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YouTube Rippers
If I ever catch you cropping my credit again... If I ever catch you cropping my credit again... UPDATE 6/29/09: I've started posting videos to the Storms Official Youtube account, so people won't have any reason to rip off crappy versions any more... And also, on the advice of my dad, I want to point out that the picture in this post is me messing around with a prop gun on a movie shoot in LA!  I mean really... I'm a Fairhaven educated Seattle liberal who makes Doppler skits for a living and documentaries about Obama Art for fun... so don't worry, I'm not a scary guy and I promise I won't shoot you. ------ Just discovered that someone on youtube has been ripping videos (off my personal website, and off the Storms website) and posting them on youtube.  I wouldn't mind if I were credited, and if the videos didn't look like CRAP, but I'm not and they do. I'm all about freely sharing content... all my personal videos are licensed under the Creative Commons, as opposed to full copyright, but it's only fair to credit whoever made the content you're sharing.  The Doppler & Sue Bird skit is only available one place online, the Storm's Video page.  The version on there ends with "Shot and Edited by David Albright," but this guy went through the extra trouble of cutting off the credit at the end of his ripped version of the video.  WHY?! It also baffles me why you'd go through the trouble of posting something that looks SO BAD, what is that video like 2 frames per second? So people... feel free to share my videos. Everything I have online is fully embeddable to make it easy for you to share it. But please, don't try and do screen captures of my videos if you don't know how to do it correctly, and definitely do not crop off the credit at the end of the video. No one is going to believe that you made it yourself anyways.
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Hope Art at STIFF
Seattle True Indepedent Film Festival 2009 Seattle True Indepedent Film Festival 2009 Hope Art will be screening at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival on Friday June 5, at 6:15 along with 5 other short films, at the Jewel Box Theater in Belltown.  Hope Art is the only Non-Fiction piece in the showing and I can't decide if that's a good thing or not.  On the one hand it'll stand out since it's the only doc, but that also means it'll be showing to a room full of people who many not be that in to docs.  But I'm still really excited about it, it'll be my first public showing in Seattle. The Hope Art page on the STIFF site allows reviews... so if you've seen Hope Art, go write me up good a review!
By the time Barack Obama was sworn in as president, the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle was covered in Obama Art. 'Hope Art,' takes a look at this phenomenon from the perspective of the artists, but also digs deeper to ask what this proliferation of Obama art means about the neighborhood. Are they merely displaying their support for their candidate, or are they being too quick to memorialize a president who hasn't even had the chance to prove himself? DIRECTED BY David Albright, MUSIC BY Colin Short, PRODUCED IN ASSOCATION WITH the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog FEATURING Jen Graves – Art Writer for the Stranger, Spike Mafford – Photographer, Shelly Farnham – Artist, Damion Hayes – Currator, BLVD Gallery, Kate Stineback – Capitol Hill Housing
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Advertise on CHS-V
Starting today you can buy ads on CHS-V through CHS's ad service.  New CHS-V videos are consistently some of the most viewed stories on CHS, both because of the CHS traffic, but also because they're often linked to and embeded by other sites like Seattle PIThe Stranger, and many others.  This means if you advertise on CHS-V, your ad will reach far beyond just CHS.  So what are you waiting for Seattle businesses?! Advertise on CHS! Advertise on CHS! Side note -  I don't love the idea of having advertising on screen at the same time as my video.  But this is the best way we could think of to a) give the advertiser good placement, and b) not make the viewer have to sit through an ad to get to the video.  Obviously I would prefer to have post-roll ads, but who honestly sits through those... if the video is over, you can just go on to something else.  Pre-roll ads are just annoying and I would never use them*,  so I thought this was a good compromise.  Plus as long as it's local businesses ads it's not so obnoxious as a Clorox ad or something.  Since I shoot widescreen, I just have to move the image down in the frame to make room for the ad, rather than actually placing the ad over part of the image. *This is not legally binding, so don't hold me to it.
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McGinn Announcement
On Tuesday I covered Michael McGinns announcement of his candidacy for mayor for CHS.  KIRO was the only TV crew that was there, the only other camera there besides me was the McGinn Campaign’s crew.  It was funny seeing how much the KIRO crew stuck out, all the journalists asked questions like normal people, and then Essex Porter in his suit talks all loud in his trained journalist voice... he just seemed out of place since he was the only one.  I'm so glad I don't have to deal with a huge camera like theirs and all that gear, although I was definitely grateful for their light.  It still seems odd to me that the people putting on the press conferences don't set up lights, even at the Sonics we'd rely on the TV crews to light the press conferences. I got some great feedback on my use of ‘tweets’ and blog comments in the video… Scott Schaefer of the B-Town Blog said
"Sweet Tweet Touch on the Vid!  Your use of Tweets in the video is very clever...innovative, appropriate, and definitely made me overlook that McGinn should've shaved.  I'm stealing this idea now."
Eli Sanders called me “ever present” on Slog.  I guess that’s a good thing…? And Monica Guzman of seattlepi.com wrote about me on the Big Blog, the post includes a rambly, semi-coherent quote from me… I definitely should’ve had my morning coffee before I called her back. I also got a comment from Paul Balcerak, of PNWlocalnews.com, who I quoted in the video as saying that he liked McGinns idea of fiberoptic networking.  Here’s what he said
On second thought... I have to reconsider what I said (and was quoted as saying). Yes, at first the idea of Internet infrastructure seemed cool ... but as so many have mentioned, it's not as if Seattle has an Internet problem or anything. The economy sucks right now and it seems like kids are getting shot in the CD and South Seattle on a weekly (if not more frequent) basis. I agree with Uncle Vinny: "I would be much happier if he'd drop the 'fiber optic network' thing and put the social safety net front and center. So anyway, consider "paulbalcerak's" video comment redacted.
This points out that including the tweets and comments in the video is not meant to be analysis, it’s just commentary… immediate reactions.  The value of having these comments is to give some context to what McGinn is saying by showing how others in the community are reacting to his statements. For some it may be useful to see other people’s reactions on screen.  For others, I’m sure it’s distracting and unnecessary.  Personally, I think it can be useful to see other people’s reactions because it can help you see where your own biases and preconceptions are, I think it is also a great way to engage the community by giving them a chance to be part of the conversation instead of just observing.
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First SeattleIAM.com Videos
My first two SeattleIAM.com videos are up today. Here and here (or you can just watch them below). I'm not that happy with the Streets For People one, besides the fact that I hate hearing my own voice... it just feels like it's missing something. It needs a stronger central character, or something, I don't know what exactly. The other one (David Montgomery) is much simpler and I think came out much better, although it's probably less interesting to most people.
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1000 views!
Woke up this morning to find that after 2 full days online, "Hope Art" has 1000 views!  More than all three other episodes of CHS-V combined.  So thanks to Slog, Seattlest, O'Reilly Radar, Obama Art Report, and all the other blogs that linked to the video! Here's the blip.tv graph of total viewers, the first two little bumps are the release days of the first two episodes "The Blog," and "Snowstorm '08,"  And the huge spike on the right is "Hope Art."
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"Hope Art" & Web Video vs. Doc Short
About an hour after I sat down to edit this video, I decided that I had a good enough story here for it to be more just a web video, and that if I spent some serious time editing I could probably submit this to some film festivals as a documentary short. What is the different between a web video and documentary short? I’m not sure exactly. (I’ve also been thinking lately about whether there is a difference between a “citizen journalism video” and documentary but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.) The main difference for me was that when I decided it was a doc short instead of a web video, I stopped assuming the viewer had ADD. It’s pretty well established that online video viewers have short attention spans... I know I do. When I watch web videos I often fast forwarding to find more interesting sections, or just get distracted by something else on the page and click away from the video. (I hate that I do this, and I’ve been making a conscious effort lately to extend my web attention span.)  When I edit web videos, I don’t add typically use very much nat sound unless it’s needed to tell the story, or long establishing shots, which slow down the pacing and give people a chance to get distracted, but I did use those things here. As a result I think “Hope Art,” is a better doc short, but probably doesn’t play as well as it could as a web video. Editing this video has reminded me a little about the limitations of web video. It’s hard to tell a good story when you’re constantly worried about holding the viewers attention. I’ve been focusing pretty exclusively on web video for a while now, but having a story that takes a little more time to tell is making me appreciate the idea of sitting someone down and making them focus on my film. So what you do you think? Is this video too slow paced for the internet? Did you sit through the whole thing? Also make sure to visit this video at it's CHS page, and add a couple of pennies to my earnings (I get $$$ per page view)
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