Michael B's blog

- 

One of our producers died today. Kenneth Keith Kallenbach was a regular on the Howard Stern Show in the 80's and 90's, and a bit of a cult celebrity. Most people wouldn't know who he was, nor should they I suppose. The end of his life was somewhat strange and controversial. He died due to complications of pneumonia after he fell ill while in police custody for a probation violation related to an alleged attempted abduction. It's a strange story, and just another example of The 1 Second Film's extraordinarily eclectic ability to connect all walks of life.

Nine Inch Nails is running a contest with their groundbreaking album release. Trent Reznor released 36 tracks recently, gave them away for free via bit torrent in high-quality drm free mp3, and sold cd's for 10 bucks, along with the standalone tracks for remixing. The contest is a video collaboration, where he is inviting anybody to create a visual counterpart for the music called Ghosts I-IV).

Here's my first submission. Please check it out. Maybe leave a comment?

ps how to embed flash in the blog?

This blog is solely dedicated to moving the blog titled "UltravioletUnderground.com plug for The 1 Second Film" off the front page block list. This is in no way a commentary on the content of said blog, however a block spacing error is doing damage to the OCD aspects of my personality, destroying the aesthetics of the front page, and I simply can't take it any longer.

* 

So we have a few 750 GB Maxtor drives we've been storing video on, but had lost one of the power adapters. This makes it nearly useless. We were swapping with another drive, which means unmounting drives, powering down, switching cables, missing media, etc, etc. Let's just say it's a huge hassle. Nirvan and I called Seagate/Maxtor the other day and told them we lost it. The phone call was strange, I think we were expecting some type of resistance, as these customer service calls often go. Alas, THEY SENT A NEW ONE FOR FREE, NO QUESTIONS ASKED (except for our serial number)! We were so suspicious on phone too, we could barely get out a proper name or address. They ended up shipping it to a non-existent person. Today it arrived and I've been cleaning up our media situation, so we can organized for the long haul. It's refreshing to get such amazing customer service these days. They've definetly kept us as a loyal customer.

Yes I finally posted my Road to Oprah images. These were all taken along the way during our 30 day bus trip to Chicago.

You can view a slideshow by clicking here

Visit the set by clicking here

One of the many grand locations for jumping, this location was the grandest. Here's Nirvan (upper) and me (lower) doing what you're supposed to do... well, while wearing jumpsuits.

see a larger version on our flickr set

Here's a picture I took of one of our larger producers when we were at the farmer's market in pasadena a few weeks back. I discovered a cool way to turn photos into a simulated infra-red, and thought it would be fun try try in on this pic. It is illustrated nicely here with the red trees and the cyan sky. You can see larger versions on our flickr set.

This is not really related to the 1 Second Film, other than that these guys kind of remind me of the Evangenitals a little, in that their songs are often musically cool with a humorous tone. A little like 8-bit too with the robot song, both of which were at our funraiser at Mr. T's the other night. Anyway, Flight of the Conchords is definitely maybe my new favorite show. These guys are genius.
A Song for Sally
The Humans Are Dead

The call came at about 12:30.

NIRVAN: "Hey Mike, Fox News is doing a story on us tonight..."

ME: "Yeah? Cool."

"Uh... yeah... they uh... need some footage..."

"Oh yeah? Well, you have lots of that"

"...On Betacam."

 "Betacam?"

"Yeah"

"Um. OK. When are they going to be there?"

"Around 4:00"

 "I'll see you in a few minutes"

 Nothing like a little ultra last minute dvd-burning, quick tape-to-tape crash recording and assemble-editing from DVD and HDV to BetacamSP to get your spirits up. For once, I'm actually looking forward to the news.

I love our producer Stephen Colbert. Not only did he help us to get on imdb, he is constantly toying with the power of the internet.

"It's official. Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American, or at least now ranks tops for that phrase at Google. It's all come from the latest Google bombing campaign sparked off in part by Stephen himself. The backstory on this, plus the "I thought Google bombing didn't work anymore" angle, all below..."

Read the full article here