MikeVideo 2007

Big Wednesday Dreams: (December 2007) On Wednesday, the 5th of December, 2007, the biggest swells in over two years were predicted along the shoreline of California. I took a day off work to travel up the coast of California, taking photos and video of the monstrous waves and the collections of surfing aficianados who similarly took the day off work to ride the waves.

Although the conditions were less magnificent than predicted, I was able to cobble together a 12 minute video showing the swells at a number of beaches, and showcasing some interesting surfing footage.

"Skyline"The First Internet MovieMorph (October 2007) brought the Morpheus morphing animation suite into my digital bag of tricks.The second experimental morph, and the first full blown "MikeMorph" Internet Movie, "Skyline" is only 3 minutes and 40 seconds long. Utilizing the Morpheus morphing software, and combined with the Sony Vegas editing suite, "Skyline" offers a continually morphing urban landscape, backed by moving cloudscapes. 39 separate photos of over 35 differnet cityscapes have been cropped, masked, and morphed.READ THE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY on the WhenWordsCollide blog.

"The Tall Ships" (September 2007) A tribute to the sailing vessels of old and the three masted schooners of today. MikeVideo combines footage shot aboard four full size sailing ships at the Dana Pt. Tall Ships Festival on Sept. 8th, 2007, with photos and paintings acquired through websearches, and scored to a music file that contains lots of traditional sea shanties.READ THE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY on the WhenWordsCollide blog.

"Floral Dreams " (May 2007) This is the latest in my "Dreams" series of art videos. Flowers and plants photographed, and taped at different botanical gardens across the South bay, including the Huntington, the Getty, and the South Coast Botanical gardens, and arranged to the Celtic music of Steeleye Span, with vocalist Maddy Prior. I've always loved flowers, and my very first job was as a manager for a Garden department for a retail chain. The attempt is to mix the video and the photographs using layering and effects so that the viewer can't tell the difference, and the overall effect is somewhat soothing. This is only the second video I've made using the new Vegas software, and it was made in one day. (Photography was shot over a four year period.)The chroma key effects pioneered in "Clowns" are much more sophisticated in this video, which also uses the title animation feature in the Vegas software..

"Cultural Blender" (Rated "PG-13") 05/07

9 min. 16 sec.

Vimeo	Xanga
Best Quality Stream and Downloads

"Cultural Blender Feature Page "(May 2007) Over one month in the making, the completely animated "Cultural Blender" internet movie is the centerpiece of the newly redesigned "Cultural Blender" website.Featuring 20 of the 40something images in the Blender composite, this imaginative piece of videomaking uses my new Sony Vegas editing suite. Some of the several icons represented, with images, video, old television footage, and music, are John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and the Smiley Face. The Feature Page includes a high quality MPEG download of the movie and a comments page.

"Moviola Dance" (Rated "G") 03/07

Part One: 9 min. 34 sec.Part Two: 7 min 16 sec.. Part Three: 6 min. 19 sec.

Moviola Dance Feature Page

Google Pt.1, Google Pt. 2, Google Pt. 3

"Moviola Dance Feature Page " The "Roxette" section from the MikeVideo "Moviola Dance" has been on either this page or the YouTube Channel for over a year. Now I have re-edited the "Moviola Dance" video for the internet, in three segments under 10 minutes long. The Feature Page is online with streams and downloads as I add them to the site. On the first weekend in March I have Part 1 and 2 uploaded, and Part 3 is being rendered. All should be online by the end of the week. "Moviola Dance" does not contain any of my photography or videomaking skills. It is made up completely of musical segments from old MGM films, scored with different soundtracks. The movements were made to match the music when I created the video in the pre computer 80s by manipulating the fast forward and reverse knob of a CAV laserdisc player in real time, and capturing the "performance" on VHS tape. These videos will not be added to my YouTube Channel for fear that Warner Brothers will claim I violated copyright, as they did with :"42nd Street Dance", whch is a similar pairing of different music with a dance clip from a later MikeVideo. The embedded files on the Feature Page for the video are from Google, and the downloads are on my server. Not only did I master three segments of the "Moviola Dance" but I also created another "archival" MikeVideo internet movie utilizing footage from 1991 showing me performing an improvisational dance to one of the tunes on "Moviola Dance", "Begin the Beguine" by Artie Shaw. The video is available on my Xanga blog, WhenWordsCollide. It's called "Dancin' Fool".

"More Tempest" (Rated "G") 02/07

10 min

YouTube	Xanga

"More Tempest" (February 2007) A companion video to2005's "Tempest" my music video featuring the Northern California "Celtic Rock Band", also recorded in Orange County, CA in 2004. This vid includes the song "Morgan The Pyrate" and two instrumentals. I added some transitions and overlays illustrating the song, not for the sake of pure embellishment, but in an attempt to hide an intrusive audience member who thought he was part of the show.

I still have some more songs from the 2004 performance, but I hope to see Tempest perform sometime in the future and get some new footage for future music videos. The band's lineup has changed since I shot this performance.

"ArtViews" (Rated "G") 01/07

9 min. 02 sec.

YouTube	Xanga
Vimeo

"ArtViews" (January 2007) The latest Internet Movie is a "remake" of one of my very first streaming internet movies. First conceived and edited as a four minute realvideo file in 2001 and announced on the MikeVideo section of AllThingsMike, "ArtViews" was composed of footage shot at the Huntington Library and Art Gallery in 2001, and was scored with the classical piece: "Hungarian Dance #1" by Johannes Brahms. The streaming realvideo files in those days were almost unwatchable. The resolution was nonexistant, and since the video showcased works of art displayed at the museum, shot in low light, the shoddy resolution and the physical size of the video, which was thumbnail sized, contributed to an unwatchable experience. The video was one of the first three "internet movies" I displayed on the "MikeVideo Internet Movie" pagein 2001, when I announced that "someday we will all have our own television stations on the web."

Slowly but surely, I'm "recreating" the three original internet movies, in celebration of MikeVideo's 20th anniversary, which was November of 2006. All of the links from the original MikeVideo Internet Movie page, which was online years before YouTube existed, are now active again, linking to the newer "internet movies." The first one was "Selling Sex at the CES", which I completed during Summer 2006. "Artviews" is the second little film to get the treatment, and I've now combined a new music track with the footage shot at the Huntington and also footage shot at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in early 2005, to create a brand new "ArtViews". Although a lot of the original footage from the Huntington was unusable because of shaky camera work and the aforementioned low light, there are enough good shots, combined with the Getty footage, shot with my latest camera, and framed with more of an "artistic" presentation, to fill an almost nine minute video. I've also uploaded my original test footage for the VideoWave program I was learning. The video is called "Camelia Dreams" and although it features footage of a rose bush, I had planned on assembling more footage of flowers, and soon I hope to "remake" this one as well, using footage of gardens I've shot over the years.

Some of the art, when photographed, displays an almost 3-D quality. I have used the chroma key and transition elements in the Pinnacle Studio video editing program to make some interesting combinations of different artworks, and each individual element is timed to the music "mashup" which was created first. The clips are arranged not with regards to the museum where they were taken, but might seem haphazardly presented, although the intent is to "create art from art" and hopefully the end result proves entertaining. It took slightly over two weeks of almost sleepless nights to assemble this latest MikeVideo "masterpiece". At first, I only wished to create something for the link on the original "Internet Movies" page, but once I began the actual construction of the video, I became almost obsessed with making the most original, interesting, and entertaining video I could with the footage, reaching into the MikeVideo editing bag of tricks more than a few times, and in some cases, layering more than six elements in a single "shot".

All the videos which contain the MikeVideo brand have a certain trademark, and this is no exception. Even the VHS MikeVideos contained many disparate elements combined in such a way as to make a new presentation. A simple dissolve, if performed with the right two shots, can be stunning and awe inspiring. Since this is a video showcasing the fine arts, every attempt has been made to insure that the viewing experience is enhanced even for viewers who have visited the museums.All editing choices were reworked until I was satisfied with the results. In fact, some of the "traveling mattes" I've used to great effect in "Betty Boop Dreams" and "Clowns", are also used here, and the combination of stills, video and graphics, utilizing the transition effects in the program, all combine to enhance the viewing experience. Ten minutes seems to be the perfect size for internet video projects, and I like to insure that not one second is wasted. There are 270 separate video and 51 separate audio components in this video.

"The History of MikeVideo" A MikeVideo Internet Movie Series (Rated "G") 01/07

The History of MikeVideo Episode One is now online.

9 min. 16 sec.

YouTube	Xanga
History of MikeVideo Page

"The History of MikeVideo: Episode 1: The Analog Years 86-88" A new Internet Movie Series begins with the History of MikeVideo. Letting the original videos and raw footage tell the story of 20 years of videomaking, this overall view of the "early years" contains newly digitized scenes from some of the original VHS MikeVideos from the 80s, including "Sacked", "Kris Cleans Up" and footage for the unfinished "Back To Lomita". There is plenty of narration, and a younger version of me stars, but the original footage, with the addition of text intertitles, tells the history pretty well. A companion piece to the MikeVideo History page on this website, here the actual footage is showcased. Some of the VHS footage looks rather good, and any glitches in the analog transitions have been repaired digitally. Stay tuned for more episodes of "The MikeVideo Story".

When affordable home video appeared in 1981, I bought one of the first CED videodisc players, one of the many formats in which I've invested that have ceased to exist over the years as the technology got better and better. I used the videodisc player and a Beta tape deck to create "video collages". By 1986, I bought a marked down video camera and I embarked on the first steps toward realizing my childhood dream. I became "MikeVideo", and I started to make movies". Take a look at the past, when YouTube was nonexistant, cameras were really heavy, and computers were large unwieldy machines. .