My Movies
The Bootmaker and Me in NYC
Hooray! I learned today that my short film, Boot Camp will be shown as part of the Rural Route Film Festival in Manhattan on July 30. Not sure yet if I’ll be able to attend, but if I do, I guess I’ll need to finish those boots I started late last year. An occasion like this will require very special shoes!
How to Recognize a Celtic King
I bought a new HDV camera last month and have been spending most of my free time learning how to use it. My big problem, though, is that every few days it seems I discover I need to order an additional piece of equipment, or an adapter, or some new cable if I’m going “to get the most” out of my new picture takin’ machine. It turns out this film-making thing is a lot more expensive than last year’s firearms hobby, but still cheaper than high fashion. Anyway, once our friendly UPS man delivers a new package, I run experiments to make sure I understand how my new stuff works with the camera. But doing science by yourself is hard, so I occasionally must roust Pat to help me. In this Quicktime 7 clip, I was testing the wireless lavalier. I still have much to learn, but I"m happy with the way things are looking and sounding.
Oral History
A few years ago, I went with my mom and Veltha Coleman to videotape an interview with Irene Stapp out in Hettenshaw Valley (that’s in the southwestern part of Trinity County). One of Irene’s great-grandfathers opened the first store in Blocksburg, while another, as legend has it, battled a grizzly bear with a knife by shoving his arm down the animal’s throat and stabbing it from the inside. Grizzly Mountain is named for the incident, although Irene says that isn’t where it happened. Anyway, I just got around to putting up this Quicktime clip, where Irene talks about her Wailaki heritage and Lucy Young, who lived through the massacres of the 1860s and provided anthropologists with much of what is known about Wailaki life before the arrival of white settlers in that region.
1950s Footage of San Francisco
A couple years ago, my aunt gave me a bunch of 8mm film that my granddad shot in the late 1940s and ‘50s. I was going to transfer it all myself, but after researching the process, I decided it looked like too much work. Last week, Pat took three reels to Digital Pickle. They cleaned it all up and transferred it to MiniDV and DVD for me. This is a short Quicktime clip taken, according to my mom, at a ranch “in San Francisco.” She is pictured on the horse. I don’t know who the little boy is.
Added April 7, 2006: My mom says the little boy’s name is Herbie Brenjolson. Are you out there, Herbie?
Boot Camp
I made a short film last year for the Western Folklife Center about my friend and bootmaking teacher, Jack Rowin. It showed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in February, and now it’s online, but if you go there, you’ll have to scroll down the page a little bit. I know that might sound like a lot of trouble, but would you be tempted to watch it if I told you the movie also features the musical magic of Matt Margolin? Of course, you would.
My Projects
My Short Films
- What's a Nice Girl like You...
- Story Machines
- Boot Camp
- Moving Horses from Montana to Washington in 1903 (audio)
My Tweets
My Photos
The Blocksburg Book
My Favorites at the Moment
- Luke's remix of his Peter and the Wolf remix
- These hand-tooled shoes and purses
- Gossip Girl
- Red Rock Rondo