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Damn, These Awards Sure Are TASTY!

Almost a year ago, Andre Crump, owner of TCB Cafe Publishing and Media stopped by the screening room at Maker Faire. With San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking (SFSDF), I produced a four-day filmmaking lighting and green screen demo for the Faire and was busy chatting with visitors and all shapes of looky-loos. But we had time to chat about his company and Taste TV and we agreed that it'd be great to work together someday.

Well, that day has arrived. I'm a Line Producer for the first annual Taste TV awards show - The Tasty Awards. I'll be sourcing and managing the film crew, contributing to production design and am responsible for deliver crystal-clear, well-shot footage of the entire show. Luckily, I've got four of the brightest alumni from SFSDF on deck so I'm confident that everything will run smoothly.

What the heck are “The Tasty Awards?”

Food, Fashion, Drink and Style, these themes have been the focus of entire cable networks, online hubs, mobile channels, and blockbuster films. They’ve launched chefs, restaurants, designers, celebrities, vacation spots, hotels, wineries, events and products … sometimes all at the same time. They’ve entertained us at home and on the job, and helped us aspire to make our lives more enjoyable and fulfilling.

The Tasty Awards were originally conceived and announced in 2008 as part of the first New Media Tastemakers Summit in San Francisco. The goal was to recognize and acknowledge outstanding excellence in video content focused on food, drink, fashion and design.

These beloved categories dominate a large portion of video / television viewership – as well as advertising spending and sponsorships — and yet they do not have their own awards for achievement. Until now.

After years of planning, we present to you the Tasty Awards for Video Tastemakers in Food, Wine & Design.

Categories include Best Drink or Beverage Program – Web, Best Food Program – TV, Best Film or Documentary – Food & Fashion, and several others. The awards show celebration takes place in San Francisco at the Sundance Kabuki theaters on January 14 and will be streamed via Justin.tv as well as filmed for broadcast on national television.

The show is being hosted by Zane Lamprey of everyone's favorite drinkin' show, Three Sheets. Also expect to see celebrity presenters and attendees including Actress Debi Mazar ("Entourage," "Dancing With the Stars," "Ugly Betty," UnderTheTuscanGun.com), and the Executive Producers of "No Reservations" and "Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie," Lydia Tenaglia and Chris Collins, plus the writer-directors of the film, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs."

Oh! Happy New Year!

Santa Claus. Shirtless. In a grass skirt. With a golf club. Among mushrooms.

This was our Holiday card this year. I took this photo up in Annapolis, California over Thanksgiving break.

Filmmaking, Art and Augmented Reality

Last week, a dozen folks met at Noisebridge to chat about Augmented Reality and Film/Art. Born from the excellent ARDevCamp, this formally informal group of artists, filmmakers, technologists and coders continued the fresh dialog hatched at HackerDojo a couple weeks prior.

I got there early and decided to get a cup of coffee at the newly-relocated Cafe Prague across the street from Noisebridge. A couple of surprises; this new iteration is more cafe then coffee shop and @genebecker and @anselm were already there waiting for a table for dinner. We grabbed a table together and we had a great chat about AR and technology issues, in general.

Rumors of freshly baked cookies proved to be true and were a great way to start a meeting. (Thanks for the cookies, @apalindrome!)

Talks centered a lot of attempting to define the current state of the space. With more questions than answers, we exchanged ideas, hopes and leads while trying to "find the edges" of medium. I pitched my sniper-oriented AR idea in conjunction with my short graffiti film. (Basically, the same FPS idea that everyone wants but is seemingly impossible to deliver at this time in the evolution of the technology.) And we walked through a couple AR/film scenarios and the challenges - and possible solutions - to each.

Anselm showed off some cool examples of existing AR and AR-inspired ideas and products and @apalindrome spoke briefly about the AR in relation to the differences between the narrative and experimental filmmaking. We veered a bit tangential when talking about the aesthetics of coding languages and the "art" inherent in the visualization and manipulation of information from a coding perspective but snapped back to wondering how the hell artists and programmers are ever going to meet much less actually work together.

In attendance - @genebecker, @anselm, @sidgabriel, @apalindrome, Walter Funk and more. (Which reminds me, we really need a mailing list for this cabal)

We're meeting again on Saturday, January 16th at Noisebridge. Also, give Sid Gabriel's meetup a look.

Augmented Reality, Filmmaking and Art

As mentioned in my last post, I've been involved in the fast-evolving Augmented Reality space.

A couple weeks ago, I spent the day at Hacker Dojo in Mountain View to take part in inaugural Augmented Reality Developer Camp (#ARDevCamp).

From the wiki:

After nearly 20 years in the research labs, Augmented Reality is taking shape as one of the next major waves of Internet innovation, overlaying and infusing the physical world with digital media, information and experiences. We believe AR must be fundamentally open, interoperable, extensible, and accessible to all, so that it can create the kinds of opportunities for expressiveness, communication, business and social good that we enjoy on the web and Internet today. As one step toward this goal of an Open AR web, we are organizing AR DevCamps technical sessions and hacking opportunities in an open format, BarCamp style.

The first Augmented Reality Development Camp (AR DevCamp) took place Saturday December 5, 2009 at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View CA and simultaneously in New York City and Mancherster, U.K.!

This was an "un-conference" and decidedly informal (although surprisingly efficient and productive). I met several great people including Mathijs Gajentaan from the Layar dev shop, Winvolve and Rick Prelinger from the amazing Prelinger Archives. 

My primary interest is in the as-yet-defined confluence between AR and filmmaking. AR is a new medium and promises to be an exciting space to tell stories and create engaging narratives. As a filmmaker, producer, writer, and Director of Marketing at SFSDF, I spend much of my time watching the evolution of the film medium - creatively, culturally and from business perspectives. And I'm convinced that AR - while admittedly at a very early stage - will be an important leap in the industry.

Interest in my particular topic was strong and myself and about 20 others spent a half hour talking about the challenges and opportunities presented by AR - specifically from an artistic perspective. Have a look at the Session Notes for specifics. We left optimistic and agreed that we should continue a dialog.

Tonight, we begin what is hopefully a long series of meetings to define, maneuver through and create in this new space. Our host is Walter Funk (Hologlyphics) and we'll be posting up at Noisebridge for an hour or so

Christopher F. Smith - A Brief Update With Lots Of Links

I've been blogging since August of 2005. But, if you take a look below this entry, you'll see that I haven't been all that "bloggy" as of late. Of course, I blame Twitter and Facebook just like everyone else.

But there is something to that, of course. My content development drive - which was once mostly focused on longer form blog posting - is now alleviated by 140 character bursts and link-driven commentary on Facebook and other peoples' commentary about Twitter.

And, honestly, I've been really busy with Big Projects.

San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking (SFSDF)
I'm the Director of Marketing at a small, well-regarded film school. We have two starts a year for our One-Year Digital Filmmaking Program and I've been working hard to market, promote and shout the school's praises to ensure a strong enrollment. We started a new batch of 24 students today - one of our strongest, most dynamic groups ever.

Augmented Reality
I've been spending a fair amount of time discussing an emerging technology called Augmented Reality or AR for short. This is hot (over-hyped?) new stuff and offers a tantalizing new way to look at the world around you. I've met some great people (through Twitter) that are global leaders in the space including Dave Elchoness, owner of GoWeb3D. Things are looking promising and I may get to work with one of my best friends, Eric Elkins, on social and entertainment side of the technology. I was informally interviewed  a few days ago by Jeremiah Owyang, Partner at the Silicon Valley digital strategy shop Altimeter Group, at an #sftweetup.

Filmmaking
I'm a co-producer (through Fog City Pictures) of a short film titled PIA to be shot in San Francisco mid-October. I'm spending a big chunk of time and focus on identifying strategic partnerships, developing planning infrastructure and contributing to production design. The film's basics:

PIA - The Soul of a Machine

In the near future, advanced, organic-hybrid service androids imported from India have replaced the human labor force in the United States. When an android escapes from a blackmarket shipment and wanders to a young woman’s apartment, the meeting presents a clear challenge to the standard definition of “life”.

The film is written and will be directed by Sundance award-winning director, Tanuj Chopra and features a strong cast including Ajay Naidu who played Samir in one of my favorite films, OFFICE SPACE.

Shadow Angel
And for the past several weeks, I'd been helping to produce a short film named SHADOW ANGEL. Apart from general production efforts, I also had a role in the film (a street thug/mugger-type) and was the Assistant Director.

This was a two-day shoot at the awesome comic book store, Comic Outpost, and my house and featured super-talented actor Jeffrey Weissman (who you may recognize as McFly's father in BACK TO THE FUTURE II and III). It's a great, fun film and I was able to work with three friends from the 5-Week Filmmaking workshop I took at SFSDF some time ago. The film is being submitted to Sundance in a few days and we have high hopes.

SF Movie Examiner
And I'm managing to write the semi-regular article at Examiner.com. I've got a couple good pieces I'm working on and will have something fresh shortly. A piece I did on a killer new iPhone app called Hitchcock was my biggest traffic generator to date. An excerpt:

The new iPhone app Hitchcock from a company named Cinemek is positioned to simplify and enhance the on-site storyboarding process. Basically, it's storyboarding using your iPhone. Simply take photos with your iPhone and use the app to build your scenario. Rearrange, delete and crop the photos to get the scenes you want. Annote them, set times and add camera moves. Build it - play it back - hate it - redo it -- better - do it again - like it - done.

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That's the latest, really. I'm off to check Twitter and glance at Facebook.

The Best Sunset Photo You Will See Today

PostClick

Neat! Picked up by the Young Manhattanite.
Golly! Picked up by SF Internet Business Examiner.

Math Rock Is Hard

Seems that iTunes's Listeners Also Bought algorithm actually works. An accidental find on Blip.fm, Giraffes? Giraffes!, sent me to the iTunes Store to buy the full album. While there, it was recommended that I check out a band named Tera Melos - which I did.

A couple quick listens and I was sold. Off-kilter, oddly-timed, guitar-driven, noise-ish stuff, Tera Melos plays a messy brand of precision post-rock that'll either annoy the hell out of you or offer a compelling, enjoyable musical challenge. They'll be at Bottom of The Hill in San Francisco on March 11

Check out this batch of covers - Idioms, vol I. My new favorite longboarding music.

Hold This?

An Interview with SF Filmmaker Jon Bowden

I interviewed San Francisco filmmaker Jon Bowden last week for my Examiner.com column. He came down to the SFSDF studios and we chatted about his film, the San Francisco film community and a couple other things.

SFSDF alum Guillermo Tunon and current SFSDF student Khen Shomron did a fantastic job on lighting and sound and Guillermo's editing skillz (yes, with a "z", dammit) made the interview smooth and look super-slick.