Digital
Video in el Norte Lights! Camera!
Tortillas!
August 26, 2002
A ways to go but lookin'
good...
Out
of the blue There I was back on July 29, peacefully minding
my own business and worrying about stupid things like sex,
money, and death, when all of a sudden the following message
popped into my email in-box:
"Howdy. I was browsing thru your "Sweating
It Out" article on Applelinks and noticed the
glorious Wheeler Peak. A few scrolls and clicks later and
I saw Williams Lake. How cool. Last I saw it was from the
peak back in '95 or so. Not your normal imagery on a Mac
website.
Anyway, I run a small digital production company
called Northern New Mexico Digital Video. Let me know if
you're interested in trading links. www.NNMDV.com."
Well, heck. Sure, why not? It took me a while to answer
back, but I was intrigued. I was also very interested
in NNMDV, both because of the regional tie-in plus the
likelihood that "digital video" meant Macs were involved. I
was also anxious to meet some actual human beings, plus
(here it comes) I wanted to jump on anything that suggested
a possible gig. Did they use Macs, I asked, learning next
that "we use Macs for the Digital Video stuff using Final
Cut Pro, After Effects, Bryce 3-D, Poser 3-D and Maya for
all our editing, compositing, special fx, and animations."
Very cool, but darn, out of my league. When you write Apple
news all day, you don't have time to learn digital video. (I
wonder what I expected, anyway, money for just being cool?)
No matter. We had a nice friendly exchange of emails in
which I was invited to several film shoots (!), so I thought
this was peachy-keen. Besides, anyone who likes my photos
gets invited to my next birthday party, if I ever admit
again to having one.
Shake
me out of my rut, will you?! Time passed. My wife returned from the U.K.,
neither of us had concocted a real job during the interim,
and dios mio, I had a birthday! (Sex, money, and
death, like I told you.) This must have taken all of two
weeks but felt like a year or two. The way I'm living now,
I've managed to slow a month down to the point that if you
were quick with a hammer and tent stakes, you could nail the
sucker down and have it be now forever. Before I had a
chance to test this theory, I heard from Northern
New Mexico Digital Video again. This time correspondent
Dan Otero [you'll find him below and with the rest of
the crew here]
displayed the remarkable good sense to lavish even more
praise on my Fotofeed.com
shots, setting me happily up for an invitation to attend a
marketing meeting in Dixon, New Mexico at the home of
NNMV co-founder Javier Arellano.
This struck me as something it would be stupid to miss.
For one thing, I'd rarely attended anything so ostensibly
practical before. For another, Dan promised to show footage
from the latest "Zen
and the Asteroid" film shoot, and I'd get to meet
people, of course. I was also a little worried about how a
wacko gringo hipster wannabe from too-too Taos would blend
in with a crew of local videographers,which meant I
absolutely had to show up, and so I did.
Naturally, I was the first one there, Dixon having
mysteriously moved a number of miles closer to Taos since
the last time I was in the area. I made friends with a
thankfully cheerful dog the size of a small horse, Javier
met me at the door and slapped a Carta Blanca in my hand,
and life was good.
Northern
New Mexico Digital Video I want everyone to know that I was suitably
impressed. When Dan and the others arrived, they snapped
right into meeting mode and proceeded to analyze their
operation's strengths and prospects for success. A very
smart lady named Suzie Gutierrez offered solid advice on
marketing. Elena Arellano, Javier's mother and a
grantwriter, dropped in from next door to lay out different
non-profit and for-profit angles for funding. Director of
photography Bob Alexander came up with more inventive ideas
than I could count. Everyone, in fact, was minutely thorough
and displayed an awesome grasp of the resources and
opportunities available to them, especially through their
own communities. None of this assures success, but it darn
sure can't hurt.
NNMDV has its hands on some real talent for its
"Zen and the
Asteroid" Taoist sci-fi comedy, too. The short segments
I saw featured at least a couple of real gems, like the hero
(Zen) dispatching bounty hunters from Mars with a flying
tortilla barrage. What's more, from what I could tell, these
guys know their way around OS X and digital video, no
problemo.
They have a lot of hard work ahead of them but I think
they're up to it, and I wish I had as clear a vision of what
I need to accomplish in my own endeavors as they do in
theirs. I'm also on their side because they're indigenous,
grounded in the region, and of course because they use Macs.
I'm delighted to have a chance to talk them up here and help
attract some attention if I can. A few years ago this kind
of creative enterprise would have been prohibitively
expensive to launch, but not any more, thanks to Apple
technology. Speaking of which, NNMDV needs to buy more
hardware. If anybody out there wants to do business, drop
Dan or Javier
an email and tell 'em I sent you.
I want to know if this digital networking thing actually
works!
"Grack!"
Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John
H. Farr is still flogging this list of extremely
relevant URLs:
The GRACK! Update mailing list has just been selected for
special scrutiny by emotionally disturbed former FBI
snipers. Just CLICK
HERE and send a blank email.
GRACK! 2001
archives are HERE. (Current
year's columns just
below)
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