Saturday, March 28, 2009

About Her

She was always determined, stubborn and concrete. She would always know what to say, have an answer for every question, a reaction to many actions and always had the right attitude towards uncomfortable situations, she would solve her own problems and needed nothing from anybody to leap her above the obstacles. She never showed weakness and never wanted to prove herself wrong.

She would love with extreme passion and care with uncontrollable measures, she would stare at my sleep till my eyes registered her presence, to be the first thing I'd see when i waked up every morning and be the last thing i saw every night.

She changed her friends and changed her likes, listened to my music and saw my movies. She was there every moment and not even a minute she faked to like me.

She changed me, changed my life and changed my likes. Made me strong and never weak, made me love and never wrong, she made me happy, she made me happy.

She doesn't regret the new days without me neither without me she stops being herself, she keeps the memories and lives the moment. She loves herself and loves her life. She is happy.



Llora el Amor from Coolerdavid on Vimeo.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Analog memories from a digital reality.

I remember clearly when i was becoming a teenager, that i had always wanted to create images through various media as photography and video, the reasons were various from boredom and curiosity to wanting to be creative and impress. Unfortunately the "workflow" for a 13 year old kid was a bit too complicated. Using the family's VHS camcorder (if I'm right it was a JVC) I created my first compelling sequences of imagery; rather a birthday party, baptism, or any given Sunday, I would play around with the heavy robust thing and afterwords be happy with what i could capture "screening" it on the TV set in the living room and let the family see what my perspective was during that day or certain event. But after a while of this repetitive actions and long eternal shots of your baby cousin crawling, or your drunk aunt entertaining a crowd, you realize that you must get rid of some images that might make some people uncomfortable or pitiful, so the next step was how to make some cuts? how to edit?

By then having a "videocassette recorder" or VCR for the same VHS format which had disposed of the previous BETA sensation, was very common in every family; with that in handy, I managed to create my first "linear" editing suite with a couple of RCA cables that connected the video camera to the VCR and to the TV, I assembled my first sequence, and then it was all about showing it to somebody.

Of course, I can't find anywhere those videos I made, I guess my mom threw all those plastic cartridges to the trash as a desire to forget or get rid of anything that would bring back those unpleasant memories.

When technology was not as we know it, to become a video artist, camera man, editor or a director, was not that easy though it was very educational and fun. Nowadays its way much easier, affordable and available. Thanks to the Internet, Digital Cameras and web streaming channels such as Youtube, Daily Motion, Revver, Current tv or Vimeo (this last one is my favourite due the quality that u can preserve) being able to produce your own content, have it distributed, receive feedback and even read marketing results is possible, and only you need a mobile phone-handycam a good enough laptop with any software that you download from the web and an account in any of these streaming websites.

An example of this simplicity is "fabulous žížkov" a minute 10 seconds clip which i video recorded during a beautiful sunny day in November, when here in Prague, winter was just a few days to start; I had nothing planed, It was just me taking a walk around my neighborhood. I had this images kept in a box until last weekend i was a bit bored and had lots of free time, so i thought -OK let's do something with that- so i started editing it on Saturday morning, and a few hours later i had a nice piece with which I'm pretty satisfied (It's not the greatest thing, but the simplicity of how it was created is the point). At the end i also added some photographs of the same place which i took during December.

I guess that what I'm trying to say is: I wish i was born a decade later.
(try making your own film-homevideo with a Beta-VHS camcorder and edit it in a 8 bit computer like the Commodore 64).


fabulous žížkov from Coolerdavid on Vimeo.