Elegy

December 24th, 2005

Elegy
(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.

One New Message

December 21st, 2005

One New Message
(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.

Fast Voyeur

December 21st, 2005

Fast Voyeur
(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.

Manipulations

December 19th, 2005

Manipulations
(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.

An Iconoclast

December 19th, 2005

An Iconoclast
(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.

Stoel III

December 19th, 2005

Stoel III
(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.

High Places

December 19th, 2005

High Places
(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.

Meal

December 19th, 2005

Meal
(click to play)

Available on: youtube.com | archive.org

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.

Open Quote

December 19th, 2005

Open Quote
(click to play)

Available on: youtube.com | archive.org

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.