David Carr, Pay walls and "innovation"

David Carr checked-in with another solid take on the New York Times new pay wall, and the technorati response.  His best point, regarding the value of real journalism:

When I was in Austin, I would fall asleep each night to bad dreams, prompted by cable television ranting that the world was melting down, principally in Japan. And each morning I would wake up to reporting that described in very careful detail what was actually known, not feared, about the nuclear crisis in Japan.

It's also worth noting that one detractor he quotes drops the term "innovation" in his critique.  This is a favorite term of the tech crowd.  In tech, "innovative" and "good" are nearly synonymous.  Not necessarily so with journalism.  The process of journalism - especially the beat system at most major newspapers, embedding reporters in key areas where they can get to know the players, learn how things work and be on the lookout for stories which deserve the attention of the public at large - that is not an innovation.  But it continues to yield great journalism.

The tech side of news agencies should be looking for innovative ways to deliver the news, and yes they've dropped the ball in the past.  But the interface is not the content, and don't we seek out news for the content?

As I mentioned in some thoughts on the new doc Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times, Carr is one of the few effectively making the case that journalism and technology are not the same thing.  Let me again recommend that film for a more in-depth look at how real journalism works and why it achieves something the aggregators never will.

Help Kickstart Julia

Some good friends of mine are working to take Julia, an original play by Vince Melocchi, from the Pacific Resident Theater in Venice to the Off Broadway theater 59e59.  I was lucky enough to see the show just before they opened in December, and it's absolutely a great piece of theater.

Check out the video for more information, and kick in a few bucks if you can over at their Kickstarter page.  If you live in SoCal or NYC, check the play out.

Film Advocacy Day

Sugar, filming in the QC

When the Iowa film tax credit program was suspended, the Iowa Film Office was also closed - effectively closing down all fimmaking in the state.  Today, we are asking Gov. Branstad to reopen and staff the Film Office and allow this industry to thrive.

It's important to understand the Film Office and the tax credit program are not the same thing.  The Film Office has existed since the 1980s as a resource for producers looking to film in Iowa.  It connects those producers with crew, locations and other resources in Iowa.  It was responsible for bringing high-profile features such as Field of Dreams and Bridges of Madison County to the state, along with countless commercials and other productions.

Essentially, the Film Office is there to let producers know Iowa is open for business.  But now the office has no full-time staff, no clear contact information, and only a website full of outdated and misleading information.  The message to producers is clear: Iowa is not open for business.

The Film Alliance of Iowa - a new organization made up of filmmakers and business leaders throughout the state - is asking for you to CONTACT GOV. BRANSTAD TODAY asking that the Iowa Film Office be re-opened and staffed.

Here's how you can contact the Governor:

Phone: 515-281-5211

E-mail: info@terrybranstad.com

Twitter: @terrybranstad

Facebook: Terry Branstad

Here's a suggested message, from the FAI:  We respectfully request reinstating a sufficiently funded Iowa Film Office, staffed with adequate, qualified and experienced staffing. The sooner this happens, the sooner Iowa can best attract production companies to add jobs and economic development to our State's economy, especially through a new Iowa production guide establishing access to Iowa's crew, talent and resources, which will help create a strong film industry.


Also - please help spread the word about Film Advocacy Day.  Post this information to Twitter or Facebook.  Bask in the karma of doing a good deed.


To keep up to date, you can also follow the Film Alliance of Iowa on Facebook.

True/False 2011: Truth Harder

This ain't Twilight. It's a friggin' documentary.

2011 was my third year in a row at the True/False Film Festival, and I can't imagine why I wouldn't go back again next year.

It's hard to describe just how great the vibe in the town is - thousands milling around and lining up around the blocks to watch documentaries.  When I miss a film at the festival - and it's impossible to see them all - and watch them months later at home, I regret not seeing them in the Missouri Theater with 1,000 others.  I missed WasteLand at last year's festival, and as the accolades and Oscar nomination have piled up, I haven't stopped kicking myself.

Probably my favorite film this year was Life in a Day - the doc culled from a day's worth of videos uploaded to YouTube.  Given that pedigree, I had some reservations, as director Kevin MacDonald said he did.  I'm a pretty hardcore cynic, but you'd have to be even more cynical than me to not be moved by the film MacDonald and crew put together.  Life in a Day has elements of narrative, but it's more a symphony of tone, framing the highs and lows of human experience.

Sure, you could call it a gimmick.  But it is a technical achievement that wouldn't even have been possible a few years ago.  If someone offers to show you what is going on around the entire world on a single day, how could you say no?

The quality of the curation goes even deeper.  The shorts program Landmarks & Monoliths featured five shorts which all revolved around the relationship between people and the environments they've built around them.  Minka, directed by Davina Pardo, very delicately explored the lives of two longtime male companions around the story of how they rebuilt an ancient Japanese farm house as their home.

Let's be honest, shorts programs always center around a theme.  But they rarely come together into much more than "here's a few films which kind of relate to each other."

To quote the Portlandia theme song, the spirit of the 90s is alive in (Columbia).  I finally got a chance to eat an truly amazing breakfast at Cafe Berlin.  Booches still dishes out the best hamburgers I've ever been served on wax paper.

I realize I come on like the Convention & Visitors Bureau, but such is my love for this festival and the people who put it on.  If you Googled your way to this post and have read this far, you owe it to yourself to check out True/False for yourself.

Troll Hunter, The Arbor and blurring lines

Troll!!!

Troll Hunter and The Arbor may only have two things in common.  Both screened at this year's True/False Film Festival, and both blur the lines between documentary and narrative fiction.  I liked The Arbor better.

I was looking forward to Troll Hunter as a fan of comedy, bizarro subject matter and Norwegians.  I knew going in that the film was largely invented, with CGI trolls and all.  I guess I thought the filmmakers extrapolated from some kernel of truth - perhaps playing out some crazy guy's stories.  But the film is 100% invention, much in the vein of Blair Witch or Cloverfield.

There are some genuinely funny moments, and the filmmakers get a lot of mileage from just a little bit of troll footage.  Unlike many mockumentaries, they stay completely true to documentary style found footage.  But once it's clear the film is all invention, I wanted the pacing and beats of a narrative arc.  If you don't have the storytelling of narrative and you don't have the "reality" of documentary, what do you have?

Worth shooting with actors just for a bitchin' shot like this.

Whereas Troll Hunter is a fiction narrative trying to look like a documentary, The Arbor is a documentary made to look like fiction.  The film consists of audio interviews with its subjects, with actors on screen lip-synching to their words.

It's the story of British playwright Andrea Dunbar, whose teenage accounts of life in The Estate (the projects) brought her some prominence in the 80s.  Dunbar's hard drinking and hard living led to three children from three fathers and her death at just 29.  Her children, especially the oldest, struggled to get on without falling down the same path as their mother.

The lip-synching technique is a bit jarring at first, but often you forget it's even there.  But Director Clio Barnard wants the audience to remain aware that there is a level of manipulation and storytelling in what they are watching.  (I asked her.)  What really made the technique connect is that, in the same way Andrea's plays were a dramatic recreation of her life's events, the documentary is a sort-of recreation based on the stories the people in her life have told.

Coming on the heels of a year when Catfish and Exit Through the Gift Shop sparked a lot of debate about the blending of truth and fiction in docs, The Arbor and Troll Hunter illustrate that the blending of styles hinges on which elements you hold onto.

Page One: Journalism vs. Technology

A key moment in Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times comes subtly, in footage from one of many panels on "the death of newspapers."  Someone from the news aggregator Newser makes the blanket claim that media companies are in the technology business.

It's hardly new to kick newspapers around for being slow or inept at embracing new technologies.  But Page One makes a much needed counterargument - these technology companies are also in the journalism business.  Or at least they should be.

Times Reporter David Carr - the real star of the film - responds by showing the Newser front page with every piece of content gathered from a traditional news agency cut-out, leaving just a page full of holes.  In another clip, David Simon points out he's never seen a reporter from the Huffington Post at a Baltimore Zoning Board meeting.

But the real argument for the relevance of the journalist comes from watching the entire machine of the New York Times.  Editors stay long into the night debating the relevance of a story, is the angle right, is it even a story at all?  These are conversations I recognize from my days in newspaper, but it's a side of the job not often seen.

Contrasting this is the office of aggregator Gawker, where writers gather around the "big board" - a screen which constantly updates with the top ten stories readers are viewing.  The implication is to serve the audience by scrambling to give them what they want, to grab clicks with headlines that play into common search terms, etc.

In a Q&A after the screening at True/False, David Carr said that the Times is becoming more like Gawker, and Gawker is becoming more like the Times.  Perhaps modern news reporting is one part journalism and one part technology.  But the technology side has taken a lot of credit in recent years, and reveled in kicking the journalists while they're down.  Score this one for the journalists.

Premium Pricing; Premium Experience?

We know about the premium price tag on 3-D movies.  This morning, I learned my local Cinemark theater is now also charging a premium for 2-D movies in something they call "XD."  What is XD?  I'll let them explain:

Cinemark XD is an Extreme Digital Experience where viewers get face-to-face with the action and experience cinema like never before! Extra large, extreme entertainment for the senses. Mega-sized ceiling-to-floor screens, wrap-around custom sound and a maximum comfort entertainment environment ensure that every seat is an intense sensory experience.

Huh the huh?  Is it me, or does that description sound like a Mountain Dew commercial?  I could barely get through the paragraph without jumping out of a plane on a snowboard.

But if we cut out the EXTREME jargon, I think we're left with:

• Bigger screen
• Better sound system
• Comfier chairs

Those are all nice.  And for the matinees I was looking at today, the XD experience will set you back $12, whereas the traditional showings are $6.50.

Now I've been in the XD theater at my local multiplex, for a 3-D showing of Despicable Me.  I guess it was a somewhat larger screen than other auditoriums.  I don't remember being wowed by the sound or my ass feeling especially well-cushioned.  So I'll probably keep that extra $5.50 in my pocket.

The exhibition business is rough, so I hold no ill-will toward even the mega-chains for getting creative to make ends meet.  But there are things that can be done to make movie going a truly "premium" experience.

In LA, I often go to the Arclight Hollywood.  Premium pricing gets you an actual reserved seat, an usher to monitor the auditorium and quality of the projection/sound, and access to a snack bar with higher-quality eats and alcohol.  Whether that's worth the extra bump in price is up for debate, but for me it is, and at least you can point to some tangible "premium" features.

It's tricky to create tiers based on "quality," as Cinemark is doing.  Does this mean the showings in the other auditoriums are shit?  Shouldn't the projection and sound be excellent in all your auditoriums?

The cynical reaction - and I'm not sure it's wrong here - is that Cinemark XD is just a way to charge a higher rate for a few showings even when there's not a 3-D film in that auditorium.  At the least, it seems likely the vaguery of the perks will make movie-goers skeptical of premium pricing in general.

The MPAA & Parenthood

If you read or listen to much movie industry news, no doubt you've heard another recent bout questioning the ratings of the MPAA.  Blue Valentine and The King's Speech are among the latest films whose rating has garnered a collective "WTF?"

As in this episode of KCRW's The Business, it's often MPAA Chair Joan Graves who appears defending the system.  And the defense cited time and time again is that the MPAA ratings are decided by parents - not film experts, or psychologists, but honest-to-goodness, salt-of-the-earth, God fearing parents.

It was probably the 20th time I heard this argument that I was reminded of this nugget of wisdom, spoken by Keanu Reeves in Parenthood.  It does well to summarize the wisdom, reliability and exclusivity of "parents" as a group.

"You need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car.  Hell, you need a license to catch a fish.  But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father."

Community Organizers

"I will kick ass and take names" is not exactly a direct quote.

We're longtime members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a group which helps people organize on a variety of political issues - often when facing large, well-funded, corporate lobbyists.  I got the chance recently to volunteer some video editing skill during a meeting here in Des Moines with Attorney General Tom Miller and an action at Bank of America, both in response to the misdeeds of big banks regarding home loans and foreclosures.

CCI worked with organizers from groups across the country on the event.  We relayed photos and video to the Showdown in America website, where they were online in less than an hour.  By the end of the day, Mother Jones, the Huffington Post and dozens of other news organizations were running with the story.  The next night, video from the event aired on this segment of Countdown With Keith Olbermann (without Keith Olbermann).

Coming from the world of film, where it takes forever to get something from idea to screen, it was a real thrill to see something go from raw footage to national media story in a matter of hours.  It was also a thrill to work even briefly with so many dedicated community organizers from across the country.  If you live in Iowa, I encourage you to donate and become a member of CCI.  If you live elsewhere, plug into a local group working to give you a stronger voice.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

How you can... and cannot read screenplays on a Kindle

I read a lot of screenplays, so I'd been eyeing a Kindle for years.  Every time I print 110 pages to read once - and maybe not even finish - I imagine a single tear rolling down Capt. Planet's cheek.  But there are some quirks to be aware of when it comes to displaying a screenplay on the Kindle.

It all comes down to screen size.  Books converted into Kindle format display less than a page on each Kindle page.  But with screenplay formatting, and given that you're typically working off a PDF file, displaying a full page on the Kindle screen makes the print pretty small.

Getting a PDF screenplay to display well on a Kindle is the holy grail of cheap-ass screenwriters and producers.  Start Googling and scouring message boards and you'll find dozens of your brethren on this quest.  I know because I have.  If you can afford to drop $300 plus on the bigger Kindle DX, you're golden.  Otherwise, you'll have some choices to make.

Convert the PDF to text

A script converted to text

There are several free web services and programs which will convert a PDF into a text document.  I've become partial to PDF to Word.  Once you've got the script into a text format, you can use a program like Calibre to convert the text to a format your Kindle can read, like MOBI, and send it to your Kindle.

This has become my preferred method for reading scripts.  The text winds up at a very comfortable size for reading.  As for formatting, it kinda works.  Line breaks are maintained, so Dialogue and Action stays separate.  Often, the indentation is maintained, but not always.  You will get some wonky bits where action is indented, and every now and then, a character name jumps behind the character's dialogue.  But here's the thing: If you've read a lot of scripts, you will hardly notice.  You know when you're reading action or dialogue, even if the formatting cues aren't perfect.

There are a few steps involved in the conversion, but it goes very fast.  I usually process a few scripts at a time.  There is a delay before PDF to Word delivers its conversion via e-mail, but the dragging and dropping only takes a couple minutes.

The one catch: This only works from a PDF which was created electronically from the script file.  It will not work with a script that was scanned into PDF form.

Rotate the Screen

Flipping the Kindle into Landscape mode boosts the size of the text to something more readable.  This requires no reformatting.  You can just send the PDF straight to your Kindle and flip it.

Again, the catch: In Landscape mode, your Kindle will display about 2/3 of a page at a time.  So you read through to the bottom, advance the page, and now you're looking at the bottom 2/3 of that page.  The top portion will repeat text that was on the previous page, so every time you flip, you'll have to scan a little bit to find the place you left off.  It's not awful.  And if you're reading from a scanned PDF, it's probably your best option.  But I find it more distracting than the wonky formatting from the conversion method.

There's got to be a program that crops the margins

This script had all the white
space cropped, but the Kindle
has added back margin space.

Maybe someday there will be.  But I've tried quite a few and not found anything that really does what you want this to do.  Programs like Preview on the Mac and Adobe Acrobat have margin cropping options - but they don't actually crop the PDF, they just tell the viewer not to display the margins.  When you send the "cropped" file to your Kindle, the margins will still be there.

I spent a lot of time working with a program called Briss which actually does crop PDF pages.  It took several tries to get the program working, though the developer was very helpful and responsive.  Eventually though, I was able to crop out nearly all the white margin space from screenplay PDFs.

But here's the problem: The Kindle seems to buffer anything with margin space.  Comparing my cropped and uncropped files, once sent to my Kindle, there was very little difference.  This may be due, in part, do a difference in the proportions of the cropped box and Kindle screen.  For my money, the small gains in readability weren't worth the effort.

Given the intense interest from the too-cheap-to-buy-a-DX crowd, maybe someone will write a program which better addresses this.  For now, I'm pretty sure these are our best options.  Even though it's a bit of a hassle to read scripts on that little Kindle, I've never thought "I'd rather just print 110 pages."

Friends, I have joined the Tweet Elite

...at least according to Matthew Shwery (@mshwery), coffee master at Mars Cafe and all-around Guy Who Has Good Taste in Stuff.

You can follow me @bengodar, where I will try to live up to this Elite status. Or possibly spam you with some magazine subscriptions.

Tweet Elite: Fresh-brewed insights :: dmJuice.com

Kindle Sleeve with free Northern Exposure DVD

With the price on the latest generation Kindle dropping all the way down to $139, I couldn't pass it up.  I often read a few PDF screenplays a week, and have been eying the Kindle just for the savings in printing costs.

But I can't imagine carrying this around in my bag without some kind of protective case.  There are all kinds of Kindle cases on the market, including some very cool ones made from re-purposed book covers.  If you're willing to drop $20 or $30, you can get something really nice.

On the other hand...

The Kindle is almost exactly the size of a DVD.  So if you've got any kind of extraneous DVD packaging - and really, what Special Edition packaging isn't extraneous? - you may already have a totally viable case.

For me, the choice was clear: Northern Exposure Complete First Season DVD. The little zip-up outer cover provides some needed padding for bouncing around in my laptop bag, and the Kindle slides right in.  Now I've got a no-cost sleeve to protect the screen, and when I pull my Kindle out in public, everyone thinks "wow, that guy really likes Northern Exposure."

See Manhattan Short Fest this week

Two kids and the Polish Chris Cooper in Echo.

This week, the Manhattan Short Film Festival is screening at venues all over the world.  If you have a chance to check it out, I would certainly recommend it.  The program includes ten shorts from ten different countries.  At the end of the two-hour program, attendees are given ballots to vote for their favorite.

The quality of the ten films is very high.  Nine are narrative, two animated (including the one non-narrative).  Most all fit into that classic short film structure: A character at a turning point moment.

The opening short, Watching, was very reminiscent of Chris Nolan's Following.  But it creates a taut little thriller with just a meeting of two characters in a diner.  It reminded me of the classic 3-2-1 assignment at Chapman film school - 3 pages, 2 characters, 1 location.  Beauty in economy.

I was transfixed by Helene Florent's A Little Inconvenience, about a man who wakes up to find himself floating off the ground.  Some I talked to at the screening were thrown by the ending, but I found something ethereal and beautiful in the images of the man gently floating off the ground.

Echo from Magnus Van Horn felt like a splice out of a feature, with a cunning detective slowly pulling the details of a horrible crime out of two teenage boys.  War, from Paolo Sassanelli, considers young boys playing war while their fathers still argue about the real thing in 1946 Italy.  The tone was balanced perfectly, never getting too cloying or too heavy-handed.

The acting and production values were professional quality across the board, with several of the films financed by government film boards.  At the same time, most came from a distinct enough voice to avoid that "auditioning for a feature" feel that can infect shorts.  And most revealed at least one endearing flaw - an actor who wasn't quite right, a location a little too "dressed."  There is still a handmade feel.

For those without access to a major film festival, traveling events like Manhattan Shorts and The Black Maria are a great opportunity to see a variety of burgeoning work from across the world.

Wherein I Come Clean About Radiohead

This morning I bought Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukulele, among other reasons, because it transported me back to a time when Radiohead was what I wanted them to be.

I had a pretty intense relationship with The Bends and OK Computer, which came out the summer after my freshman year of college.  What always drew me to Radiohead was the fragile, human voice struggling to be heard under this electro-symphonic crush.

Is there any vocal and lyric more naked than Creep?  When I was 16, that rawness punched me in the gut.  There are no barriers, no twee, no irony.  You're so fucking special.  I wish I was special.

But it's a little obvious.  The Bends made me work harder to find that emotion.  There would be the dense cacauphony of My Iron Lung before the plaintive yearning of a song like Black Star.  And even then, Thom seemed quick to shrug the questions off to some cosmic forces conspiring against him.  Blame it on the Black Star.  Blame it on the Satellite that brings me home.

I should have seen what was coming, but it didn't really hit me until about the 500th time I listened to OK Computer.  I think every song on that album has been my favorite at one time or another.  On that afternoon, I was deeply into Let Down, and listening closely.  The album was all about humanity lost in a digital age - that was obvious - so I knew I had to listen harder than ever before. 

And there in the middle of the song was a line that told me something important: Don't get sentimental; it always ends up drivel.

How could I hear a line like that and not think back to Creep?  To that moment Thom stood in the slow of that grunge, slow-fast-slow and told us he wanted a perfect body.  He wanted a perfect soul.  Now I could hear the struggle against that sentiment, right there in the song.  He goes on to say that one day he is going to grow wings, but then dismisses it as just a chemical reaction, hysterical and useless.

It's a beautiful, complex song.  It was also a real turning point away from something about Radiohead I'd always loved, from Creep and Fake Plastic Trees and High & Dry and Subterranean Homesick Alien.  I kept waiting for Radiohead to turn back, just a bit, but the chaos and noise kept growing louder, the human voice growing fainter.  It was still there, and that umpteenth listen when I found it could still be transcendent.  But there was something self-conscious about burying it so far.  I missed The Bends.

I no longer sit with the cool kids.  The band went down a rabbit hole I was reluctant to follow, so I'm the old guy at the concert waiting for them to break out some of the old tunes.  Oh well, it happens.

But it's nice to think someone as hip and interesting as Amanda Palmer might share my feelings.  All but one of the tunes on her record are from OK Computer or before.  And she plays Creep twice.

Or maybe the older tunes were just easier to arrange for ukulele.

Welcome to My Documentary

After several months of work, I'm proud to announce that the website and trailer for Welcome to Daytrotter are live.  The film is currently in production, but when complete, will be a feature length look at the recording studio / website Daytrotter.  The story of how this group of people built this thing in the Quad Cities caught my attention the first time I heard it, and I believe it resonates with anyone who has ever built any kind of arts project in an unexpected place.

The film is my first foray into documentary, but given my background in filmmaking and journalism, I feel like it's going pretty smoothly.  We hope to finish shooting this summer/fall, then move into post-production.  At the moment, we're targeting January of 2012 to premiere the film.

That said, we need help to tell this story.  Non-fiction films don't have much profit potential, so we, like many films, have adopted a nonprofit model.  We have partnered with NY Arts Group Fractured Atlas so that donations to our film are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.  You can donate online and get some pretty sweet Thank You gifts through our partnership with IndieGoGo.

You can also help us show there is an audience for the film by becoming our fan on Facebook.

The site's been up for less than 24 hours as I write this, and we've got more than 200 fans on Facebook and the trailer is about to go over 1,000 views.  It's a gratifying response.

Eleven Bulls, LLC

As we began to manage money for Welcome to Daytrotter, it became clear I needed a production company to filter the money through, as well as provide a legal buffer for my gross negligence and defamation of character.

And so it was that on the Nineteenth Day of July, Two Thousand and Ten, Eleven Bulls, LLC was created.  It's been a bit exciting to setup a business, especially if you're into such things as filling out forms and paying fees.  But now, here we are.

As for the name, it is an allusion to this series of lithographs by Picasso, which I've always found to be a potent metaphor for abstraction, art as a process, etc.  Or, if that's too highfalutin, I chose it because Bulls kick ass, and we turn it up to eleven!

If you or anyone you know are a logo designer who enjoy working for extremely low pay, please contact me.

My Bacon Number

A friend pointed out today that The Oracle of Bacon now lists me with a Bacon Number of 3.  If only the Oracle of Bacon counted instances where Kevin Bacon was a director, I could cut my number down to 2.

I will not rest until I have a Bacon Number of Zero, at which point I WILL BE KEVIN BACON.

A Weekend of (filming) Music

So it took me a little longer than expected to recap the weekend.  It was a great weekend of music and we got some great footage for the documentary.  The only downside was that working to get that footage left me little time to just sit and listen.

The third 80/35 felt like it really hit a groove.  It's big enough to draw A-list bands but still feels like a neighborhood festival.  We shot a great interview with William Elliot Whitmore, and after negotiating level after level of handlers, and with the help of the amazing Jill Haverkamp, we were able to shoot an interview with Spoon's Britt Daniel.

Mr. Daniel, or Britt as I've decided he'd like me to call him, was very cool and had a real perspective on Daytrotter.  I'm so glad we were able to sit down with him for the film.

After watching Spoon's headlining set on the main stage, Naura and I were both feeling too tired to head to The Mews to catch the always amazing Poison Control Center.  But I must admit my head exploded a little the next morning when I saw this picture from the friends we would have gone to the show with:

Sunday morning, we rolled east to the Codfish Hollow Barn just outside of Maquoketa for the Daytrotter Barn on the 4th Show.  We went in with a few interviews in mind, a few performances we wanted shoot, but aware we wouldn't be able to get everything.  We got everything.

We shot performances and interviews with The Walkmen, Dawes and Justin Townes Earle, as well as performance from Jonny Corndawg with Dawes as his backup band.  We got great interviews and footage of the Daytrotter crew making the whole thing happen. 

But what made the footage so killer was the atmosphere of the event itself.  I've never seen musicians and fans so charged to be with each other.  The Walkmen and Dawes both played afternoon sets in Des Moines and then drove through the rain to play a second show because they wanted the experience of playing a Daytrotter barn show.

We wish we could just throw all our material into the social media stream.  But aspiring to put together a feature as we are, and in the interests of only putting out what we've had the chance to polish, we'll be sitting on it for now.

Once we're happy with the cut of our trailer, we'll be launching our website and Facebook pages, and then we will be posting shorter bits of video and pictures from these amazing shoots.

Several people approached us while we were shooting the barn show with enthusiasm and curiosity about the film.  We look forward to staying engaged.

Dick Prall in a Backyard

Last night, we joined about 50 friends in a backyard for a "house concert" from Dick Prall.

After more than a decade of touring, often with a full band, Dick's put together a tour "from Portland, Maine to the Napa Valley" playing in people's homes.  It's an innovative idea, and it makes for a hell of a show.

Dick played without amplification, but his percussive guitar and booming voice didn't need it.   The pop of a beer can or the rattle of a lawn chair sometimes caused a moment of distraction, but it was all in the spirit.  And it sure beat the cracking pool balls and TV sports chatter of even the most intimate club shows.

He build his set entirely on requests, with someone in the crowd occasionally helping remember a lyric for the more obscure numbers.  Brief gusts of wind and other surprises from the natural world highlighted the organic feel.

And after the show: Drinking.

Today we'll be rolling out to Day 1 of 80/35 and hopefully have enough left in the tank for Poison Control Center tonight.

Rock & Roll Weekend

I'm on the verge of an exciting and diverse weekend of music, and it feels like there's only one thing to do about it - blog.  That's right, blog - as a verb.

The four shows/events range from a multi-day festival to a backyard concert.  All are happening in Iowa, three just in Des Moines.

Tonight I'll be at a small, backyard performance by singer/songwriter Dick Prall.  Dick's doing a nationwide tour exclusively of house parties - a cool concept and an exciting, intimate way to see a show.

Saturday and Sunday bring the ever-awesome 80/35 Music Festival back to Des Moines, with a really killer lineup this year.

If I'm not face-down from exhaustion or otherwise Saturday night, I plan to get over to the Vaudeville Mews to catch a free show from Poison Control Center - great guys who just put out an amazing record.

Then Sunday night I'll be rolling across the state to a barn outside Maquoketa for a 4th of July Barn Show being put on by Daytrotter.  Another unbelievable lineup in an unlikely location.   This will be more of a working event, however, as I'm currently producing and directing a documentary film about Daytrotter.  It's an exciting project we've been working on for some time, but keeping mostly under wraps.  We expect to launch a more public face for the film in the coming weeks.

I'll work to post updates on the shows here throughout the weekend, and will absolutely post more on the documentary as soon as I can.