Tag: film

Oh-Hello there keyboard

On By thevideoslabLeave a comment

Oh hi…hello there Mac Airbook keyboard, it’s been a long time since we hung out. Feels like months since you and I typey typed out my thoughts into letters onto a screen, just because I needed to write or just because I wanted to write – for fun. To clear my brain. To offload all the things that I am doing. I have missed this.

And I might not have anything important or critical to say whatsoever and I feel out of practice. Right now though I have about 40 minutes till I need to be somewhere so here we go.

I am at Deluxe Bakery eating a slice of pumpkin pie and a turkey shaped cookie for breakfast. To drink I am sipping down a delicious decaf cortado (no additional cream or sugar please and thank you).

It’s Saturday Nov. 8th, 2025 and about 11:50 AM. I was at work this morning trying to catch up on my hours. I took Thursday off this week because 1) I was feeling super run down and a bit ill 2) I had a friend coming through town and I wanted to rest up and see if I could feel better before they arrived.

I rested all day and didn’t work at my day job, the one that pays the bills. But in that rest time I had the time and restful space to catch up with some folks via text and email. The end result is that I scheduled 4 new interviews for the Iowa Prairie Podcast Project. This is a testament to how creative and proactive we would all be were we not “working” for a living. 

My friend is 28 years old. And my kids and this kid’s siblings all used to play together back in like…2007. It was such a lovely catch up with someone whom I have known since he was 6 years old. Also odd how you can be good friends with people who are your children’s age. Kiah, my visitor, has also been the one who created OST’s for most of my movies thus far and many more short videos. When he was here he informed me that the alarm tone or ring tone on his phone was a segment from one of the title tracks for one of my movies (that he composed). So nice to be reminded that we worked together on a movie that made a difference in land conservation. 

I felt better on Friday and worked from about 7 AM until 6 PM. Then off to the record store to buy this beauty:

I last owned this album probably in 1985, just before giving away all my records, because you know…no one was EVER going to listen to vinyl again. It’s now the 7th record in my newly building collection. I fell asleep while listening to it on the second play through but snapped a pic of my record player in the darkness because I like how it looked.

Oh gosh what else…hmmm….I have been working so incredibly hard on the Iowa Prairie Documentary Project. It’s got ahold of me all day, everyday. It’s really all I think about. Daydream about. I am constantly sending myself notes and messages to not lose track of an imagined sequence or new idea of a visual. This movie is happening so differently than any of the others. It’s really become my Hail Mary pass regarding the state of the world we live in…as seen through the lens of the state of Iowa. I can tell you it’s a sobering thing to realize that one can tell the story of how it’s all gone much too far without leaving home. All the worst stories are right here…and that’s really strange. It keeps me up at night but not in an awful way. More like a…how can I creatively convey these ideas that I have been pondering since the 6th grade, sort of way. Because that is literally when I first began really seeing our separation from and depletion of, the natural world. I started journalling about the topic when in study hall or detention hall. 

Today in about 30 minutes I will be picking up some used large diaphragm condenser microphones, some really old school ones…in hopes that I can record some warmer tones for the movie soundtrack. I will be recording the first segment of the movie, the first three minutes’ soundtrack which will be played live by a cellist. I’ll probably be recording on three mics at the same time. I have heard him play it through once already and it nearly made me cry, and def gave me goosebumps. 

There’s just so much going on that I can barely keep up. And yes, I do think of quitting. Quitting it all and just going back to simplicity. But the story needs telling and there aren’t enough people listening so far. I might not be able to pierce that particular veil either. But I feel compelled to try. 

I hope this weekend to finally give the project a proper website, FB page and IG account. Far fetched…maybe 1 out of 3?

(typed in a sort of hurry, please forgive typos and errors)

That Kind of Movie

On By thevideoslabLeave a comment

If you are going to document something, it means to faithfully represent what is/was there, so that it can be shared and understood. What happens when you document what has happened and you leave portions out of that documentary effort, is that you become a part of erasure. And it can happen so innocently. You may not want to impact someone’s reputation, for example. Or you need to keep someone on the record, so it means possibly that you have to exclude someone else…because they have beef with one another. People can lose their livelihood, often unbeknownst to them, for being involved in documenting the truth of what’s transpired around a certain issue. Moneyed interests can influence one’s decision or an organization’s choice to be a part of accurately documenting history as well as contemporary (right now!) events.

I guess what’s wild to me is that from day one of starting on my first documentary about exposing truths (in 2015)…I keep learning how you can’t tell the whole truth. Not in the kind of society that we have all agreed to live in. Call it an affectation of so-called “polite society” perhaps…or call it fear. Call it pragmatism. I’d say that our society is designed as a place for people to hide from the truth. I am not saying it happens on purpose. I don’t think it’s intentional. I think instead that we unconsciously seek to protect ourselves and so sleepily design a world of mattresses where we can take naps while it all falls apart around us. We’d rather not know…I mean…don’t interrupt our Netflix.

The bottomline line is that it’s difficult to say the whole damn thing and that’s frustrating as hell. The only way to have a pure documentary film or podcast is to interview people, and to be the kind of person, where your employment has no strings to the topic…where you won’t lose any friends for your honest words, where people are willing to put it all out there because they have stopped sleeping.

In every case, a conservation documentary hinges on the same tired premise; Money corrupts absolutely. There are many ways to effectively tell that story…which I don’t think we’ve seen yet. I want to find one of them, and put it to good use.

In this podcast, but especially when it comes to the movie…I want to really do something different with this film about the Iowa Prairie. I want to take a lot of creative directions that I have never attempted. I currently live in what is most likely the most environmentally degraded and abused landmass in the entire USA. But hardly anyone realizes it yet. Few understand just how bad it is here and what it means for the future. I have made some wonderful documentary pieces. I wouldn’t change a thing about them. But this one? Iowa needs a movie that makes the audience think “I can’t believe he just said that…and it was true” I am hoping that I can find enough people in the state who are willing to tell it like it is. Because a documentary without a community and without people who risk…isn’t one that makes an impact. And Iowa NEEDS an impact. I hope for a creation that leaves an indelible impression.

Anywho…here is Podcast Episode #2