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.

Enoch receives a premonition of disaster, so he sets out to collect as many books as he can find, to preserve the knowledge of the world. But, lacking reliable divine guidance, all his careful preparations come down to a straight-ahead, all-or-nothing gamble….

format: DV video
software: Final Cut, Audition, Photoshop
Los Angeles, 2003.

Broadcast on CBC TV 2005.

This is a story about a little bird who claims to be able to predict the future. Don’t trust him.

The Little Bird of Disaster was developed at The Kitchen’s 2003 summer workshop. The speaking characters are real-time “video puppets,” controlled with Mark Coniglio’s Isadora software. The piece was actually performed, like they say, in front of a live studio audience (you can hear them in the background).

format: DV video
software: Flash, AfterEffects, Painter, Isadora, Final Cut, Audition
Los Angeles, 2004.

Screened at Rotterdam Film Festival 2005.

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.

At the start of the Afghan War, I heard the title’s classic Cold-War motto resurrected by Texas Congressman Dick Armey. Oddly enough, it made me think of the Lewis Carroll poem “The Voice of the Lobster,” in which the Panther and the Owl sit down to negotiate an agreement. The story just seems to have a timely ring about it.

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