My cousins used to play this odd little game; they were about five and three years old at the time. The older one would pick up the remote control to the TV, point it at her sister, and say “Turn you off”–she’d obligingly fall to the ground and play dead. Then the remote changed hands, they’d change places, and the game would begin all over again. It was carried out with the solemn gravity of an execution by firing squad.

This short is a grown-up version of the same game, played with a grown-up weapon…

format: DV video
software: Commotion, AfterEffects, Painter, Final Cut, Audition
Pittsburgh, 2002.

Broadcast on CBC TV 2002.

I’d seen pictures of it before, but an especially dramatic photograph caught my eye on a magazine cover in the grocery store. It almost looked like another vegetable: a brilliant marigold-orange “fuel-air” bomb, the most powerful non-nuclear weapon on the market.

format: DV video
software: Commotion, AfterEffects, Painter, Final Cut, Audition
Los Angeles, 2003.

The painter in this short may think she’s only painting circles on the ground. But from our privileged vantage point, we can see well enough where it’s all going to lead….

format: DV video
software: Commotion, AfterEffects, Painter, Final Cut, Audition
Los Angeles, 2003.

“Remember, you never need to solve the problem right now.” Apparently, no problem could possibly arise that this handy video self-help pamphlet is unprepared to deal with.

This short, a dance for camera, was created at the Point Park Conservatory in Pittsburgh, choreographed by Doug Bentz.

format: DV video
software: AfterEffects, Final Cut, Audition
Pittsburgh, 2002.

I was in my car, parked, and it was raining. I was under a giant neon sign, a grocery store sign that hadn’t had all its letters lit since I was a kid. The battery in my camera was still good, so I pointed it out the windshield and began taping. It lasted long enough to catch the sky turning dark, and the sign turning to gibberish as its un-lit letters faded away, and a most unusual song playing on the radio. The whole thing felt like a funeral.

format: DV video
software: AfterEffects, Final Cut, Audition, Photoshop
Huntington, West Virginia, 2001.

The message consisted of nothing but the distant ringing of church bells and a voice that said only “Hello?” before hanging up. It arrived in my voice mail on July 8, 2000. How did it get there?

It must have been entrusted to a tiny electronic messenger, a wayward soul who somehow got lost in the phone system. It’s a short journey, but a very dangerous one, and maybe she didn’t reach her destination in time…

format: DV video
software: AfterEffects, Premiere, Audition, Photoshop
Pittsburgh, 2000.

If you search for a needle in a haystack for too long, you start to get bored, then tired, then angry. If you get angry enough, you might even throw the whole haystack away, but then you’ve lost the needle forever…

format: DV video
software: AfterEffects, Premiere, Photoshop
Pittsburgh, 1999.

The letters used in this short fell off a movie theater marquee one Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1998. They’d originally been part of some grand, meaningful words, but now they were stranded and helpless. So I gave them a new home.

format: DV video
software: AfterEffects, Premiere, Photoshop
Pittsburgh, 1998.

This short is about an argument over dinner, an argument that goes around in circles. What’s unusual is that the dinner goes around in circles too; what’s eaten by one combatant comes out of the mouth of the other, so neither the eating nor the fighting ever has to end.

format: DV video
software: Premiere, Audition, Photoshop
Pittsburgh, 1997.

Have you ever looked at a sentence until it stopped making sense? For this short, I took a bit from a little-known Lewis Carroll poem, and repeated it until it lost any kind of meaning.

format: Hi8 video
software: Premiere, Audition, Photoshop
Pittsburgh, 1997.