putting the j in jjosh

Ok, let's follow this path a little bit, and see what we're talking about as far as unlocking creativity.

First off, there was this short short film that I really wanted to make. Got an invite to submit a film to Moviehouse a few weeks ago, and so we made A Minor Revelation, which I have linked to before, but will do again for the sake of completeness.

A Minor Revelation from josh granger on Vimeo.

So that played at the Moviehouse film night, and there was a vote to see which of the 14 2-minute films would win. The vote was decided by applause, and we won, which was pretty exciting. Such a democratic way to vote too, it was a blast. What did we win, you ask? We won the first swing at the pinata they had for the rest of the party. So they handed me a big wooden stick, and told me to give it a go.

I took one crack at it, and decapitated the thing. Done. One blow. It was fun as hell. Someone got a great pic of it:

Then, it keeps going. Unbeknownst to me, friend HB and MRT made off with the head and hatched a whole plan to hit me like that scene with the horse's head in The Godfather. Last weekend was such a monster — we were out trying to see an event at 3:30am on Saturday morning, then had guests visit for Saturday & Sunday (and they are guests who like to drink), so it was late nights all round. Monday I knew I was staring at a full day of work, so really Sunday morning was the only time I had to try and sleep in, recover. Went to bed late Saturday night after a heavy round of drinking, so stoked to turn off the alarm and just sleep as long as I wanted…

And was awakened to the pinata head, and MRT filming me and giggling. When you watch this, look at me, look at how I'm hiding from the camera, I'm in so much pain, both physical and spiritual. All I want to do is hide.

I don't know if you caught it, but the only way I was able to get her to turn off the camera was by saying "You wouldn't want me filming you when you wake up in the morning." Because believe me, she wouldn't. Let's put it mildly and say she's not a morning person.

So she left me alone, and I was lying in bed, frying my brain because I couldn't get back to sleep after that crazy experience. My brain was on overdrive, and I hit on the idea that what we needed to do with our afternoon was to shoot a remake of that Godfather scene, shot-for-shot. And since MRT had put me through some pain that morning, I was pretty sure I was in a good place to demand that this happen.

We loaded up the scene from youtube, had it on the iphone, and made a shot-for-shot remake. It was a good time, 'cuz our friend who were visiting were tv folks too (an AP and an editor) so we all got really into it. Loaded it up, put the original sound under it, and AK who was staying with us dialed up an awesome sepia color-correct to try and match the original…it came out well…

But the real fun is with youtube doubler, which I have come across a number of times, and with which you can run the original and our remake at the same time to see how close we got…not bad for just an afternoon…you'll know it's in sync if the audio sounds normal (no echo)…if it won't sync up, try going to the original page, and if it still won't sync there, try hitting refresh a bunch…

When I bought the latest Brian Eno record (which is fitfully awesome) I got on the mailing list for the Warp label (which is a CLASSIC electronic label), and they recently announced this competition they were running to mix your favorite tracks from 2010, and post it up to mixcloud where they’d judge it. I don’t know why (I certainly have enough projects going on), but I decided to give it a shot…

So here’s my mix of my favorite electronic tracks of 2010. Much like the band I’m rocking out with, these tracks favor an analog/digital mix of electro and organic sounds. Sounds pretentious, I know, but hopefully the mix fares a little better. Even if electronic music isn’t typically your thing, you might wanna give it a spin, see how it works for you…

I don’t have much hope for the competition — a week or so before the deadline I found out the first round to get to the top ten is based on how many plays the mix gets on this mixcloud service (basically a sneaky marketing way to spread the word about mixcloud), but I was close enough that I figured I would finish it…

I think it came out pretty well, give it a listen if you have time…good for background music while working…should enable you to get sh*t done…in a little bit I’ll post a link to the file for download so you can have it in your library…

lemme know what you think…

We shot a short short film yesterday morning — remind me never again in one day to attempt to shoot a short, edit it, then watch the Superbowl, then finish the edit — and got it all polished up today. It came out pretty well, and was a blast to do. It’s been ages since I’ve done a small film, shooting for no reason other than the fun of it. And this was actually even a bit above that as it was super simple narratively, but we did rent a bunch of equipment (7D! doorway dolly!) from rental places in Manhattan to make it look really good. And I think it does. Maxine did a stellar job with the camera work, and Vince was so solid in the main role.

The reason I felt we had to get it done yesterday was that there was a deadline for a 2-minute film submission today. We got it all done, I burned the DVD and then rode a bike over to 3rd Ward to drop it off. Sunday is the 4th anniversary of Moviehouse, a kind of film art collective screening night (or something) and they had an open submission for 2-minute films to potentially show at their event. I didn’t really read too much about it, just saw the open submission, knew I had been desperate to make something fun, and put the plan in motion. At one point I said to Vince, and realized it was true, that with this kind of project, “a deadline is almost as good as getting paid.” And it really is true. Having a deadline helps so much, gives you that push.

There were a lot of factors contributing to the fact that I hadn’t made a fun film in a long time: moving to New York meant kind of a social reset and it took some time to find like-minded folks, Maxine and I have been pretty swamped trying to take Hitman to the next level, and working on Musicwood at the same time, and — and this one was a tougher realization — it’s been secretly hard for me to get into the swing of things because this was something that Mike and I always did together, and with him gone, it’s kind of a tough reminder. It’s been 6 years (really, 6 years?) and it’s definitely dialed down a bit, but it’s still tough. Last Wednesday, Mike’s birthday, I finally got around to digitizing all the films we made in the 90’s (those VHS’s are getting close to crumbling) and I’m in the process of getting them up on vimeo. I’ll post the link when they’re up.

There’s an even weirder thing, which is that I have this raw footage for a film Mike and I shot in 2001 or 2002, and have since lost the finished piece. You have to understand, we were making little films whenever we could, although, since neither of us had a camera or any kind of editing equipment, we had to find people to borrow it from all the time. So at one point we decided we were going to apply to be a team on ABC’s Amazing Race. We made up this whole narrative for our team, where Mike and I had been best friends but then he stole a girl I was really into and we hated each other, but then they broke up so now we’re trying to patch our friendship back together. You know, the kind of stuff that reality tv eats up with a spoon.

For the application you also had to send in a video of the team, so they could see how you did on camera. And for some reason, we thought it would be best for us to make this completely bizarre video where Mike was this shirtless guy living in an old abandoned shopping center in Annapolis (Parole, now a crazy mall/America place), and I was his friend who used to live there but somehow got out. He phoned me, and I was imploring him to leave the crazy shopping center, and finally he does, extolling the fact that “there’s a whole world out there!!” The implication being that Amazing Race would allow him (and us) to experience that world. It was totally bonkers. I was working as an editor for TLC at the time, so we cut it on the AVID I had access to, and recorded it out to VHS.

And sent it in, and I think I saved the project for ages, and then somehow it vanished. No trace of the finished film has ever turned up, but I have the raw footage on a miniDV. I know at some point I’ll try to re-create it — although it won’t be 100% because I know there was music of some kind, and I had MIke do some voice over for it — but right now, I’m too too busy to think about it…

At some point though, it’ll be a blast.

Oh, and no shock, we didn’t get into the Amazing Race, although I remember Lee K was really digging the film.

And then hey, Thursday I got an email that said Moviehouse is going to screen it Sunday Feb13th as part of the mini festival we submitted it for! Amazing! Stop by 3rd Ward if you’ll be in the area, it should be fun…looks like about 10 films, so it’ll be great to see our film projected large, and with an audience…I will report how it goes…

A Minor Revelation from josh granger on Vimeo.

<hit number 2 on google images when searching "not just a dream">

Last week after band practice, I came home and before crashing out I sat on the office couch in the dark and rode the ipod on shuffle for a while…the mix wasn't spectacular or anything, but it hit this one track…and actually, iniitally I was gonna skip it, and then something said, no check it out…

It's from this record that my old band-mate JE digitized for me, and I can't remember where he got it from. It's an anti-drug record from the 60's, but it takes this bizarre form of an announcer who is going to take you on audio versions of all these different drug trips. He's using his BIG ANNOUNCER VOICE, and then he'll pick a drug, like pot, and start talking to you, "You feel very good, very relaxed. Things don't seem to bother you. Maybe you'll get up and go outside…ahhh, why bother. Might as well sit here. Sitting feels good." And so on. Predictably, the LSD one goes into a bad trip, and soon you're in your own grave, trying to claw out of the dirt, and his voice is using all these weird, vaguely sci-fi 60's trip-out sounds. There's one on uppers where you're all wired up. I can't remember the rest, because it was actually kind of boring, and not at all like Bill Cosby Talks to Kids About Drugs (a hoot), or A Child's Garden of Grass (a stone cold classic!). The funny thing is, they don't really have any way to make the pot one sound bad…I think it's just a lack of motivation mainly, but mostly its about how good everything is.

Anyway, this track was the LSD trip. And while I didn't have any interest in listening to that bad trip, I listened to the beginning of the track and heard this great sample about pretending it's a dream, but not a dream. Just amazing. I began to loop it on the ipod, continually hitting the skip-to-beginning-of-track button, and it had a great rhythm.

So then, a few days later when I saw it was PD's birthday, I got stoked! PD and I are working on a project about dreams, and have been dropping dream-related stuff on each other for the past month or so. So I took that sample, got a good loop going, and dropped in a beat and fx and some sampled speech and so on. It was just a goof really, but I kind of like the sound of it…

See what you think…

Not Just A Dream – DJjG