A big problem I have with film scores is that a good deal of the time they try and cover up sloppy writing by making the audience feel an emotion that is otherwise not present. Like a light-hearted wacky tune playing when the protagonist of a family comedy is chasing a crazy monkey who has his house keys. Uh oh! Or having the rebellious teen character listening to the latest rock jam, so we know that this teen is cool and against the establishment, just like rock and roll.

I try to avoid this problem as much as I can, one way I try to is by making sure that any script I write has decent enough characters that can stand on their own.  Another way is by removing a lot of scoring from my films.  But what of the music I do use?  That’s where the Edison Cylinder Preservation and Digitization project comes in.  Not only is mostly everything on there in public domain (most of the cylinders are around 100 years old after all), but it also adds a degree of separation from the film while also being intertwined to it.  For example, The Ameer, also known as the piece used in Delicious Pound Cake, doesn’t dictate the action onscreen like the above examples but it does cover the ideological base of the movie: The scratching and decaying quality of the cylinder lends to the sense of something being horribly wrong with this world which is covered up by the romantic and sweeping music of The Ameer.

To check out the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization project, click here.  To check out/download The Ameer, click here.

You already saw this first one, but I enjoy it:

Video and pixellation make rock and roll.

 Another poster from the same band. It has a similar style:

Similar as the other one, but more fiery.

 Then we’ve got a few from Madness Screaming Hysterical:

I'm not sure I ever got into the same groove with MSH as I did with FuckPig.

Also, that's the great chicago fire in the background.

 And finally, our good friend Cube_Truth:

I like the way the colors and abstracted cube work together.

 So that’s it. I may have more on Somnambulist later.

Also, here’s a small glimpse of some of the background design I’m doing for a punk rock apartment:

Video and pixellation make rock and roll.

There’s only four days left for the funding campaign, so if you have some extra money why not give it to a struggling student director?

“My Name is Ward Armstrong and I Travel Through Time” has long held the position as the most viewed of my videos, however recently there has been an upset.  “My Mother the Dog Walker”, the documentary I made my freshman year about my mother taking my dog Peekaboo for a walk, is the first of my movies to break the 100 views mark and make it to the top of my most viewed list.

Some of you will find this vaguely interesting, and so for something else vaguely interesting I’ve included links to the top ten viewed films of mine. They are:

1. My Mother the Dog Walker

2. My Name is Ward Armstrong and I Travel Through Time

3. The Delicious Pound Cake teaser trailer

4. Lamplight Breakfast on a Burning Kitten

5. The ad for Skin Removal Cream from Plastix Ultimate

6. Vvinni Gagnepain’s The Shining

7. Into the Mainframe

8. Powerful Magics

9. Disfigurement Man: The Fear Wake

10. About Film, Time, and Pumas

So there we go. I suppose if you haven’t seen any of my movies, those are the ten of mine that people know about.

Now that I no longer have access to a large room full of film equipment and a building of actors it will be a bit more difficult to make live action shorts, however that doesn’t mean I’ll cease to make work.  Case in point: Below is the script to an animation I’m going to begin working on.  It’s about Mars Rovers and the sun. Let me know what you think.

Expedition- MARS

I was chosen as one of the top filmmakers of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, formerly the College of Santa Fe, and I was asked to include “My name is Ward Armstrong and I Travel Through Time” on the site, as it may be one of the most beloved movies of the school right now (not that I want to toot my own horn).

So here’s the link to website where you can watch Ward Armstrong and also read a little biography about what brought me to the land of Dust and Folk Art.  Also for the record I would like to thank Leroy Twarogowski and Salvador DeSantos for not only agreeing to work on the project at short notice but also for not being too angry that I’ve been posting a lot.

And thus ends an era.  For those of you reading this on the Facebook, you may go to this link to see the video: http://www.vimeo.com/26899539