll be moving towards using motion graphics exclusively in documentary projects in the near future, but I’d sure love to include something like this.

Happy Friday!

A Raincoat for the PNW Woman

Today, I can finally share something that I’ve been working on since the beginning of March!

I’ve been collaborating with Sonja Silver Designs and Chandler O’Leary on their creation of a new raincoat, exclusively designed for fashion conscious women on the go.  My role had little to do with the design of the coat – instead I’ve been working on the Kickstarter video:

EMFIRNO

A contemporary raincoat with a constellation print lining illustrated by Chandler O’Leary. Useful + Beautiful. Made in the USA.

Sonja and Chandler’s Kickstarter campaign runs May 17-June15. Fore more details on this amazing product, please check out the details at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1284565607/a-raincoat-by-sonja-silver-with-chandler-oleary