glitterfish.com

Glitterfish is proud to present the music video for She’s Your Sister’s single, Gravity, off their debut album, In Between.

You can watch the video on YouTube.com by clicking here. Please login and vote for us on the Youtube Underground contest! If you don’t have a Youtube account please sign up and vote for the video.


Directed by Jonathan Pulley
Produced by Andres Martinez

Gravity marks both mine and Jonathan’s first project since moving out to Los Angeles five months ago. We had no money and basic equipment but we still managed to make a cool video for an awesome band using over a thousand still photographs. Expect a high quality quicktime version after the Youtube Underground contest is over.

If you like the band, make sure you check out the She’s Your Sister’s official site.

After the success of Charles Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the issuing of such statements became popular with all kinds of political, social, and artistic organizations. Art manifestos were a feature of many Modern art movements of the early 20th century and they have continued to be issued by new groups ever since. Circulated in magazines, journals, newspapers, and now the web, the documents served as an easy platform for art movements to renounce the outdated ideas of the past and outline new aesthetic and thematic frameworks.

Generally manifestos contain a brief introduction followed by an enumerated list of demands and then some commentary. Usually they are written in a revolutionary or even incendiary tone. In his dada manifesto, Feeble Love & Bitter Love II (1920), Tristan Tzara’s describes the art manifesto as follows.

A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretension is to the discovery of an instant cure for political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomical and literary syphilis. It may be pleasant, and good-natured, it’s always right, it’s strong, vigorous and logical. Apropos of logic, I consider myself very likeable.

I’ve said before that art is in a slump. These days art is dominated by the page-view-click-thru critics. With their penchant for hype and smarmy language, the blogant-garde has gone from a cornucopias “chorus of voices” into a homogeneous indiecrat PR machine. If you think that’s a grim situation, I don’t even want to get into god and politics. Because the world needs revolution, and because I find myself very likeable, Mr. Tzara’s words strike me.

The reasons are all the usual suspects: cheap cameras, cheap bandwidth, cheap blah blah blah. The deluge of short form video is upon us. Artist, filmmaker, and photographer Nathan Swango of Freeworkingspace.com proposes:

Laying awake I recall an idea shared with me by a good friend, his thought is that anything is watchable as long as it is short. Lately it seems true, a new wave in videography and digital filmmaking has emerged in the form of amatuer filmmaking and internet streaming video. Enormous trends have been set already, funny cats, inside jokes, personal video journals, sexy-smoking-housewives, music video parodies, etc. More often we are seeing professional concepts being inspired by amatuer videographers. The mass contribution continues non-stop and it is a global phenomenon.

Here is my list of rules for Short Concept Digital Video, this is an experiment:

1. One minute in length (60 seconds).
2. Up to but not more than four edits.
3. Camera is hand held.
4. Sound must be original.
5. Playback demensions must be 320X240.
6. No credit to the director.
7. Quick, Cheap, Easy but no sacrifice to the integrity and the quality of the idea.
8. Showcased in a digital public forum, i.e. the internet, youtube.com, Google Video.

Nate doesn’t think like the hand held camera rule and I definitely agree. There seems to be consensus that the 4 cut limit is at least very interesting even if there is disagreement on the exact number of cuts. My favorite rule is #6 but I think it contradicts #4. To me rule number #4 totally flies in the face of what digital short form video is. Digitized information has no “final cut.” Putting something on the web is implicitly giving permission to have your work remixed, mashed up, and made fun of.

Go read the manifesto and check out Freeworkingspace.com.

Have you ever had one of those “as long as there are tests there will always be school prayer” moments?

We wrapped the Gravity video. Jonny and I are both stoked with how it turned out. For reasons I can’t get into here there was some tense moments right at the home stretch but things are looking positive now. We have a few loose ends to tie up before the release but check back Wednesday. later.

P.S. She’s Your Sister just recorded their second full length album. No official release date but probably sometime early next year.

If your into screwed up morality tales featuring animated children and rabbits this might be up your alley.

Uhh…it was made in England I think.

If you haven’t click on a link that says Line Rider yet, you need better internet friends.

It’s not a game, it’s not a toy, and it’s definitly not a movie. It’s a flash thingy made by some dude and posted to some forum that is amazingly addictive and totally joyful. First play the game, then watch this movie that just popped up on Youtube.

When I was in high school for school spirit week, my friend Ryan and I dressed up as Boy Scouts for twin day. We wore two identical Class-A Boy Scout uniforms complete with short shorts, knee high socks, and brass on brass belt buckles. We had a great time mocking the Boy Scouts but ironically, the only reason we had all that crap was because Ryan and I had been in the Boy Scouts our entire lives. We were so hardcore that when we were twelve we both went to the National Jamboree.

After satisfying the necessary requirements, in conjunction with the MPAA and the RIAA Los Angeles area Boy Scouts are now eligible for a special patch in “respecting copyright.” To earn the patch, Scouts will have to do one of the following: visit a peer-to-peer file-sharing network to identify which files are illegal and which are legal; create a 1 minute movie explaining the importance of copyright protection; or go to a movie and after watching the credits explain to their counselor who is hurt by copyright infringement. You can read the full curriculum here.

Personally I would choose the “go to a movie” option because that sounds like it is the easiest. I would not pick the “make a movie” option because filmmaking is hard and it’s really expensive to get proper clearances for your music. On a side note, amongst Boy Scouts there is a patch trading activity where you trade interesting, rare, and vintage patches with one another. When I went to the National Jamboree the most coveted patch was the Marin County totally unlicensed “Yoda” Star Wars patch (Lucas Film has since licensed the image and the 2005 patches feature a trademark.)

Contrary to recent reports, the award is in fact a patch and not a full merit badge. Since it is a local initiative of the Los Angeles Council for the Boy Scouts of America and not officially sanctioned by the National Boy Scouts of America, becoming an industry shill will not get you any closer to your Eagle. Still, it’s a little disturbing that the MPAA and the RIAA are out there indoctrinating children with their anti-consumer, anti-progress, and draconian notions about copyright. As Cory Doctorow points out, there is no discussion about fair use, consumer rights, or how copyright law orphans creative work. I don’t think it’s bad for kids to understand that artists and industry should be compensated for their work, but I do think its wrong to inform kids about both sides of the debate. Plus, that patch is probably the ugliest patch I’ve ever seen and its a shame to make the Boy Scout uniform worse than it already is.

One of my biggest regrets is that I’m not an Eagle Scout. While I disagree with a lot of the organizations intolerant values, there is still something to be said about a kid who gets his Eagle Scout. More telling, there is something to be said about a kid who jumps through all the hoops and gets all the merit badges to be a Life Scout by age 14, and then doesn’t bother to do that one last step necessary to be an Eagle. But I digress…

Jonathan Glazer is the director on one of my favorite films, Sexy Beast, and the comercials of one of my favorite beers, Stella Artios. He also has directed videos for bands such as Jamiroquai, Massive Attack and Radiohead.

You might remember the last Sony-Bravia commerical where thousands of bouncy balls are dropped on a hill in San Francisco. Jonathan directs the new Bravia comericial where a building is rigged with thousands of paint cannons launching explosive balls filled with paint. The effect is a beautiful and totally digital free color show.

Watch.

I just caught this little ditty on the Interweb an felt it needed to be shared. For music and movie lovers alike, this will blow your mind. Credits are at the end. ENJOY!!!

If you watch MTV2, some of those wacky promo’s are the work of Crobin. It sure feels like this 30 second clip was rejected and then repackaged as a viral video. In any case I’m definitly a fan of anything that calls out hipsters as Nazis.

The Arizona Daily Star ran an article on Tucson Arizona’s growing filmmaking scene.

Tucson hasn’t been a hotbed for spawning Hollywood talent. Actor Garry Shandling was born in Tucson. Oscar-winning screenwriter/producer Diana Ossana owns a home here. Actor Dennis Quaid attended the UA, as did megabucks producer Jerry Bruckheimer. As far as directors, though, only Palo Verde graduate and Oscar-nominated documentarian Kirby Dick has made a national impact from the director’s chair.

During my graduation commencement ceremony, Jerry Bruckheimer received an honorary doctorate from the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts. The applause for Dr. Bruckheimer was thunderous and noticeably louder than Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano’s who also spoke at the ceremony.

The article talks about The UofA’s film school and The Loft’s Monthly Short Film Contest. My former class mate, Jennifer Beatty, gets a mention.

According to the article, “a search of the word ‘Tucson’ on the online video-sharing Web site Youtube.com found 1,034 results.” Hmm…I’m not sure Arizona Daily Star reporter, Phil Villareal, really watched any of those videos. But if he did he must be referring to this awesome Tucson produced music video called “Caitlin sings The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Personally, I’m hype about this amazing trailer for upcoming feature film “Tucson Vice.” From the looks of the Vice trailer, filmmaker layoub42 decided to eschew 35 mm film for not only the cost savings but also the gritty realism of the digital video aesthetic.

I’ve said it before, Youtube is a place for Hollywood to incubate talent. No doubt Dr. Bruckheimer has got these guys on his radar.

Youtube is having a contest for unsigned bands to submit their music video.

YouTube is on a quest to find the most talented and entertaining U.S. based unsigned musicians and bands out there.

Submit videos that best represent your group’s musical, lyrical and video-making skills. The YouTube community will vote and decide just who rules the YouTube Underground!

We will be submitting the She’s Your Sister video so please don’t enter the contest.

Right on the heels of Mark Cuban’s comments that only a fool would buy Youtube, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is in talks to buy the video portal:

A purchase of YouTube could give a big boost to the online video efforts of Google. YouTube commanded 46% of visits to U.S. online video sites in August, according to market research firm Hitwise. That compared to a 23% share for the video activities of News Corp.’s MySpace social-networking site, and 10% for Google Video.

Reports put the price at 1.6 billion. However, “talks” don’t atomaticallly mean there will be a sale. Go ahead and read why Arstechnica thinks its all sizzle and no steak.

Universal Music CEO Doug “Youtube owes us millions” Morris, must really be excited about the deal. Suing Google–who according to the article as off June had 10 billion dollars in cash–is a juicy proposition. I would be stoked if my intellectual property rights were being flagrantly violated. Here is the WSJ portrait of Chad “my company is not for sale” Hurley.

Founder of Youtube.

UPDATE:From Paid Content at the ONA Confab:

Mark Cuban, who recently made waves by suggesting only a moron would buy YouTube, is the afternoon keynote here. We talked beforehand and I’ll post about that later. He’s up on the podium now, Diet Cokes at hand, fielding questions in a straight q-and-a session. The first came from the NYTCO’s Vivian Schiller, who introduced him and kicked off with a Google-YouTube question. His response: “The minute that acquisition took place YouTube couldn’t be YouTube.”

My buddy, Nate Buchik, wrote a long running column for the University of Arizona’s Daily Wildcat. He covered music, movies, and other pop culture stuff in sort of a scatter shot kind of way.

He’s since put the column online and turned it into a blog. Check out this recent post on Michael Cera’s new band who plays George Michael on Arrested Development.

The kids of AD always seemed super cool behind a nerdy front, and this was confirmed when my friends spotted Maeby and Bland checking out the Mountain Goats in-store at Amoeba L.A. a few weeks ago. “Where was George Michael?” I asked.

Apparently practicing with his band, The Long Goodbye, who are actually AWESOME. Only 18-years-old, Michael plays guitar and sometimes sings for TLG - which cites influences like Neutral Milk Hotel and Weezer (I’m sure only pre-Green Weez, though). Michael even sports a serious Rivers Cuomo style in most of the band’s pics on their MySpace page.

Between chasing his cousin and selling frozen banana’s who knew George Michael had time for a band?! Nate is a serious television, music, and all around pop culture junkie. Best Week Ever recently gave him some link love and so should you!

I was interviewed for an article in the college newspaper of Belmont University in Nashville. From the The Belmont Vision:

Andres Martinez, a 22-year-old University of Arizona film graduate, founded Glitterfish.com, a Hollywood blog for filmmakers. He uses YouTube video for “new means of distribution of film for new filmmakers.”

“For a long time, people haven’t been able to publish videos, but now YouTube has given people that opportunity,” Martinez said.

“It’s about democratizing video; video is such a popular means to show people things. YouTube has shown us there is an audience for unpolished, amateur video.”

Read the rest of the article.