I posted this on Tea Leaf Dancer, but I'm posting it here, as well. Why? Because I have something to say, that's why. I FUCKING HATE MY LIFE! Ok, not really... but after having watched this short video, I realize... I need to get out and, yeah... move. I need to do shit. Go places. See the world. Live an exotic life. Maybe settle down on Staten Island. Ha, yeah... no.
This creative little punk does more in 60 seconds than I will have done in 60 years.
I need a drink.
A bit late, but... worth posting. Nice little speech on being a dad/flushing away your dreams.
Photographer Rick Smolan's tale of an extraordinary Korean girl. Link courtesy of TBK.
I didn't want to post this on YouTube as it ends with, well... you'll see. It's a video I did for work. We had a big conference a few months back. Flew out all the reps from across the company. Our VP usually taps me to do these things because no one else is stupid enough to work into the wee hours night after night just to create a trivial video that's only going to be shown once - and to co-workers on top of it. For this one, he had a simple request... that it be motivational and emotional. I spent a lot of time on it. Everything you see was pulled from YouTube. I sifted through thousands of clips. I mean... for every athlete or movie I used, I had to look at 10-20 videos that were similar just to find one with decent resolution. YouTube clips are shitty enough as it is, so... it was a bit of a chore. Absolutely insane.
I first had to find the emotional piece. I did a video a few years back that was centered around an autistic kid that had a Rudy moment and won the game for his team. Lots of tears at the conference. That's what he wanted. So... the profile/story had to be incredibly moving. I went all Readers Digest on this and researched every inspirational story over the past year. It had to be something that made the news, but not so well known that everyone would have seen it already. I also had to find the right song to play in the background (music always helps pull at the heartstrings). Then I had to create a companion video that fit with the theme he was trying to get across (i.e. stop making excuses for why you didn't make quota; get off your ass and sell!) and finish it off by tying it back to that emotional story. Much harder than it sounds.
I got lucky, though. I found a video that had the same idea and even used some of the same clips I wanted to work with, but I couldn't just steal the whole thing and call it a day. Why? Because the guy had a lot of scenes in his video that I didn't like (cheesy movies, stuff that didn't really fit with the theme). So... what I did was kind of genius (and labor intensive). I deconstructed the entire thing. I liked the song he used, so I recorded it via Audio Hijack Pro. I liked several of his clips, but they weren't in the order I wanted, so I spent hours searching for a standalone clip I could use. Whenever I found something I liked, I downloaded it using an add-in for Firefox. There was one other video that had a few great clips, so I stole portions of it. In some cases, I came across a scene from a movie that was perfect, but somebody had music playing over it. Ugh. That meant I had to keep searching until I found the SAME scene... sans music. Then I saw a few videos that sampled some movie/sports dialog as a voiceover, but... I didn't like the footage they were using, so I sought out the audio by itself which was extremely difficult to do - especially Ali (you'll see). I nearly lost my mind.
Anyway... I pieced this video together over a two-week period - right up until the night before the conference. The audio drops a bit in the end (glitch in the editing software), but... I'm too sick of working on this fucking thing to go back and fix it. Besides... these work videos are usually just a collection of stuff on YouTube - like the one I did for a diversity event on leadership across generations. I posted this to Facebook months ago, but I hesitated over putting it here. Again... it's due to how it ends. Oh well... here you go. Enjoy.
Buddha
Figured out a way to post to YouTube without it being public...
Inspiring in My Stuff, Short Film Saw this on Facebook. This kid blew me away. Content of character, indeed.
The world needs more people like young Zach...
Inspiring, Interesting in Viral These "It Gets Better" videos are great. I'm proud of Disney for staying out of the way.
I would imagine gay teens need all the support they can get. Good for Pixar.
Commercial, Inspiring in Viral They should do this with every major speech. Great stuff.
Inspiring, Interesting in Viral Another video in the "It Gets Better" project - something that's a wonderful idea. As for this video... the guy talking about having to fake being sick got to me. I have to say, though... the transsexual creeped me out a bit. Don't judge me. Just being honest. I support the cause.
Inspiring, Interesting in Viral You're going to want to grab some Kleenex for this one. A Texas councilman gives an eloquent speech about the recent string of suicides among gay teens. I can only imagine how tough it is to be seen as "different" when growing up. Life is hard enough. Poor kids.