Went to see my friends the Delta Spirit play with the Walkmen last night, and did some filming for my Documentary. I ussually don’t even film the performances anymore, it ussually more about the venue, and the people, and checking in on whats new with everybody’s life. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them, because they were on tour for a while.

I’m too lazy to edit, the footage because I’ve been editing all day, but here are my selects, and you could image what it’d look like if I had energy to edit.

Heres a nice picture that ryan roco took

So I’m a huge Obama Supporter, and have been working on some grass root campaigns. One of which is making Obama LA shirts.

I wore one of the shirts to the show last night, and got lots of compliments, and spurred lots of interesting conversations.

I’ve always had a deep appreciation for music, growing up in the bubble of Orange County, music was what saved my life, and allowed me to leave even if it was just in my thoughts. I’ve played music for a while now, and because of it, I have lots of really talented musician friends. I gave up my dreams of being a Rock star long ago, but get to live the life vicariously through my friends. When I was first leaning about film in school, I would practice shooting all my friends bands. At the time I didn’t know why I was doing it, but I started telling their story. I found the subjects as interesting if not more interesting than the music. There was a few other things that clicked in my brain, but soon became clear that I wanted to make Documentary films. So I have continued shooting my friends bands, keeping tabs on their journeys, and will piece it all together when I’m ready. I wanted to have a concept for the film, that was bigger than just the music, or just one band, and I’m trying to show how many of these bands have been getting their inspiration form the 60’s, but more important than the sound, are the ideas. I like to believe the idea that social revolution is still possible, and maybe I’m projecting my goals onto the bands, but I know from talking to my friends that they feel the same way. Music is a powerful platform, especially for the youth, and I’m excited to see whhat these guys do with it. I’m going to try and edit some excerpts now that I have this Blog as an outlet to show them.

Thanks for reading my thoughts this morning

I included this little video as a reward.

It’s super raw, the “Brotherhood” were improving some blues covers

Still working on H-Factor Trailer, been working from my home office, so every now and then I need to take little breaks and touch base with the rest of the world via the Internet.

Last Night I worked on one of my side projects, Hacienda Prints. We started making our own screens in our apartment in Echo Park, and started giving shirts to our friends.

We make our own designs, which has its influxes of what we can all agree on as being good designs, but having a few different designers allows for diverse styles. My style tends to lean toward more boutique stlye with the sloppy hand made-ness being part of what makes it special. Darren likes the Skate/Pop culture of T-shirts, Max likes Music/Band style Shirts, and Jared likes the Cult/Niche hipster style of shirts.
My First design Virgin Mary

Sex Sells

My First attempt at making some marketing materials

We then got some opportunities to do some live screen printing at events. People are fascinated by the process, and we’ve been marketing ourselves around this idea. In LA people throw parties all the time for all sorts of reasons, and having a hired photographer is pretty much standard these days, and now instead of just giving away shirts to promote your event, you have the shirts being printed live at the event.
Last Night we did an Event at the Hammer Museum called Paper Trails, the idea being to help get UCLA students more involved with the Museum. I took some time myself to walk around and check out the exhibits. They also had some live painting as part of the event and met a cool artist Max Neutra.

I like events like this where I get to interact with people meet other artists, I like inspiring, and acting as a role model for the college students, that want to pursue a careers in the arts.

I got some Photos that I worked on Published this month in Filter Magazine.

We actually got the cover of the Filter Mini that they pass out for free all over the Country

So I was thinking that this would be a cool job, a Photo-Journalist for Space.

I’ve been working on a Documentary about Happiness for about a year now with Lisa Kamen. I started out as a camera operator, and since then my responsibilities have expanded to every aspect of production. We’ve shot over 150 hours of footage, and have traveled all over. It has been a rewarding project as the subject matter is something that pertains to everyone, and I’ve got to interview and meet some truly amazing people. We have tried to sample as many different people from as many walks of life as possible, and have focused on combining the Spiritual and the Scientific definitions of Happiness.

For the last week, I started roughing out this version of the trailer, where I was aiming to really show Lisa and Kayla’s adventure, and introduce them as characters that will take us on the journey and discovery of happiness.

Upon reviewing this version with Lisa and Rachel, we decided that it was a bit flat, and that we needed to add a little more tension. Show the difficulties in trying to get a 10 year to cooperate, or the struggle most people have with trying to be happy. So this is my task for this week, to build some tension and excitement for this film.

Well I’m starting this Blog as part of my new website, which has been a long time coming. I appreciate the power of the Internet, and want to somehow try and stay on the cutting edge of what’s possible. At this point in my career I’ve acquired enough production experience to tell the stories I want to. I’ve chosen to focus on documentaries as I feel that is the best medium for me to express my ideas. I don’t like boxing myself, and try to apply my creativity to everything I do. I’m still shooting photos, started a new project with my friend Ryan Roco, called Purple Ninja Photography as way to try and market some of our photos towards magazines.

I really enjoy conceptualizing what I think would be brilliant art, fashion, installation, music, whatever… I’m trying to create a couple installations for a gallery my friends run in Berlin called the Spielraum. They’ve already offered to show my work there, when I was there two years ago. I was lucky enough to be there to help set up for the opening, and tape some of the opening party. I had started to make an instructional video about how to pick up after your dog after it shits to post as an installation in the window. Anyone that spent some time in the Kruetzberg in Berlin knows why they need this. I recently created an installation of the beach with waves, and the freeway with cars, and drawing comparisons between their meditative qualities. My idea is to have the waves shown with the freeway audio on one wall, and on another wall across would be the freeway with the sounds of the ocean. I edited one short video that had both videos in it, so you can get a sense of what I’m talking about.

I also recently started creating a video wallpaper to be projected behind my friends The Voxhaul Broadcast, while they play their shows. Still deciding on the concept as a whole, but have started with a study of birds flying in large groups. I love the way they form a shape, and how this shape moves and evolves, it has an organic quality that would be impossible to re-create.I’ve recently been doing some experimenting with my friends camera the HVX-200, which allows we to shoot in 720p. What I’m most interested in is the ability it has to shoot in multiple frame rates, that I then can manipulate in Final Cut to slow down, or speed up. I did some test with my friends, smoking cigarettes, and by slowing down the footage shot at 60 frames to 24, gave me a clean slow motion, that made simple acts seem so much more dynamic.