So, like some 10+ years ago, I made an initial foray into film making. I took an intro to production course at what was then a brand new community cable network. I played with their cutting edge non-linear editing equipment. I read all sorts of film-making books. Devoured Rodriguez’s Rebel Without a Crew. Would beg, borrow or steal people’s cameras and make these little (terrible) on the fly short-films. All of which are on various ye olde video formats, like Super VHS and VHS C.
I even sat down, wrote a screenplay and spent a fun day making an almost feature-length movie that we never got around to editing. Because it was terrible and we knew it. But it was fun! Plus, there was this cameo by a miniature horse that wandered onto our guerrilla production.
Now, it’s the age of YouTube.. a more permissive time, when you can make fun little videos and upload and share them, and get on BoingBoing; stuff like that. Which is just what my friend Heath has been organizing for our little local troupe of fun loving Actors / D&D players.
Patting his back, I said, “There, there, Cory, surely you didn’t expect anyone to be truly astonished by this old ragbag assortment of clippings and ephemera. It’s not like the old days, when you could effortlessly ride the bleeding digital edge of culture, shining your spotlight on weird niches before anyone else could get there.”
…
“You’ll just have to face facts, Cory. You bloggers were addicts. The medium was almost as important to you as the content. The technological glitz, the bells and whistles — I know it was hard to kick it all cold turkey. But if your content is strong, you can make the transition. Things will just be a little different. But look what Bruce Sterling and the cyberpunks accomplished, without the Internet. After all, even Boing Boing started back then as a fanzine — ”
“I was fourteen years old in 1985! I never even saw a paper copy of Cheap Truth! That’s prehistoric! I can’t go back! It’s pure torture! It’s unfair! It sucks! The human wreckage from the Internet collapse is beyond calculation. Xeni, Mark, David, my good buddies — they’re all swilling this excellent mutant agave tequila or radioactive Chernobyl vodka just to blunt the pain.”
Spike Jonze is up to his usual subversive anarchy. The observative may note in the picture to the left an homage to George Romero’s anti-consumerism ‘Dead’ film. But here he has made a commercial destroying the very brand he is advertising (Well, sort of…). It’s worth a look for sheer shopping carnage.
