Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Analogue Lives!


This kind of music isn't for everyone, but if you are a fan of synth-based, meditative "space" music you must check out Baltimore musician Jeff Koepper! I used to dabble in this stuff back in the 80's but never approached Jeff's level. I met him through craig's list and recently sold him some of my old keyboards. As far as I'm concerned they couldn't have gone to a better home! There are some samples on his MySpace page so you can see what I'm talking about.

Jeff Koepper

I love this stuff! You may hear it finding its way into some future video projects of mine!

He's also giving a live concert in Philadelphia on April 19th. I'm not going to miss it!

You can check out more about the concert and his CDs here...

thegatherings.org

Just so you know..."analogue" is a classic type of synthesizer that predates digital. It's the kind of instrument guys like Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman used to play. By restricting himself to only these kinds of keyboards Jeff Koepper, and others like him, create music that has a distinctive "retro" sound that can't be achieved any other way.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A thought about editing...

Real life is mostly long boring stretches with brief moments of excitement. The problem is it takes too long to get from one interesting moment to the next. 

What we do as editors is take real life and condense it. It's like taking the watery sap from a tree and boiling it down to make maple syrup. We boil life down and boil it down and cut out the boring bits and remove the waiting around till all that is left is the good stuff.

A well edited TV show or movie or documentary is real life as we WISH it would be! I think that video and film editors should be as highly paid as doctors because we do just as valuable a service...we save, preserve and present the best of life.


Friday, March 7, 2008

Why am I being Googled so much?


I am always sure to include a link to my site when I post on other blogs or on Youtube. So why is my tracking service telling me that much f the time my website is being reached by people who have to Google me to find it? Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm happy that you found me no matter how you did it! 

If you used Google to get here please leave me a comment telling me how you heard about me. I would really appreciate it!

Thanks,
Mike

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Good news!

The MMA promo has been getting mixed reviews but mostly positive. 
Here's what the webmaster of mmarecruiter.com/ had to say...

"The video is awesome and you did a great job with what was available to work with. I was trying to create a buzz and it worked. We had a big increase in our sign ups since the release of the video.

We are the first site MMA site that has a intro video which is huge. I couldn't be happier to be breaking ground and making the standards higher. Just alone today we have had close to 20 sign ups and its still early.
It's working!

Thanks,
Mike"

All in a day's work!

Monday, March 3, 2008

Classical music ROCKS!!

It always bothers me when people say that they like classical music..."but only when I fall asleep"! I've loved classical all my life. Some of the hardest hitting music I know was composed for an orchestra. There's nothing like the power of 100 people playing together! 

It was with that in mind that I dove into the re-edit of my MMA promo video. The original was a flop. (See "Mixed Martial Arts video backfires!" below.)  I had tried for a Raging Bull homage but just got snores. I posted it on a few MMA boards and it didn't get them very excited.

For my re-edit I chose a section from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, one of the most powerfully raucous pieces of music I know. This video is the result and it has been applauded by some of the very people who had expressed disappointment with the first promo. Home run!!

Hopefully it will also be successful in drawing people to the mmarecruiter.com site to join up. That will be the true test!


The fight footage was graciously supplied to me by rageinthecage.com and ukcmma.com. Thanks guys!

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Bodybuilding as art

While I was shooting my new documentary, Beyond the Pain, I was lucky enough to get permission to sit in on a photo shoot with the exceptional photographer Martin Schoeller. Martin is known for his portraits of celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Bill Clinton, among many others.


This day Martin was working on his latest project, a series on women bodybuilders. An exhibition of the work is opening in March at the Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills, CA. A book will be published some time after that.

I like this clip because it does three things. It shows Martin's method of relaxing a subject during a photo shoot, tells us a little about the difficulties that Vicki has faced in her career and says something about bodybuilding in general.