Episodes of The Facts1. Francesco Rosi’s Le mani sulla città (Hands over the city – 1963) (DVD – 2006) – Italian with English subtitles with Rod Steiger, Salvo Randone, Guido Alberti, Marcello Cannavale, Dante Di Pinto, Alberto Canocchia, Carlo Fermariello, Terenzio Cordova, Gaetano Grimaldi Filioli, Angelo D’Alessandro, Vincenzo Metafora, Danv Paris
2. The House of Suh by Iris K. Shim Grayscale Films 2011 English and Korean with English subtitles – documentary
From Lenore Von Stein
Combining my interest and techniques from three fields:
1. Method Acting: monologue techniques, detailed plan to develop and extend performer’s focus especially under the added stresses and/or distractions of performance itself (as opposed to rehearsal)
• What do I want (objective)? What am I doing to get it (action)?
• Who am I talking to, about what, what do I expect, what am I talking about (setting for the initiative)
2. Musical Composition: Modern art music, classical, baroque, be bop, free jazz, and electronic compositional techniques, forms, styles, examples
• Clarity, thematic analysis, transitions
• Economy of movement, focus, justification, adjectives
• Counterpoint between individual lines of music
• Parameters and sensibilities
3. Musical Performance: Singing
• Vocal skills: Training and maintenance
• Sound quality
• Focus, through line of action
• Rehearsal methods
• Injury prevention and treatment
4. Prose Composition: fiction including play form
• Logic of the progression from section to section, transitions
• Economy of movement, focus, justification, adjectives
5. Prose Composition: Non-fiction including business communications
• Audience interests and expectations
• Clarity of arguments
• Length and packaging of presentation
• Positioning for successful presentation
6. Ballet and Modern Dance
• Economy, clarity, relevance of movement
• Individual movement’s relationship to the whole body
• Physical space including performance space
• Rehearsal methods
• Injury prevention and treatment
7. Mixed with the new visual dimension of TV and internet video
• Crew requirements: training, sensibilities, parameters of involvement, levels of involvement, satisfaction, politics
• Visual Composition: elements, counterpoint, resource limitations
• Lighting, recording, audio, resource limitations
• Timing: production and pre and post production chores
• Distribution
• Fundraising
Statement of the importance of individual artists and fostering their individuality
1687, Inc. supports the artwork of one artist and the artists, technicians and other professionals that work with her on 1687 projects. In order to do this we are building a business model that facilitates the production and growth of an individual artist and as such serves as an exploration into elements that are beneficial to individual artists, the results of supplying those in a variety of amounts and for different lengths of time and finally the importance of art works created by individual artists with complete content control as opposed to collective artistic products – (in both cases citing specific examples) to the expressive, intellectual and emotional progress of peoples and civilizations.
it’s christmas day and I’m so full – glad to be sitting again at the computer to finish this report
Report on taping December 20th – “Building a Character”
Working from DVD’s – will hear tapes this week and get a better picture
We keep on going forward – so exciting – what do they call this? – oh ah ART
New levels of video movement in these tapes. The action kept pulling the audience through the piece and the room.
Real strides in what I’m calling the “personal approach” to filming these productions – evocative shots
Sound was good – volume was good
Issues:
Establishment shots were often out of focus at first and then moved into focus – we need them to be really out of focus or really in focus -
One idea – use robot pre-sets for establishment shots in order to get crisp focus every time
Lighting wasn’t as good as it has been – the red light lighting the cable box in the back didn’t work as well – this was my mistake – the black background would have been better
Lighting was also set early in the set-up period before a series of changes were made to the talent positions.
Merry Christmas!!!
Yes you are making real strides- look forward to seeing the next one-
Have a great day!
Rachel
Alice,
The visual approach to the music episodes has been evolving in my head – I’d like them to look more like a film – with the narrative punctuated more obviously by the music and the change between foreground and background for each element (music and narrative) accentuated by the camera both in a shot’s individual composition and in a group of shots – the same problem remains of no rehearsal or story boarding and improvised sections. Happy Eating Day – I usually make myself sick on such days but continue to analyze it looking for a better way (I also sent the above description to Pedro and am cc’ing this to Travis)
Best, Lenore
Hi,
Hope you both had a happy Thanksgiving. I agree that synchronizing the crew with the talent would add a lot to the show.
I think this would work if we could follow along with a score and a set list in the control room. Perhaps, I could cue the director when a piece of music was ending. Then, we would have to figure a way to cue the end of a narrative section.
Let me know what you think. Travis
Travis,
The cuing for the end of the piece would only work with someone like yourself who can read music — very few crew can do that (we’ve only had two yourself and Daniela Muhling) – I’ll bring extra copies of the music. Attached is the set list for this taping.
Cuing – there is also an issue with the improvisation because they are true improvisations and we don’t know when they will end. In general improvisations build the bridges between each piece of text and the next written piece of music. Increasingly this symmetry is changed because of the content of a particular show or just so we don’t fall into a rut – I favor asymmetry
Occasionally I change the set list during the performance sometimes because of:
A performance error – that happened a couple of weeks ago when a piece was not played
When I get the five minute mark, etc. I may decide I don’t have enough time for everything on the set list and edit so that I still end up where I planned to end up. This has also happened several times.
Also something more interesting than what I planned may be happening. This has happened several times.
Any changes during performance have to be made without disturbing the flow of the performance or confusing the musicians. Lenore
Lenore,
No problem. I understand that the scores can only be used as a guide, but I think it may help in predicting some cues. It could also make things more confusing. But, couldn’t hurt to try using them.
I wasn’t able to get the entire mastered file uploaded to the server. And, you’ll notice I deleted it along with a couple other files. The “How I became a Coward – Episode” was also incomplete and I deleted it too. The server seems to be disconnecting before the file transfer is complete. Most likely due to the length of time required to upload the file. This explains why the files are cutting off before they are done. The most important thing to check after uploading a file using Filezilla is the “filesize.” If the file on the “remote site” is much less than the one on the “local site,” then the file is incomplete.
I’ll have to bring “How I Became a Coward – Rehearsal” mastered on a disc when I see you this Weds. for the next taping. By the way, I think it looks and sounds very good.
Ironically, the conflict I have on Dec. 20th is with the Control Room Class that I’m scheduled for at MNN. That would be my last class from 6:30-9:30, where I believe I’d be needing to complete a practical exam to become certified. I’ll try to talk to Rich (the instructor) on Weds. to see how that can be sorted out. I can probably take a separate practical exam with him on his show another day. Travis
From Oakland, California to New York City, the police, ordered by politicians, have smashed through Occupy encampments. Noted for their rigorous non-violence and orderly arrangements – tents with medical assistance, legal aid, libraries, media relations and sanitation controls – the Occupy protestors are being shoved out of their public places all over the country.
The Mayor of Oakland admitted to the BBC in an interview that mayors, police and other security officials have been in contact with each other regarding how to deal with the removal of the protestors, including an 18 mayor conference call she participated in recently.
The police power is always the first response to a mobilized citizen action that refuses to go away. Even a protest against corporate greed and governmental complicity shattering the economy and millions of livelihoods, which has widespread support by the American people, faces police intervention.
How else has the plutocracy of the corporatists and the oligarchy of the politicians who serve them responded? President Obama has remained aloof, as he did earlier this year with the giant Wisconsin labor protests. California Governor Jerry Brown has stayed out of the fray. The Congress is wallowing in its tone-deaf bubble squabbling over how to reduce the crumbs for the masses while the obscenely-bonused corporate bosses feast on the tables of corporate welfare and privilege.
Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer-prize winning war correspondent – described what entrenched illegitimacy by the power brokers has to offer besides force:
“Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.”
Except, one may add, for the perpetuation of their autocratic, self-enriching, dominant rule at the expense of the “99 percent.” Their outcry is for law and order – clear the tents from the public parks. These are the same corporatists who constantly receive from the corporate-dominated state all kinds of waivers from health and safety regulations, from government contract rules, from fair labor standards, from taxes. And all kinds of loopholes to enhance their profits and executive pay packages. But there are no waivers for orderly encampments non-violently advancing justice for “we the people” by spotlighting the gross inequities and cruelties imposed on tens of millions of innocent Americans.
As the destruction of the Occupy encampments proceeds, this movement will disperse into many locations and become larger and stronger. From the neighborhoods, joining with long-valiant community groups, the Occupy protestors will return by day to these public squares for their ever-more innovative demonstrations.
One protestor told “Democracy Now” that their expulsion from over-night stays in Zuccotti Park will show “how intuitive and ingenious a movement we have.” Already the protestors have shown their adaptive creativity. They responded to a ban on bullhorns or other amplifiers with the “human microphone,” relaying words through waves of people.
Occupy Wall Street had a 5,000 book library loaning books to residents without access to a nearby city library branch. So taken was the “Washington Post’s” architectural editor, Phillip Kennicott with Occupy Washington at McPherson Square that he devoted two pages to an aerial view and report of its intricate organization calling it a “vibrant brand of urbanism.” The same is true of the other Washington, D.C. Occupy site at Freedom Plaza. So far City Hall and the National Park Service have left them alone.
With the coming of winter and the Occupy sites overwhelmed with the hungry and homeless poor – some urged to go there by the police – it was time for stage two. By not being somewhere, the Occupy movement will now be everywhere – in the neighborhoods, on the campuses, in churches and union halls, and marching in the streets toward the edifices of the corporatists and their political lackeys.
Furthermore, this diffusion and magnification will spread into the established institutions themselves as first a few and then more whistleblowers, dissenters and other silent patriots do their part to subordinate the corporate structures and political controllers to the sovereignty of the people. After all our Constitution’s preamble starts with “we the people,” and ends without a single mention of corporations or political parties.
Becoming stronger from violent over-reaction by the police, it will become an “Occupy America” movement with demands for long-overdue revisions of priorities and equities relating to children, workers, consumers, taxpayers, retirees and restricted voters. The sheer volume of Americans coming into the streets with their non-violence will exhaust police resources and police resolve. Already, the city police and local district attorney in Albany, New York refused the governor’s order to arrest and remove peaceful protestors. Why? Because said one police official “we don’t have those resources and these people were not causing trouble,” as quoted in the instant new paperback “This Changes Everything.”
At the University of California at Berkeley demonstration, Daniel Ellsberg said that the official enforcers’ “instinct for repression is irrepressible.” That is the dark view, predicted by Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World Revisited” – a copy of which was found, ironically, in the debris of the destroyed Zuccotti Park library by Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now.”
But the instinct for freedom and justice is also irrepressible. Who are you betting on to prevail this time?
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Tell your friends to visit http://www.nader.org/ and sign up for Ralph Nader’s weekly column.
Lenore, Oct-17 08:28 am (EDT):
I’ve been posting videos to blip for over two years and never had problems with distortion. I recently became a pro member. The last two videos i’ve uploaded to blip using the same settings I have in the past have arrived on blip with the audio and video out of sync. These videos have audio and video in sync – no distortion problem in the Quicktime files I upload to blip.
blip.tv Support, Oct-18 11:49 am (EDT):
Hi Lenore,
Can you send me a link to the episodes where you’re seeing this problem?
Thanks, blip.tv producer support
Lenore later that day : I sent the links – these videos have since been removed
Evening of the same day Lenore sent to blip:
Solved the problem – found a YouTube page that provided new settings for Quicktime conversions that eliminates this out of sync audio-video issue
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1297408
Apparently a common problem
Here is a list of some of the difficulties I’ve found working at a public access station with a crew that is a mixture of amateurs and professionals. I hope it will be helpful to others:
Overseeing all these problems is a budget that is too small for the job resulting in:
Equipment: deferred maintenance, and replacement for example:
Staff Support
For our series the Facts the audio problems for the music episodes have been hard to move but movable.
They are and continue to be (although lesser as we solve parts of the problem:
Staffing – lack of sufficient number and consistent trained audio personnel to handle mikes and sound board
Equipment: Basic mikes that are inadaquate for this job
Time: Insufficient time for soundchecks
Addendum: multi track recording mixed down to two track during taping
Post production: lack of trained audio personnel
Discussion Episodes: We haven’t had audio problems on the discussion episodes in part because its much easier to get an accurate audio recording of what is actually going on and, to a lesser extent, by the time we started making discussion episodes we had learned a lot from the audio problems in the music episodes
Subject: Congressional Tea Party downgrade of America
The Boston Tea Party in December 1773 threw the East India Company’s tea overboard. The Republican Tea Party in August 2011 threw America overboard.
Only in Congress, with its rules for minority rule, can a minority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives impose its havoc on the American people there, then on the Senate side and on Obama’s wilting White House.
Leaving aside the psychiatric question of why a clutch of Republican Tea Partiers, many of them freshmen, terrify the veteran Republicans who outnumber them in the House, consider what they just pushed through the House against the American people.
For 150 million workers, Tea Partiers pushed through more cuts in the already starved federal programs that are aimed at diminishing the yearly 58,000 fatalities in workplace-related disease and trauma plus larger numbers injured and wounded.
There are 307 million eaters in America. More than 7,000 of them die from contaminated food and more than 300,000 are hospitalized each year. The Tea Partiers pushed cuts through the House to the already underfunded FDA food safety programs. They did this even though last year Congress strengthened the FDA’s authority and expanded its responsibilities, including closer inspection of hazardous foodstuffs increasingly coming from communist China.
There are 60 million investors in company stocks in America. The Tea Partiers stomped their feet and cut the House appropriations for law enforcement against Wall Street’s frauds by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This cuts the number of federal cops on the Wall Street crime beat, especially on derivative scams.
All Americans breathe air and drink water. The Tea Partiers are cutting the budget of the federal agencies working to get the toxic pollution out of those two necessities for life on Earth. Don’t even mention global warming and climate change to Tea Partiers who are willing to die laughing at such a prospect.
There are millions of women and children with special health needs who depend on federal programs for assistance. The House Tea Party members want to slash the modest budgets for these programs.
There are 200 million drivers in America. The Tea Partiers intend to cut the already measly auto safety budget of the Transportation Department. The auto safety budget is less than a third of the budget they allowed for guarding the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
They have also told others in Congress they are opposed to last year’s auto and bus safety bill giving long-overdue authority to safety regulators. The bill was supported by Democrats and Republicans but was blocked by one Senator Tom Coburn, a physician no less, in the last December days of the session. Minority rule again blocking 99 senators who signed off on unanimous consent to get this life-saving legislation through the Senate.
There are 30 million American workers, polls show, who would like to have a trade union represent them in negotiations with giants like Walmart. The Tea Partiers hate unions of workers and were instrumental in blocking the budget for the FAA in late July and early August on a union organizing mechanism and $16 million in subsidies for a few rural airports. For almost two weeks, the Tea Partiers punished tens of thousands of American workers who had to stop working on airport improvement and repair projects, and with the law’s expiration, the Tea Partiers let the U.S. government lose $30 million in a day in airline ticket taxes.
The Tea Partiers hate taxes, especially on the rich and corporations, even though they are the lowest rates in 20 years. They are extremists, mindlessly embracing Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge. They are even against giving the IRS funds it needs to collect $15 for every $1 it spends collecting taxes on the ever-more privileged. The number of Treasury auditors focused on these giant global companies is miniscule.
The Tea Partiers don’t even care that 50 percent of Tea Partiers back home and 70 percent of Republicans polled thought additional tax revenues should be part of the deficit-reduction program passing through Congress.
You see, these House and Senate Tea Partiers are like mad dogs – at times even beyond control of their political and corporate masters. Fanatics neither think nor blink in their hostage politics. They’re scarring Wall Streeters with their brinkmanship. Brandishing a historic moniker that symbolized rebellion against the then monarchial power, the Congressional Tea Partiers are anything but rebels against power – whether against the wars of empire, corporate welfare, sovereignty shedding NAFTA and WTO, corporate crime, the flouted war powers of Congress, or a runaway Wall Street.
Back home last year, Tea Party rhetoric did echo the people’s concerns about these matters. It turned out to be just talk by those now in Congress. The Tea Party in Congress is more interested in wielding the axe against public works programs, education, housing, public health, drug safety and medical research. But they leave alone the hugely expensive, cost-over-run weapons systems – long after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Raising money from the fat cats for next year’s election, the Tea Partiers aren’t about to challenge tax favoritism – officially known as tax expenditures – that Reagan’s economist, Professor Martin Feldstein recently called the single largest source of wasteful and low-priority spending in the federal budget.
It is one thing for the Tea Party politicians in Congress—already well-to-do and consuming a pretty nice salary and a bevy of benefits – to lack empathy. But America needs to call them out on their downright ideologically-inebriated animosity toward the domestic necessities of the American people. Tea Party extremists in Congress may well sink the Republican Party but in the process take many Americans down with them.
They’re taking the debt-limit vote to the cliff set up the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) first-ever downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating, last Friday. Call it the Tea Party downgrade.
It is time to put a firm cap on the kettle.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written – so much work has been going on, no money has been coming in – but money is only part of it for real real.
Raising money – being able to articulate what you are doing without boxing yourself in, framing yourself – I’m a this and that – without branding yourself. I used to provide references – I like this and that – what’s influenced you. I suppose that means artwork, places, incidents or people I especially remember or want to be like, or learned something from.
We’re about to launch our new improved website – developed over a couple of years with most of the work done in the last couple of months by Rui Bass, computer scientist and myself.
We’ve lost one of our editors. I’ve learned more about editing with final cut, taking another set of classes at my local Mac store. Been editing with this software for over a year but haven’t been doing it steadily so every three weeks when i edit something I end up tearing my hair – finally in the last few editing sessions I’m calming a bit. It’s really simple software even though its complex – it allows you to do all these generic effects, etc. and the way you put them together makes them better but its a slug through the possible combinations and the aesthetics of the program.
The crew/staff was up to 22 at last count – people come and go. The core team of artists remains tight, the core team of crew is less tight but mostly holding.
The discussion episodes are turning out to be stimulating – about to tape the first music episodes on the same subject as a discussion episode – drugs and the war on drugs. No reason to say the same things twice and little reason and scary intellectual pitfalls (and their emotional entwines) to propagandizing – so soldiering on to new perspectives that were unmasked or set free by the discussion episodes and then from there on to new discussion episodes likewise built on what’s gone before.
So how do I describe what I’m doing – provide what I think is the necessary stasis. Perhaps that’s where wrong headed. The description can be about house that’s being built, grant us money to build this house made of examinations of ourselves, analyses. I don’t think you can reach the end of yourself. You can hit some big pockmarked walls that people around you say are invincible – you go on – what else are you going to do?