Archive for November, 2005
November 10, 2005 | Filed under: Uncategorized
You can either click on the photo or click here to watch. I beg of you to let me know if you cannot view it.
First off, let me warn you that this little movie isn’t all that little. I had a tremendous amount of difficulty cramming half-an-hour of raw footage into 2.5 minutes. So it’s really more like five minutes. And if it seems like an endless barrage of pictures of mass distruction, that’s because it is–because that’s what’s there. I do have some images from the spankin’ clean (although totally empty) French Quarter, and wanted to include it because of the sharp contrast, but then the darn thing would have been like eight minutes, and that’s really pushing it, so I’ll post it seperately.
A couple of notes to fill in where there’s no narration: those brown markings that run across cars and houses are silt marks from water lines. When you can’t see them, it means that either there was no high flooding at all, or the house was completely submerged. Those first houses shown are in my boyfriend’s neighborhood, and although it’s in the 9th Ward, it’s on the high side of the river and was spared major damage. Driving through the Lower 9th showed us how lucky he really was. I think it’s also important to remind folks (and myself–sometimes I get all caught up in N.O., too) that there are towns along the Gulf that were wiped off the map entirely, and that while New Orleans is getting the lion’s share of the attention, other areas affected by the hurricanes are also in dire need of aid.
The aspect of the trip that bothered me the most is the overall feeling that no one really knows what’s being done or what happens next. That lone local we encountered that was searching for kittens under porches summed it up: “What’s the latest? Do you know what’s going on?”. And he lives there. I have the luxury of going back to my little dry apartment and hoping the media will keep me informed, and this guy lives there and is getting next to zero information. Unfortunately, there is some truth to the rumor that the Lower 9th will be razed.
Another word on the godzilla-like size of this video: it’s about 19MB, which might explain why the kind folks at Ourmedia had trouble uploading it. That’s where my other videos have lived so far without incident, happily rubbing pixels with the other freely hosted media files from around the globe, but the last few days have been a computer-crashing, files-missing, screen-freezing, browser-bunching disaster as far as uploading was concerned. After nearly giving up hope (and even re-editing a little to shave a whopping 4.5 MB off the size, as if THAT would make a difference) I remembered that I have an unused .mac account just lying there waiting for a little upload love. Eureka! Thanks to Becca for all her good advice, Ryanne Hodson & Michael Verdi at freevlog who taught me everything I need to know about compressing movie files (teaching Quicktime IN Quicktime!), and Steve Garfield at feevlog, whose list of web hosting services jogged my memory about the .mac account I had totally forgotten existed.
Also, this and my other video posts are Quicktime files. I’m a mac user from way back in 6th grade, and still don’t get around Windows very well. I’m just getting the hang of it at work and I think that’s Windows 2000. Maybe even ‘95. My deepest apologies to the Windows Media users out there. I have absolutely no idea how to convert into that format, and I’m not even certain that there’s a way for me to do so, but I’m looking into it.
Enough of my yakking.
“I Wish I Was In New Orleans”
Tom Waits
“Small Change”
Asylum Records, 1976
Buy It!
11/27/05 update: This video now lives at blip.tv, and I return to my prior state of possessing a .mac account for virtually no reason whatsoever.
4:32 pm | 15 Comments
November 9, 2005 | Filed under: Uncategorized
No, I’m really not. But neither am I know for being too terribly impatient. I’m a little frustrated because I finally finished editing the footage from my recent stay in New Orleans (see an earlier posting for reasons why I found this task difficult) and now that the video is all nice and compressed, and uploaded to its host site–twice, in fact, but the second time was an accident because I thought the first time around it was interrupted by the cat sitting on the keyboard–but for whatever reason it’s has not been assigned a link yet, and it’s been nearly 19 hours. My other two went up without a hitch immediately, but not this one, I have no idea why and it’s killing me. I just got home from work, it’s 9AM and I have to be back there tonight at 7 so I really need to get some sleep but now I’m obsessed with posting this video. So much for this blog/vlog thing being a healthy form of expression for me: it’s turned me into an obsessive lunatic a good deal sooner than I thought it would, and so damnned early in the morning, too!
I’m going to check one more time to see if it’s there, and if it’s not, I’m going to bed. I’ll be sad, and likely have anxiety dreams about my little video forever lost in the internet ether never to be seen again, but I need my Z’s.
Nope. Good night!
8:08 am | 6 Comments
November 4, 2005 | Filed under: Uncategorized
After we were all dressed, we headed down to the Haunted House for a good scare. We made the attempt last year, but there was a line five people deep all the way around the block, so we were shut out. This year, due to overwhelming demand, they sold tickets in advance and Jenn’s roomate gave her several for her birthday. This was awesome because it guaranteed us a timely entry, but was a bummer because since there were no lines there was no guaranteed Cast of Thousands hanging around in their costumes. Less to film for me. The theme for the house was “Nightmare”, and they were not messing around. I enjoy a nice scary movie as much as the next person (more “Audition” and “Night of the Living Dead“, less “Child’s Play” and “Friday the 13th Part 12″) but live-action, ankle-grabbing, creepfests aren’t really my speed. Each room of the walk-through house contained a different nightmarish scene. Some were basic, like the little girl checking under her bed for monsters only to be dragged under in the end; and others were just…awful. The disturbing blood-soaked man in the corner slapping a 2×4 into his palm saying “Now, you wouldn’t want to do that, no, that would be a bad thing.” over and over and over comes to mind. Also, the teeny, black room they stuffed us into only to shovel dirt onto the low plexiglass ceiling giving us the feeling of what it means to be buried alive was damn unsettling. The whole thing left me pretty shaken, but I followed Jenn and Shannon through a jaunt through a dark maze that was also offered. They thought it would be funny to stay in the maze longer, pretend we were being chased and scare me some more even though they knew full well where the exit was. To Jenn and Shannon I say “Bite Me.”
I learned some things about my camera that evening. a) it does decently outdoors with little light (there’s a light on it someplace, but I haven’t read the manual yet) and b) but not so well indoors with little light. That slo-mo of Jenn at Belly was not artsy flair, but rather an example of what filming in “Super Night Mode” looks like in a dimly lit bar. I kinda like it!
Click on the photo to watch… or here, if you prefer.
“Bela Lugosi’s Dead”
Bauhaus
“Press The Eject and Give Me The Tape”
Beggar’s Banquet, 1982
Buy It!
4:08 pm | 8 Comments
November 1, 2005 | Filed under: Uncategorized
Every year my friend Jenn and I go out on Halloween, and every year it’s the same thing. We start getting excited around August, get really twitchy around Labor Day and downright squirrely by mid-October. But are we ever ready by sunset on the 31st? Do we ever really have a concrete plan? Not exactly, no. But it doesn’t matter. We spend so much time getting ready that we don’t get even leave her apartment until past nine, and now that we’re over 24 we’re pretty much ready to turn in by two-thirty. Putting on make-up and watching scary movies is half the fun, anyhow! Except this year for some reason we were watching an infomercial about avoiding blood clots.
Blood clots…that’s Halloweenish, right? Anyway, at a certain point in the evening, I think my muse was getting irritated with me.
For some Quicktime fun click on the picture (or here) to watch hardcore (and slightly tipsy) trick-or-treaters prepare!
“Funtime” by D. Bowie & I.Pop
Performed by Iggy Pop
“The Idiot”
Virgin Records, 1977
Buy It!
4:40 pm | 4 Comments
