Some time ago, I heard an interview with Quentin Tarantino where he urged aspiring filmmakers to use whatever means necessary to tell their story. Something I’ve been super stoked on lately is the fact that we’ve been doing these videos every day with incredibly limited resources. For a long time I thought I wouldn’t ever do much in film or video due to a lack of access to high quality professional equipment. While I absolutely adore the velvet richness of film or even the ever increasing quality of HD, I’m happy to be over that mental block. It is interesting to be in this digital era.
We’ve been using dinky little consumer cameras for the 31 Days / 31 Ways project and putting them up on YouTube with fairly good results considering. The audio leaves a lot to be desired and the tiniest water droplets can completely mask the action in a shot. Yet, not once have we been deterred from doing this project.
These videos were originally destined for the internet, which is an inherently lo-fi medium at this point. Somehow, through compression and pixels, viewers can still get an impression of the beauty of these experiences… even if they are being playing from a box that is only 433 pixels wide.
I also adore the accessibility of this channel. We, mere mortals, are empowered with the ability to get these stories out there. And for viewers, there’s no movie store or ticket booth line. They can watch our creations on their phones, at home in their underwear, or even while they are pretending to be working. Of course,with great accessibility comes clutter. But I feel we’ve managed to reach quite a few people in our communities and even beyond our intended audience. Part of the charm to me is the connection from human to human rather than media conglomerate to consumer.
So, thanks to the amazing people we’ve surfed with and interviewed. Thanks to everyone who watches or tells their friends to watch. And thanks to Lauren who gets me out surfing every day no matter what and gets me creating every day no matter what.
Track our progress at merseabeaucoup.blogspot.com
Latest videographs
The Hands Across the Sand event was started to gather support against offshore drilling. Given the climate after the oil spill, participation grew a great deal from the first event in February (check out Lauren’s video from then).
Also, this is an absurd celebration of Independence Day, explosions and the insanity of the beach on that weekend.
Finally, my friends found tar balls on our beach the other day. Pretty sad…Lauren has been doing some good documentation of it over at merseabeaucoup. Her video: