Hello all!  I wanted to share my thoughts on our Sundance 2012 show.

 First of all, we played ALL NEW records.  I'm enormously proud of us as a production company for that.  The last time we accomplished such a feat was indeed two years ago, last time we were at Sundance, and many of those records went on to be refined into versions so good, we included them in RECollection.  I think the same will prove true about last night's short films.  Some of them are closer to "finished" than others, but I'd bet that most of them end up in some form or another on RECollection volume 2.  I think we showed a pretty incredible range of both substance and style, while further establishing our unique voice as a creative collective.  In my opinion, it was an entertaining, substantial and inspiring program of little movies.  To everybody who collaborated on these records, you guys did a ton of excellent work, and to you (and us) I say, Bravo!

 Also worth mentioning, (almost) all of the records were connected somehow to a unified theme of "independence."  We played a bunch of little records explicitly addressing the theme from our "RE: INDEPENDENCE" collab, and most of the short films had more subtle connections to the theme.  The only other time we managed to so thoroughly focus a show was our previous show last Halloween.  I really like the structure a theme lends to an evening, and I'm looking forward to further developing this concept.

 As we always do at our shows, we put together a variety of "live" moments to be RECorded right then and there, with the intention of RECording them, and then collaboratively refining those records into new stuff that we might use in future productions.  We had a sing-a-long to Lights Off.  We did readings of a few new tiny stories.  We had several conversations regarding the evening's theme of Independence.  And we performed and short a reading of an adaptation from Mark Twain's (public domain) novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

 At all of our shows, some of the live moments work, and some of them don't work.  I'll be the first to say, I don't think our reading of Tom Sawyer will likely result in a great short film.  So it goes.  Doing things like that is always a risk, and in order to achieve the successes, we can't be discouraged by the stuff that doesn't quite work.  Gary Oldman's reading of Turnip Head, Latyrx's live remix of American Scrimp N Save, the scene between Neil Patrick Harris and me at the Fall Formal, the Little Red Riding Hood project -- all of these were just as risky as the Tom Sawyer reading.  We had at least a half dozen live readings at various shows of the Wicked Witch tiny story that didn't quite work before Pamagotchi finally gave us what we needed to make a tiny film.  And the conversations with audience members, those are always hit-and-miss, I think that's part of their charm, and our conversations Re: Independence were the same.

 So, the show had its hits and misses.  But I very much think that over-all, it was a grand success.  The audience was hugely responsive.  Even after the dip in energy during the Tom Sawyer reading, we got them back, as their applause for the "and a new earth" reprise was just about as strong as any over the course of a very effusive evening.  The director of the Sundance Film Festival, Michael Cooper sat through the entire thing, which he never does, and was very complimentary after the show.  The director of the board, Keri Putnam was also there (RECording on her blackberry!) and told me that hitRECord at Sundance was a great tradition she hoped would continue.

 Now then, I'd like to address some responses to the show from the community who wasn't there.  Before getting started though, I'd just like to say that I'm delighted to hear constructive criticism.  But some of you have been not at all constructive with your remarks.  Especially regarding the Tom Sawyer bit.  Again, I admit it didn't work, so it goes.  You've probably made some things that don't work too.  How would you feel if somebody was as harshly negative towards your work as you have been to this?  As I always say, I think it's really important to preserve our positive creative environment so that all of us feel safe to participate in our unconventionally vulnerable open collaborative process.  There's plenty of other places on the internet you can talk like that.  Please take it elsewhere.  Now, to address the more substantial criticisms and questions...

 There's been some questions regarding parts of the collaborative process happening in private.  We talked about this a few weeks ago, and it really was something I tried to keep in mind.  This is what happens.  ALL of our projects are up on the site, and ANYBODY can contribute to them.  That's why we call it OPEN collaboration.  I certainly don't see everything that gets posted to the site in general, but for the specific collaborations we were working on towards Sudance, I think I saw pretty much every contribution.  Sometimes, when we're on a tight deadline, when I see contributions that I think show a lot of potential, I will email that artist to encourage them to continue, and to do it quickly.  This has more to do with the shortcomings of our website than anything.  As y'all know all too well, our web-application is far from perfect.  I can leave a public comment on somebody's record, but there's not (YET!) a great way to make sure the artist will see it quickly.  So we email people.  That's all that happens.  AndyClift, Krrr, MattConley and five animators working on LRRH, Dr Gory, Marke, MusicInYourHead, MarieIv, TotallyJamie, these are the people with whom I communicated privately.  But all of the substance of that communication was mirrored on the site.  They publicly posted all of their iterative versions, so everybody saw the projects progressing through the exact same steps that I did, and had the opportunity to add to them, refine them, remix them, etc.  Todd68976 built his "and a new earth" mix at the same time as Krrr was building his, and ultimately Krrr's final version used a bunch of what Todd had done.  I publicly posted as many of my notes as I could to these artists as comments on their records.  I'd say the process was pretty open, which isn't to say it can't improve.  It can, and it will, especially as our software becomes a more efficient and organized tool.  FractalDust made a good suggestion that I could have posted a video before the show breaking the news to everybody that we weren't gonna play LRRH.  I think that's a good idea, and I will try to do more things like that..

 There's been a lot of conversation regarding the live stream.  Since posting my quick "morning-after" video yesterday, I've had a chance to watch the recorded version of the live stream, and I gotta say, I find it really dissatisfactory.  We haven't done a live stream since our Vista shows last april, because to do it properly is a bigger undertaking than our little company can really handle presently.  Sundance strongly wanted to do the live stream, and they said they would have a crew there to do it, multiple cameras and everything, so we thought we'd give it a shot.  But I think they really blew it in two ways.  First of all, they didn't plug into our video switcher -- they just pointed one of their cameras at the screen.  This made the short films look awful.  In Blue Dildo, for example, you couldn't even really make out Jamie's face half the time.  You couldn't make out any of the details of MarieIv's excellent animations on Turnip Head or Strawberry Bootlaces, etc, etc, etc.   Secondly, they didn't mic the audience at all.  Our shows are extremely interactive, and this audience was particularly lively, and to see the show without hearing them is sorta like hearing only one side of a conversation, and it really detracts from the records when you can't hear the enthusiastic applause that followed them.  I understand it's fun to gather together and chat about the show, but to be honest, my priority is to present our community's work in the best light.  If/when we're able to put together a live stream that meets my standards of quality, I see the upsides to it.  But that's a big undertaking, and Sundance wasn't even able to accomplish it.  You can absolutely see the show in its entirety through the records.  We shoot the whole thing on at least one camera, and we post those, plus the soundboard audio.  Our Sundance show records will be up soon.  And that's not to mention the records posted by everybody else at the show.  I think we could improve by consistently posting set-lists of which records we played in what order, what live bits came when, etc, and I'm certainly open to suggestions of how else we can make our shows more accessible to our world-wide community.  But in the end, no proxy will ever come close to really being there.  That's live art.

 There's also been some questions regarding how I pick which records we screen.  Well, it's hard to describe, and there's no quantifiable system to it.  It's just how I feel.  And that's how I want it to be.  I have absolutely no intention of our productions ever being put together by counting votes or anything like that.  There's other collaborative art on the internet that is more democratic in that way.  That's never been hitRECord, and I don't think it ever will be.  I pick what jobs I take as an actor the same way.  Some actors count box office of a director's previous efforts, consider advertising budgets, and work with their representatives to pick their roles. I don't do it that way.  But I do pay a lot of attention to the opinions of this community.  Sometimes I agree, and sometimes I disagree.  Sometimes I choose to go against popular opinion, and sometimes I am swayed by it.  To me, that's what a good director does.

 Whew!  That was long.  Thanks for reading!  And again thanks to everybody who participated in our Sundance production this year.  It was a deeply meaningful experience for me, creatively, professionally, and personally, and I'm grateful for such a cool community of artists to share it with.

 thanks again <3

J

 

 

 

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