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:
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!
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:
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.
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:
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.
It’s that time of year again. It’s time for kids to head back to school, the weather is cooling off and it’s time to bring in the food harvest. How did that happen? I’m not sure where this summer has gone, but it’s practically gone. Yikes!
A year ago, I went with a food theme for the month of September, and once again, I’m returning to that theme- I suppose my last post should have been a heads up. I mean, who can resist food? It’s beautiful, something that we all need to survive and it’s something that everyone enjoys on some level. For me, it’s one of my favorite ways to explore new culture. Food speaks volumes about a culture. It’s also a way that I like to unwind after a long day in front of my computer because it uses all of my senses and challenges my creative muscles that I don’t always get to exercise depending on what part of a project I’m working on.
Now several months ago I mentioned that I had been working with a company called ChefSteps. I loved working with them because not only are the people amazing, but they combine my two passions- film and food:
This isn’t the piece that I worked on while working there, but I hope that I will be able to share that with you soon.
Food is actually how I got into reading blogs in the first place. I was looking for a cupcake recipe for my friend’s birthday and came across Hummingbird on High. It was a complete fluke that I found it and now I look forward to Michelle’s posts each week, not to mention updates on several other blogs.
If you have any interest in food blogs, I would recommend the following:
Food52: I use this as an online reference for basic recipes that I would like to find original twists on and just good ole’ trusty favorites that I don’t already have in my collection.
Two Red Bowls: I love this blog for the original twists on recipes.
The First Mess: I love the photography on this blog- even if I’m not vegan.
Adventures in Cooking: I can always find recipes that I would never have thought of trying myself.
So now that I’ve shared my fairly new love for food blogs, I’m signing off for today. Stay tuned for a slew of food related films.
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.
Back in July, The Breach had it’s world premier at the Galway Film Fleadh, Ireland. Now if you remember, I’ve been working on various aspects of this film for several years and I’m excited to finally share the official trailer:
I’m also excited to share that the film has already won an award and we have many screenings yet to come:
This project has been an on going for me and it’s hard to believe that it’s finally ready for people to see. I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunities that the director, Mark Titus gave me throughout the process. I’ve learned a lot and I’m so proud of the team of people that have made this project what it is. Congratulations everyone!
More screenings coming in the future – schedules will be posted here and at www.thebreachfilm.com.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
As much as I’m loving this unusually warm summer for the Pacific Northwest, I have one complaint: The heat makes me lethargic. It makes it kind of hard to get things done when I just want to lay on the beach somewhere or glide around on a paddle board. However, that isn’t something that I can do all the time right now.
The high temperatures also make my thoughts wonder- it probably has something to do with the fact that the sun is shining and it always grabs my attention when I’m near a window. I find it kind of meditative, something that drawing also does for me. I don’t do it all that often but it makes me relax – something I associate with summer and warm weather. I would never say that I’m any good at drawing or that what I produce is even worth keeping but I like how it makes me forget whatever is going on in my life.
I’m always in awe of those who produce art for a living- I’ve only featured artists multiple times on this blog, but for this month I’m just talking about artists that draw for a living. I’m always fascinated by their way of conveying their ideas and thoughts or even their
Until next week though, I leave you with a short video that makes me relax and imagine that I’m somewhere else. It makes me feel like its summer no matter what the weather outside. And as my summer travels are very limited this year, this gives me just a couple minutes of escape. Enjoy!
emfirno 