It's a library of free movies, films, and videos, ranging from full-length classic films to archival footage of street scenes in American cities through the centuries, public service announcements to art and music, cultural and academic films - and almost all of it is free to download, so you can use these moving images to make your own films!
I have already downloaded little weird movie commercials for pizza and candy and spliced them into a disjointed music video. This stuff is so fun.
Lincoln Lodge Highlights, November 29 & 30, 2007, featuring yours truly (filmed and edited by the Lincoln Lodge). Allison Leber tells one joke at the beginning, and then there's one from me.
EDIT: To clarify the conversation going on in the comments for this post, when I sent an e-mail with this link to family and friends, I also said: "So I had the honor of doing stand-up at the Lincoln Lodge last week. I've actually decided to stop performing for awhile, because the anxiety involved is insane, plus I'm getting busier as a producer, writer, and filmmaker -- with my show and with professional stuff. (I don't know how that happened, either, but I'm going with it.)..."
I don't know what's gotten into me all of the sudden -- fruitful conversations with new friends? Tackling terrifying new challenges and walking away unscathed (see theater-related posts here and here)? Inspired by the example of other brave friends? -- but I'm in this very "I can do anything and I'm going to go for what I want, and if the first try doesn't work, then next one will" mode.
So here I come, get out of my way.
I was banging my head all day yesterday...and last night...and this morning, teaching myself all the stuff I needed to know in order to produce the film of Prescott's Improv set. Lots of phone calls to Canon technical support. Lots of phone calls to Apple tech support. Lots of being caught in the Nerd's Bermuda Triangle of Radio Shack, Best Buy, and coffee places. Lots of trial and lots of errors, but I figured out everything I needed to know.
The final cut of Prescott's set is too long to post online at the moment but here's a sample clip I put together, because in the middle of all of this technical dickery I realized I could and should be doing this sort of thing for other people as well. Want a nicely shot and edited clip of yourself doing a killer set? I can probably help you out there.
And this clip is just the first try at this sort of thing. I'd never used the tripod before, and I know I'll get smoother with it, and get snappier with the editing, and learn to get better sound, and write better music, too.
I am such a hopeless Macmonkey. Sloan and other family and I crashed at our friends Tim and Sally's awesome farmhouse in Wisconsin over the weekend. They're honeymooning in Japan at the moment. I've been home for ten minutes and I'm already uploading a two minute video to YouTube.
I don't have a real video camera so I just used the camera on my MacBook, very carefully walking it around the house and barns. I'm such a dork that I wrote the music for this and edited it on the way home in the car.
It's not perfect. Some of the titles overlap and I put the soft focus filter on after the titles, so they're fuzzy and too light in places, but I don't feel like taking four hours to re-edit. And I wish I had a bridge in the song but I still like it. I could write music for hours.
I'm taking Chicago by storm! My videoblog of Critical Mass is posted on Metroblogging Chicago. (Thanks, Fuzzy!)
I'm making my showcase debut at Chicago Underground Comedy tomorrow night, yes indeed. I'm bringing extra candy (I take care of my audiences, yo), and 30-40 friends and family are slated to be there to cheer loud enough to drown out any boos. I've been walking around like a crazy person, playing a recording of my set on my computer, in my earphones, and reciting my jokes out loud while riding my bike.
BFF, PR genius, and megaproducer K-Rock and the girls invited me to fill in for Hattie Snyder (who, sadly, will be at her friend Nailah Franklin's memorial) at the Spitfire showcase at the Apollo the following night, so my first two showcases are wham bang one after the other.
Speaking of K-Rock, check out Buscemi and Delahoyde's "Angelina," starring K-Rock (at left)! Well, not "starring," in the literal sense. But look how cute!
What else is exciting? Well, I just talked a nice lady at Comcast into hacking my monthly bill in half. HALF. Just goes to show you how much you can get in life by asking nicely. (And if that doesn't work, then raise hell.)
Friday night was the 10th anniversary of Critical Mass in Chicago. 3000 of us rode for about 5 hours. It was such great fun, I'm doing it again next month. It'll be Halloween, too, so weird costumes are in order.
There were some flaring tempers (bikers, motorists, and pedestrians included) and a cop bumped into my bike at one point (he was splitting to make an emergency run). Me, I just like to bike ride. The longer, the better. 5 hours hit the spot very nicely. Plus, with all that caloric output - two dinners!! Highlights of the ride: the happy baby (captured clapping on film), the pissed off pedestrian who stood on the street corner yelling "F*cking attention-needing motherf*kers!", the cheers and honks and thumbs up, little kids in Cabrini Green giving us high-fives, the rich dude in the Jaguar smoking a cigarette in a very "yeah, okay, I'll just chill here for awhile" sort of way, the cop who bumped into my tire while speeding off to a call (I hurt my knee trying to get out of his way), the random bumping into friends, and yes, two dinners. Vietnamese food AND greasy diner grilled cheese and fries. Mmmm.
EDIT: My video got posted in Metroblogging Chicago. Also, here are some Critical Mass events in other cities.
A prototype of a promotional ChUC video. Do you have 64 seconds? Click here and get a glimpse of what's so damn cool about Chicago Underground Comedy. Photos by the greatest fangirls in the world. Editing and weird music by me.
A prototype of a promotional ChUC video. Do you have 66 seconds? Click here and get a glimpse of what's so damn cool about Chicago Underground Comedy. Photos by the greatest fangirls in the world. Editing and weird music by me.
(EDIT: this is version THREE. As my co-producer Dan pointed out, I had the address wrong. Duh. And then there were some issues with the credits. Whatevs.)
(EDIT AGAIN: I deleted the earlier versions. Check out the final video here.)
My brother threw his increasingly larger-scale End of Summer party despite the inclement weather. Lots of my friends were MIA. Didn't show up because you thought a little thing like a thunderstorm would stop us from celebrating? Wrong. My brother directs events on an Olympic scale, people. It was an amazing outdoor party under tents, with a live DJ, an unbelievable assortment of food and drink, little kids splashing through puddles, and fire-eaters as entertainment. Real Cuban mojitos, New Orleans jambalaya, Filipino wedding cake, and more.
Here's a two minute video I made. I wrote the music, too - it's a little mish-mashy but fun, sort of like the mix of cultures and food and music at the party. Sort of like my family, which we sometimes say is like one big living Benetton billboard -- except our sweaters aren't that nice.
Another cat video thinly disguised as an editing exercise. Don't say you weren't warned. This time I used different titling, shot with the iSight camera, and used what iMovie refers to as the "Ken Burns Effect" (no, seriously) on still photos. I also used the letterbox feature to obscure the boob spillage that happened every time I leaned over to kiss Flora.
How do I justify this silliness? Well, first, Flora is almost ten years old, is not going to live forever, and no video footage exists of her, so when she jumped on my lap this morning, I flipped on the camera. I always need more editing practice. And if I'm going to shoot and edit something, why not archive it online? Finally, let's be honest. This is a blog. You want substance and erudite editorial comment? Read the New York Times.
Sloan and I hopped aboard the CTA to Chicago's marvelous Garfield Park Conservatory on Tuesday, to do the first of what we hope will be the first of several little parallel movie projects this summer. Lots of fun.
She brought her professional-quality vidcam, and created a really artistic and sophisticated little movie.
I brought my crappy old 30-grainy-seconds-at-a-time digital camera (which is probably worth about $50) and created a crazy video pastiche that includes a time-lapse hot dog eating montage. Call me well-rounded, or call me constantly hungry, but I always enjoy art and culture that much more when there's snacking involved.
It's so cool how we have such distinct impressions of shared experiences. One thing that made it into both of our movies this time was a big group photo moment that we happened upon near the end of our visit. Sloan has this really sweet fixation on cute elderly Asian women, who stir up her intense affection for her Filipino grandma, and there was one in this group who prompted her to whip out her camera on our way out the door and catch just one more moment. Hmm...I wonder if we should try to work a tiny Asian grandma into every parallel project from now on. It could become our trademark.
I'm still learning iMovie. Yesterday I spent a huge amount of time editing a video of Sloan's and my trip to the Garfield Park Conservatory. (We each did our own, and I'll post both of them here soon.) Then somehow my whole project was garbled and unfixably screwed up. Argh! So this morning I did this clip as a brief test.
Long ago I bored my readers with tales of Calpurnia's edamame-munching ways, and I guess a photo essay just wasn't enough to tell the tale. So here is video proof that she loves, loves, loves vegetables.
Thanks to the dude on YouTube who posted this, which saved me several more hours of hair-pulling while trying to figure out how to post an iMovie creation on YouTube. Without further Apu, Bella's Saturday afternoon:
I guess comedy really is a roller coaster ride. Open mic #3 was great. Open mic #4, last night, was not so great. I hesitate to post this clip, because it's not too impressive. It definitely doesn't make me look as quick and confident as last week's set. Maybe I was spoiled by having more friends there before (it was just Dan last night), and a more enthusiastic and diverse audience. But I'm going to buck up and post it anyway. Being transparent with my development, bumps and all, is in the spirit of this whole project, and - how can I reframe this positively? - moments like this are character-building.
It was a very different room than last week, despite being the same physical place. First, there were very few people there, and it was almost all guys who were all comics, save for one girl in the audience. I know comedy is sometimes a boys' club, and I can handle that, but sometimes it gets a little locker-roomy. I'll just leave it at that. And, without divulging too many details, I'll explain that for various reasons there was tension in the room, and some antagonism, and it wasn't the most comfortable, encouraging atmosphere. Comic after comic got up and put themselves out there to receive only dead silence, and most made jokes about the awkward atmosphere itself.
I had new material I was really excited to try out. It's about the information age phenomenon of using communications technology to avoid human interaction, using myself as the butt of the joke. (Of course, it's not entirely a conceit - I'm as guilty as any other technerd of communicating from a distance and sometimes holding people at bay while convincing myself we're in touch.) But the response, while not the utter silence that some people received (I did get some actual laughs), was not too enthusiastic. I acknowledged being thrown by this, and while I didn't melt down, I was put off enough that I left off lots of details that make the material denser and more nicely detailed. I realized, in editing the clip, that you can see the annoyance on my face as I hand the mic back at the end, and I'm not proud of that.
But it's cool. Nights like this are part of the deal, and it's certainly not going to dissuade me. If anything, it makes me feel like I'm earning my stripes. I'm a pretty tough girl when I need to be.
And when I think about all the years I lived a quiet life in a quiet town in Indiana, dreaming and dreaming and dreaming of doing this, and never really believing I'd have the courage to try, nights like this are really no big deal at all.
Yep, number three is under my belt now. Here's a clip of my third open mic. May 3, 2007 at Pressure Cafe in Chicago. Again, all new material (hopefully not a mistake). Topics covered - I am not tall like the other comedians, many fashions are unflattering, Cosmo magazine makes me choose between Cheetos and sex, and it's tough being German, because we are to blame for the blight of sausages upon humankind.
I did it! Woo!! My stage fright is GONE. Here's the proof.
Thanks again to Brett Snodgrass, the winning bidder of my eBay stage fright auction, who also served as cabbie and cinematographer. (That wasn't actually part of the deal, that was sort of above and beyond the call of eBay - thanks, Brett!) It was nice to have an art director help me figure out the "releasing the stage fright into the universe" thing. We had a cool little private ritual out in the open parking lot behind Bad Dog involving flames, heavily metaphorical objects, and maybe a little pinch of fervently creative magical thinking.
Anyway - here it is, the "put up or shut up" moment:
Yes, I was insanely nervous. Looking at the tape, I can't believe how relaxed and comfortable I seem. So I'd never spoken into a mic before. Whatever. When I stepped offstage, a local producer invited me to perform at a new faces showcase, which I will, after as many open mics as possible. Also, I got a really sweet comment on my blog from the girl who went up after me, also for the first time. I tried to google her, but to no avail. E-mail me, other open mic girl!
I'm going back again on Sunday with probably entirely different jokes. I still like some of the stuff I did last week but some of it is sort of boring to me now, and I've had a ton of new ideas over the past week. Plus, while I like some of the more storytelling-ish ones, they take some time to build, and for the sake of my own nerves, I'd like to get to a bunch right off the bat that have a quicker payoff.
I was on the phone with my mom shortly before the show, and she asked for a word count on the dirty language I planned on using, because, of course, nice boys won't be attracted to me if I use naughty words. (And really, after my show at Second City, you'd think she'd be desensitized to this kind of thing.) I told her I only planned on using one - of course, I was bringing it out of my grandma's mouth in the joke, and it was "bitch." But at the last second, the final joke I had written to include Brett's name (as part of the auction) seemed really clunky and slow, so on the spot I changed the end...and I used the word "ass." Sorry, Mom. I'll do better next time.
Last night. Bad Dog. Slightly less than five minutes. No tomatoes or pineapples were injured in the filming of my stand-up debut. I didn't know how to talk into the mic (holy dumb!). I didn't puke. I didn't blank. There was laughter. But I have a lot of bugs to work out.
Guess that energy transfer worked!
More details (and the auction-mandated video clip) soon.
I know, you're used to content and substance here. What can I say, I'm sick. So please indulge me while I post nothing but cute. (My brothers can skip this entry, since they're generally uninterested in this sort of thing.)
First, the cutest zoo animal clip I've seen lately. Floating otters holding hands? I can feel my cold symptoms melting away! Might want to turn down the volume, though, the spectators' "awww" noises might be a bit much for the testosterone-impaired:
And finally, my cat Calpurnia, in a recently rediscovered video I had forgotten about. It's one full minute of her playing in fresh laundry. Don't say I didn't warn you:
This is as exciting as when I figured out how to download free loops for Garage Band.
