san francisco minute

Knowledge is power. Despite the fact that there exists people who want to supress and censor those with alternative viewpoints- or those who keep others from participating in a medium where information can be freely accessed, I have started producing a series of short segments, along with my colleague, Colleen Taylor about various issues in the City of San Francisco, covering politics, trends, music, and the various subcultures that never receive news coverage in traditional media.

Our initial intent was to focus on non-partisan coverage of the 2007 Mayoral Race, however, working with Colleen, we decided to expand from our original position to also include other areas in which we explore the particular issues relevant to the city of San Francisco.

San Francisco is a unique city, progressive in its politics and often considered the left capital of the United States. However, it is still relatively a newcomer when considering the amount of resources available for filmmakers and those who work in media when compared to Los Angeles and New York City. We spoke to Mayor Gavin Newsom last Saturday on what he is committed to doing to help the future of those who work in new media.

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According to Mayor Newsom, information, including those on the internet and broadband should be accessible to all.

music as an end to discontent

I've always been quite surprised at how music can affect and influence one's state of mind. Although working in film and television, I've found that music has a subtle but powerful effect on the way visual information is perceived and comprehended.

I've been quite fortuitous in having worked with talented composers, ones who can create that exact piece of audio work which my mind envisions when I set it against a set of sequences.

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I met Erling Wold quite randomnly, at a Producer's birthday party several years ago, when I first started making short films. He has been the main composer for the films of Jon Jost, and I found that there was something entirely poignant and intangible about the pieces he created because within its complexity, and usages of textural ambient sounds, was at the center, a human element which I found quite hypnotic.

I was working on several commercials for the arts-based show I had produced last year for Peralta.TV in Oakland, when I asked him what he thought about the way his music was integrated into the set of visual images with my voice-over.

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He paused for a moment, then told me he liked them.

missing information

A friend of mine who works for a publication told me over dinner one night that it didn't really matter if one didn't really know anything about the subject in which he was writing about, rather, it depended more upon how much controversy one stirs, and how many letters to the editor one generates within the public sphere. It seems in our day and age- and perhaps not unlike past generations- we live in a society of the spectacle, and controversial figures and personalities are always great for publications. It was better that people write in with letters of acrimony than with no response at all. That seemed to be a consistent relationship between content-providers, publications and advertisers, a perplexing state of affairs in which advertisers ultimately dictated content. This didn't seem too far replaced from DeBord's commodity fetishism. The loss of quality so obvious at every level of the language of the spectacle, from the objects it lauds to the behavior it regulates, merely echoes the basic traits of a real production that shuns reality. -Guy DeBord, "The Society of the Spectacle"

No one really wanted to know all the facts of a story, rather it was more effective to use the methods of narrative story-telling to create intrigue within the viewer/ reader. This odd amalgamation of fact and fiction, carefully interwoven then was the most powerful way to get one's message across.

However, the current generation had seen it all. Nothing upset them anymore, they ceased to be shocked by events having been carefully desensitized by the exhibitionistic times that have sufficiently numbed their senses. To show all was rather predictable these days.

Having memorized most of the 50 plot lines for most stories, I have found that a more effective way of the re-telling of old tales was the tactic of purposely leaving out important information.

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I have realized that it does not matter where in the timeline one samples the information from, as long as it is in non-linear form and is ambiguously connected to the preceding images. One of the ways the mind naturally worked was by filling in missing information and making connections between seemingly random images and events. Viewers, I've found, do not want to be told everything- they want to make their own inferences, using their own sphere of experience to project their own version of events.

the internal war

Politics is a dangerous game I rather not play, however to be apolitical in this day and age seems even more dangerous. In 2002, I was in the minority when I opposed the Iraq War, and now five years later, it seems the veil of confusion has been lifted to mobilize people across the nation to stop an unjustified occupation of a nation that has become all but the forgotten nightmare.

As we go on with our daily lives, I wonder how many of us think exactly what is happening to the very foundations of our nation in which our economy is continually deteriorating due to an unjustified war.

We have looted their art. We have shattered their culture. We have killed their children. We have murdered their leader on television. We have divided their people. We have destroyed another nation.

What remains now is do we abandon our own soldiers to do our bidding in country that we have failed to control? Do we leave them there to slowly die while our leaders figure out how to solve the Iraq problem? Or do we cut our losses and ask them not to fight anymore?

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There will not be an easy way out of this.