The Story of Mankind

In "The Story of Mankind," a film from 1985, the Devil is interrupted in a Universal courtroom by his portable telephone.

Bears Eating Corpses

"Russian bears treat graveyards as 'giant refrigerators'"

full story here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/26/russia-bears-eat-corpses-graveyards

Playing with sounds.

A good sandwich? Oh yeah, I'm a fan.

THE ALCHEMIST MAKES GOLD - *Sound Design*

Jared finished a first complete sound clean up and it's sounding really great! I'm amazed at how much cleaner the audio is than it was. I watched it through and put together some notes with timecode markers which I sent his way. He's going to make changes and mess some more with the overall balance and then we'll be on our way to some serious soundscape design. Exciting!

Jay

By the way...

I bought a Go Pro camera, these things are pretty neat!

At the coffee shop

I met with Sara today and we talked about ideas for future projects. We may be collaborating on something in a little while, that would be great. Here she is at the coffee table...

A Few Life Movements

The whole of Project 61 fell apart yesterday, the other painter dropped out, so now it's just one mural artist trying to pick up the pieces. She's had the idea for years and still hasn't done anything with it, I don't imagine that she will be able to put it all together again. It's a shame, we were all really excited about the idea, but I think we had pretty differing views of what the idea was.

Now I'm trying to brainstorm a concept for a short film. I realized I haven't put anything new on my YouTube account in almost a year! And I did upload Astral Woman to Vimeo, so that's something, but looking at Astral Woman it feels almost like an exercise in aesthetic technique. That certainly has it's value, but I really want to tell a story that communicates something to people. It's bizarre to want to tell a story and then realize you don't have any stories to tell. The thing is, I do. I have plenty to say, but asking myself to structure it and put it into a container, that's where things get finicky. In some ways, it feels like anything is possible, but then that makes narrowing down the spectrum all the more difficult. I get overwhelmed by the breadth of possibilities and so instead I don't do anything.

I know that one thing lacking in a lot of my works is a connection to emotion. A friend mentioned that what I do is very cerebral, and that is something I have been noticing. I wonder if I start with defining an emotion that I would like my work to express, if I could then structure something around that expression of emotion.

Anyway, there's some stuff to think about.

Sometimes shit ain't simple...but it's always an experience, right?

As of right now, looks like there wont be any Project 61--or at least not anything that I'll be a part of. Things took quite the turn in a series of emails on Saturday, in which I was informed that one of the parties responsible for the project doesn't feel like the documentary is worth financing. She said if I want to make it, I'll need to take care of the financing myself. Since the documentary is the whole of what I had planned to do on the trip, I guess I'm not part of it anymore.

Mom: "I've been listening to the radio up in the pottery shop and, you know, we don't get much radio out here so I get to keep up on Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. Haha..."

Me: "How do you feel about Lady Gaga?"

Mom: "Oh, she's a trip!"

"See the job. Do the job. Stay out of the misery."

Oh, David Lynch.

Project 61

A project that I'm starting with two friends is finally underway. We'll be departing for New Orleans on October 23rd and staying a week where they'll paint a mural of Dr. John and I'll document it on video. Our goal is to travel the whole Highway 61 for a few weeks and they'll paint murals to honor the evolution of blues along the way while I document (I imagine I'll help paint also). We're starting small to work on financing the trip. I'm excited about this adventure.

The website is http://project61.net , we have a blog also: http://alongroute61.wordpress.com

The Garage - MUBI / Vimeo Plus

I was contacted by The Garage at MUBI (http://mubi.com/users/133502) to link 'The Astral Woman' on their site. I did so, you can see it's project page HERE.

I updated my Vimeo membership to Vimeo Plus a little while back to submit 'The Astral Woman' to the Vimeo contest, it didn't get in. Anyway, with Vimeo Plus you can view Statistics of your videos. The whole thing is a little disheartening. So far, 'The Astral Woman' has 487 loads with only 19 plays and only 2 played all the way through! Now, granted, the credits are a bit long for a 4min video and I will admit to often stopping a video when the credits start (terrible, I know), but still! Only 19 plays out of 487 loads! Jeeze. I don't know what the general statistics look like on Vimeo, but that's quite the average...

The Astral Woman

Here is my 4 min short, 'The Astral Woman'.

The Astral Woman from Cait Davis on Vimeo.

In many cultures, The Astral Man or The Cosmic Man is a symbolic representation of the human beings potentiality towards wholeness. The symbol can also be seen as a symbol of Self. "According to the testimony of many myths, the Cosmic Man is not only the beginning but also the final goal of all life--of the whole of creation." (Marie-Louise von Franz, “Man and His Symbols”) This symbol is sometimes represented as a hermaphrodite, to show the joining of opposites, though quite often is represented by a white male human being. In “The Astral Woman” I have begun what I hope to be a small series of various short films that start to re-define the masculine dominance in our cultural history. I want to take strong and meaningful concepts and replace the dominant image with something different.