Compulsive share presents: Things That You Think
If you’re unfamiliar with any of the characters here – check out the links in the lead. If you are, you probably realise how orgasmic is the thought of Ben Folds and Nick Hornby together.
Sadly the only way I can get hold of the album at the minute is via iTunes and I don’t want to do that.
Patience, patience.
A tip for documentary filmmakers
Welcome to CycleFabric
You can read the whole story over at cyclefabric.co.uk. Apparently UK sends 1 million tonnes of textiles to landfills a year – mostly used clothes. Emma salvages them and turns them into comfy, resistant saddles. She also acquires fabrics from apparel designing friends and takes on commissions using fabrics chosen by clients. I’m after getting my Gustav Klimt “Kiss” bag (handles went to hell) made into a saddle that fits my yellow bike.
Emma says, “I’m a geek when it come to saddles totally. You should see me these days, I see people in nice T-shirts and think it would be a compliment to tell them how nice their shirt would be on a saddle.”
Since I’m a newly made bike enthusiast I also guest post over at CycleFabric tumblog – it’s updated with short posts about cool biking stuff, places, pictures, videos and some such.
If you’d like to find out more or order a saddle catch Emma at:
www.cyclefabric.co.uk
Emma (at) cyclefabric.co.uk
#BikingWarsaw
At the age of circa 13 I demanded a bike – as many 13 years olds do. My mum got me this lovely yellow “Piranha”, which was also the bike I wanted. Love affair lasted about a week. Then it stood in my room gathering dust, although still being an object of my adoration. Then I moved out and my room at my folks’ place turned into a storage any way. Then I moved to London and considered buying a bike for the 4 years I was there.
Cut to 2010. In an effort to be a get a bit more fit, avoid public transport and see more of the city I dragged the bike down to a friendly bike shop and got it taken care of (by a rather good looking young gentleman, may I add). I installed a tracking app on my Android G1. And I got sucked in.
I use it for transportation, but if the day goes by without going anywhere I take it on a ride in the evening. This is as close to Hunter S Thompson as you get in Warsaw. Was I living in Aspen, I’d probably buy a rocking motor and drive at 120 km/h out of the town. Living in the center of almost 4 millions strong city I can only comfort myself with the thought that I’m eco friendly.
If you’re a rather stationary geek, like myself, there’s nothing better to get you moving than adding a bit of tech into your biking. Trust me. Endomondo does it all, tracking, times, maps, networking yada yada. And by default your weight is only visible to you (how thoughtful). It’s works on a bunch of different make and models phones. If you go for it search for “Ana Bee” and add me as your friend. Predictably, I’m rather lonely with my passion for techo-workouts.
This came bang on time, since a very talented designer and a friend, Emma, is working on a website for her custom, recycle-savvy biking parts business. We’re working on temp website before hopefully launching an online store. It shall be unveiled soon. Meanwhile expect some biking posts over here and healthy portion of boasting about my sad achievements across social media.
Compulsive share presents: “F*ck you”
Needless to say this took interwebz by storm. The video pleases all hip design blogs out there and the tune is pleasing the rest of us. Always had a soft spot for his voice. Maybe I’m craaaaaaaazyyyy…
Also, if you want to learn a thing or two about getting viral videos out there, take a good look at Cee-lo’s website. Make it good AND make it easy to share.
The idea behind #AnaSellsBooks
Some of the books are great, some are bizarre, some are 30 or 40 years old. None of them are really worth more than between 1 and 10 pounds (budget of the short isn’t huge either, but any day of shooting costs, as we know). The thing is, by buying one of them you’re not only acquiring a book, but also helping getting a film made.
Information is the key here, as well as using tools you will not spend hours getting to know and customizing. What I did for #AnaSellsBooks:
1. A dedicated email – this is easy for me, as you see I have my own domain. Use gmail, if you don’t – you’ll get the benefit of being able to chat instantly with whomever writes to you and uses gmail as well. What you need is an address that people can easily associate with your project, easily remember and most of all – easily pass on to others. No intricate spelling, is advised.
2. A facebook event – because god knows you don’t exist without one. Also, it is handy while spreading information, because people can share easily (my mum knows how to do it). And many did because they liked the idea. You also automatically acquire a kind of mailing list – to get in touch with all interested, when something important happens.
3. A tumblr blog – smooth and easy, and with a social edge. I put up snippets about my favorite books, photos of myself and friends with books and so forth. Any additional info goes up there.
Now with my basis covered, this is what I am going to do next:
- a mobile-friendly website with basic info about the action and most important links (more on this soon, you can use mippin.com to familiarize yourself with the whole thing),
- a simple monochrome, eco-friendly (not much printing needed) poster with basic info (web address, QR code for the mobile site, so mobile users don’t have to write things down) – to put around town in cafes/galleries, accessible online in case some one would like to download it and put it around where they live,
- a simple button for friends who offered to put it on their websites/blogs,
- hand written thank you cards for buyers, also easily fill-able in case a book is bought to be a gift,
- emails to my favorite book-related blogs asking if they like the idea and would hence write about it. This needs to come with – a nice high-res photo and/or graphics, all the useful links and a non-pompous description of the entire thing. Trust me, I’ve been blogging for a while.
- I’m going to stay on top of answering any one who contacts me in regards to this.
This is rather basic, but if you’re not very familiar with these tools, hope this gets you started. And if you’re looking for any more advanced ideas for your project – do get in touch. As long as you’re a filmmaker, it won’t cost you more than a pint of beer..
david wants to fly Q&A
The documentary is about David’s adventures with meeting his long time idol David Lynch and the TM movement that he’s a member of. But – perhaps even more importantly – it’s a great insight into the process of independent film-making, the worries, the joys, the impact on personal life. “David wants to fly” took 5 years to make and several threats of law suits, as well as an occasional hash smoking with Buddhist monks over 1000 meters above sea level. Here’s the trailer.
The file is 14:18 long, mp3. You might hear some not too delicate cut outs – there was a girl translating the Q&A as it went on and I decided to skip it. Audience was laughing often, however some of it is cut out as she was talking over.
Quality might vary as it was recorded at random from a seat at the film theatre audience. I did my best to make it as clear as possible. Also apologies for slight distortion towards the end. I think the story and anecdotes are worth bearing it.
Enjoy. Any feedback – as always – much appreciated.
Gombrowicz II
Gombrowicz hunts me from the depths of 1958 with hideous timeliness. I do realise one tends to seek related meanings if things are praying on their mind and if one seeks long and hard enough one will find. But, but…
Our current discourse of “environment”. Not even nature, “environment” – of humans, because it only matters when it surrounds us. We speak of protecting the environment, because it turned out not to be an bottomless, never ending resource. And as this resource runs out it endangers our way of living. Panic! We call to stop damaging environment, but in order to protect us. The actual pain of other life forms is not even considered in nomenclature.
The indifference is a part of preservation instinct – if we were to feel the pain of every fly or grass with full empathy, we’d all end up safely placed in appropriate mental institutions by the age of 22. However – save the Bengal tiger, so that our kids can see it not only on photographs?
Yes, that’s what I think about. Especially when struck down by a killer migraine and completely helpless.
Audio Tales: “Erasing David” interview
We talked about how the idea for a film about the data base state came about, productions, headaches of independent documentary promotion and who dug in David’s trash. There’s also a word from Ashley Jones, film’s producer. Given a chance I would have asked few more geeky questions, but time was limited and magazine readers have their preferences, which I had to cater to.
As you’ll be able to tell this took place in May, so yes, I took time editing the thing together. As usually life happened and I didn’t have as much time as I would want to, but hopefully I’ll have something to show for it in terms of audio too.
So here goes.It should be soon available for subscription on iTunes and few others. If you’d rather subscribe to a standard RSS feed, here it is.
I can’t promise audio content will show up regularly or even what it will be, but there’s few things in the pipes. It all has to do with content, arts, digital, culture – erm, well, binary life.
Audi quality is so-so, but this is Skype recorded via Audio Hijack Pro.
enjoy.
Deliver us from discourse
I write this as a journalist documenting events, for the record. So that few years from now I will look back at it and know what this whole business was about.
I remember a young (my age, therefore young) producer telling me that most of the money, really, “is in the speaking gigs”. I remember her as a very nice and helpful lady and I can assure you she wasn’t being a jerk. That was just some realities of media production we were discussing after a session at Sheffield Doc/Fest. I loved Doc/Fest as an experience of being surrounded by fellow geeks, avid content creators and story tellers, pretty conscious of fiscal hopelessness of their endeavors. Second day of the festival there was a session discussing whether you can make a living out of making documentaries, the general consensus being that you cannot.
I remember that because recently I’m constantly finding out about more workshops, panels, discussions, classes about how to deal with the digital age, how to make our film seen, how to distribute, how to produce, how to finance. Except no one yet knows exactly how to finance or distribute. The countless panels seem to consist mostly of reinstating that one has to be able to communicate with different modalities of transmedia landscape or some such sh… and I can’t help but wonder - is it not a case of one of these short lived advice industries that breed on general confusion and lure with the perspectives of answers it does not provide? The best that comes of it is few extra bucks for more experienced producers and filmmakers. I’m all for them making money, may I add, so as long as people are willing to pay, so it be.
Just remember, the prices of admissions might sum up to good part of your next projects budget. Especially when you are the DIY filmmaker, trying to get your story told by all means possible, asking all available favors and sleeping in a tent outside SXSW.
If you need reminding that it’s the compelling story that matters – I will happily give it to you for free. Because I’m confident you know that already.