Melanie Anne Phillips

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2012-01-16T06:29:00.000-08:00

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Marauding Memories

2012-01-14T08:06:00.000-08:00

Teresa: You know those young actors in the Harry Potter series were so lucky to play against the cream of British actors.

Me: Not just the education but the experience.

Teresa: Can you imagine, being that age and working with Kenneth Branagh and... Peter O' Toole... no, wait, not Peter O' Toole... that other guy, the one I like.

Me: Oh, yeah.. the guy who played Dumbledore originally. I can't remember his name now either.

Teresa: I hate getting old

Me: I don't think it's age so much as experience. You stuff sot much information into your mind over the years, you just can't find things easily anymore. Oh, I'm sure age can be a factor, but there's also the overstuffed warehouse aspect.

Teresa: I know what you mean.

Me: Richard Harris! See, it was in there, I just had to track it down. That's why I don't let my memories wander the halls at night. Everybody has to go back to their rooms or I'll never find them again.

Teresa: You could if you had a map.

Me: You mean, like a "Marauder's Map?"

Teresa: Exactly.

"American Gothic" (1972)

2012-01-12T22:19:00.000-08:00

"American Gothic" (1972)

Saw this along the road by Aunt Jessie's house in New Hampshire. Wondered if the nearby forest was Grant Woods.

"Transitions" (1971)

2012-01-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

"Transitions" (1971)Compositional exploration of

the zen-like progression from solid to ether to null.

Caveat Emptor

2012-01-11T18:52:00.001-08:00

"Neon Soldiers" (1971)

2012-01-11T15:33:00.001-08:00

"Neon Soldiers" (1971)

Somewhere across country on the 4th of July in the middle of the family coast to coast road trip vacation. Another stab at time exposures. Again, a shaky camera (hand held) but the end result of this (out of many no-so-good shots) was something that looked like tin soldiers made out of light with their bayonets glowing at the ends of their shouldered fire-rifles as they march beneath the aerial bombardment. Sometimes what makes a snap shot into a photograph is nothing more than picking the right mistake and giving it a catchy name full of imagery.

"Moraine Park" (1971)

2012-01-11T14:45:00.001-08:00

"Moraine Park" (1971)

Colorado. A truly beautiful spot in the expansive meadows left by the retreat of the great glaciers after the last ice age. Good spot to experience a Rocky Mountain High.

"Man Made Lightning" (1971)

2012-01-11T10:56:00.001-08:00

For this shot, I had just discovered the wonders of time-exposures. This was a hand-held shot on a city street at night, taken from the passenger seat of the family car. As a result, the shot was shaky, and when I got the slide back, it struck me as looking a lot like lighting. Imagine that, "struck" by lightning!

"Memorial" (1971)

2012-01-10T23:23:00.001-08:00

Continuing to go through my old photographs, organize them, and archive them. Here's the current on worthy of sharing....

"Memorial" (1971)

At age 18 I was into "trick" photography and photo manipulation (old school - no computers). So, I took two slides, one of Arlington and the other of the Lincoln memorial. I sandwiched them together, using a paper hole-punch to create the circle that features Lincoln. It seemed to me that the combination of these two memorials, Lincoln, and the "little" people on the steps/grass made some kind of political statement, but I couldn't figure out what, exactly. Graphically, I like the way the pillars of the Lincoln memorial kind of line up with the sides of the head stones. Make of it what you will....

The Grand Tetons (1971)

2012-01-10T20:01:00.001-08:00

The Grand Tetons (1971)

The foothills of the Grand Tetons is a land of a thousand lakes. the cobalt blue skies, glaringly white clouds and snow, and the silvery reflections in the pools of water, all against the dark rocks and earth - all of this creates such a stark contrast that it actually hurt to look at it. My eyes would water from the intensity of the light. In fact, I actually had to wear sun glasses or I would have become essentially snow blind. Though you can get a sense of that from this scan of a slide, the reality is more as if the whole scene was backlit with an arc light. That is one reason I shot slides at the time - the dynamic range of the brights to the shadows was so much more intense than any photograph.

Weight - No, wait....

2012-01-10T11:34:00.001-08:00

Me: I've lost a lot of weight lately.

Teresa: I haven't lost anything.

Me: Yes you have.

Teresa: What?

Me: Hope.

Then she hit me....

Robot solves Rubik's Cube in 5 seconds....

2012-01-10T07:55:00.000-08:00

From my novel-in-progress....

2012-01-09T21:28:00.000-08:00

"We are but a petty mold upon the dark side of inconsequence." (Line from my novel-in-progress).

My latest musical composition....

2012-01-09T12:04:00.001-08:00

My latest musical composition is now on YouTube under my performance name of "Tarnished Karma"

My latest article on story structure

2012-01-09T10:53:00.000-08:00

Narrative Space in the Real World

"Candy Loop"

2012-01-08T13:18:00.001-08:00

"Candy Loop" - mp3

This is a new song I wrote and just recorded. Usually I play all the instruments myself, but I just got a new Macintosh with Garage Band and thought I'd fool around with loops, which I'd never tried before. Both parts of the vocal are me, each heavily filtered. (Neither one is my normal singing voice.) Amazing what computers can do these days! The lyrics are just one verse from a song I wrote a couple of months ago and haven't had the time to fully record yet, so I thought this loop version with just one verse repeated would be kind of a fun experiment.

http://melanieannephillips.com/music/candy-loop.mp3

"Glass Deer" (1971)

2012-01-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

"Glass Deer" (1971)

This may be the very first picture I took when I was given my first 35mm still camera in 1971. It is certainly my first indoor picture using natural light. I remember wandering around the living room, looking for something interesting - something that offered a really good composition. Plus, I was interest in "macro" photography at the time, due to my six years of previous experience shooting super-8 movies with my Canon 814 Auto Zoom (which had a macro setting for some really cool close-ups no one else could do in super-8).

This deer is about 3 or 4 inches tall - something my mom had picked up as a little display trinket for the house. I noticed the light coming in through the front window behind it and liked the matching colors of the sun and the glass, plus the matching curve of our front room lamp (the dark silhouette that bisects the deer, right along the legs, completing the curve and casting the trinket have in front of light and have in front of shadow, but highlighted from behind.

"Farmhouse" (1971)

2012-01-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

"Farmhouse" (1971)

Somewhere in the Great Plains - snapped this shot of this tiny farmhouse beneath a huge threatening sky. Really drove home the pioneering spirit to me, man against the elements, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no one to rely on but yourself.

"Hand Me Down Frown"

2012-01-07T16:02:00.001-08:00

Just a title idea for a Country Western song I'll probably not ever get around to writing.

Another "Photo Booth" self portrait....

2012-01-07T15:48:00.001-08:00

Self Portrait 1 - Just fooling around with "Photo Booth"

2012-01-07T14:11:00.001-08:00

"Touching" or "Retouching?"

2012-01-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

1971 - Outside Denver, Colorado. Shot this from the car while my dad was driving. I've always been enraptured by clouds. Clouds and also silhouetted leafless trees against an evening sky. I used to waste a lot of film on those kinds of shots. Now I waste a lot of meg.

This particular shot caught my attention because of the contrast differential between the sky on the left and the dark storm clouds on the right. And, I liked the silhouettes along the bottom which nicely support the shot.

Problem was, in the original there were four phone lines snaking across the clouds right in the middle. I always hesitated posting that picture because it ruined the mood - "Just ignore those phone lines and focus on the concept of the shot - what was intended - the majesty behind the imperfection...." Yeah, right.

Well, I've tried fixing shots but never found a program that did it easily and cheaply - until now. Recently I've received a MacBook Air. After years of working mostly on Windows, I've been playing around with iPhoto. And there's this cool little "Retouch" button in the Edit section.

Now I remember "retouch" from my days as a professional darkroom technician at Drewry Photocolor in Burbank in my twenties, when I did all the black and white custom enlargements for a couple of years. Eventually, I got so good I could spend all day exposing light on photo paper that I could enlarge 175 pictures, then throw them all in the developer at the end of the day, one after another, and every single image would come up perfectly and stop at the right exposure without having to whip it out of the developer into the "stop." (It used to drive my boss crazy 'cause his job was to dry all those prints that popped out just before closing! - Of course, that's why I did it....)

So, I thought "retouch" - hmmmmm... I wonder if the technology has gotten that good. I clicked the button. I adjust my "retouch brush" size. I whipped it along one of the phone lines and voila! - the damned thing vanished, like was never even there! Amazing!

In short order, all four lines were gone and the photo fulfills its true potential. But it made me think - does that same kind of retouching go on in life as well? Of course it does. In our memories we keep alive the parts we want and let the rest of the picture fade away until important parts of what things were really like - what really happened, are missing as if they never existed.

And so, all that we think is true, all we base our current decisions upon, has been purified, altered - in short, retouched. So, I'm keeping the original photo around so that I never forget the truth of the matter, even though I'm likely to only show around the perfected version to those who (aside from this post) will never know.

And I suppose that would be a good approach in life as well - to purify what I project, but never lose track of the reality of the situation in my own head.

Experiment in "Negative Space"

2012-01-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

1971- Experiment in "negative space." For those of you who aren't heavy into photography, "negative space" is an area intentionally left open in a prominent way. This creates an unusual composition in which the informational parts of a shot are on the periphery (or at least off center).

While one might expect this to create a sense of unbalance, the impact on the viewer is to force them to consider what's between the lines, the spaces that connect or separate other graphic components. It engenders a more thoughtful appreciation of the subject matter, much as one might one day look down a side street while on the way to work and discover a whole new micro-world or feeling that was always there in the shadows but drowned out by the blinding light of what's directly in front of you. I believe this was my first attempt at that kind of composition, which I have revisited many times in the decades since.

My latest article on Story Structure

2012-01-06T22:26:00.000-08:00

Narrative Space

“Narrative Space” describes the complete breadth and depth of subject matter in which you seek to define a story.Simply put, most authors don’t come to a story with a complete structure immediately in mind. Rather, they are attracted to the subject matter, which may include setting, time period, activities and events, personalities, snippets of dialog, situations and anything else that is not inherently part of the argument of a narrative.

For example, take Santa Claus. You can have him be the main character or a victim or a villain. You can make him a spirit or a man. You can have him involved in a western, a science fiction, a romance, a buddy picture or a tragedy.

In and of itself, subject matter is not part of a structure but just the raw material from which a structure is formed. That is part of the reason that in Dramatica theory we named a story’s structure the storyform as it brings form to story.Think of subject matter as the interstellar gas and material from which solar systems are formed. This is the narrative space. Just because you carve out a piece of this space – enclose a particular cloud of star stuff – does not create planets that orbit in understandable patterns.

The job of an author is to look into the nebulous nature of an area of subject matter – a particular historic event, an aspect of human nature – and to coalesce that material into a tale or a story. A tale in a given narrative space would simply explore the subject matter and make a statement about it. A story would transcend that and make the case for the best (or worst) of all possible ways to organize (or live through) that material.

As you might expect, there does not have to be a just one single storyform within a narrative space. In fact, there can be an infinite number of stories told within a given realm of subject matter. Some of these may exist in different corners, completely separated from each other. Some may overlap slightly, covering similar areas of subject matter with two complete different structures and messages. In fact, two completely different storyform arguments may actually occupy the exact same portion of the overall narrative space but form the raw material toward two contradictory purposes, much as two scepters might fashion artistically incompatible statues from identical pieces of clay.

As a final thought in this brief introduction to the concept, consider that when you are developing your story’s world, who’s in it, what happens to them, and what it all means, just because there are parts of the narrative space subject matter that are the reasons you want to write this story does not mean that they can all fit into the same storyform. Often, to make a complete argument, we must exclude favorite subject matter pieces that would have to be ham-handedly crammed into our story and would never truly fit. Further, we may have to include additional elements that really don’t inspire us, because if we went with only the parts we truly care about, our overall argument would be full of holes.

Lastly, take solace that you can always write a second story or a series of them about the same narrative space (subject matter) until you have devised enough structures to powerfully explore them all.

Read all my articles on story structure at:

Dramaticapedia.com

Cross Purposes

2012-01-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

1971 - An inspiring shot at the top of Eagle Cliff near Estes Park, Colorado. I took this shot of my friend Bill Krasner who accompanied my parents and myself on our cross-country road trip vacation.

We climbed up the steep hill behind the cabin of our friends who's dad was a ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park in the summer and found this old cross made of branches.

The Care and Feeding of Your History

2012-01-06T19:50:00.001-08:00

Hey, cats and kittens! Today I'm continuing this new year's project of organizing all my old archival material. This includes all the music, photos, movies, writings, and even old memories that I've created and collected over the decades.

Basically, I've always been so forward-focused and innovation-seeking that I've never stopped to realize I've left this rubble trail of old ideas and creations in my wake. In fact, I'm kind of anchored to it. You really can't escape the past, you can (at best) stay one step ahead of it. A single slip, though, and it all piles into you from behind. Worse, every year you live that thundering beast on your heels is getting bigger and meaner. I'm beginning to suspect we never just die - we simply get consumed by our own history.

I suppose some can just turn around, yell at their past and shout, "Get out of here - I don't love you any more!" And others may pretend it isn't really there. But for heaven's sake, why don't we just face the damned thing and embrace it as our own, which it really is, after all?

Now, I'm not suggesting you have to carry it around on a stick and shake it at everyone you encounter... No, just that we recognize we have a trailer and learn to take those tight turns a little slower lest it drag us over the edge or, ever worse in a karmic sense of things, have it break off from us and go thundering down the road toward some poor bastard following us. Talk about unwarranted!

Well, I could go on and on. And day by day I will, you can be sure. But for now, I've got other blogs and other social sites and (screw all that) life itself to live. And besides, I still have to put out fresh food and water for my past before bed.

1971 - Bear Lake, Colorado

2012-01-06T18:57:00.000-08:00

1971 - A craggy peak at Bear Lake Colorado. Taken while my parents and I were on a cross-country road trip from California, visiting friends.

I was just staring to think about "arty" shots in those days, as I had already been making movies for six year when I got my first still camera, and was more "focused" on "trick" photography in moving pictures.

I think this is the first reflection shot I ever (intentionally) took.

What I liked most was the symmetry and the darker-than-life exposure. To this day, I'm usually not satisfied with the exposure on automatic setting, even on my most sophisticated professional cameras. I tend to shut down almost every shot between 1 and 1.5 "stops" before an image gets the richness and depth I'm looking for.

Amazing Robot Dancer!

2012-01-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

Slow start, but trust me - wait for the dancer in red. Once he get's warmed up it is the most amazing thing!

Online Data Storage and Backup Solutions Review

2012-01-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I woke up last night around 1 a.m. and was up for three hours trying to figure out how to deal with a lifetime's worth of digital data. And I actually found a way to alleviate the biggest part of what was bothering me. More than anything, I have this fear of all of my creative works, all of my personal history being totally erased and gone forever, just like when wedding photos used to burn up in a house fire.

Just having a 2 terabyte back-up drive isn't enough. If the house burns, both the computer AND the back-up are gone, so that only protects against crashing the main drive but not against catastrophe, such as an EMP.

And, putting it all on DVD is good, but not on a regular basis - too time consuming and too much work - better to do this just once a year on the New Year.

Fortunately, there's the Cloud. Now you can back-up online. This creates a regular daily-updating copy of everything on your computer and even also on your external hard drive in an "off-site" location so whatever happens to the data in your house doesn't happen to the data copied elsewhere.

So, for three hours I investigated every system that held promise - Carbonite, Sugar Sync (which I already use for transferring files), Go Daddy, Amazon.com, Mozy and MyPCBackup.

Here's the results - Carbonite - second best price ($150/year), chokes on large files, slows down noticeably (according to their web site) after 200 gig. Sugar Sync - WAY too expensive for large storage. Go Daddy, great price for up to 100 gig, okay price (about the same as Carbonite) for up to 200 gig. Amazon - for professionals only and WAY too expensive - more for programmers. Mozy, good but still expensive. MyPCBackup - that's the one I chose. Unlimited storage. Backs up all file types. With their discount, just $50 a year (about 1/3 the price of the next lowest cost alternative).

Started it last night. I have about 300 gig initially to upload. It will take about 10 days, which is true for any of the systems. Runs in the background automatically. Had the option to determine which folders to back-up and used that option. Had the option to exclude certain file types like CAB files. Chose to remove all the "default" exclusions and back up everything. Default is to limit to files less than 2 meg. I have a lot of video and larger picture files, so I changed that to unlimited file size.

You need to look for these options in the advanced area, as they automatically exclude such files as mp3 and video files and set the limit to 2 meg. But, if you go into advanced, all of that is easily changed by just selecting the check boxes you want and such. Easy as pie. And, since you are allowed unlimited storage, you can do that at no extra cost.

So, now everything is going to be safe in a few days. All uploaded with maximum encryption, just like your banking site. They're in the UK, have been around for a few years but the nice thing is that if the company folds, you can always just go with another one like Carbonite. And, if you really don't like the service, they give you a complete pro-rated refund at any time in the period you paid for. Me, I signed up for 2 years to get the best price. Oh, and when you order, if you order, go to the bottom of the page and click on the "secret link" button to get a 35% discount off the otherwise charged price.

Zazzit!

Now here's the thing....

2012-01-03T01:33:00.000-08:00

I like a clean ship. But life isn't like that much. Especially these days with all the gigabytes of information one carries around. It's worse than possessions. With material things, at least they can be crammed into a storage facility where you know you still have everything but just can't quite get at it very easily.

But your digital life is another story. With all the different web sites, blogs, and the social media, everything you've created, everything you've expressed about yourself - hell, you're whole personality - your SELF, is spread all over creation, a bit here, a byte there, and there's no single place you can go to get it if you want it.

Things get lost that way, out of site (sic) out of mind. There's got to be a better way. Wouldn't it be nice if every time you created anything, a blog entry, a photo, a sound recording, a video, a caption for a picture, a personal journal entry - whatever - that it could simultaneously: 1. be archived by date, medium, and topic, and 2. be instantly distributed to all your social sites, web sites, and blogs with a single button push? Wouldn't that be great?

Imagine - without any work on your part, you'd have a chronology of every your put out there into cyber space. You could run up and down your life story and see it flash before your eyes whenever you wanted, rather than having to wait until those last few moments before you die.

And since it is also auto-saved by medium, you could jump to just the photos or the videos or the journal entries. And, since it is also by topic, you could find everything in any medium or time that has to do with camping or sci-fi or collecting coins or about your kids.

Plus, it would be saved in the cloud, securely, and also in some form or other that couldn't be erased or wiped out by an EMP in nuclear war, as if that would be your first concern. But I know I'd think of it while dusting off the fallout and I bet I'm not alone.

Well, I've got a bunch of ideas I've been working out around this notion, but as usual, I haven't found a single place that offers such a system or package of services. So, once again, its just another idea that won't go anywhere by my hand. But, if you've got the ken to give it a whirl, let me know and maybe we can build this thing!

This is the pits....

2012-01-02T19:13:00.000-08:00

1978 - a "charging" mammoth at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits in L.A. Another of my photos from the archives, just turning up.

Futuristic Space City

2011-12-31T15:08:00.000-08:00

1976 - Futuristic Space City set. Another special effect from the same movie I made as a kid. Again, in the film the "city" is much brighter and due to the lower resolution of Super-8, it degraded the image enough to look like it was distant. Made this one with items from around the house (can't you tell?) - some of my mom's perfume bottles, some green plastic dishes from our camping set, even the flash reflector from my still camera looking like a satellite dish.

A Black Hole (1976)

2011-12-31T15:01:00.000-08:00

1976 - A Black Hole. Special effect from one of my early movies. Made by placing an upside down bowl on a piece of black velvet, then sprinkling around the bowl with flour and hitting the velvet with a strong light. This is actually a poor image - the one in the movie looks like brilliant white-hot stars against a pitch black background as the camera slowly zooms into the center. Keep in mind, this was before computers and CG - everything had to be mechanically created.

Here's how it stands...

2011-12-31T14:31:00.000-08:00

So, this is going pretty well. I can shovel whatever the heck I'm thinking about at the moment up here on this blog where hardly anybody (IF anybody) ever sees it, but I've satisfied my need to shout in the town square.

Then, I can take all the little gems and best-of-the-best and post it to Facebook or Google+ or Twitter. The VERY best goes on my web site and the whole pile of it gets shovelled into my archive (on hard drive and back-up on my web site in a folder).

Pretty satisfying. Short of having a personal librarian, I do believe this is the best I can do. And whenever I get the urge to organize that ol' archive on the internet, I no longer feel an obligation to make it complete, but see it more as a playground where each trip into the sand box spiffs things up a little bit more in the warehouse.

Cool.

Still at it....

2011-12-31T14:24:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I've been working about six hours now on this archive project, trying to get all my creative works and personal history (family photos and such) up on one place on the internet in a form where it can be accessed by both date and topic.

And I've accomplilshed nothing.

Oh, I've tried myriad of ways, but it keeps coming down to this: it's a hell of a lot of work!

Now, it's one thing to spontaneously create something and toss it up on a blog or Facebook or Google+ or YouTube or Twitter. But, it is about ten times as much work (and no creativity involved) in archiving it and organizing it.

So, rather than make the archive organized and accessible, I've made a radical decision: I'm going to put things on my internet archive, but leave them disorderly and inaccessible. The point of the archive is not really to show all my crap along with the jems, but just to ensure that nothing is ever lost due to one of the aforementioned social network sites ceasing to function.

Sure, I'd love to have it all in a good "library" of my "body of work." But until I'm rich enough to hire a personal librarian, I'll just keep posting it all to the internet and making sure I have some copy of other in the archive of all the raw material.

This way, I can take advantage of all the good formatting, presentation, and built-in audience of these internet services and still not have to worry about losing the only copies in existence.

So, there it is. It is better to create than to catalog. And while I'd love to build an internet version of the "story of my life" just as my mom vainly wanted to publish a book of all her writings, at least I can take solace in the fact that in her day, if you didn't publish then no one would ever see your work whereas today, just putting it up on the networks gets you an audience and just piling it up onto your hard drive and your web domain buys you protection from loss.

Good for now.

But I still hope I can afford a librarian soon....

More on internet archives

2011-12-31T12:47:00.000-08:00

Here's another thought... I'm finding it absolutely frustrating to take every single posting or journal entry that I make originally on the internet (such as this one) in the very convenient form of this blog system and then try to reproduce it in my home page archive in some form such as in a Word document. What a pain in the ass!

On the one hand, I want a permanent record of this stuff that can't be deleted at the whim of a company, on the other hand, who wants to spend five times as long documenting each thought as it took to originally think of it and post it?

What's more, I still haven't figured out a good way to present this stuff. I started with a page called "Chronology" and though I have tried dozens of ways to organize it, they all suck. For example, if I create two columns - one for a creative timeline of what I invent and the second for a personal history of what's going on day to day, though it clearly shows the side by side relationship of the "artist's"
work to the "artist's" life, some entries in each are links to whole works (like articles and music and family photos) while others are just a single line that's a good creative phrase or a note about what's going on.

How to you create a system that has the best features of a blog, a web site, facebook and twitter while it makes a permanent copy of everythig on your computer as well? Beats me! I'm going to keep trying though - my mom wrote one book in little essay pieces. She always wanted to compile it and publish it, but never did. I think that is the one thing that makes her life look like a tragedy to me (and probably to her at the time she passed on). For me, this archive effort is my "book" and I'm damned well not going to put it off like she did, no matter how frustrating the damned thing is!!!

Archive, Chronology or History?

2011-12-31T10:59:00.000-08:00

On the day before the New Year, I continue to give a lot of thought about my key focus for the year to come. Last year I determined that 2011 was to be my year of organization for all my creative endeavors, family history, personal interests, etc. And that effort was largely successful as I have now gathered all of those materials into boxes, into foldes on my computer, and online on my web site, blog, and various social networks. But just having the material organized, I'm finding, is not sufficient. Rather, it means nothing unless it is contextualized and presented in some consistent accessible fashion.

Through all of these decades I've been a little fount of creativity and documentation, snapping photos, shooting videos, inventing quoatable aphorisms on Twitter. And I've saved all of and, as of the end of the Year of Organization, has gathered it all together. But it is hardly accessible, not grouped in any useful form, and much of it exsits, like this posting, in a vulnerable state in which I have no copy and the only original is hosted on some company's web site like Google+, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, or Twitter. If any of those were to go permanently down or change policy to begin wiping less popular posts, I (as many others) would be screwed.

So this year, 2012, is when I begin to obtain a copy of every creative and personal item I've got, put them both on my computer and on the internet both to share and for safe keeping. This, naturally, presents quite a challenge. For one thing, there is a whole hell of a lot of material! Much of it needs to be scanned or transferred. And, in the case of videos, the intent of this project means that I can't rely on YouTube to achive my material but must host and post copies of every one of those hundreds of mini-movies on my own web site (a technological and time expenditure nightmare, even in this age of easy user interface).

What's more, I've been nagged all this last year by wondering how I should categorize this material for easy access. For example, in the past I had established a creative chronology - essentially a day by day clickable list of every item I create, be it a photo, video, or quip on Twitter. But what happens when I write a clever new caption for a family photo from 1975? Does that belong in the creative timeline because of the original writing or does it belong in a personal historical timeline because it is about a family photo OR should it only be listed topically by the subject matter or just randomly thrown in the internet equivalent of a storage box that maybe, a hundred years from now, some decendent will turn up while researching the family history?

I guess we all want to leave a legacy, but that doesn't really drive me much these days. After all, once I'm gone, what will I care? And is the small satisfaction that I left a recording really going to comfort me much while I'm busy gasping for air once my heart has stopped. Right. I'll stop and think of how those to come will know who I was. Right.

No, the motivation is really more that of the creative spirit - that every human being has a unique view of the world and a life worth sharing - that some of us are driven (for whatever reason) to document the best of what we see, to put a frame around things and figurately say, "Hey! Look over here! This is really cool or worthwhile or pithy!"

There's pleasure in the sharing, even if one has moved well beyond the need for external validation (how many views did I get today? Who the hell cares!!!). If there is any meaning to life, I suppose it is the communion we can share as one soul to another. It is in the traffic of information and emotion among us that we can discover the richness that enhances our experience, the savory that blends and elevates our salty, sweet, bitter and sour.

So though I am stymied now in my attempts to parse out this collection of insights and personal history, I am confident that by the end of this year to come I will have resolved all these strategic issues. An I am even more confident that just the effort alone will prove both enriching and satisfactory to a growing sense of closure.

Cat Burglar

2011-12-30T15:02:00.001-08:00

A Dead Great White Shark at Sea World

2011-12-30T11:01:00.000-08:00

1975 - A dead Great White Shark at Sea World. An early attempt of my photographic Muse to make a social statement. I set up the reflection and waitied for the moment when this poor, natural creature was posed in a permanent unnatural position, in a glass case, surround by gawkers and reflected palm trees as it "swims" through the sky.

I like the dynamics and balance of this composition - the two faces in the back, flanking or boxing in the shark as they stare, the companion composition of the two folks in front, seen over their shoulders, the unnatural bar across the top which also serves to frame the shot, the counterpoint of the foreign element of the sky above and the plastic of the faux water below.

I've often felt the best definition of art is "That which you put a frame around." In other words, anything that you elevate from its surroundings - anything you paste an exclamation point on, is a way of saying to other people, "Look here" or "look at this!" or (conversely) "Don't look out there" at what's outside the frame.

An old film instructor of mine in "junior" college before I transferred to USC Cinema used to say, "They tell you the camera never lies, but the camera ALWAYS lies - at the very least in what it frames out to create a context that is not complete." Brilliant guy.

Hail around my 1953 MG TD Sports Car

2011-12-30T09:11:00.000-08:00

1975 - A rare, rare day in Burbank - so much hail that it looked almost like snow. Previously, it had snowed last in Burbank in the 1940s, and it snowed again in early 2011. Wasn't there for either of them. This particular shot is in the front yard of my childhood home on California Street. The car is my beloved 1953 MG TD. My dad (my natural father, John) gave me $1000 in 1971 so I could buy a car to drive to college. I bought this wonderful vehicle and he never complained - in fact, he thought it was cool. I used to drive this to USC while wearing a white leather jacket with gold buttons. Once, my steering column sliced through the whole wiring harness just before arriving home. The momentum carried me right up into the drive way. I ordered and installed a whole new wiring harness (all the wires in the whole car in a bundle) all by hand myself. At the end of the long day I turned it on and realized I'd reversed left and right and had to do it all over. The gas gauge didn't work on the car so I used a stick in the tank on the back. Eventually, the bark peeled off and clogged the fuel line. It would gradually cut off the gas until I had to stop every hour or so, unscrew the fuel line from the carburetor, then attach a rubber hose and blow the fuel back to the tank to clear the blockage. Then, I'd have to reattach the fuel line before the gas came rushing back down so it wouldn't spill. Once I had to do that at 2 in the morning in the bad part of town - pretty spooky. This thing had dual carbs (just cylinders with floating balls in them) and one of them was missing a stop, so on the freeway under high pressure, it would always splash gas out the top all over the hot engine. But, it evaporated pretty quickly, leaving a trail of un-burned white gas fumes behind me like a cloud for the whole trip. I remember once stopping at a light, again around 2 in the morning, as I was passing a bar. A bunch of guys at the bar saw my odd car and decided it would be a good thing to screw with. They ran across the street to (I suppose) rip the cloth top off my car and beat the snot out of me. I was so innocent in those days, I didn't want to run the red and just sat there. Fortunately, the light changed and the fuel line didn't choke, and I peeled out of there with about five feet between me and them. Since it didn't have working windshield wipers I used to have to poke my hand out the side window and clear the glass with a rag. It also made it pretty foggy on the inside. One time, I could barely see where I was going and almost ran over a motorcycle cop. I mean it - I stopped just inches from his legs. He wasn't happy. But, once he saw the pathetic person driving and took a good look at the even more pathetic condition of my car, he let me go with a stern warning. Ultimately, I chose to sell the car so I could support myself in film school. What costs we pay to pursue our art, eh? My dad (John) offered to pay my rent (he was already paying the tuition) but that was just too much for my self-esteem to bear. So, I sold the beast (which was quite a collectable antique) for $2500 to a doctor - $1500 more than I paid for it, so I did pretty good. He paid me in 50 $50 bills and the fuel line choked on the way out the driveway. Still bought it, though he looked a bit worried. Being me, I put on my worst ripped up jeans and crappy jacket and walked into the bank (no ATMs in those days) and portrayed a bum showing up at the teller window with $2500 in small bills. They looked askance at me, but took my money anyway.

A little salad?

2011-12-30T08:25:00.001-08:00

My Latest 3D Family Photos

2011-12-27T20:21:00.000-08:00

Video of my latest experimental 3D still photos. (You'll need your 3D glasses for this one.)

Lilith and Eve (original art)

2011-12-23T10:48:00.000-08:00

Rummaging through my archives: "Lilith and Eve" - photo manipulated artwork I created back in the late 1990s...

2011-12-23T10:31:00.001-08:00

From my archives - a sketch I drew in 1996, first attempt at drawing on a computer using a mouse....

A Sad Day in Burbank.... (by Peter Gullerud)

2011-12-23T07:40:00.001-08:00

An old acquaintance of mine wrote this song about my home town...

The Kitty Cat Rag....

2011-12-11T11:12:00.001-08:00

It doesn't get more real than this....

2011-12-07T08:35:00.001-08:00

Brush with Death

2011-12-06T07:57:00.000-08:00

Jon Schmidt - Michael Meets Mozart

2011-12-03T07:55:00.001-08:00

Stayin' Alive In The Wall (Mash-up Pink Floyd vs. Bee Gees)

2011-11-22T12:43:00.001-08:00

Pepper Spraying Cop in History....

2011-11-21T14:45:00.001-08:00

http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/

PEPPER SPRAYING COP

Dinner

2011-11-10T20:44:00.001-08:00

Teresa has been doing a lot of cooking lately. Tonight she made an extra thick New York steak marinated in sherry, olive oil and herbs, seared on the grill and smothered in melted smoky blue cheese crumbles and sautéed onions and bell peppers also marinated in sherry and grape seed oil, King Crab leg served with melted garlic butter, baked purple potatoes, golden acorn squash with Irish butter and brown sugar and a freshly baked sourdough baguette which was slowly crisped on the crust in a warm iron skillet. Egg Nog and pumpkin spice coffee for dessert. She cooks like this most every night. I think I’ll keep her.

Illume

2011-10-31T20:22:00.001-07:00

Illume

By Melanie Anne Phillips

In the quiet of the night,

My heart wakens,

Flying free above a land Ido not know.

And yet, familiar is the realmbelow.

It stirs some long forgottenharmony,

Of hazy evenings past.

There was a time,

(do not lament),

there is a time again….

Here, in this moment, thisfeeling,

I soar above my mind,

Upon the winds of whimsy.

An open heart,

Free and clear,

The moment, the moment,unending.

All is transient, yet whatremains?

Is it the ripples of ourpassing,

That holds the truth of us?

Perhaps when our essence,

Resounds against the rocksof other souls,

Do we, ourselves, take form?

Or is concept,

That unique beat of eachsingular heart,

Sufficient to the task,alone?

Soliloquy, conceived,received

Which most embodiessubstance?

Does form outweigh the rawemergence of experience?

Or are they twins,

Joined at the thought,‘twixt heaven and earth,

And me and you?

We bob in the same seas,

We drink the same air,

We see in you, ourselves.

Yet we are unalike as well,

Sparks from the same fire,

Water from the same well.

We run deep,

run amuck,

run away.

Yet the yearning,

To truly be,

Draws us all together.

The soft warm breeze,

Embraces my face,

In my waking dream.

The night,

So oft an echoed chamber stalkedby fears,

Becomes a gentle blanket ofcomfort, soft and full.

And all sins of the past,

Are not forgiven,

But washed away.

And all fears for thefuture,

Are not calmed,

But banished.

And the present, everchanging and uncertain,

Becomes serendipitous andcapricious,

And rather more the spritethan the trail sign of fate.

In the darkness,

All is bright,

Within the radiance of myheart.

Reviews of a horror film I directed in the 1980s

2011-10-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

Click the link to read Amazon.com reviews for a horror film I directed in the 1980s. Scroll down on the page to see one customer's video review, if you dare.....

http://www.amazon.com/Strangeness-Dan-Lunham/product-reviews/B002JUP8GA/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R1ZWBAK47791KS

From our recent backpacking trip to Mount Jefferson, Oregon

2011-10-24T13:27:00.001-07:00

Collection of images by a passionate photo journalist....

2011-10-23T13:53:00.001-07:00

Shot this out our back window this morning....

2011-10-23T11:55:00.001-07:00

"Blackbird" cover by Salvatore Manalo

2011-10-23T10:30:00.001-07:00

Everyday Blues by Cyrus Sink

2011-10-23T10:15:00.001-07:00

Our Backpacking Trip to Mount Jefferson - Breakfast

2011-10-22T11:13:00.001-07:00

Night of the Living Trekkies Video

2011-10-22T10:51:00.001-07:00

Take One for the Team

2011-10-20T20:14:00.001-07:00

Facing North

2011-10-20T20:13:00.001-07:00

Rock On

2011-10-20T20:01:00.001-07:00

Ya Gotta Have Heart

2011-10-20T16:00:00.001-07:00

Quantum Levitation Using Superconductors

2011-10-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

Award Winning Video Shot with a Smart Phone!

2011-10-18T14:16:00.001-07:00

Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.

Fashion Hounds

2011-10-17T03:44:00.001-07:00

The Women's Room at WB

2011-10-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

When I fly down to California to work with my partners, the restroom down the hall from their offices has a motion sensor to turn the lights on and off.

It works great when you walk in, and does fine if you are just washing your hands, checking your hair or have a quick pee. But anything more than that, and the damn thing snaps off, leaving you in total darkness.

Of course, you can sit there in the dark waving your arms wildly around and eventually it will get the message and snap back on - bur only long enough to get back to business. No sooner has everything settled down enough to continue, but it snaps off again!

At first, I tried cursing at it, but found (not surprising for a motion detector) that it responds best to crude gestures.

Eventually, you just settle into an ongoing game with the wretched thing of waving and clenching until the job is done or the urge passes.

Unrelated YouTube Videos Edited to Make Music

2011-10-16T11:16:00.001-07:00

Shit Happens?

2011-10-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

Pulling the Plug

2011-10-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

Clive Cussler's Car Collection

2011-10-14T21:33:00.001-07:00

Siri Voice Recognition?

2011-10-13T13:53:00.001-07:00

Kaiser Find Your Thing Commercial Singer Found!!! (Song, Music, Theme, Jingle)

2011-10-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

Myster Solved!!!! I finally found the singer of the Kaiser Permanente "Thrive - Find Your Own Thing" commercial! It was a huge mystery and nobody knew the answer.

I tracked down the ad agency that made the commercial and here is their reply:

"Thank you so much for your interest in our music. In response to your request, unfortunately our productions are works for hire, and we are not at liberty to release them independently.The singer is Heather Ogilvy: http://www.heatherogilvy.com/ Best wishes --- Human "

To see the commercial on her web site and "prove" she did it, follow this specific link to her site:

http://www.heatherogilvy.com/#!video-portfolio

Mystery solved!!!!

Here's the original commercial on You Tube;

A poem written while working away from home.

2011-10-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

The object of my passion is a thousand miles away.
The subject of my intellect is how I fill my days.
The logic of my feelings is a mobius sword,
Cleaving self from selflessness quite of its own accord.

Leaf Art!

2011-10-12T07:46:00.000-07:00

See all this artist's creations here

http://webecoist.com/2011/08/03/naturayarte-nature-and-art-meet-in-delicate-cut-leaves/

Surveillance

2011-10-05T21:48:00.001-07:00

The Reel Truth (What the Film industry is REALLY like!)

2011-09-28T20:54:00.000-07:00

This video won't let you embed, but it can be viewed directly on You Tube, and it is absolutely hysterical for anyone who knows or has worked in the industry:

http://youtu.be/n8OaTJN9MM8

Cyrussink - "The Fall"

2011-09-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

Mad World - Gary Jules

2011-09-24T22:17:00.001-07:00

Hanna Soundtrack - Chemical Brothers "Devil in the Details"

2011-09-24T22:14:00.000-07:00

Blind Pilot - "Half Moon"

2011-09-24T19:36:00.001-07:00

Blind Pilot - "Just One"

2011-09-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

Blind Pilot - "We Are the Tide"

2011-09-24T19:26:00.001-07:00

The Burned-Music in the stars

2011-09-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

The Burned - Where Are We Now (Live in the Bing Lounge)

2011-09-23T20:27:00.001-07:00

David Gilmour - Wish You Were Here

2011-09-16T20:37:00.001-07:00

Japanese Tsunami POV from Car

2011-09-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

The Guess Who - "No Time"

2011-09-16T20:19:00.000-07:00

A Message from Tommy Smothers

2011-09-15T08:46:00.001-07:00

Perhaps the funniest blog ever....

2011-09-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

http://thebloggess.com/

Return of the Jedi 2011 New Darth Vader Voice

2011-09-05T22:03:00.001-07:00

Maneli Jamal - Vasat & Ziur @ Tirgan (2011)

2011-09-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

Tell Out My Soul - Hymn Tune Woodlands

2011-08-27T09:32:00.001-07:00

Re: Jesus Loves You

2011-08-26T22:33:00.001-07:00

"Not Quite" by Melanie Anne Phillips (Tarnished Karma)

2011-08-25T22:35:00.001-07:00

Fish Cakes

2011-08-25T08:39:00.001-07:00

So I took the last piece of cake out of the refrigerator, grabbed the nearest fork and shovelled a big chunk into my mouth, only then realizing it was the one I had casually rinsed off from serving the cat food. Tasted kinda fishy for a couple bites and then it was fine....

"Earth from Above" - Elephants

2011-08-25T04:11:00.000-07:00

The Guess Who - 6AM or Nearer

2011-08-24T18:35:00.001-07:00