Fear and Loathing in a Digital Blah

Documentary Update: Boston Latino Film Festival Screening

2008-10-06T12:44:00.002Z

Boston Latino Film Festival Screening, originally uploaded by donshades.

Good news - our Film has been selected for screening by another festival. This time it's State Side at the Boston International Latino Film Festival. The nice people over at BSide have put our trailer up on their website. We'll have an official film site up by the end of the week.

Diagram of Me

2008-10-02T23:46:00.001Z

Diagram of Me, originally uploaded by donshades.

I was thinking a lot about myself while out in the dessert. In the great tradition of the great surrealists of the past I realised that I can split myself into myself and three alter-egos. This is more a note to myself than a blog post but fuck it if you read this blog then you probably read posts from all four of us.

Freaky

2008-09-30T09:20:00.001Z

freaky, originally uploaded by donshades.

Another photo from Melbourne.

Nice Graff - Melbourne

2008-09-27T11:12:00.002Z

Nice Graff - Melbourne, originally uploaded by donshades.

Lots of nice graff in Melbourne - more over at http://www.melbournegraffiti.com/

Come in Number 9, your time is up

2008-09-25T23:55:00.001Z

Australia 2008, originally uploaded by donshades.

This is, I think, the best photo I took in Sydney... I didn't actually like the place that much.

"That's the Law o' tha Northern Territories"

2008-09-24T22:18:00.001Z

I'm back from Oz.

Exert from a travel diary to the Dam (April 2008)

2008-09-24T22:11:00.003Z

The Professor was sitting in the Dolphin Coffee-Shop, just on the edge of the Old Town in central Amsterdam. A plume of smoke rose from his musk coloured ashtray, interrupted only by the Professor's hand as he fumbled the cream into the thick black coffee in his cup.

Drip

Drip

Stop.

The third drop seemed slower than the first two. Too slow. This was it.

luckily I'd packed glucose tablets and had made sure we both ate a large breakfast. When you're playing with psychedelics, you can't afford to have your blood sugar levels suddenly crash out on you. You need fiber in your system; and some carbohydrates. Slow burners. Marathon food.

"...I can see this is going to be a long trip", I quipped casually beneath baited breath.

But why where we here? What insane motivation had we for being out of the safe haven of London town, what wayward desire had brought us here, to the center of the Dam?

Remember; we are Westerners. We don't have a week to sit around in a tin hut on the outskirts of a Central Mexican village while a Shaman burns us for 50 dollars a night not to eat the food that he's putting on a sacrificial alter for Mother Earth while promising us spiritual enlightenment. We need hard, solid, freebased experiences which shortcut straight to the good stuff. We don't care for spirits and ritual any more, we've replaced the old gods of the past with laptops, palmtops and iPhones... No respect is to be found here, no grand questing for truth, divinity or greater meaning; this is about pushing it to the limit. This is about squeezing as many psychedelics as you can into a weekend away and getting back to your office in time for breakfast on Monday morning. This is about escaping the monotony of bed-to-office, the rat-race which grinds us down and brings us to our knees. This is adventure, living on the edge and plane stupidity all rolled into one. This is that extra something; that sparkle in your eye when people ask you ”how was your holiday“. This is scratching a little deeper.

Plastic time is always the first sign of a mind starting to twist it's self into perceptual knots.

Don't fight it.

Steady yourself and continue to do whatever you were doing. Let it creep on gently... that way you might have a chance of retaining some sense of control. But not for long.

Was that drop of cream really suspended in mid air?

The Dolphin painted on the wall opposite winked before animating it's dorsal and propelling its self out into the middle of the shop floor.

”Did you-”

The Professor appeared startled. Even the most experienced of psychedelic tourists can't prepare himself for such a sight.

”What?“, I replied. The smoke had got into my eyes and I was thinking of coming clean and telling the man that I wasn't particularly enjoying myself. I had come to The Dam in search of art and architecture, not smoky underground drug dens. I looked up and saw the mans eyes. They were glazed, as if covered with a generous helping of translucent jelly. He was focused on the mural across the room. starring intently. Waiting. Watching. Feverishly expecting something to happen.

But how had I got into this mess in the first place? My thoughts wandered back to the previous Tuesday, sitting at my desk in Dare; cursing myself for not booking a holiday in April. The phone rang and on the other end was my Friend and some-time creative partner Lady Matisse. Her dark husky voice on the other end of the phone was the last thing I needed at this early hour of the morning.

”So do you want the ticket or not?”. She was offering me a ticket to see yet another fucked up psycho-trip-hop band play at a concert hall over in the Dam. She was supposed to be meeting the Professor there that Saturday evening but had to pull out at the last minute.

”Sure”, I replied. ”Your loss“. The game was afoot.

I knew that this excursion would be a difficult one. Our mutual friend the Professor was not an easy man to travel with. His hunger for the surreal and lust for some twisted understanding of what he considered to be the lucid world at large could often be like some all consuming and horrendously destabalising tornado. And so the ticket was mine.

Fast-track through three hours at an airport; all kinds of zealous security measures leading to a thirty minute Easy Jet flight; plane, train, automobile and tram...

...oh... here I am. The Dolphin Coffee Shop. The Professor sitting opposite me. The smoke, the coffee, the cream.

The cream?

The cream had remained suspended in time, just for an instant; but that instant had been long enough for both of us to realise what was about to happen.

The Professor drew in a long breath. As he did so, the expansion of his lungs was echoed in the slow, yet definite expansion of the room.

Exhale.

”Did...did you see that?“; his eyes were beyond help. Reality was draining away as quickly as the mural painted on the wall was starting to run down on to the floor. Even from where I was sitting it was clear that something was wrong with this place. What kind of a twisted psychopath decorates the inside of a smokers paradise coffee shop with corral reefs, pirates chests and life-sized polystyrene models of flipper anyway? Clearly the owners were in some sort of pact to see us both wind up checking into a rehab clinic before our trip had even begun.

”Will you calm down? You're freaking out the tourists”, I kicked him under the table in a effort to curb what was about to turn into a spiel of some sort of crazy paranoid babble. The last thing we needed was a scene; and the Professor's sudden lurching back on his chair, as if avoiding a joust from some invisible terror swimming right at him through thin air was already starting to cause a stir with the owners of the establishment.

I was starting to feel a little uneasy myselef. I knew we had to change the scene; but it wouldn't be as easy as pressing the red button.

Somehow I managed to settle up with the owner and found the Professor outside, lost in the daze of a waking dream.

Flash frame. Snippets of situation, mixed with a saturated streak of super realism.

Tram lanes... Is that the Professor standing in the middle? The expression on the face of the driver as he pulled on the breaks of his big metal beast was one of acceptance. The professor was evidently not the first psychedelic screw-up to suddenly have a reality check with one foot glued solidly to each rail.
“Move you fool“, I shouted from another place in the dream. ”Get out the way! That great iron whale is about to eat you“. At least I knew what I was talking about. The Professor was moving from the waste up, but his feet appeared to be welded to the track. I remember the breaks making a loud screeching sound and the Professor's head thrashing around like a guard-dog on heat. This was the end, I remember thinking. I'm about to witness the poor fucker leveled by a tram.

Flash frame. What next? A park. Arh yes, that park; just on the north east side of the old town. Surely the perfect place to take time out, rest and regroup.

"Can you see them?" The Professor exclaimed. A look of awe on his face.
"See what?", I felt like a broken record.
"The men... Aztec men, everywhere. The come from the sun, they link together and their energy grows the trees, the lake, the grass... you."
"Don't involve me in this..." I tried to take a back seat, helping him onto a bench and sipping my coffee.
"The warmth of the sun is the little men, nymphs of the day, of the night; they burn brightly and bring life to the dark. They are inside us, they make us who we are - they are... energy".

On Drugs...

2008-09-24T12:14:00.003Z

People often ask me if I have any opinions regarding what could be seen historically as a link between creative types, artists and what-not and alcohol/ drug abuse, unchecked hedonism and promiscuous disregard for some aspects of what would be considered clean living.

I have only this to say on the matter:

The Professor Goes Wandering

2008-08-20T11:21:00.005Z

.... and I'm going with him. We're going walkabout in the Australian wilderness for a bit.

I'm roughly heading for somewhere around here:

View Larger Map

Via all the bits everybody tells you you'd be crazy to travel through. I'll be driving with my good friend with loose aims of meeting some cool people, doing some cool stuff and some things and stuff.

I will return refreshed in just under a month. In the meantime:

NO email
NO phone
NO twitter (well, maybe a little twitter)
No GPS devices

Selah.

Kill your Ego: Update

2008-08-14T14:12:00.002Z

whispermag, originally uploaded by donshades.

well, it seems that my Teeshirt design has been picked up by the nice people over at Whispermag, who have featured it along with Spreadshirt as site of the day.

This is my first and as yet only outing into the world of e:commerce and not 5 days later it already seems to be making headlines.... God Bless the in ter net

More Fear and Loathing

2008-08-11T10:04:00.001Z

Fear and Loathing in Glasto '08, originally uploaded by donshades.

In Glastonbury. I had a big scanning session last night... it takes me back to before the days of digital photography when the only way in was a set of prints and a few hours with a flatbed scanner.

I rather like this one (Fisheye Lomo), I might get it made into a poster...

Digital is Dead

2008-08-08T08:35:00.006Z

Long live Analogue (photography).

Been adding to the Ongoing Lomography Project: a few from Glastonbury. This one is my favorite.

more fear and loathing.

Guinness Viral: Yet Another Reason Why I love The Interweb

2008-07-31T11:51:00.007Z

Some dude made his own Guiness Ad. It's fucking great and Guinness hate it.

*

Of course Diageo are up in arms about it, even protesting to YouTube's owner Rupert M. to have the film pulled, stamped out, destroyed, eradicated, disregarded, wiped out, Exterminated blah blah blah it never happened.
Brand Republic gives the full story with humorous quoted reactions and press release clippings etcetera.

Did nobody learn from the Diet Coke and Mentos thing? Are any of the brands out there even tuned into what's going on? Surely this is a good thing after all no PR is bad PR. Of course they did, but my feeling is that they still feel that they have to be seen to try to stamp this sort of thing out, even if their digital strategist is wiping the pleasure stains from their pants and realising that somebody just did a years' worth of work for them.

This is the best damn Ad I've seen for Guinness in a long time; and it didn't come from a overpaid ad agency who's happy to spank a few million smackers on, "the most expensive ad of all time". This is real, humorous, appealing and engages me more than half an idea sexed up by exotic locations, ACE associated photographic direction and ego-massaged Ad-creatives sitting on deck chairs in some Argentinian backwater.

I'm getting myself into a larger argument here regarding democratisation of media, the pros and cons of often badly made UGC versus a well though out, paid for and professionally executed idea, but hey there's time for structured debate later: this was just supposed to be a rant aimed at championing the little man (and the naked chick being spit-roasted) over the Agency.

Well done Deschatz. Now grow some backbone and repost the video on your youTube channel.

*Obligatory message: Please comment if this video doesn't appear, it means it's been stamped out. I encourage you to copy it, and repost it in any way you can. selah.

More Lynch

2008-07-30T10:20:00.002Z

I'm addicted to this man.

But not because he talks in an informed way about creativity; I love him because he does bonkers things like this:

I Agree with Lynch

2008-07-29T11:25:00.004Z

So I think we're all agreed that the future of a large part of the work we do in digital is increasingly about the creation of interesting content. Be it small films on your phone, episodic dramas or secret codes buried about the net (remember Lost...?). A danger to be avoided is the James Bond ("Casino Royal") route.

Cut to:-

XCU sony ericsson handset

Onscreen Text: ELIPSIS

This means educating our clients, fighting their urge to go full screen on logos, or to be honest even have the sponsoring brand's product appear in the film at all:

My view on it all? I Agree with Lynch.

You just can't argue with that.

some amusing quotes on drugs

2008-07-25T10:40:00.001Z

My deskbuddy has just finished a 4 month motion graphics project for our COI client at Dare, on Drugs and what they do to your brain. The running joke of the project has been the meeting requests in his diary where we all arrange to meet and talk about the various poisons on the rosta...

so I though some quotes would be applicable at this time....

wine robs a man of self-possession; opium greatly invigorates it
- thomas de quincey

you can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when it's waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye
- hunter s thomsom

cocaine is god's way of saying you're making too much money
- robin williams

hashish will give him the courage of a hero, the eloquence of a poet, and the ardor of an itallian. remember that gentlemen and come to me when the crisis approaches
- louisa may alcott

This is the Coolest thing I've seen in a While

2008-07-17T10:03:00.004Z

I know that everybody else is talking about this, but I finally got round to seeing it today...

I remember playing around with a non-contact digitser (3d scanner) at uni and thinking it was cool, but I never got to do anything with it - so well done for these Loonaversity dudes for taking it to the Head.

More interesting that that even is making of video here:

The Most Important Question you can Ask

2008-07-16T16:31:00.002Z

When in a stressful situation is:

"Are babies going to die?"

if the answer is no; then it can't be that bad.

Selah

I'm Off to The Circle....

2008-06-24T19:41:00.004Z

... With some close friends my alter ego and Twitter... If it looks like bad weather on this handy Glastonbury webcam, then spare a thought for the day you almost met - The Professor.

See you on the other side.

Selah.

In the Future

2008-06-19T23:53:00.003Z

There will be no mass production of any considered worth. We shall all have meaningful, bespoke experiences, which engage us to a suitable level.

This is why I work in digital.

Banner ads can fuck off.

My Desk

2008-06-12T16:05:00.001Z

My Desk, originally uploaded by donshades.

My Desk at Dare

Crazy Film Projects with Dare

2008-06-03T10:53:00.003Z

Radio silence and lame 2nd life related blog posts of late are most definately the product of a Bonkers volume of film work going through the pipeline at Dare right now. Some exciting advertising bits about to break out of the doors and on the interweb...along with some great motion graphics work and a short interactive film for Barlcays.

Last week we undertook a two day location shoot in the dizzy heights of North Hackney for our outher Barlays Client.

The shoot was Dare's biggest to date; and saw us taking over a Pub and some poor dude's house. We installed false walls in the house, clamped a prop car outside the house and built a false bathroom inside the location bathroom.

Most people at Dare are under the illusion that shoots are glamorous affairs. Trust me they're not. This one had three exterior set-ups - and it pissed it down with rain...

To me the volume of great material we got down on camera is testament to the amazingly talented group of people involved in the project. It's top secret so I should go on about it until we put the project live, but for now here's some on-set pics of the ga

The Night I Spent in A Police Cell

2008-05-26T15:16:00.001Z

donshades in jail, originally uploaded by donshades.

I got caught aiming my shotgun at a hoodlum across the street. Apparently they're clamping down on random shootings in Tombstone. I hadn't read the local paper saying as much. I was only going to give him a warning shot in an attempt to stop him robbing the bank. The Deputy said I shouldn't have taken the law in to my own hands, I should have shouted for the sheriff..

Our Documentary: An Award Nomination!

2008-05-22T09:27:00.001Z

festival nomination, originally uploaded by donshades.

Our Documentary - Rio Blanco: The Farmer and the Mine, has received it's first festival recognition; and is up for an award in the Best International Documentaries section of the Heart of England film festival!

It's a small festival, but showcasing films sent from around the world, with an exciting line up of pictures created by independent film makers from various backgrounds.

JM Script Project update

2008-05-15T11:34:00.003Z

Some nice dudes worked up our sony vaio script project into a nice animation.

Snow Angel
by angels_in_the_snow

The film was directed by the incredibly talented Laurie Proud.

As JM would say - a good script has a beginning, a middle, and an end.