Words of Indigenous Media Artist and Performer Donald Morin, Residing on Turtle Island near other humans, animals, and birds.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
CBC News - North - Yukoner's cell 'not habitable,' inquest hears
The RCMP is a racist institution who hire racist people, who have no regard for Canad'a first people due to ther cultural, political and educational and economic upbringing,. What does that say for Canada as a society? THE RCMP should be dissolved and these people charged with criminal charges. Back me up and pass this around. It si time now to bring some accountablility to the actions of this Racist organization
CBC News - North - Yukoner's cell 'not habitable,' inquest hears
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Film, Video, Media transference and Convergence, From Analogue to Digital to Podcasts
CHAPTER ONE:
30 years of Learning about Film, Video, Media transference and Convergence, From Analogue to Digital to Podcasts, My Observations. Based on my current Web stream of Take It Easy When You Talk About Me"
Sometime ago, an artist approached me about web streams and pod casts, and the availability of them on the Internet. Digital filmmaking since 1992, I have seen many changes in filmmaking, digital media, and I know I have still so much more to learn. Digital Media is a complex web of variations, formats, and converging technologies to create the moving image. Capturing the digital or analogue sound and image varies in according to the technology and capital available to create moving pictures; but more so depends on the creative applications of the filmmaker, visual artist, or amateur working with such technologies.
I prefer Arriflex 16mm camera, but today the digital camera surpasses the availability of such technology, and the immediacy of seeing and using moving pictures surpasses the desire to use "film " today. However upon using film ; how does one transfer 16mm images off the celluloid and 1/4 inch sound off the niagra sound recorder in sync or non-sync applications?. (That is another problem I will mention later.)
The filmic way in my younger days at the SFU Film Workshop consisted of re-photographing the image off walls, bed sheets in makeshift studios, or special front screen re-photography screens based at the SFU mountain basement library studio. It may not exist anymore, an old 3/4 TV studio in the basement of the library building at SFU mountain in Burnaby, BC. That was where we (Peter Webb and I) filmed the 16mm Re-photography scenes of "Take It Easy When You Talk about Me". See the slightly altered version of "Take It Easy When You Talk about Me" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKhycWMXScM; my 3rd year 16mm film collaboration with former alumni of those classes. Directed by Peter Webb,
It was learning collaborative on my part as I did not agree with some of his choices on audio usage, but overall, I enjoyed co-creating this short dual screen narrative because of the collaborative script based on the Native Scientist and his petrogyphs experiences. Important was learning about cultural protocol with actor (Buffalo child) and other research in first nation's cultural history. We created two 16mm reels and one 16mm audio track.
The audio track was synced to the right screen of the scientist working in the field when he encounters something strange. We then bring in the left screen with the accompanying narrative to the story. Sound was synced up on an old Steinbeck Editing table. I remember many "B" roll excursions thru Vancouver to film what we needed and as well helping record one "Native" protest of the time for the film, that sound recording involved Michael Playfair recording a protest against Fletcher Challenger Corporation and he recorded words from the protest speech by the late Joe Mathias which the director included in the film. I cannot remember if I was there for the recording, I think I was, someone will have to remind me, who was there. It was a protest at the Canada Place Hotel Complex on the waterfront.
Nevertheless, Getting TIEWYTAM to YouTube today was different to what we had to do to get TIEWYTAM on video side by side. After we graduated I remember Peter and I booked time with the SFU Video Communications Lab, where he had friends. We brought our finished edited work print films to the techies and they telecined each edited film roll it to ¾ video tape. Telecine is a method of projecting the film image through a prism device apparatuses to record the image onto video. Frame ratio was a problem as film was 24 frames a second and video was 30 frames a second. Flickering was problematic and today such problems are resolved with existing technologies.
Onward, we had the techies as well transferred the audio to video and then we used a TV switcher to compose the two video images side by side, inserted and synced up the audio track to the sync beep and voila! Peter gave me a ½ inch vhs copy of the film of which some of the VHS was creased, so I edited it out; that is why the ending of the film is slightly off. The VHS copy sat in my library for years as a personal record of my work, I showed it to old friends like Lenard Fisher (pictured far right) but it was not till 2005, when Wendy Nahanee asked if I could show some work at the 2005 Heart of the City Festival aboriginal film night that I digitize the 16mm dual screen narrative short.
After years of desktop video editing thru my old Amiga 2000 Commodore computer and S-VHS equipment, I accumulated miles of S-VHS, Hi-8 and VHS footage for my film 7 Fires 4 U...Kitchi Manitou, I haven't even shot any 16mm film yet. I finally had funds release in 2000 and I filmed 16mm footage out of the "timely" script. I had the 2000 16mm footage telecined to video. Darryl Bird offered to edit a promo of the shot 16mm footage and existing video archives of the 7 Fires project. His promo is now at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHnY1e-uV8s
With the completion of the promo, I re-applied to Canada Council for the arts for further funding. 2,001, I received further funding to shoot the 7 fires project. After discussions with fellow artists, computer consultants, I upgraded my desktop video system to digital media. I secured a windows system with Adobe Premiere editing software, Matrox video hardware, and other video editing software. I remember sitting at the computer for at least a month trying o figure out how digital filmmaking worked.
Connecting the wires was not a problem, RCA composite connectors, S-Vhs connectors and BNC connectors all fine, it was the compression rate, or no compression, but as well as usage of the fire wire. Getting the Hi-8, VHS, and S-VHS footage into to the computer at the proper compression ratio was problematic and involved trial and error methods of operation. I settled on combining old and new technologies together to achieve my own sense of satisfaction. I connected my Analogue video technologies to the video/audio input of a mini-DV Camera and went thru the menu section to output the video data coming thru the RCA v/a connectors and S-VHS connector thru the fire wire to the Adobe Premiere Capture window.
Upon capture the video data thru the fire at a rate acceptable to me I saved my film and clicked on the captured data in the browser window. Sound and Image show up in a separate window and I clicked play. Seeing the "film" image on the computer was amazing.
After setting in and out points, I dragged the avi file to the timeline, adjusted in and out points to fade in and outs, added smpte countdown, black video and exported the file as a "movie" file in DV avi. Upon completion of export, I opened up the file in QuickTime Pro and exported the avi file for 'web". Finished exports involved formats for podcasts and webcasts. 3GPP audio/video and Mp4 video for webcasts and pod casts. Ready for mass distribution on the net thru zshare, YouTube, Digital Drum or MySpace.
Closing this chapter, I recently recaptured the VHS copy of TIEWYTAM and the "Dazzle " Capture device practically eliminated those creases in the capture, so that was great, and I will have the new version of "Take It Easy When You Talk About Me". On the net soon. Thanks for visiting!
Donald Morin, BA Filmmaker/Digital Artist
Friday, April 09, 2010
CBC News - World - U.S. woman returns adopted son to Russia#socialcomments-submit#socialcomments-submit
"Torry Hansen of Shelbyville, Tenn: You are a disgusting person who will be punished severely for your callous actions to this poor vulnerable child. IT is absolutely awful to see that there are people like you in this world. I hope your punishment after t his life is so serve that the evil minions punishing you will yell at you, swear at you, and pull your hair for eternity."
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/04/09/russia-adoption-tennessee.html#socialcomments#ixzz0keLQBPvA
I was angry, Very Sad, but God Bless that littel boy Artyom Savelyev; HAng in there young fellow, I was like you, but trusting God, he saved my very soul. See you soon in life
Donald:
FOR Artyom Savelyev:
I apologize for being so judgmental. I was angry, I saw the picture of the child, I was adopted as a foster child, and had a tormentious existence from child to man. Demons have haunted me, my vices, and my own self damnation for who I was, who I am, and who I can be today. I could have taken my way out if it was not for our Creator. After finding out about my sixteen foster homes of hell from age 1 to 4, then systemic colonial ideals as a child growing up in redneck Alberta, I moved to Salish territory at 24 because here in AB, they expected NDNs to remain in jail or dead. 29 years later I am back to Cree territory, and nothing has changed when it comes to how people treat people or children, and we are the losers of the grand picture of life. God forgive all of us in these days of judgments’, and God help this child, and the child in all of us, so we can start each day without shame. As I am ashamed today. Yes, the woman did wrong, but who I am to judge without knowing all the facts, I read the letter, I was an unstable child, screwed up for years, but through the patience of my last foster parents, I found some tracks to follow. Yet, I know I have so much more work to do, B4 I sleep, miles to go B4 I wake, remembering Robert Frost.
CBC News - World - U.S. woman returns adopted son to Russia#socialcomments-submit#socialcomments-submit