(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
“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.
(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
What if you’re offered only two options, and neither of them are any good? The poor creature in this short can’t hope to understand that it’s trapped inside a completely arbitrary system.
format: DV video
software: AfterEffects, FrameThief, Premiere, DVD Studio
Pittsburgh, 2001.
(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
>> #1 in a series of 6
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.
(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
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.
(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
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.
(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
I began to take a video camera out at night and peek into hundreds of other people’s windows, just for a few seconds at a time. I wasn’t sure quite why I was doing this…
format: DV video
software: AfterEffects, Premiere, Photoshop
Pittsburgh, 1999.
(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
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.
(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
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.
(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
Stoel III is a musical group based in Amsterdam. Its three members (Govinda Mens, Tilmann Meyer-Faje, and Peter van der Jagt) compose and perform musical pieces written for a very remarkable instrument: the folding chair. After years of practice, they can coax an amazing variety of sounds out of their instruments.
This short is a documentation of one of their practice sessions, in the basement of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
format: SVHS video
software: Premiere, Photoshop
Amsterdam, 1998.
(click to play)
Available on: youtube.com | archive.org
Photographer Dafna Levy took a picture in 1992. It showed a cheerful yellow billboard bearing a syrupy poem about the beauty of mountains, something you scan quickly and break off reading about halfway through. It took me a minute to notice the barbed wire, and a minute more to realize where this photo had been taken…
format: DV video
software: AfterEffects, Premiere, Photoshop
Amsterdam, 1998.
