The End of Barns

   Nothing lasts forever or so they say. Wanna prove this concept? Just start doing some home improvements. I mean by yourself. Wow. Put on a coat of paint and let the clock tick away. Before you know it those lovely old windows that you trimmed are cracked and peeling, the decks you stained have faded and even hard wood posts which looked solid have weathered cracked and now look iffy. What's a weekend home depot warrior to do?

    But the really scary part is you can extrapolate this process to just about everything on God's green earth, including and especially YOURSELF! Even entire species get wiped out as a part of mother nature's spring cleaning. Now there's a woman who knows how to toss stuff. 

     Today's essay will hone in on one of her often overlooked casualties but we can't pin this on Mother N alone as man has had a neglectful hand. I speak of our nation's historic barns, many of which  crumple in decay across the center of this great land.

     More than a handful of road trips of late have taken me across the nation's midland. From the interstates you can't see much other than the duplicate strip foods and gas mother ship landing stations. But in that little window of America that you can see from the road is the startling sight of barn after barn after wood barn abandoned, perforated and sagging. A once proud symbol of the pioneer ancestor's prosperity is now left to return to dust on farms that one presumes may now be in the hands of agricultural corporations.

    A common sight is a cement silo standing proudly without it's partner. Another is a wooden outbuilding with a broken back silhouetted across the evening skyline. Still more common is an old grey shell with some remaining boards, no longer much of an obstacle to prairie winds.

   I am not sure why this bothers me but it does. Perhaps it marks a change in our food production from family farms to conglomoculture. Perhaps it is just that it is an aesthetic shame. Perhaps it is just a reminder that we and all we create are temporary.

I throw this out for you to ponder. Anything that makes enough impact for one to exit the freeway to get a  picture for a future blog must have some significance. I share and wonder why I have been affected by these sights. Evidently I am not alone. From one barn remnant in Michigan hung a sign shouting  "Save the Barns" at passers-by and pointing to this website ...

www.mibarn.net

I did not have the energy to exit and photograph that one. I can't help but wonder why.

haverstickfilms.com

FINALLY! Today I uploaded my FLASH masterpiece...aka my beginner website effort in flash, the new Haverstick Films website. Check it out at www.haverstickfilms.com and of course you will need flash to view it, plus a DSL or cable level connection is recommended.
Now much like camping excursion to the Grand Tetons, in order to enjoy this website at this point in time you will need to endure a few pesky bugs. I am aware of them and am working to fix them (eventually) but don't rain on my parade with emails on them just yet because, folks I am darn proud of learning flash and creating this website 100% minus two percent myself! ....fine print disclaimer.... I did need the help of Flash expert and dear friend Adam Clark of Trick Digital to assist in some of the final navigation coding to the pages, but we will not officially give him any credit as Adam is a Flash master and will not want his name on a buggy beginner effort I am certain. You can check out some of his truly amazing work at www.trickdigital.com. He was a gentleman and stifled any snickers when he gazed on my code, but I am very pleased to have used my grey matter to learn what I certainly consider quite a difficult program to get this far with flash.
While I am accepting my Academy Award from FLASH and thanking my mentors I would like to also thank a person I have never met, Nathaniel this young Flash wizard who has put online free tutorials to learn various programs and I followed these things to the letter. If any of you ever want to teach yourself new programs I really recommend this dude at www.tutvid.com, and I also can tell you when you are desperate with a question he even answers your desperation emails.
Anyway, I am still working on perfecting and bebugging, but I am pretty pleased to have gotten this far!
By the way this web launch also marks a switch to our new Haverstick Films logo. The logo and the website were all created from images I took with my cell phone. While much of the film and digital world is going into bigger resolution and more pixels I am enjoying the challenge of creating imagery on my iphone, using such a pure and simple tool can bring clarity.
Enjoy!

Give Me Back My Face

So I get a little obsessive. Some things are easy to obsess about.

    Recently I have wondered if I "turn off my face" so as to commit the 2% of brain power it takes to activate your face and put it toward problem solving. I'm serious. When I am thinking about things I get like that, not a good habit especially when you are supposed to be listening to someone. I am actually trying to kick the habit, but it does seem that the extra 2% sometimes nudges the brain into a successful result, even though you will have no friends left because while you are problem solving you look like a serial murderer. I really do not recommend "turning off your face" to get that little last brain boost.

    So, wouldn't it be nice if these obsessions were pleasurable? But nope, not really. There is of course the fleeting happiness moment of solving the problem but fleeting it is.

    Don't worry, all of my obsessions sadly are G-rated. That is quite a bummer and will no doubt make this blog much less interesting. Get ready to get very bored because here is an example of the latest.

    I wanted to do a really nice upgrade on the Haverstick Films website and if anyone knows anything about the Haverstick Films Method they know this involves learning how to do it and building it yourself from scratch. I had seen that the websites I admired were usually built in a program called Flash, so Flash would be the program of choice.

    I am not in love with FLASH, but we are clearly living together already. Upon first meeting through a series of web video tutorials I was disenchanted and initially questioned my choice as this is not a user friendly program. In fact at times it doesn't even make sense. Kind of like a crazy person, and they have a way of fascinating me too.

    Gradually I found that with FLASH there was a method to the madness, the crazy coding language with the necessary perfect punctuation. One tiny typo or misplaced space in 15 pages of crazymaking code and you are punished with failure of your entire website, a website you have worked on for over a month. Quite  a heavy-handed and torturous backlash for a small infraction, and some would leave such a cruel and heartless program for bluer and easier skies. But that person would not be me.

    Oh I thought about it. I mean I really don't think I like FLASH. It's just that I wake up 15 times a night thinking about it. The good news is that I will have no problem breaking up with Flash when the time comes. I am already planning my exit. After 4 weeks of Flash hell I am probably only a week or two from completing this website which took far longer than I expected. Then I will put Flash away and not revisit it until the next upgrade. By that time FLASH will have upgraded too and we will get to know each other all over again. Next time I also plan to keep my face turned on all throughout our courtship. But then it will be a second go-round and that is never quite the same.

    I am sure in the meantime a new obsession will arise....

My Harddrive

Welcome to the rumblings in my head. As a child I was hyperactive, or so they say. Now I am cursed with a brain that goes around in speedy circles like my dog does when he sees his dish hovering above his head. As a writer I suppose I am to harness this into something meaningful. But in a blog there can be a free form style of just throwing out there the day's thought string, and that is exactly how I will use this forum.

If there happens to be anyone on the other end holding a little can to their ear, why hello! If not then I guess this is writing practice. Either way, here goes...

Today is a big day of sorts... I am upgrading my editing system for a much newer operating system, a newer computer and upgraded auxiliary programs. This sounds technical enough but I have found the process to be surprisingly emotional.

Emotions are often surprising. My mother's last words were "It's surprising, the emotional responses in death". Her voice sounded happy about it but she was deeply somewhere else and could not elaborate even after some intensive follow up questioning.

So who would think switching software and computer hardware would summon much other than the requisite anxiety and hairpulling involved in tech support? I guess it depends on what kind of meaningful time has been spent with the old system, and in my case therein lies the rub.

You see, I created a whole film on this system, a very personal film. But that alone could be viewed as just a tool in the process if it weren't for how much I learned on this project sitting in this chair seeing images on this screen being played by this software. I did not like my first edit of the film at all. In fact after viewing it the first time I actually hysterically blurted "Oh My God! I have given birth to an ugly and retarded baby! How can I love it?". I am aware how hideously politically incorrect that is but I was traumatized so please forgive me and I especially apologize to our developmentally delayed citizens.

Then I knew I had my work cut out for me. It took me many reincarnations, much reading of the master editors speaking of their craft, tons of trial and error and more than a little soul searching to find the film's voice. It wasn't easy and I am still unsure how well I did. But I gamely entered the battle, have scars to prove it and came out all the better filmmaker for it.

They say you create a film when you write it, you kill it when you film it and you must bring it back to life again in the editing room. Before this project I had no idea what that meant. Now I have taken a crash course in editing CPR. Editing is so much more than stringing together the film as planned, it is truly at it's best the final rewrite of the project. The last chance to make it better. The only chance to make it all it can be.

So it is with more than a little sorrow that I say goodbye to a system that has taught me so much. It won't be far away, like a favorite dressy shirt that no longer fits I am handing it "down". It will now happily be an audio workstation for Michele. Audio work is much less intensive than visual for a computer system so it will be a semi-retirement, or a second career. I'll come down now and then for a visit. But I will never forget the days, long nights, and drama we slogged through together. Goodbye old friend. Like most of us you are greater than the sum of your circuitry.