Twin Cities Picture Show

I'm typically a fiction lover, but right now the top of my nightstand pile is home to Twin Cities Picture Show by Dave Kenney. Not a complete surprise: Kenney's preface describes the demise of the HarMar Theater, the staple movie house of my childhood and teen years. But when he reminisced on page one about singing along to "Grease" at the HarMar as a teenager, my heart skipped.

When I was sixteen, a group of friends and I went to the State Fair together. By midafternoon we'd done all we cared to, and got the giddy notion of walking the two miles or so up Snelling Avenue from the fairgrounds to the HarMar to catch a showing of "Grease". This memory of sore feet, cheesy showtunes and the company of good friends has always been a favorite of mine, and to hear Kenney echoing one so similar — well, he had me.

Kenney works his way through the history of movie-going in the Twin Cities, showing us the business intrigues, attempts at censorship, and innovations that movie houses have adopted over the years. I'm half-way through the book right now, stuck in the 1950s with its attempts to lure folks to the theater with inventions like Cinescope and teen exploitation films. So far, it's been a very fun ride.

Movie's done!

Good grief. Nine months ago I bought a camera, made a couple of figurines and a couple of sets and began a long odyssey that has ended today with the posting of my film "The Moon and The Gargoyle" on Vimeo and here on my site.

I spent about two months making the sets, and another two months, off and on, capturing the raw sequences using an SLR camera and a program called 'iStopMotion'. Once it was time to pull together the audio, I was lucky enough to have the help of a friend, Todd Melby, who's an independent audio journalist. And after stumbling over who might be willing to provide the narration, I again lucked out - the fine Minneapolis actor and playwrite Ben Kreilkamp was happy to come to my rescue. Finally, budding engineer Charlie Garetz helped create the caliope sounds for the ending music and recorded most of the film's live music.

People have asked many times where the story for the film came from. All I can say is that the faces of the figurines themselves suggested a direction, and my quirky mind did the rest. People have also asked, upon seeing the film, how tall the 'actors' are. For reference, I'll tell you that the larger one is the body of a WWF action figure, selected because of all the dolls and action figures out there, they have the most positionable joints in the most places.

A feel like I've lived with this project for a long time - longer, I think, than I've ever lived with a project I've undertaken. But there's something about filmmaking, at least the way I've chosen to pursue it, that strikes the right chord for me. Over the course of the past nine months, I've needed to sew, carve, construct, find objects, configure sets, light them, photograph them, draw and cut paper, write a script, write music, perform it, edit video, edit audio, and play with my friends. I've squeezed a lifetime worth of pursuits into these past months, and now I finally have a final product.

And - an idea for my next film.

A gift for a migration

A friend of mine is leaving for New York soon to go to graduate school. I'll miss her. She's someone I met fairly recently, but as happens sometimes, circumstance and personality made things click.

It's hard to give a gift when you know someone's travelling light, so I decided to make her a couple of origami hummingbirds. They weigh next to nothing, can get packed flat for travel and then eased back out into shape once she's settled in that big city.

Why hummingbirds? The ones I've known just appear one day, and you're glad they came. They stick around, and you start to get comfortable in their company. Then suddenly they're gone, off to whereever it is hummingbirds go. But you know they'll come back — and you'll be glad to see them when they do.

Computer patois

I worked on a PC today for the first time since I converted to Macs four years ago or so. The experience was a bit like travelling around the inland towns of Jamaica - you're pretty sure that the communication you're being offered is related to your native language, but at the same time it feels like you've just had a minor stroke. You're picking up every third word or so, and you long for a more familiar format or a swifter acculturation so you could catch more of what's going on.

On top of that, all of the Office programs I encountered were clearly of a generation beyond those I'd worked on in the past. It's a generation that, were it a person, would probably enjoy shopping at the Mall of America: the commands have a circus-y feel to them, busy and circuitous when a simple drop-down menu would do. Nonintuitiveness was the watchword of the day: want to get to "Save"? Sorry, you'll have to go through the food court first.

Macs may be relatively expensive and carry an unnecessary mystique, but I can recommend one to my octogenarian father-in-law with some confidence that most of its functions will come to him naturally. After today, I can't say the same for PCs.

Music from a tree

I ran across this today on Chunnel and just felt I had to share. Wow.

Diego Stocco - Music From A Tree from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.