When the U.S. Open came down to an 18-hole playoff between Rocco Mediate and Tiger Woods, MobLogic had no choice but to cover the story.
Roman Bodnar and Nick Paley whipped this out today at the studio:
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While Luci put together multiple festival submission packages, I made this:
After viewing the video, you'll see a series of suggested videos load into the bottom of the player. Hold your cursor over them to see their titles. Find the video titled "Why every girl should buy their boyfriend Wii fit". Click it. It used to be when you did this, you'd be transported to the YouTube page of that video, but now you stay on the page that you want to be on and watch other videos. Really cool! Someone's understanding something about embeddable distribution. That's Amanda Elend, MobLogic blogger and Wallstrip writer with hip-swingin' editor, Sean Smith. It was a light-hearted video response to this video:
Here's a couple videos we did over the past few days to test the viral waters. Enjoy!
Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones are selling videos of themselves "chatting" about their sexual encounters with Bill Clinton. Huh? What else could this kind of wierdness need? A commercial, of course.
Buy them all at $1.99 per download at their website: www.genniferandpaula.com
I cut this one today in response to E.D. Hill, host of the freshly canceled Fox News show, America’s Pulse, connecting presidential candidate, Barack Obama’s hand gesture to terrorism.
Of course, the embed code is disabled, but click here to see the video
The mind-blowing thing isn't the trick, it's the viewers ability to choose the path of their viewing experience.
The possibilities are endless. I can't wait put them to use at MobLogic and Wallstrip.
MobLogic took a crew down to Georgia to get a first-hand look at the Death Penalty and the execution of Samuel David Crow.
We've posted five shows so far, three of those were today(!) and we'll continue to post multiple shows daily through the week! They've sparked a great conversation on our site. I encourage everyone to come be a part of a very important issue and a landmark event in web video.
Here they are:
Execution Day: What Would You Do?
Lindsay Vlogging to the Airport
Georgia Covers the Death Penalty?
For or Against in Georgia?
and an awesome inerview with the Southern Center for Human Rights President and Lead Counsel, Stephen Bright
This is an awesome piece the regional network, SNN was running through the weekend of our screenings:
Here's an inciteful podcast from Noralil Ryan Fores who interviewed us for her excellent site ShortEnd Magazine: thoughts on independent film. To listen to the interview please click here: shortendmagazine.com/content/view/536/71
or find ShortEnd Magazine on iTunes.
From the Good Hard Working People blog:
She asked some really great questions, not only about All God's Children and our process, but also about other projects and our thoughts on documentaries and changes in that market in general.
We talk rather candidly about some of the obstacles and frustrations in making this film. It makes it sound a bit worse than the experience really was. At first I wasn't sure if it's such a good idea to talk about the struggles, because it may make us or our film look bad. But then I think that it's important to be honest with other makers and the audience: it's not all just fun or easy and we all go through difficult times with our projects. It's probably one of the bigger frustrations when you think to everyone else it's a piece of cake and you may be the only one struggling.
When talking about how "ill-prepared" we were or how difficult it was to conduct the interviews with the abuse survivors because of how emotional it would be for us, I missed to emphasize that a lot of the difficulty came from realizing that this was causing pain to the interviewees and that we were lacking the psychological training to know if we were handling this and their stories well.
Lindsay makes journalism personal. There's a great conversation happening on the comment board at MobLogic. After you watch the show, read Adam Elend's, one of ML's executive producers, blog post about the episode.
I got my hands real dirty on the edit for this one and I'm very proud. We sent 4 cameras out on Wednesday that shot about 7 hours total The editors had selects picked by late Thursday morning. Roman, Adam and I pulled a 24 hour shift to get all the best B-roll into the cut before posting the show. I hope you enjoy it. There's lots of love in this one.
The follow-up episode is sure to spark a heated conversation about the boundaries of journalism. It'll run Sunday and Monday, so watch the show and join the conversation at www.moblogic.tv
Our first interview on MobLogic and it's with the superstar blog aggregator and founder of the Huffington Post (the blog aggregator I'm referring to)!
Sean Smith's animation talents really shine in our first animated episode of MobLogic. Our newest editor, Nick Paley, assisted.
We found out today that this episode of Wallstrip that I produced and directed is nominated for a Webby! I blogged about this twice when we first posted it, because I was so very proud.
This was truly a collaborative effort. I'm sure I'll forget someone, but I'll try to remember how it all went down. The idea for a "We Didn't Start the Fire" parody came from the Executive Producer, Adam Elend, then his sister, Amanda, wrote the lyrics using only stock ticker symbols (deserving of an award in itself) and her husband, Jason, scored the music. Then I came up with the news anchor idea inspired by the brilliant R.E.M. "Bad Day" video, Lindsay and I decided what props would be best, Katie Ainslie bought them and wrote the cue cards (you can see her playing the make-up artist in the time lapse segments as well as the then newly hired, Clark Caldwell as the stagehand). Clark also served as our gaffer, confetti consultant and all-around, do everything guy. Terrence Elenteny, our badass, uber editor shot the scenic New York footage for time lapse, resident senior shooter/editor extraordinaire, Appolos Laurient ran camera and last but not least, the talented and freakishly proud K.U. graduate, Sean Smith, did all the editing, motion graphics and special effects. Go Team!
It's among five other videos in the "Best Editing" category for online video. Not to sound cocky, but after sizing up the competition, I think we have a very strong chance of taking it home. Just to make sure we go home with something, we would love for you to vote for the audience award. Once there, go to "Online Film and Video" and then to "Best Editing." Thanks in advance! Unfortunately, you'll have to register, but I'm sure it's to control the number of votes by any one individual.
I was trying to get as many things going on in the frame as possible. Let your eyes roam around and watch it again and again. I guarantee you'll see something different every time. Enjoy!
Two of our other entries received "honoree status." They are "Cal-Maine" for "Best Use of Animation/Motion Graphics" and "U.S. Dollar" for "News and Politics: Individual Episode". They are posted below respectively. U.S. Dollar rings even more true today.
At last the mystery is revealed:
That explains this classic video from Black20:
Happy Easter Everybunny!
It's the Iraq war's 5th year "anniversary" today (March 19). Check out today's MobLogic show, "5 Years in Iraq."
Me, Jeff Marks and Adam Elend hold Lindsay Campbell and we all scream. All we needed was the fourth producer, Clark Caldwell, to complete our MobLogic crew, but he had returned to New York earlier that day.
Karina Longworth and myself. I know the photographer took a better pic, but this is what I could find.
This year's SXSW fest is going to be a busy one for me. I'll be wearing several hats throughout the week.
First, we'll be launching MobLogic.TV on March 7th. I'll be producing a show on Friday in and around SXSW to air on Monday. We'll overnight it and have the guys in New York cut it to air on Monday. HERE'S OUR FACEBOOK PAGE.
I've been instrumental in organizing the party for Sunday. Our decision to have ours at 3:00 has proven to be a good one. There seems to be 5 other parties happening that day, but they're all starting at 6:00 or later. We'll be draining our last margarita by then.
Secondly, I've written about the Exquisite Corpse Filmmaking Project I'm a part of and on Tuesday, I'll be in front of an unknown amount of people talking about my process of making my 4-minute contribution. I shot my part 4 weeks ago and handed off my minute to Scott Colthorp a week later. VIEW MY LAST MINUTE HERE! I have to say, I'm really proud of my piece. I can't talk about it too much yet, because other filmmakers aren't allowed to know. Shhhh!
Thirdly, I'll be going down to Austin this year to promote "All God's Children". We received great news last Monday night: our film was accepted to the 2008 Sarasota Film Festival and will be screened twice between the 5 - 8th of April! We are so excited by this news. It will be our official World Premiere and we can think of no other festival that would be better than Sarasota. I hope to meet some people who are also planning on being in Florida in April that will come support our film.
We have lots of family and friends in and around Florida who are planning to attend. There is also a sizable C&MA community there as well. It should be a full screening with a lively Q&A afterwards.
The festival makes its formal announcement very soon. It'll get its own post after that. (and I'm sure plenty more surrounding the experience). This is the beginning of yet another leg of a long trek with this film. One we've been looking forward to for quite some time now.
Somewhere between all that I had a birthday. It was a wonderfully relaxed couple of days with friends, food and shopping.
Here's the first video I've produced for Mob Logic. Let the fun begin! The show launches March 7th. If you're in Austin next week come by our party on Sunday. Details to follow soon.
One of my favorite political online shows, "Political Lunch" showed me some love last week by listing the mash-up videos as their #1 story. I sent him a link to the videos through FaceBook. I love when the love goes around. Almost makes me believe in Valentine's Day again. Not really. Here's the show. Watch to the end:
Here's the URL for the YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/YouChooseCandidates
Our soon to be launched show has been discovered by world leaders... and they're not happy.
The empty messaged and overly emotive, Barack Obama video, "Yes.We.Can" by the "can you believe they take themselves seriously" Black Eyed Peas' Will.I.Am has been poignantly spoofed:
Here's the "original":
Apparently, the band is ripe for parody:
YES!!!
This was a fun one to shoot, but a challenge to edit.
Grab any of our many widgets http://www.wallstrip.com/subscribe-share/
The latest candidate mash-up from YouChooseCandidates:
If not the first, one of the first, online videos of his speech. Again from YouChooseCandidates:
and then the remixed remix:
Check out this new channel on YouTube called YouChooseCandidates. Here's the first video:
I'm no fan of Ron Paul, but I love this video. I highly encourage you to rate it high, make it a favorite and if you have a YouTube account, subscribe. There will be more coming.
Check them out on Facebook .
The first of hopefully many more projects to come out from under our studio roof. Sign up and receive updates: www.moblogic.tv
Our friends Clark Caldwell and Miles Kahn produced a video in the ECNY Awards this year. It's from the hilarious mind of Dave Hill. Check it out and VOTE for them. It's in the Best Short Comedic Film category with the title, "Little Michael Jackson and Me".
By following Dave Hill's links, I ran into this masterpiece of mash-up. WOW!
What I wouldn't give to have a chance to take a shot at ole "trickle down".
I first saw the Hilary video on The Peeled Apple blog, where Amanda Elend gives a great feminist take on Hilary's "moment of weekness."
Before I watched the video, I thought this was a contrived move to gracefully coast into the VP seat, but after watching it, I felt she really showed a human side. A side that no man could show without being considered weak and feminine; ultimately blowing his chances of winning. She may have blown her chances as well or done exacly the opposite. Only time will tell. Although I still hold her vote for the war against her, this cast her and the Presidential role in a different light. What a concept: to have a President that actually displays human emotions. Of course, the skeptic in me can't escape the thought that this too may have been a PR move. Judge for yourself:
It's striking how little has changed.
and now for something completely different:
It's been quite a great week at Wallstrip. Nearly every show has had amazing responses, comments, views and online coverage.
Our Facebook show made Michael Arrington's blog, TechCrunch. FB is one the blog's favorite topics to write about and with nearly 700k viewers daily, I was happy to be the daily pick. Silicon Alley Insider gave us some love too.
This was very difficult to direct, because we never had 2 actors in the same space except for the vampire gag. Green screen is so much fun!
And then there's yesterday's show. I'll just say I am very proud of this piece as well as the team that made it possible and now I'll let it speak for itself.
I have to give a big shout out to New TeeVee for doing THIS. Please go there and vote for us. The Huffington Post included us today as well.
We got in a little trouble with the lawyers with this one, but the short disclaimer up front cleared all that up. John Pieza turns in a stellar solo performance in another smart John Behlmann script.
Here John portrays his recurring character, Leslie the Vampire for our show on Abaxis, a blood testing company.
Look closely. I'm rockin' out with the best of them. Our Lower East Side neighbor, Pianos (as well as a slew of other bars across New York) host a weekly Guitar Hero "party." This was fun... and a little weird.
If you listen closely, we have three of my favorite bands playing in the background. That'd be (in order of appearance) White Stripes, Bloc Party and the Beastie Boys. This was another one that we all got involved with. You'll see Adam Elend, our Exec Producer, myself, Terrence (as Val Kilmer doing Jim Morrison doing Jose Cuervo) and of course, Lindsay. Does it make anyone else hang their head in sadness that we ran into "brokers" and "traders" at the venue? Sigh.
Guitar Hero, like most games these days, is all about finding the "sweet spot" of the game's responsiveness to succeed. Honestly, it did nothing for me. I think I might be in the minority with this one. Judge for yourself:
Karina Longworth, author of the Spout blog and New TeeVee's, feature series, "Karina's Capsule", had this great analysis of the "Speechless" videos being hosted on Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood blog over the Thanksgiving weekend. "[...] Speechless, a series of short videos starring A-list talent that was produced and conceived by B-list talent and designed to promote United Hollywood’s position by dramatizing the impact of the writers’ strike on the art form."
The "Speechless" videos achieve many things on many levels and are definitely worth a quick look. The series has an exclusive deal with Deadline Hollywood, so I couldn't embed the videos. Instead, I decided to do my part of the blog chain and provide links to all them below:
#6: David Schwimmer and Kate Beckinsale
#8: Bill Macy/Felicity Huffman
From The Daily Show:
From The Office:
Somehow amongst all the fury of Luci getting a rough cut of her film together and her heading to Germany whilst I crank on my 5th week of 10 - 12 hour days, we were able to team up to produce a special fall episode of ReelerTV.
Check it out. The Reeler feels fall in New York. Tamara Jenkins, director of The Savages talks about her bulletproof cast and Karen Wilson reviews Margot at the Wedding and Redacted.
Showing all the signs of relaxation, Luci sent a pic from Sylt, a beach in the North of Germany. Chilly, but beautiful.
I directed this Wallstrip homage to a favorite SNL skit, "Bill Swerski's Superfans." This was green screen madness at it's best. Oh yeah, and beer, beer, beer. Is it obvious I'm having a blast?
From left to right, there's Jason Hall, Roman Bodnar (our post-production supervisor), John Behlmann (who also wrote this episode) and Sean Tice our Web Producer on the far right.