Was very glad that this film won an award. To sum it up in three words: Music can heal.

Poetry in Motion directed by Ron Mann 1982

A standout section of the film for me was when Charles Bukowski compared writing poetry to taking a beer shit.  Most poetry should be flushed away.  There’s some good poetry out there, but I’ve found myself shying away from most poetry, and most poetry readings.  A lot of it is too pedantic and overwrought.

Bukowski provides the spine of the film with his anti-narrative ranting against poets.  I enjoyed the film on many levels, especially because it covered so many different styles of poetry, featuring a variety of poets.

Ron Mann introduced the film, telling us that he shot over 100 hours of footage.  Anticipating the question of how he chose which poets to include from such a huge library of materiel, he said that some poets wrote great poetry and were poor performers, while others were great performers who wrote horrible poetry.  Using that as a measuring stick, he was able to find a middle ground and create a great film.

I’ve never been a fan of the over the top avant-garde jazz, preferring Coletrane and Davis to some of the other “weirder” musicians.  This film was enjoyable, as it exposed me to music I would never had otherwise heard.

Watch Cecil Taylor Bill Dixon – Imagine the sound on youTube.

Coober: A Desert Speedway Story

The description for the film alludes to a big race that promises a celebration by the community and lots of fun.

The race never really happens, people just talk about how great it is.   I think that is the success of the film.  Promise never realized.  This is a broken town full of tough, proud people, but it’s also a dying town.

I Love Alaska directed by Lernert Engelberts & Sander Plug,  2008

I was talking to one of the BSDFF staff members about this film.  He said he didn’t like it.  I told him that I’m fascinated with communication, and that I loved it.  he said, “Yeah, but there was no communication”.  I agree with him in that there was no communication between user #711391 and her husband, which is why the searches took place, and that if they had communicated better, their relationship may have been better, and the searches may hev been less interesting.

Because the movie was so intimate, it was at times difficult to watch.  User # 711391 is lonely, desperate, paranoid, and not very aware of the world.  The minimalism here is incredible, building a character around user #711391 that is fascinating.  I cannot say enough about how much I enjoyed this movie.

Thankfully, you can watch it online.  Links below.

Official site

Episode 1

Episode2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

Episode 7

Episode 8

Episode 9

Episode 10

Episode 11

Episode 12

Episode 13

Jennifer directed by Stewart Copeland, 2008, WINNER Best MiniDoc 2009

Growing up in a family of educators, watching this film for me was great.  What an achievement for Jennifer to have been able to pull off what is probably the most memorable lesson ever in these students’ lives.

An interesting companion piece to the film would be to track down those kids today and get their memories of the day.

Stewart Copeland

Official site (view film)

The Oldest Tree directed by Dale Elrod, 1997

The oldest tree in the world gets cut down by a scientist.  That’s the film.

Beautifully shot, with a “gotcha” that isn’t terribly surprising if you have a cynical view of humanity.  The problem was that Elrod tried too hard to be “poetic” in the film.  The Bristlecone is a fascinating tree and the story of Prometheus (aka WPN-114) is one worth telling.  This film only gets it part right.

Crude Independence directed by Noah Hutton, 2008

Hutton does a good job telling the story of Stanley, ND with an objective eye.  He first introduces us to the town and its people before the oil men show up and change the town forever.  He portrays all sides equally, giving the point of view of the land owners, mineral rights owners, oil workers, company owners, townsfolk, all who have a slightly different take on what’s happening in and to Stanley.

The film, using many long shots of the North Dakota plains, allows the story to seep in and the viewer begin to ask his own questions about oil dependence and consumption in the United States.

Official site

South: Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance Expedition directed by Frank Hurley 1919

Incredible story about the ill-fated expedition.  The silent film was accompanied by a live performance by the Alloy Orchestra, which made it one of the most amazing film going experiences I’ve ever had.

Goth Cruise directed by Jeanie Finlay, 2008

Not sure what I expected from this film, but I didn’t get it.  More about defining what a goth is than anything, just happened to be set on a cruise ship to frame that definition.  I walked away knowing that goths are professionals, own homes, have families, not groundbreaking stuff.  The film held my attention, though, and I enjoyed it for what it was.

Official site

I Think We’re Alone Now directed by Sean Donnelly 2008

Obsession can sometimes lead to delusion.  Very interesting movie about a couple of very interesting people.

Official site

Mellodrama directed by Dianna Dilworth, 2009

This film could have been amazing.  The problem with “Mellodrama” is that there *was* no drama.  Show me, don’t tell me, and there was a lot of showing going on.

Had the people talking been illustrated with more examples and they talked less, this film may have been stronger.  Not sure how that could be accomplished without some heavy editing.

The Wilma

Originally uploaded by BigSkyDocFF

Thriller in Manilla Directed by Joe Dower, 2008

I was too young to remember the details of these fights when they aired, but remember them being on TV.

I never realized how much of an asshole Ali was, betraying his friend after Frazier supported him for years when he couldn’t box. Ali was the most barbaric poet in the world – rasicst and mean to his friend.

Ali did say, afterwards, that he said some things he shouldn’t have. That doesn’t make up for the damage done to their friendship. A well-told story using interviws and archival footage.

We are Wizards, Directed by Josh Koury, 2008

Never having read the Harry Potter series, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this film. Its main focus was on Wizard Rock, with bands like Harry and the Potters in the forefront of the movement. The film also delved into the Harry Potter boycott, started by a 16 year old girl who ran a fan site on the interwebs that was sent a cease and decist letter by Warner Brothers.

I really enjoyed the film as it took me into a world I’d never experienced before, and erased preconceived notions about what a Harry Potter fan is.

Omen, Directed by Oksana Sokol, 2007

Cinemetography really captured the movement of the art as it is being made. Watching the flow of the paint as it came out of the can, listening to the words of the artist – very inspiring.

Number One With a Bullet, Directed by Jim Dziura, 2008

Well told story about gun violence and its consequences. Anti-gun without being preachy.

Some things I scratched in my notebook as I watched: “Violence begets violence.”

Tupac compared to JFK, Martin Luther King, John Lennon.

“Hip hop doesn’t show this” (from a doctor in a hospital emergency room.)

I’m live blogging the festival as I experience it via Twitter.  Find me there, I’m @marcmoss.

See you in the theatre.

Mother Lode Theatre for the premiere of Butte, America

Growing up in a union household in a workingman’s town, I felt a strong bond with Butte, MT the first time I visited it. My father was the union president for the Fraternal Order of Police in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and he did his time working a union job in the rubber shops of Akron at Goodyear and then at Firestone, just as his father had.   My grandfather helped form the first unions in the Akron rubber shops.

I remember listening to my ‘ole man tell stories of the difficult conditions when he was building tires, conditions that the union always fought to improve. And I remember him telling me, that even as union power in America began to decline, that it is because of unions that American workers have many things that we take for granted, like eight hour days and five day work weeks.

Remembering this, I very much looked forward to seeing Pam Roberts’ and Edwin Dobb’s finished documentary film, “Butte America”, which premiered in Butte last Saturday.

Roberts, a Montanan, but not a Buttian, sought to tell a Montana story that had national significance, and she found her story in the dusty hills of Butte.

She knew the challenge ahead of her and recruited Edwin Dobb, a Buttian who wrote the 1996 Harpers article Pennies From Hell: In Montana, the bill for America’s copper comes due. Dobb, who returned to Butte after a 25 year hiatus, was dragged “kicking and screaming” into the project, wary of “entering into such an extreme collaborative process”, being used to working alone as a writer. The time away gave Dobb perspective with which to help craft a compelling film.

The duo formed a good team, creating a movie that spans 120 years of history — the rise and fall of the labor unions in Butte, and, by extension, in America. They capture the “feel” of Butte well, illustrating the ambivalence of a town’s dependency on “The Company” via footage with former miners, old timers who worked underground before they were “turned into truck drivers”, or just quit mining altogether when the pit mines opened, because their spirit was broken, their livelihood stolen from them. They were proud men who did hard work in the mines underground, and they helped to build America.

But the story is more than just a story of workers and a boomtown gone bust. The story is a human one about the bonds that hard work can forge within a community, how hard work can actually become the defining element of a community. Those bonds and that sense of identity can be destroyed when work dries up. In the case of Butte, the work dried up as a result of corporate greed, when finally, mining left the town forever.

More than this, though, is Butte’s story – a story of survival. Montana’s own Pat Williams introduced Roberts and Dobbs, speaking eloquently about Butte and its spirit of survival.  Pat told the story of how he was able to get a job in the mines of Butte taking care of the miner’s tools, noting that it was because of his grandmother’s relationship with a local alderman that he was able to get the job.  The crowd laughed knowingly, and it was that sense of camaraderie among those in attendance that I most enjoyed about the screening.

The theatre was packed – a 1,200 seat building sold out.  Some people were dressed to the nines, and Buttians young and old settled in for an evening of celebration of their town, their history and of themselves.

One difficulty Roberts and Dobbs faced in making the movie was the lack of first-hand accounts available. Many of the people who were alive during Butte’s heyday are dead. Killed in the mines, or by miner’s consumption. Half of the characters in the film have died since the film was made. Those who are still living were in attendance, though, and stood to be recognized, to wild applause.

Roberts gracefully used the live resources available to her to create a beautiful film that blends archive film footage and photographs, donated home movies, and recreations, telling an important story in American history.  The screening was a gripping one.

Now that the film is finished, it will be shown over the next year at various places across the country.  There are talks in the works with PBS for distribution of the film. Roberts and Dobbs will also work to get the film into the hands of students in local communities, along with footage not included in the film, to create learning opportunities for students and encourage them to become more involved in their community through history and community pride.

Pam has been working on the film with co-writer and co-producer Edwin Dobb since its inception in 2000. Along with the following screenings, the film will also be shown nationally on PBS and on Montana public television in the fall of 2009. To view links to the “Butte, America” press kit or to catch a sneak peak of the film

“Butte, America” Screening Schedule:
Mother Lode Theater (Butte) – January 17th @ 8:00 pm
For more information call 406.723.3602

Emerson Theater (Bozeman) – February 6th @ 7:30 pm
Q&A with filmmaker and Butte historian
For more information call 406.587.9797

Myrna Loy Center (Helena) – February 21st @ 6:00 and 8:00 pm
Q&A with filmmaker and Butte historian
For more information call 406.443.0287

Butte, America Teaser & Press Kit [link]

Google Fail

I had only four tabs open when this message displayed. I killed the page.

I attempted to upload this screenshot to Flickr via Chrome, but it does not play well w/Flickr.

Nor does it play well w/Google Reader. I attempted to scroll through my news items using “page down”, as well as the scroll wheel on my trackball, but no love.  The same article bounced repeatedly in place.  It looked as if it was scrolling, but it was not.

Then I killed Chrome.

The performances by all bands were amazing.  high energy, fantastic rock and roll.

Why was the sound so muddy?  Specifically the vocals.  I was sitting about 3 rows back from the pit and the sound was terrible.

Reports I got from folks who were right up near the stage were that the sound was better, but that’s because they could hear the monitors on the stage.

Who’s fault is the terrible sound quality?  Knitting Factory Entertainment?  The Wilma?  I know hope you guys can do better than that.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

2008-03-29 Springsteen Seattle 1091

Originally uploaded by albabe

“Nils just played my pants off!” she said as the band launched into “She’s the One”. I could see why, as Nils’ scorching guitar work on “Because the Night” lived up to the hype its been getting during this tour. As a Springsteen fan since ’84, and a longtime tour veteran, I was proud of my friend’s newfound love for the band. “I just fell in love with Nils,” she said, and I knew I had a new convert. Her first tour, Abby drove with me 8 hours to Seattle from Missoula for her Bruce baptism. She was not originally a fan, and I tried to prime her on the drive over with as many of my Bruce CDs as I could grab on the way out the door. She did me proud, rocking out, singingalong with some of the songs she recognized, and even calling out “Waiting on a Sunny Day” before I recognized it.

When we arrived at the venue, ticketless and soaked from the rainy walk over from the hotel, I was skeptical she would have a good time, though. I had bought tickets in the parkinglot before,paying well below face value for them. (The last time I saw The Boss, in Jersey, back in 2002, I paid $15). She, however, had never arrived at a show without tickets before, and was getting nervous after we had turned down three different scalpers asking $100 a pop. On our second pass around the complex, she was nearing her last nerve, so when the scalper walked towards us I was ready to deal.

“Got tickets? Need tickets?” he said.

“What do they cost?” I asked.

“Don’t waste my time. What’s your budget,” he said.

“$60,” I said. He countered, I countered. We ended up paying $140 for a pair in section 211.Nosebleeds, I know, but factoring in the “convenience charge” Ticketmaster charges, we still paid below retail.We made it into the venue, and she waited for another friend from Missoula who had been to the Portland show while I went to check out the seats. When I returned to them, we eventually balked at the $7 beers that we couldn’t take to our seats, and headed up towards our seats around 8. The show, slated to begin at 7.30, was finally underway just a little after 8.30.And what a show.

I had been warned that it was different from any E Street show I had ever seen, and those reports were right. Absent was Dany Federici, recovering from melanoma treatment. In his stead was Charles Giordano, the Sessions Band keyboardist and accordionist. Patty was also thankfully absent as well, back in Jersey dealing with the teenagers who had “kegs of beer rolling up the driveway, and 100 pizzas were delivered. Pot cookies were coming out of the oven. Patty’ll take care of that. She’s got that shit down.” At least she’s got something down. Lord knows she hasn’t figured out how to be a part of the E Street Band.

From the flubbed opening strains of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped”, of which Bruce said, “A little panic, good for the band,” Bruce Springsteen helped us celebrate “the final curtain on eight years of magic tricks” for a little over two hours. It was a politically charged show, with a heavy focus on the new stuff. The favorites, some coming from scrawled request signs in the crowd, (“Tenth Avenue Freeze Out”), some coming as audibles,others, as evidenced by the handwritten setlist posted on brucespringsteen.net, were planned out. But “Point Blank”? Amazing. Sandwiched between “Your Own Worst Enemy” and “Devil’s Arcade”, this gem hasn’t been played with the E Streeters since June 14, 2003 in Denmark. The re-working of”Reason to Believe”, for me, was the favorite. Bruce re-invented it as a driving, foot-stomping rollick, haunted by his opening imploration to “SSSSHHHHHHHHH” before the harmonica intro, and punctuated by the haunting treatment of his voice through some sort of effects pedal. Incredible.

I talked to ‘ole Abby today, and she confessed that she couldn’t stop singing Bruce all day.”When are you going to let me borrow some CDs?” she wanted to know. Wait until I give her,thanks to the power of the Internet, the entire show at 203 kbps.

Thanks Bruce, and thanks E Street Band.

Finding Normal

Listening to the Q+A session after the film, it was good to hear that some of those depicted in the film have seen the film and liked it. They were present at screenings of the film in Portland and were able to interact with audience members, validating their process and strengthen them at the same time. Lindstrom said that he made the film because he believes in the program’s strength, and that it deserves to be replicated in other communities. He admitted that there were ethical concerns of following individuals on such a fragile journey, and, to his credit, said that their recovery was the most important thing. He said that if he thought at any time that their recovery was in jeopardy, he would have backed off. This responsible approach validates the folks in the program, giving them strength, and, by the director’s own accord, telling them that they are important and valuable human beings.
The director Brian Lindstrom took great care in patiently setting up the story of each character involved. The film follows three of the people involved in the running the mentoring program, David, Jill, and to a lesser extent, Randy. Their stories are told through their interactions with the people entering treatment. The film focuses upon three key individuals, a 36 year old white kid (who I thought would surely drop out of the program by the end of the film — he didn’t), Peni, a recovering drug addict (Peni eventually drops out), and a black ex-con who was to me the most ready to change from the very beginning of his introduction into the program.

David, the main councilor, is amazing as he non-judgmentally walks new inductees through what they can expect as they enter into the program, telling them in a no bullshit way what they’re up against. At the same time, David validates their addiction and fear of overcoming it through personal stories. David, like Jill and Randy, believe that people can change, and believe that the change is so profound and so worth it that they are willing to do everything in their power to help those who want help.

Jerky camera work and editing throughout the movie seemingly paralleled the confusion of someone entering and participating in a recovery program. Cutting back and forth between letting those in recovery tell their story, and letting those running the mentoring program tell their story, the film does a good job of depicting the difficulty of overcoming addiction. Around about the half-hour mark in the 77 minute film, I began to get fidgety. Lindstrom’s choice to attempt to tell two distinct stories is the film’s largest fault. Attempting to blend both the stories of the people in recovery as well as the stories of the people running the program proved to be too big a task and weakened what could have been a stronger film. Had he chosen to focus on one or the other of the stories, the secondary story would have told itself, and with more grace. The stronger of the two stories in the film as it stands is that of David, Jill and Randy.

The three mentors have been through so much in their lives, and have beaten their addictions in order to create new lives for themselves. The power of this accomplishment leads them to want to reach out and provide that opportunity for others, and that, to me, was the story the film was telling most eloquently. During the question and answer session after the screening, Lindstrom’s comment about “..what David, Jill and Randy had to deal with…” as they provided help to those in the program spoke to this idea that the film really should have been more focused upon the program itself, and those who created and run it.

Butte, America

Growing up in a union household in a workingman’s town, I felt a strong bond with Butte, MT the first time I visited it. My father was the union president for the Fraternal Order of Police in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and he did his time working a union job in the rubber shops of Akron at Goodyear and then at Firestone, just as his father had. I remember listening to him tell stories of the difficult conditions when he was building tires, conditions that the union always fought to improve. And I remember him telling me, as union power in America began to decline, that it is because of unions that American workers have many things that we take for granted, like eight hour days and five day work weeks.

Remembering this, I very much looked forward to seeing Pam Roberts’ rough cut of her work-in-progress, “Butte America”. Roberts, a Montanan, but not a Buttian, sought to tell a Montana story that had national significance, and she found her story in the dusty hills of Butte. She knew the challenge ahead of her and recruited Edwin Dobb, a Buttian who wrote the 1996 Harpers article Pennies From Hell: In Montana, the bill for America’s copper comes due. Dobb, who returned to Butte after a 25 year hiatus, was dragged “kicking and screaming” into the project, wary of “entering into such an extreme collaborative process”, being used to working alone as a writer. The time away gave Dobb perspective with which to help craft a compelling film.

The duo formed a good team, creating a movie that spans 120 years of history — the rise and fall of the labor unions in Butte, and, by extension, in America. They capture the “feel” of Butte well, illustrating the ambivalence of a town’s dependency on “The Company” via footage with former miners, old timers who worked underground before they were “turned into truck drivers”, or just quit mining altogether when the pit mines opened, because their spirit was broken, their livelihood and stolen from them. They were proud men who did hard work in the mines underground, and they helped to build America.

But the story is more than just a story of workers and a boomtown gone bust. The story is a human one about the bonds that hard work can forge within a community, how hard work can actually become the defining element of a community. Those bonds and that sense of identity can be destroyed when work dries up. In the case of Butte, the work dried up as a result of corporate greed, when finally, mining left the town forever.

Roberts acknowledged, in the Q+A session after the showing, that one difficulty she faced in making the movie was the lack of first-hand accounts available. Many of the people who were alive during Butte’s heyday are dead. Killed in the mines, or by miner’s consumption. half of the characters in the film, Roberts told us, have died since the film was made. Roberts gracefully used the live resources available to her to create a beautiful film that blends archive film footage and photographs, donated home movies, and recreations, telling an important story in American history. Though the film is technically unfinished, (the movie still had many editor’s marks like running times and other video notations), the screening was a gripping one.

Roberts intends to put the finishing touches on the film, including more voice-over narration and more original scoring, in time for a spring 2008 release. I’m looking forward to seeing the final version.

Sorting Letters and Prototype

Originally uploaded by love not fear

Last time you wrote you said that you thought collage was a nostalgic impulse. I think you’re wrong. Can we argue about this? Kurt Schwitters would laugh up his sleeve at you for saying that. His collages are like writing letters. Letters are collages. Educations are collages, too. –Jolene Iolas to Martin Sloane; Martin Sloane, Michael Redhill

So often, when I’m working on a project, layers of that project reveal themselves to me in other aspects of my life. Recently, I was introduced to the writer Michael Redhill as a result of an interview with him that I’d heard on The Kacey Kowars Show [disclosure, Kacey Kowars is my uncle]. In the interview, Redhill mentioned his fascination with Joseph Cornell, the artist who makes intricate boxes of objects. He said that he drew inspiration from Cornell in his book Martin Sloane, which I have just begun reading and am enjoying very much.

It’s making me think a little more cerebrally about the Leaving and the Left project I’ve undertaken recently. I posted some early sketches and notes about the project previously here, but I never flushed out the idea. I guess the idea won’t be fully flushed out until the project is completed, but I’ll explain a little more about the concept before tracing the process thus far and then sharing what I’m learning as I go.

My progress on the project has been slower than I’d hoped. Part of the reason for that is that I unintentionally made excuses as to why I could not move the project forward, namely that I didn’t want to be cutting up glass in my kitchen and risk having glass shards in my food, or on my floor for me to step on like some sort of modern Bukowski, going weekly to the doctor to have them removed from the bottoms of my feet.

Excuses are always barriers to progress, and I have begun eliminating them and will have a prototype completed by the end of the weekend. I already have one laid out. A quick todo list:

1. Create prototype
2. get wood scraps at Home Resource
3. cut wood for pieces : 20 pieces at 12″x12″ (allow extra pieces in case of screw-ups)
4. paint cut wood, allow to dry
5. get more glass from the frame shop
6. cut glass for each piece. Work on each piece individually, or no more than 2 pieces at one time

Each piece will likely have its own todo, but that’s a good start for now.

As far as the actual idea for the series, let’s backup a minute and I’ll share some insights that the process is teaching me. My own little art education.

Love relationships, and I’m speaking here about relationships comprised of romantic and/or sexual love, break down for a variety of causes for their crumbling. Granted, sometimes they don’t break down at all, which is good, but when they do break down, there can be a variety of reasons for their demise: a wrongdoing to one or another in the relationship, new information that informs the feelings of the relationship’s participants, lack of communication between partners, new honesty in the reasons for entering a relationship in the first place, clarity as to the goal of the relationship and realizing that one or both parties are on different paths, geographical distance that cannot be overcome. I’m simplifying a huge thing here, and am not trying to create an all-encompassing list, but you get the idea.

When a relationship ends, there are associated with its ending a variety of feelings: hurt, anger, resentment, relief, regret (again, not an all-encompassing list). But my thought as I have been thinking about the series is that the love shared between the two individuals does not just disappear. That which has been given cannot be taken back. Amidst the pain and heartache we often forget the good and valuable things that drew us together in the first place.

Where does that love go? How does it manifest itself in our lives moving forward? How can we grow from the love we shared, honor the hurt and pain of parting yet allow the love to become a part of us, enriching us and renewing us? How can we grow from both the love and the heartache? These are some of the questions that the series intends to explore. I cannot pretend that the completed pieces will answer all or any of the questions, but the discussions are important ones to have, and hopefully the viewer will be challenged to have these kinds of discussion with himself and others close to him.

Initially, I had intended to use snippets of old love letters, juxtaposed with after-the-breakup letters to illustrate that love and sadness can exist in the same space, although maybe in different time continuums. Acknowledging and honoring both disparate feelings is important. Attempting to replace love with hate isn’t truly possible or healthy. The concept may not be fully articulated here, and I’m still spinning it in my head, but it’s stuck around long enough that it’s worth exploring.

Some unexpected things are coming up as new themes while I continue working on this series. The big surprise was that I had almost all of the love letters, but none of the breakup letters. No “You hurt me, I hate you” letters. Nothing.

Then I started going through some old email archives. (I save everything. I’m going to be one of those old men with goat trails in his house, I swear). I noticed that I had some love letters sent electronically, but what surprised me was that there were quite a few residual after-the-breakup letters in the emails I was reading. This realization raises a question about technology and the coldness of words displayed as intangible pixels on a screen. Sure, they can be printed, but the former love/lover had not physically touched the printout. Her essence is not present. This creates distance between the leaving and the left. Is this intentional? Does it matter if it is or isn’t?

The process is a fascinating one for me, and I’m learning much about myself in the process.

A steady stream of foot traffic made its way past my art on Friday. Many of the women who were in attendance also were enticed into buying a trinket or two from the boutique, as i noticed the cash register’s buttons wearing out, which is good. Alas, no one purchased any artwork. On Friday, anyway. The work will be on display on available for purchase through the end of the month, so if you’re around downtown Missoula, stop in and see it.

The Miss Zula’s show marks the first time I’ve exhibited anywhere that requires a cut of the art sales. In this case, I believe it to be a fair trade, as they took care of the advertising in the weekly and daily newspapers here in town, as well as refreshments. Being on a shoestring budget right now, that’s good for me.

The next show I have scheduled isn’t until the holiday season, and it’s a group show. More on that as time progresses.

The sign-up process was relatively painless. They included humor in the process as well, which is always good, incorporating positive words into the annoying anti-bot detection requirement, as well as making the button read “I’M A HUMAN”.

For the actual uploading of images, Animoto supports uploading from your local machine, or accessing some of the popular photo sharing sites online including Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Photobucket and Picassa. I chose to grab some images from my Flickr site. After giving Animoto permission to access my Flickr account, I chose an album. This process from within Animoto was less than perfect because, for a 30 second clip, one is limited to around 15 photos. Animoto does not display photo counts for the albums in Flickr, at least. I had to login to Flickr to check album sizes. A minor annoyance.

The next step is to choose music. You have an opportunity to upload music from your machine (with a warning that it had better be legit), or choose from selections offered on Animoto. I tried to upload from my machine, but the Animoto service did not seem to have this feature completely bug-free yet, so I had to go with their selections, which included three genres: Indy, electronic or hip-hop. It seemed all of the selections in each category were lame, so I went with what looked to be the least lame. There was no way for me to tell, as the “play” button intended to preview the music before selection did not work.

Okay, so I have the photos loaded, the music selected. Lastly, I need to tell it to create the video. I do this and wait a short amount of time before I receive an email letting me know that the vid is ready for online viewing.

It seems to be a fun little tool, but not very useful in the end because of the lack of control the end user has as to which images are displayed in which way. I think the display order is based upon the way the photos are ordered in the album, but I think it’s more of a throwaway “Oh, neat” thing than anything. We’ll see how it goes, as with all 2.0 startups.

View the video below.

Update: The embedding feature seems to spit out bad code, so you’ll have to follow the link to view the vid they made for me. View the vid for reals.