Image Makers

With the go ahead for the amateur film festival affirmed two weeks ago by Bob and the rest of the team at Studio620 I have been moving forward in refining and the marketing this event. The official name of the event is now Image Makers Film Festival. With work, a full load at school and a truckload of personal responsibilities, time has been at a premium and I am always amazed at the end of the day that accomplishments have been made.
To this point, a press release has gone out to all print media and local talk radio shows. My next step was marketing a time consuming enterprise as it entailed calling all possible venues that might have image-makers within their domain. The responses that I have received have been overwhelmingly favorable especially from the media departments at universities from Orlando to Sarasota. I send each contact a flyer/poster, which was artistically done by Coralettte from the studio along with instructions and details of the film feast. I have also placed flyer/ posters in local business through out the city and still need to do so in Tampa, Sarasota, and Bradenton. Hopefully, and very hopefully with these efforts we will have a good amount of creative work to be shown at the festival which has been slated for May 14th at the studio.
I am open to any constructive input from you’ all in marketing direction or any other input directed towards putting this event in front of potential image-makers.
On the social scene, my seventeen year old son who is diligently refining his accomplishments on guitar turned me on to the following bands that you may know ‘Porcupine Tree” They are really good, innovative and fine musicians, they have been out awhile, and I do not know how they got past me. The other band is from Israel called ‘Infected Mushroom’ again really good musicians. Both of these groups can be checked out via U-Tube.

Call it participatory journalism or journalism from the edges. Simply put, it refers to individuals playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, sorting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information—a task once reserved almost exclusively to the news media. “Blogs are in some ways a new form of journalism, open to anyone who can establish and maintain a Web site, and they have exploded in the past year,” it is journalism of a different sort, one not tightly confined by the profession’s traditions and values. Bloggers value informal conversation, egalitarianism, subjective points of view, and colorful writing over profits, central control, objectivity and filtered prose. Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University who has consulted on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies, sees the difference between traditional media and blogging communities this way: “The order of things in broadcast is ‘filter, and then publish.’ The order in communities is ‘publish, and then filter.’ If you go to a dinner party, you don’t submit your potential comments to the hosts, so that they can tell you which ones are good enough to air before the group, but this is how broadcast works every day. Writers submit their stories in advance, to be edited or rejected before the public ever sees them. Participants in a community, by contrast, say what they have to say, and the good is sorted from the mediocre after the fact.”
Shirky, also suggests that mainstream media fail to understand that despite a participant’s lack of skill or journalistic training, the Internet itself acts as an editing mechanism, with the difference that “editorial judgment is applied at the edges … after the fact, not in advance,”. Seen in this light, it has been suggested that bloggers should not be considered in isolation but as part of an emerging new media ecosystem— a network of ideas. No one should expect a complete, unvarnished encapsulation of a story or idea at any one blogging site. In such a community, bloggers discuss, dissect, and extend the stories created by mainstream media. These
communities also produce participatory journalism, grassroots reporting, annotative reporting, commentary and fact-checking, which the mainstream media feed upon, developing them as
a pool of tips, sources and story ideas. The relationship is symbiotic.

The Life and Times of Sam Cooke and his Songs

I worked the door as a greeter on Thursday at studio 620, which was the opining of the “life and times of Sam Cooke.” The show was enjoyable but was loosely done and was not very professional. The talent that surrounded the leading character was very amateur. The leading personality who sang the Sam Cooke songs had a decent voice and lots of on stage personality, as he was able to arouse the audience in participating in the sing along of most of the tunes. With this said the amateur and simple ness of the production was enjoyable for the reasons I just stated. Their was a simple joy in watching and listening to the audience chime in to each song and knowing all the words, and then they got up to dance to ‘twisting the night away’. In all the show was well received by the audience as they piled out of theater with smiles on their faces.
As I left the theater and walking to my car, I was struck by the acceptance of the audiences approval of this armature production, what was it that allowed these folks to go beyond and become involved in the show. Was it the leading character and his charismatic performance? Was it the songs, which were so recognizable to the audience? On the other hand, was it the period of time that these tunes personified? I believe it was a combination of all, the performance was good, the songs, and there words were better and the times the audience connected to was a time of innocence and simple pleasures. These were personified in the words of songs like ‘You send me’ and ‘Cupid’ portrayed as most songs of the period the turmoil and joys of falling in love which seemed to encompass ones entire day. The simplicity of boy meets girl and vise versa was the overriding persona of the time and produced in the following years as data suggests via US census a truckload of babies. ‘A change is goanna come’, and ‘chain gang’ were encompassed within the racial unrest of the country while love was all around in a ‘wonderful world.’ A slight dichotomy in reality but not for the times, as this racial unrest, and love produced the 60’s were love and racial issues were not so simple and involved deeper interaction with deeper thought. When reviewing the lyrics of some of the Sam Cooke songs and then just moving ahead by five years the contrast is radical “At first I thought it was infatuation But woo, it's lasted so long Now I find myself wanting To marry you and take you home Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” ‘You send me’(S.Cooke) or "don't know much about algebra. Don’t know what a slide ruler is for. But I do know that I Love you and I know that if you loved me too. What a wonderful world this would be.” ‘Wonderful World’ (S.Cooke) Then moving forward to a Pink Floyd tune ‘young lust’“I am just a new boy, Stranger in this town. Where are all the good times? Who's gonna show this stranger around? Ooooo I need a dirty woman. Ooooo I need a dirty girl. Will some woman in this desert land, Make me feel like a real man? Take this rock and roll refugee. Ooo Babe, set me free.” Or again Pink Floyd’s The Wall We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teacher, leave those kids alone. Hey, Teacher,
leave those kids alone! All in all it's just another brick in the wall. When we look at Sam cooke’s racial statement with ‘A change is gonna come’ “I go to the movie and I go downtown Somebody keep telling me don’t hang around It’s been a long, a long time coming But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will Then I go to my brother. And I say brother help me please But he winds up knocking me Back down on my knees Ohhhhhh…..” This tune has been recently redone by Seal, It was nice to hear it again, and done well. When we move ahead to the sixties, we can see how differently, the genre of a racial song differs by James Brown in his ‘say it loud’ “Look a'here, some people say we got a lot of malice Some say it's a lotta nerve I say we won't quit moving Til we get what we deserve We've been buked and we've been scourned We've been treated bad, talked about As just as sure as you're born But just as sure as it take Two eyes to make a pair, huh Brother, we can't quit until we get our share Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud, one more time Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud, huh.
Yes, Things changed from those simple innocent lyrics and so did our social system and that was simply the response by the audience at studio 620. They reverted to that simplicity of innocence and lost their inhibitions through the tunes of Sam Cooke it was nice to see the audience freely sing along and get up and dance the twist in the isles. These people left their realities of everyday life at the door and their intellectual insights that we all have now of our social and political system. They had memories of a different life when all that mattered was falling in love and what a wonderful world it will be. I know we all have memories of a time when life was simple in our lives when all we had on minds was where, when, and how we were going to have fun each day, and with whom. These where the memories that the audience returned to as they were not being entertained they were reflecting and interacting with songs that produced falling in love again without a thousand words.

....And life goes on

As of today, I am still trying to get a clarification on proceeding with a project for this course. The project is the first St Petersburg annual amateur film festival. The two formats will be education films that could be used as working tools in classroom instruction from K1 through higher education the second format will be of an open theme from animation to any form of artistic film endeavor. I will know if this is a go-ahead project and if so I could use some support in publicity writing and venues.
Above all this, I received a call from a long time dear friend of mine who has been going through a child visitation hearing for the past five years with his ex-wife only to find out through DNA testing that it is not his child. Over many days, and many hours on the phone going from pain, and anger to frustration, and remorse to ultimately realizing that he has been the father over these past 12 years, and no matter this is and will always be his son. I must say I was lost for words of wisdom in my consoling presence, as I could not put into words the emotional trauma that was being experienced, so I am thankful my friend was able to resolve it on his own by using me as his sounding board.
On an up note I attended the first annual City of Writers function at Studio 620 last week, and was overwhelmed with the talent that I was subjected to, it was truly an enlightening experience and one that I look forward to involving myself with in the future.
So long for now… until we meet again...

Studio@620 Le Salon de Dance

Le Salon de Dance
Studio@620


This past Saturday I had the opportunity to visit and offer my volunteer service to Studio 620. The venue for the evening was Le Salon De Dance featuring Jennifer Archibald a dancer from New York City. Her one-person performance montage was a mixture of Hip Hop, Jazz and classical performance art. Miss Archibald’s recital was an extremely phyisacal and expressional performance in which she used a pre-recorded sound track of herself interviewed. The topics ranged from her art to her political stance on Hip-hop, race and war, while, she expressional moved on stage, and then punctuated, by a music sound track where she would break into dance re-emphasizing her subject’s stance. Her stage performance was broken into three acts with two videos slotted between the acts. The videos maintained the same theme as the live performance and were a collaboration of a director, choreographer, and Miss Archibald. The evening ended with a Q&A with the audience and Miss Archibald and was followed by a theater party, which I did not attend. In all I found the performance, studio, and patrons a pleasing and stimulating experience and would recommend for anyone who wanted to experience performance out side of the box.

Anna Deavere Smith - Letters to a young artist

Anna Deavere Smith
Letters to a young artist


From the first page to the last I found Letters to a young artist impelling, insightful and motivational, not only for the inspiring artist, as it offered clear insight into a way of proceeding through life with an emphasis of paying attention to all that is around you and your assimilation and processing of it “ wide-awakeness”. The book, which is set up as most self-help and spiritual books are, allows the reader to access a character insight by definition from its contents, this is helpful for quick access to ones particular need. Her innovative method of producing a fictional young artist and her mentoring insights through letter was a process I found uniquely interesting. Miss Smith perception of “the man” a street verbiage depicting the positive or negative link in ones direction. I found this insight pertinent in fine-tuning ones awareness, and communication skills for their will always be the man who comes in many forms. He is the cop, the judge, the dope dealer, the director, the coach, the boss at work and the professor at school they are all instrumental in your movement forward, or backward so take note and act appropriately is her message. To think, act outside of the box, and to venture beyond the norm, to face your fears, and shed their shackles. To fall with a laugh, and not a frown and then to surface with a newfound strength, of passion and confidence in your path are character attributes of presence. The presence Miss Smith speaks of is being comfortable within ones skin and when you are, you shine. The inspirational and motivational theme Letters to a young Artist professes is a very down to earth humane approach. “Art should take what is complex and render it simple” In life as well.

Nothing should ever be left un-said!