Archive for 2008

Making time for what matters

I’ve gotten to see some good shows these past couple of weeks. It started with Vampire Weekend and then a whole day of music at EdgeFest last saturday. Opening for VW was a local band called the “Fucking Kennies” they were barely a band, but were obviously having a good time. The lead singer spent most of their set in his underwear and apologized to the crowd a few times because they didn’t have enough music to fill their time. No one seemed to care, no one was there to see them anyway. VW took the stage soon after and played most of their album. I was a little concerned about exactly what they would play because they really don’t have much recorded music. I got to hear all the songs I wanted to and the new stuff they played sounded pretty good, so it worked out. Here is Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa as recorded by my phone, the words are a little different then on the album so be warned it’s a little NSFW.

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EdgeFest was also a grood time. I didn’t get to shoot as much video as I would have liked but my editing and motion graphics were on the main stage JumboTrons and on the EDGE’s website so that’s all right. I had made a little intro graphic for each video and then as interviews and band performances rolled in throughout the day we edited them down, slapped on the intro and tag and they were played. It was stressful, it was long, it was fun and it made want to never work for free again. Here is the intro, the crowd was done with Particular, it’s a bit sketch in places, if I was cooler I would have done it in Combustion, but I’m not yet. It’s also available in HD

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I saw an absolutely amazing movie the other day, it’s something that I had wanted to see for quite some time but I missed it when it was here in town. It came out on Blu-ray last week and the format might have well been invented for this movie, it’s beyond beautiful. The movie is Tarsem‘s The Fall and if you’ve never heard of it that’s ok. I highly recommend seeing it, I think Roger Ebert put it best in his review:
“….a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free-fall from reality into uncharted realms. Surely it is one of the wildest indulgences a director has ever granted himself. Tarsem, for two decades a leading director of music videos and TV commercials, spent millions of his own money to finance “The Fall,” filmed it for four years in 28 countries and has made a movie that you might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it.”
Here is the title sequence to give you a taste of it’s amazing cinematography.

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I’ve been a little blue lately, I’m not really sure why, things have been going pretty well. I have been busy, so busy that I’m falling behind in one of my classes. I’m so close to being done with school that I really wish I could just get my degree tomorrow and not go to class again. That’s not how it works though, so I’ve had to make some tough decisions in the past week and am giving up some projects and responsibilities in order to spend more time on school. I have a lot of opportunities and it’s hard to accept that I can’t take advantage of all of them. A friend of mine suggested that I make a list of everything that needs to be done this week and check them off one by one as I finish. Sounds pretty simple, I think I’ll give it a shot. Hopefully clearing things off my desk will help pull me out of my little melancholy.

I ordered a sweet t shirt this last week, I can’t wait to wear it around town. It’s the McCain 2008 logo except under his name where it usually says “for president” it says “for retirement” ;)
David Hildreth

Wake Up America!

First off, I tagged a few people on Facebook on this note, I don’t want to offend anyone, but if you’re going to be a fan or supporter of McCain 08 I’d love to share my opinion with you… but only if you want to listen. Do what you want, I’m really not trying to force anything down your throat.

I honestly don’t understand people sometimes. How, after 8 years of our country going down the drain can people look at the two presidential candidates and choose to not change anything. One candidate talks about issues while the alternative just talks about the opposition. One provides concrete ideas for change and the other doesn’t offer anything different then what we have now. The policies that John McCain puts forth are the exact policies that we have right now, so how could anything be different when he’s in office? I can honesty say that I can’t begin to fathom how an informed citizen could cast a vote for McCain/Palin. If someone can give me a good solid reason I’d love to hear it.
A friend of mine said something a few years ago and at first I didn’t agree, but now a few years later I can really see the wisdom in it. He said that the Republican party (then my party of choice, I now claim no party affiliation) holds people, especially conservative christians, hostage with issues like abortion and gay marriage. He said that there are many, many people out there that vote based on those issues and those alone. He’s completely right, there are many people who look at Barack Obama’s stance on abortion and immediately count him out. People even take into consideration issues like prayer in school, that have been dead for decades, and cast their vote accordingly. It’s time to really look at the problems in our country and look at what it will take to fix them. Abortion isn’t ever going to be illegal, if you don’t support it then help out programs that give young mothers another way out. Gay marriage is about equality not personal beliefs. No one wants to change your bible they just want to be able to have hospital rights for their loved ones. America is a democracy and it’s policies will never match your beliefs or dogma, it wasn’t built as a Christian nation it was built on the idea of freedom of religion and that means compromise. Not compromise of your beliefs but compromise in the rules we all have to live by.

If you have looked at John McCain’s record on the economy, on health care and foreign relations and still think he would make a better leader then ok. At least look at the issues though, and also look at how he is conducting his campaign, the following video sums it up.

Alright, no more politics for a while.
Everything is good down here, I’m busy with work and school. I have a couple of cool projects I’m working on so I should have some good video to show in the near future.
David Hildreth

A good week off

It rained a bit last week… as a matter of fact we had quite the little storm on thursday. Even with a house full of people you could hear the wind whip around our place in Tempe. The rain was coming down in sheets and there was even hail for a short time. I don’t usually do much weather photography… none really, but living here has made me want to start (the above photo is not mine, it’s from flickr). Even though my car windows were down the whole time the storm was pretty cool, that is until I got to work the next morning. Downtown was a mess, getting from the 10 over past Thomas took 20 minutes longer than usual, none of the traffic signals worked and the roads were a maze of toppled trees and power polls. Then when I got to work not only was our SAN down (a non storm related issue) so I couldn’t get any work done but we also didn’t have any internet. I found myself reading the paper until someone finally found me a project I could work on. It’s very frustrating to know there is work to be done and not be able to do it, and then to not have interwebs to pass the time… not cool.

During my week off from school I was able to get out of work for a day and drive up to the Grand Canyon with a good friend. We drove through Sedona on the way up and I can’t even being to tell you how awesome that was. In all honestly we should have just stopped and chilled in Sedona for the day, but my travel companion had never seen The Grandest of Canyons so we ventured on. Sedona is like another state, it’s not hot, it’s not dry or desolate. It’s beautiful and green, there’s a river and the temperature is tolerable. I really want to get back up there soon, it’s a very expensive little town so it’l just be a simple day trip, but there is a part of me that wants so badly to jump into a river. It’s simply been too long since I at least scoffed at the opportunity to do so. Later the trip hit a sour note when I found out that my friend didn’t know where Idaho was on the map. After a few texts to ChaCha she got the picture but I don’t think I’ll let her live it down any time soon.

I’m sure by now you’ve all heard who McCain picked to be his VP. It’s never been more appairent that he would rather win an election then effectivly govern.
That’s about all I can stomach to say about it… I’ll just let John Stewart take over.

If you didn’t catch Obama’s speech I suggest catching up. I’m interested to see how the Republicans react at their convention.

In other completely unrelated and slightly random news I told someone special this week flat out “I want to be with you.” She said something about being light headed… I think that’s a good thing.
Time will tell.

David Hildreth

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