G Love & Special Sauce
It’s official - I’m going on a 4 date tour to the west coast to mix as VJ Miixxy for a few bands, primarily G Love & Special Sauce. Also doing one show with The Sounds and The Bravery.
The Bravery
I will be in LA, San Francisco, San Diego and Long Beach between December 9 and December 13.
Will update from the road!
Peace,
Melissa
Vince Lee, Executive Director of UrbNews.tv, shooting b-roll
We had a great first day at the Billboard Hip Hop Awards & Conference. Shot a couple great interviews, set up a bunch more for today and Saturday.
We will be on the red carpet tonight at the Awards, in downtown Atlanta.
More later…
Melissa
I will be in Atlanta next week for the Hip Hop Awards and Conference. I’ll be shooting with Misty and Vince, as we cover events and do interviews on the 2008 election, the state of Hip Hop and issues with the Anti-Snitching movement.
Look for me on the red carpet Friday night!
Peace,
Melissa
I love my Macs - seriously - no other tool besides my camera gear has allowed me to express my art so fully. And now, proof again that Macs are truly badass.
Have you ever had an officemate that borders on, oh, I dunno, psycho? Lucky for me I was saddled with one this past summer, and she, in a selfish and ridiculous move, ended up crashing not one but 10 of my hard drives. Over a terrabyte of data inaccessible. To say I was inconsolable for the few hours after fully realizing the situation goes without saying. I did consider homicide but I’m too peaceful a person, (I really just wanted to sock her a good one in the eye, for the idiot factor alone). I had backed up data on redundant drives, but she took the whole drive farm down, in one fell swoop.
So cut to trying to save the drives - nothing worked. No application made it better, and quotes for data retrieval were well outside of my budget. I sorta shut down creatively, or at least became cautious. I moved my office home, and I worked on what I could. I tried to make peace with the content that was gone, and notified clients of their lost data (oooh that one really hurt and cost me a bundle). I considered suing, but the silly person who did this isn’t worth much, and what’s the point, really, but to stay angry? That’s not me. I’m all speed ahead, even if I’m wounded. And this loss truly wounded me, as a sole proprietor and an artist.
Cut to a week ago, some more research and I happen upon two programs - an updated version of Disk Warrior and Data Rescue II. I snag them from Digital Society, and held on them for a few days, not really wanting to be disappointed all over again. I had a sense at the back of my brain not to give up completely, but take a break from the trauma of data loss, and then try again when the dust settled.
This morning, I’m sitting at my desk, procrastinating again, and eye the two applications to the side of my monitors. I see the box of drives across the room, with a portable 80 gig drive I named Brigid sticking out of the top, under LaCies labeled Minerva, Sappho and Artemis (all my drives are named after goddesses). I snatch it up and drop in the Disk Warrior CD. I run the rebuild on Brigid and there it is, fixed, mounted and ready to rock.
I dropped to my knees and thanked the goddesses of data!!!! And the manufacturers of Disk Warrior.
I load another drive in - Disk Warrior takes care of it. Another - boom - done. Another - ah yes - I definitely want to celebrate tonight. Another - technology is so hot when it works. Another - ooops - not loading. Not fixable. Data Rescue II sees some of the data and I can snag it. Oh yah…I’m feeling REALLY GOOD about my projects and my data.
So the moral of the story is sometimes data takes a nap, but if you find the right tool, you can wake it up again. Also, patience…not something I’m particularly good at…but damn, if it doesn’t always work out for the best!
Peace and Smiles!
Melissa
Check out this short sample of animated backdrops for an upcoming tour. Can’t say who its for yet…but check back to see who I’m on tour with this December!
Peace,
Melissa
Here is the updated trailer for “The Art of Love & Struggle”.
Enjoy!
Melissa
Does this strike include a call to independents?
Dear WGA:
As a freelance writer, who has been so for years, but not a member of your organization, I sympathize deeply with your members. We in the independent world, particularly in internet content producing, work more with corporate bodies who have little experience in production, and little understanding of the costs or process. Or we work on low budget productions, skewed more and more toward direct to DVD or internet broadcasting, where you are simply a gun for hire. I cannot speak for my fellow independents and internet video makers, however I sincerely hope you will invite and include us in the fight, and in the union.
Rallying around the issue affects all of us, however, I believe that for the union to be truly powerful, it should also embrace the independent more inclusively. The process and cost to get into any entertainment union is prohibitive to many independents, particularly documentary makers, and exclusion has turned a worker’s concept into an access-only club. The ability to produce quality media no longer meets a pay scale rate allowing for a new media maker to afford both rent and dues. Can these rates be more accessible to independents? Can the initiation fee be more realistic to our times? Can the concept of “writer” be broadened to include webisodes, podcasts, blogs and even code? Can this concept also be embraced by the other unions, to understand that now an online content producer may do all roles professionally - write, direct, shoot, edit and stream? Perhaps now is a time for the WGA to revisit what they see themselves as, and who they include in their mission.
For the ability of the many independents has grown exponentially in this digital age and talent is everywhere. To harness that talent now would be a progressive action for the union to do, as the majors most certainly will, and probably already have, with contests like “America’s Next Producer”, “The Lot”, etc. We independents need you to help us get the same rights, and you need us for numbers and solidarity with your cause. This is not a threat but a call for inclusion. Unions originally formed to protect the many poor laborers in this country, not just the ones who could afford entry. Unions traditionally get their strength from the proletariat. WGA, get yours now from the digital proles.
We are here, with you, ready to stand in solidarity.
Best,
Melissa Ulto
Independent Content Producer
Multo.com
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Above, Tina Fey pickets outside Rockefeller Plaza. (Go Tina!) The strike is beyond valid and overdue. As the new media boom continues, cross platform delivery of writers’ content is now on everything from DVDs to iPhones. Not to mention the mass use of content now in public spaces (with LCD screens everywhere), and on the internet. The writers, who come up with the ideas and scripts for the content, get a little upfront and a little on the backend. Very little. I say to writers and content producers everywhere - take back the media - start your own .tv and find your own audience. Take that audience away from the entertainment fossil known as Hollywood, and bring it back to the realities of what it really costs and who should really get the credit and bank. You can get sponsors, advertisers, etc, without the massive middle-beast and bring the industry back down to the people who actually make it happen. Lord knows the Hollyweirds certainly don’t have anything over the creatives and crew - they couldn’t pick a winning movie if it came up and slapped in the face with a protest sign. And seriously, without the words, the talent would do what it does best - stammer and sputter and say stupid things like its prose. We don’t want too many actors improv’ing, you know? There are few Robin Williams out there - very few. Its bad enough when talent speaks on bigger issues and blunders titanically - Tom Cruise and psychotherapy, Dog the Bounty Hunter and his racist rants, and well, any actor on politics.
The strike calls up a few other issues - like asking independent filmmakers and content producers to submit work for very little, for free or for a “contest” to a growing swarm of websites. From YouTube to Fox’s The Lot, pros are having to swim with the tadpoles and cell phone cammers, and are asked to “prove” their worth and work. Didn’t we go through years of artistic poverty and PA’ing to do that already? Isn’t our reel or our website or our YouTube profile enough? Guess not! So that means these sites can pick and choose, stockpile content and wrap their advertising around it, while barely breaking a sweat or spending much at all. I guarantee you the studios, who have been stockpiling scripts, will turn to America, with some LAME contest, to find the next great script or sitcom or film, and bypass the Writer’s Strike. I mean, wasn’t The Lot, American’s Next Producer and a variety of other shows proving that talent exists in plenty outside the Hollywood system?
I participated in The Lot and I felt conflicted at the time. I know why - it was most definitely talent mining, on an uneven field, where both pros and amateurs jockeyed for position. How many of those hungry hopefuls, if offered the chance, would cross the picket line eagerly and get their foot in the door? Thousands, if not millions. And not just in the US - worldwide! How do you explain to a desperate, starry eyed amateur that being a scab is not only killing the existing professionals a chance at real parity, but destroying their own chances at fair pay down the road?
When you can mass anything together - talent, workers, choices - you can lose sight of the individual value of each thing separately. Homogenized results come from mass selection. The mean or the median is chosen, the average is applauded but what about consistency and brilliance? What about professionalism and the craft of what we do as artisans, not just corporate cogs?
Support this strike, though it may cramp your Daily Show watching. Its important for many reasons, and solidarity is required of all of us, union or not, in this industry. For disclosure, I’m not in the union, but I do subscribe to the WGA for their bulletins and notices.
Rock On Writers!
Melissa
Check out this trailer I edited for a fledgling project. Not sure if the project itself is still happening, but the trailer I directed, animated and edited still stands up!
Peace,
Melissa
This clown’s paparazzi moment
Halloween this year was a hoot. I shot the parade as stills and on HD video. Some great stuff for my own stock needs! The costumes were amazing!
Parade revelers on the Costume Cult Float (more…)
Finished up the post production on an installation of four concurrently running DVDs for the Armory. A complex project, involving archival stills, video and a tiny design font, it took a little extra elbow grease to get it all working right.
The installation will be up for the next 6 months, so drop into the Armory (at Park and 66th St) to check it out.
Thanks to the folks at Pentagram Design for the opportunity.
Peace,
Melissa
I burn DVDs regularly from projects built in FCP, and have been doing this since the first version of FCP. DVD Studio Pro has its issues, but they are workable - the DVDs I build for clients - art installations, documentary rough cut reviews, screeners and video wallpaper - require the best out of the MPEG 2 codec. A recent project for an installation of 4 concurrently running DVDs had me testing codecs and encoders to get the best image from text and stills. Granted, the designers are print designers, and forgot the basics about images and text on video - keep it a fat font, keep on whole numbers for the x/y plane, keep it above 24 points, make sure its not WHITE white, use a keyline if you can, or deal with the faded edges versus jagged, pixelated ones. So I had work with InDesign Interchange documents, export as high res print PDF, import back into CS3’s Photoshop, exported several ways - high res JPEG, high res PNG, and finally, (what worked the best) Quicktime MOV files, using the animation codec setting.
(deep breath…slug back a coffee…sigh deeply, and…)
I then imported the files into FCP6, set the sequence codec to match (animation), and viola - tiny text that is readable when projected on a huge screen. At least according to my NTSC monitor. (more…)
