…time for the annual(?) blog update. What I’ve been doing:
And some of this.
Category: Video
(I finished my thesis film, I graduated, I am now available for all your freelance video shooting and editing needs.)
My favorite project from this past year—brought to you by Maggie Fazeli Fard:
(I shot it—while managing not to puke over the side of the boat.)
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the homepage
I’ve never been a print journalist, so I haven’t known the thrill of an A1 byline. But in the past week I’ve had two videos on the New York Times homepage, and I’m pretty sure I took enough screenshots to make up for all those missed years of newspaper clippings.
Reporter Trymaine Lee and I worked together on two Harlem-based stories, one about feisty old ladies who go door-to-door in the projects, teaching their neighbors about recycling, and one about two professional clowns who renovated their apartment to allow them to practice clowning routines—when they’re not out performing around the world.
The print story that spawned “Paper, Plastic and Persistence” was front and center on the homepage for a few precious hours last Saturday, with a link to the video:
The print story for “Three-Room Circus” is currently the highlighted Real Estate story on the homepage, with a video link, but for a while Trymaine and I had 2 out of 4 of the homepage video player spots:
OK, I’m done bragging. But it was pretty cool 😉
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proof of my existence
The first video I edited at the Times is now online on the NYT site here—and also on Nicholas Kristof’s YouTube channel (and, at the moment, highlighted on the YouTube homepage as part of the Reporters’ Center!):
Also, I was an assistant editor on this piece.
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Oh, yeah. New York.
Per Leslie’s request, here’s some blog CPR.
I’m in New York, interning here for the summer:
| End Times | |
On my first day I and another intern went out to shoot footage of gyro cones (the big rotating things of meat that chawarma innards are shaved off of), then I burned some DVDs. The next day I tried to call people in Utah whose houses were up for auction (and got mostly disconnected numbers), and today I had a few hours of tech training and then started to edit a Nicholas Kristof piece. It’s fun.
At Alba’s parents’ very lovely house in Girona:
(explanation: I’m here on a J-school travel grant shooting a story on Senegalese immigrants in Spain—I met up with a guy and two kids from my Peace Corps host village. My Pulaar is being stretched to new limits!)
Shot video:
* at a design/fabrication studio and at the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco
* at a prison in Ione
* from a zeppelin over the South Bay
Felt like a slobbering news hyena:
* at a suspended-driver’s-license police sting in Oakland
Ran:
* after a crowd of Cal students parading through Berkeley and chanting “O-BA-MA!” and “U-S-A!” on election night
Turned:
* 27 years old
For the three of you who still check this thing: Hi! Thanks for your misplaced loyalty!
Excuses:
1) Busy. With work, mostly. I’ve been editing a steady stream of Adobe projects—customer profiles and filmmaker stories from Sundance, including a really cool doc on kids’ experiences of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Cory and I also revised our “soil in Senegal” video for a Peace Corps World Wise Schools feature.
2) Blog fatigue. I hit the point that many others have, where I realized that what I would be writing about (if I sat down and forced myself to) was stuff that wasn’t especially unique or insightful. Or interesting, even to little ol’ navel-gazing me. And while wankery can make you famous, I have no interest in just adding to the noise. Susan Sontag had it right:
“A good rule before one goes marching or signing anything: whatever your tug of sympathy, you have no right to a public opinion unless you’ve been there, experienced firsthand and on the ground and for some considerable time the country, war, injustice, whatever, you are talking about. In the absence of such firsthand knowledge and experience: silence.”
I could comment on every Peace Corps story that pops up in the national news, but does anyone really care? The days and the weeks and the months are passing in a blur of work and guilt over unfinished work and episodes of The Wire, and honestly I have no interest in boring my friends with trite laments about “Where does the time go?”… which of course brings us to:
3) Mid-twenties, post-Peace-Corps crisis, blah blah blah. Maybe I should get a dog.
Blogging might become interesting/relevant again once I’m at school this fall (Orientation starts August 21st. I’ve bought a Cal sticker and a t-shirt, so I’m set.), but until then I’ll probably just post the occasional photo.
Thanks for checking in, all the same 😉
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video shoot from last night
Fire dancing by Fire Pixie. They were awesome.
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RTF street cred
It took an extra three years, but I’ve finally earned the right to call myself a film student—I’ve done an unauthorized video shoot in a laundromat.
Parking garage ninjas can’t be far behind.