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Cool Mac Gear• iPod Video • iPod nano • iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Garageband |
Lights! Camera! Tortillas! A ways to go but lookin' good... Out
of the blue "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. 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?! 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 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: FarrFeed -- new Salon blog, woo-hoo! 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. (Current year's columns just below)
"GRACK!" is © copyright 2002, John H. Farr, all rights reserved
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