Salvation Mountain Project

I've had it in my mind for some time to create something special with all of the footage I shot on the road in 2009.  Of that footage, my favorite scenes include those that I shot at Salvation Mountain near Niland, California.  My friend Dave and I had spent the day exploring the areas around the Salton Sea and capped it all off with a trip out to Leonard Knight's epic art project in the middle of nowhere.

Last month Dave passed away and this ultimately brought all of the memories from our road trips flooding back.  I started reviewing the footage I shot and began to find some inspiration.  There's a story in that footage and a short film there that I now feel compelled to create.  Part documentary, part poetic experiment, I'm already visualizing what a rewarding and challenging edit this will be for me.  It's a way for me to honor my memories with Dave, to emphasize what our experience at Salvation Mountain was like, to reflect on my views of life and death, and to really address my own emotions and frustrations with losing such a close friend.

My goal is to keep this project under five minutes in length, which will really help me to condense and further define my thoughts about this entire experience.  While I've just begun outlining exactly what I plan on doing, I'm feeling ambitious and charged to really create something special and personal that I could see myself submitting to short film festivals.  This already feels different from any of the other videos I've ever created or worked on, but I think it also plays on my strengths as an editor and the archival video work that I've done in the past.

I look forward to sharing more about this project in the coming weeks.

Salvation Mountain near Niland, California.

Giving Thanks

On Friday our family got together for Thanksgiving dinner. My parents spent the day preparing a delicious turkey with mashed potatoes, yams, stuffing, garden salad and pumpkin pie. It was incredibly good. I would have turkey dinner once a week if I had someone else to prepare it for me - naturally.



It's been a difficult few months. With so much going on it was a nice change of pace to sit down with everyone for a home-cooked meal. I feel like I've been having a rough go of things, separated from friends, lots of unexpected expenses, and a general apathy towards some of my routines. Thanksgiving is about being thankful though, and I've realized that as bad as things may seem sometimes I've obviously got a lot to be grateful for.

So here it goes.

I'm thankful for the people in my life, for my friends, family, and the random readers who will see this. The fact that I've convinced myself to keep this journal for so long must be a reason to give thanks too. I'm thankful for my health, for my body, for my mind. I'm thankful for my home, for my bed, and for the one or two nights a week when I manage to get a decent sleep. I love my car, and I'm thankful for the days when it's working properly. I'm thankful that I'm able to inspire myself. I'm even more thankful when others do it. I'm happy that I've managed to find jobs that challenge me creatively, and I'm thankful that I proved my fears as a film student wrong by getting them. I'm thankful that Arrested Development is coming back and that I still have time to watch TV, because I'm also thankful for my sense of humor. I'm thankful for good food. I'm thankful for those who share it with me. I'm thankful that there's a lot of love around me, even on those days when I don't recognize it.

And maybe most of all, I'm genuinely thankful that despite knowing my worst mistakes and weaknesses, I'm still happy to be me.

Here's hoping you find yourself in the midst of some thanks giving and receiving this weekend too. And maybe while we're on the topic, ask yourself, what are you really most thankful for?

Mission accomplished.

One Upgrade After the Other

This last month has been an expensive one.  I bought myself a brand new suit, I've spent more on my car than I'd care to admit, and now after several nights of frustration I've gone ahead and replaced the CPU for my editing suite.  On the positive side of things, these were all worth while expenses that needed to be addressed.  On the downside, they were all worth while expenses that had to be addressed immediately within just a few weeks of each other. Ouch!

This is really about my editing suite though.  The issues with my computer started just a few days ago, but became increasingly worse very quickly.  It was either my video card or motherboard that was failing, and after a few hours of research on the cost for replacements I decided that I should just put my money towards an overall system upgrade.  I'd been toying with this idea over the summer, but temporarily shelved it when my Jag began crying for some new parts.  

I purchased my last computer late in the summer of 2008, and it was really just at the beginning of this year that I began overhauling my existing setup.  New software soon followed, and I added a laptop to my arsenal in the spring.  Now here I am in the fall and I've shelled out more money yet again for my PC.  This time I opted for a more powerful six-core processor and a more robust video card.  I'm genuinely happy about the increased performance I can expect while editing more intensive projects, but still, this wasn't the plan and if my old system hadn't crapped out I would've been fine with it for another year.

Aside from the pain of being forced to make the decision to upgrade now, the transition was actually easier than it had ever been.  Having all of my files, photos, music, and past projects archived on my various hard drives, upgrading simply meant reinstalling a few key programs.  Everything else I was able to access off of my drives just as I did before so there wasn't really that much to do.

I know this is really an investment in the work I do, and were it not for the professional editing I have to complete I probably would've made an excuse to live off of my laptop for awhile.  But, here's hoping I can now get around to writing something about how awesome the editing suite I've been upgrading all year finally is!  I could really use a silver lining right about now.