Charlie Parr in Minneapolis this morning

Amidst such a perfect backdrop for his sound, the morning flew by listening to him sing and play his National down there along the river while we did our three-camera shoot. He has a new album out soon, too, so keep an eye peeled for it.

I’ll be sure to post the final edit here but, meanwhile, please enjoy this clip taken in ‘09 while Charlie played Cheap Wine at the Victoria Pub in Birmingham, UK:

there was no magic moment when meta and frankie hula met they just became sisters:

pups chillin @ lofto

This one Bergey and I made together:

Bergey made some things that inspired me to start tinkering with stills digitally and call it pixeliering, which is a meager attempt at adding an element of painting to digital images:

Click on that first image right there to see before and after examples larger and more in charger:

This is cool and I like the way the digital mixes together with the analog. These are very time consuming to make so I only have a few of them to show but this is one of my favorites, so far:

If you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a feature film I could tell you the steps to take to do that, but every working documentary filmmaker I know has gotten there through their own unique path. There is no career path.

Some think content will keep getting longer and longer until movies are 3 and 4 hours long. That’s fine. OK with us. We also like the idea of not spending 3 or 4 hours to get something out of it.

Like music, there is a time and place for a long song and a short one. We like them both. We do listen to waaay more short songs than long ones, though. This is the reason we love still images more than films. If our house was on fire and we had to save still images or films, we would have to save the stills. We know. Sounds surprising! We work in motion but, like most of our favorite filmmakers, we think in stills. Moments. In a moment, a still image can change our lives. Films take a little longer.

Which is one reason we created and curate 10secondfilms.org. In 10 moments, a film can pack quite a wallop. Some maybe not so much, but are still worthy as friendly exercises in media literacy.

Howard Rheingold called this site “genius, funny, and yes, friendly expression of participation media literacy” via his Twitter account.

Gever Tulley also commented on it using the most appropriate phrase ever: “oddly compelling” – also via Twitter.

Compliments coming from fellas like these make us feel pretty darn swell, to say the least. Thank you, Gever and Howard. You both have our most humble admiration and deepest respect.

This is all just to say that we believe the experience of producing media should be a friendly one for all ages, especially as technology can still be an obstacle to the creative process for many of us. As an exercise in media and visual literacies, the 10-second format is vital. It minimizes the need for complex tools. These moments as movies are gratifying and occasionally inspire larger, more ambitious projects.

Make a 10 second film with any device that captures motion pictures.

No editing — One take — 10 seconds maximum length — Sound is optional.

Have a 10 second film you like?

We’d love to hear about it and perhaps even feature it on the site – click here to tell us more.

Meanwhile, thanks for reading and — keep playing.

• iPod
• | Flash
• | QuickTime

The Senegalese are among the friendliest people in the world. Given the challenges they face as a people, this is magnified ten-fold when considering the grace with which they shared their homes and hearts with us this past week. Below is a rather large sampling of still images from our week-long visit to work with Habitat for Humanity outside of Dakar. We are grateful to the people there for their kindness and generosity and are very happy we could make a contribution to their community.

It was just about one week ago that we first picked Frankie up from Lynn and Gardner Gray’s beautiful ranch in the remote Black Hills.

Since arriving here and starting to get used to her new home, she’s picked up on things very quickly:

She knows her name
*mostly* comes when called
Sits via verbal and visual command
Ss crate trained during the day while Pollee and I are at work
and is coming along nicely with her potty training, especially after having sat by the front door last night, waiting for us to notice she wanted to go out.
She’s met her new vet and begun the menu of vaccinations recommended for city pups.
She sleeps at our feet each night with Meta as they continue becoming tight pals who share everything and play mighty hard.

The images above illustrate just a slice of the new richness she has brought to us. Thank you, Frankie.