Posted by Rina Svet:

Happy Cinco de Mayo! 

Seems like the perfect day to share this music video with everyone! This was one of the really fun projects I’ve worked on.  If you're at all familiar with my AMV background, you may know that I started off editing mainly music videos set to anime, and somehow after film school I've drifted away from my roots and now I mainly work on short videos and corporate projects, which are fun in their own way of course!  

This was a project I edited during the summer before my senior year of film school, and I really had a blast doing it!  No pun intended! :)

Syncing up visuals to music is just, well, awesome.  Despite the long and sometimes painstaking process, there's not many other words for it... and the result is so satisfying.  You won't find yourself watching that 20 minute medical corporate video you just finished editing together on loop for a day and a half for fun, but a music video is a whole other story!  So I hope you enjoy this one!

The band is Kenotia, and this is the official performance piece of the song, from the album "You’ve Dug Your Grave, Now Lie In It"  The official music video came be found here and was edited before I came on board, so I didn't edit this one.  Both videos were directed by Erica Ford.

Guest post by Shappy Seasholtz!

Hello, poetry lovers! My name is Shappy Seasholtz and this here is a video of me performing my poem "Butterfly". At this point in my illustrious "spoken-word career", "Butterfly" was considered my "signature poem" meaning I performed this ridiculous piece hundreds of times. To me, it was the "Satisfaction" of my poetic repertoire, like when you go to a Rolling Stones concert you expect them to play "Satisfaction". Sometimes I don't even understand that metaphor since I'm really more of a Kinks fan.

I wrote "Butterfly" for a Rod McKuen tribute show that famous rock poet Thax Douglas put together at the Lounge Ax in Chicago sometime in the late 90's. Rod McKuen was probably the last poet to show up on prime-time network television. He was a huge phenomenon in the late 60's and early 70's reading sappy love poems behind canned music. My mom had his books and an 8-track called "Listen To The Warm." I figured what could be a more groovy topic for a poem than a butterfly? Especially one with a drinking problem? I have since performed it with jazz combos, punk bands, at comedy clubs and, of course, poetry slams.

When this video was shot we were in the last miles of Gary Glazner's SlamAmerica 2000 bus tour. A crazy poetry experiment in which a rickety tour bus drove various slam poets across the country to perform a slam poetry revue in support of Gary's Slam anthology that had just come out from Manic D Press. Somehow it had Grand Marnier as a sponsor which meant us broke poets could drink as much of the syrupy orange liqueur we wanted. I haven't touched the stuff since.

We were all psyched to be performing at a NYC venue. Everybody turned it up to 11 that night. In 2000, I was on my first ever slam team (despite having been around the slam scene since 1991) representing the Mental Graffiti team out of Chicago so I had a huge chip on my shoulder and was ready to kick ass at Nationals which were in Providence, RI that year. I ended up in a 3-way tie for 11th place in Individual Finals tying a former National Champion and a NPR radio host which was impressive but kept me from the Finals stage. Our team got to semi-finals hosted by New York City poet Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. She thought I was an asshole because I refused to shake her hand as I walked on stage. Needless to say, I feel heads over heels in love with her, and later moved to New York City to be with her. We've been together for 11 years.

But back to this vid: I think Paul caught me at great point in my poetic path. This was my New York coming out party. I'm cock-sure, a little buzzed and fucking with the slammers heads in this video. Who knew that a year later, I'd be moving to Gotham to help Bob Holman open the Bowery Poetry Club or that two years later I'd be on the first team fielded from the BPC, and that we'd win the 2002 National Poetry Slam with the Urbana Slam team?

So I guess you could say this performance really helped me earn my wings! Get it? Wings?

Thank you! I'll be here all night!

Uncle Shappy's Chuckle Parlour!

Follow Shappy on Twitter!

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SlamNationTrailer

Posted by Paul Devlin:

While I was shooting Power Trip in Tbilisi, I kept hearing about a war that nobody seemed to know of outside Georgia. The territory of Abkhazia had split away from Georgia and many young Georgian men headed north in a fever of patriotism to take it back. Unfortunately, these ragtag militia were mismatched against far superior Russian-backed forces. The result was massive casualties and many horror stories for the Georgians.

One of the characters in Power Trip, Datto Tabidze experienced this conflict first hand. As can be seen from this piece, the trauma was too much for him to talk about. Now of course, a more recent, much higher profile conflict over Abkhazia between Georgia and Russia has brought this issue into worldwide consciousness.

Datto was a compelling character. In addition to working for AES-Telasi, he was an entrepreneur. On the side of a hill above Tbilisi, the rock had been hollowed out as a passageway between two park areas. Datto had developed a huge project to convert part of this cave area into a giant dance club. Unfortunately, some unsavory characters wanted a piece of the project and Datto refused to pay the extortion. On camera, he showed me the scars from the bullet that went through his knee and out the back of his calf.

The project was never completed and the segment did not make the final film.

Power Trip DVD
Power Trip Trailer

Posted by Paul Devlin:

I love those calls: “Hey can you come to Paris for a few weeks, and help us edit some tennis.” Hell yes!

The call came from Woods Communications, who had been hired by ESPN to help them cover the 2002 French Tennis Open (Roland Garros). I met Tom Woods when I was working for ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 editing World Cup Soccer in Paris. Tom and his brother Ian, are two Americans who set up shop in Paris years ago, servicing American sports networks in Europe. Fantastic business model and very clever guys. I also worked with them covering the Tour De France for CBS.

All that work in France made me fall in love with the place and I try to get back at least once a year, even when I’m not working there.

Guest post by Taylor Mali!

The first thing to notice about this performance, which comes from the final stage of the 2000 National Poetry Slam in Providence, RI, is how loud the audience can be BEFORE the poem starts. You can hear someone yell out "I love you Taylor" before I begin; but that's tame! Sometimes that good-natured hooting and hollering can last almost 30 seconds, and if you're not prepared for it you can lose your focus.

The second thing I notice is how short my hair is. I really do look like a Republican! The quirky laugh that I give to the lawyer twice is something I have stopped doing over the years because I think it's distracting. Notice that when I take the mic off the stand, which I always do at the exact same moment, the sound quality becomes appreciably worse. I wonder why I didn't hear that and move it closer to my mouth?

Lastly, of course, a pirated version of this exact performance has been on YouTube and received close to 4 million hits. Consequently, whenever I begin this poem today, depending on the venue, the audience is filled with people who either clap in excited anticipation or roll their eyes and groan, "Not THIS old poem again!"

SlamNation DVD   SlamNationTrailer

And check out Taylor Mali here!

Posted by Rina Svet:

Vanity is a short story of a girl and her vanity. Shot on 16mm film, it is a beautiful piece of art that teaches a lesson about the darkness inside each of us.

Vanity was directed by Chris Cazavilan and edited by Rina Svet as a thesis film for The School of Visual Arts.

Posted by Paul Devlin:

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His name says it all when it comes of Freestyling. A true master of his art form.

The Making of Freestyle (continued)

After starting my own movie about Freestyle, I discovered there was another filmmaker, Kevin Fitzgerald (aka DJ Organic) who had already been shooting a movie on the same topic for about 5 years. I thought about abandoning my project, until someone showed me a bootlegged rough cut of Kevin’s movie. It was a mess and ran well over two hours. I stopped worrying about it.

Check out Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme.
Buy the DVD.

Posted by Paul Devlin:

“Group Pieces” are a truly unique art form that has emerged from the National Poetry Slam competition. The concept of a team of poets created by the competition naturally led to interest in collaboration. Some of the most innovative performing art I have ever seen on stage has been Group Pieces at National Slams, with poets using their voices and movement to create a masterful mix of vocal music and rhythm. Multi-dimensional poetry.

But a slam team is a fragile, ephemeral phenomenon, and a Group Piece exists as performance for a very short time. It is near-impossible to re-create after poets go their separate ways. As Taylor Mali points out, if a Group Piece is not recorded that season, it is usually lost forever.

Thankfully, this classic Group Piece from Team Austin was recorded for SlamNation. Wammo, Danny Solis, Phil West and Hilary Thomas were masters of the Group Piece that year. They were favorites to win, but as can be seen in the movie, the competition played out differently...

Posted by Rina Svet:

Hi everyone.  Some news... my boyfriend of 5 years, Jerry, proposed to me last Friday night on our 5th Year Anniversary!  It was an amazing and unique proposal, so I'd like to share the story with all of you.  It's also available here.  :)

---

I’m sitting here at Starbucks staring out the window at the foot traffic outside.  It’s 5:15PM on Friday, June 22^nd.  It’s my boyfriend Jerry and I's fifth year anniversary today and he’s late. He told me we had dinner reservations for 5, and he won’t tell me the place.  He told me to wait on the corner of 3^rd Ave and 67^th Street, by the Caché.    I’m staring out the window and wondering where in the world he is, when my iPhone buzzes.

It’s a text from Jerry and it’s a cryptic, exciting thing.  “I’m in the city,” he writes.  “But you have to find me!  You’re going to get clues on Instagram.  Your name is Marie Antoinette.   Your first clue is up.  Happy hunting!”And so begins the most amazing, exciting, and rewarding scavenger hunt of my life, trailing me across Manhattan’s upper east side, and eventually leading my to the love of my life.

My first Instagram clue is pretty straightforward.  A picture of a Caché tag against a gorgeous fabric!  I read the caption on Instagram and I cannot believe my eyes  - it reads just like a post on Gossip Girl!

I cannot even… Jerry has tapped into my Gossip Girl fan girl side.  It’s amazing. Phenomenal.   Has he been listening to me ramble on this whole time? I run into Caché, and my adventure begins!

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Guest post by Evert Eden aka Adam Ash!

I Want to Be a Woman became one of my signature poems in my slam years from 1994 to 1999. You know how it is: you road-test everything you write, then you find that two or three or four or five poems get the highest scores, and sometimes you stick with them for years. People used to complain that Patricia Smith did the same two poems three years running to win the Individual Slam, but hey, those were the ones that scored highest for her, so what was she supposed to do -- perform some other poem and lose?

I Want to Be a Woman was actually going to be the first in a long series of gender, cultural and other reversals, but after I Want to Be a Woman, I only got to write I Want to Be a Black Man. I never got round to I Want to Be a Dog and I Want to Be God and I Want to Be a Murderer and I Want to Be a Republican and I Want to Be a Dictator.

I performed I Want to Be a Woman as my final poem in 1997 to qualify for the individual finals in Connecticut, and managed to score a whole bunch of tens (in the actual finals I screwed it up royally). I remember Michael Brown telling me that my performance was like a levitation, like I was flying or something. I wish I had a video of that performance, because it was my best performance ever of anything I've ever performed ever.

I've seen this with many poets: the one time they hit a transcendent incandescent note. It's an absolute blessing to be there when it happens. In fact, there's nothing greater. I can recall such moments from many poets: Patricia Smith, Marc Smith, Lisa Buscani, Wammo (the one about the bar), Dana Bryant (the one about the heat down south), Maggie Estep (the one about being a lady vampire), DJ Renegade (the one about Miles), Da Boogie Man, Gayle Danley (at least three of her poems, when she burst on the scene in Asheville), Michael Brown, Sheila Donohue, the Superheroes group poem (best group poem ever), Regie Cabico, Jerry Quickley, Glenis Redmond, Beau Sia, Mayda del Valle, Morris Stegosaurus, Reggie Gibson (the one about Hendrix), Cass King, Taylor Mali, Roger Bonair-Agard, Derrick C. Brown (what a funny guy), Shappy Seasholtz (Butterfly, just for starters), Sarah Holbrook, Jeffrey McDaniel (the one about the submarine full of midgets), Rachel McKibbens, Lynn Procope, Sarah Jones, Scott Woods, etcetera and on and on into the long good night. Heck, I remember a performance of Beau Sia when he was just making shit up on stage from moment to moment, freestyle-style, and he was on like a boner on a bat, and it was LOL hilarious. And I remember seeing Bob Holman do a whole show of his poems, with a friend on percussion and other instruments, and it was utterly mind-blowing. The memory of those incandescent performances are burned in my mind like laser etchings. When poets hit that spot in your brain, that spot stays lit up forever.

Another good moment with I Want to Be a Woman was when I ran across a student who told me he used it as an audition piece to get into drama school. I walked on a cloud for days after that. It's not that often that you find your work has actually helped someone achieve a dream.

OK, some links. My book of poems, Suck My Poem, is available here, and my novel Vagina Rebel is available here.

These days I've reincarnated myself as Adam Ash, singer-songwriter, who performs solo and with his band the Dingbots. Check out my band's CD here and follow my music career here, where you can also listen to three of my songs, including the rather bizarre My Girlfriend Got Freaky with a Strap-on.

SlamNation DVD 
SlamNation Trailer
Slammin' Trailer

Picture this: 40-50 documentary professionals watching your unfinished movie and then ripping it to shreds...uh... offering constructive criticism. It's an intimdating scenario, but also exhilirating and always valuable.

Founded by filmmaker Susan Kaplan, DocuClub is now run by Arts Engine. It is a member organization of filmmakers in Manhattan that workshops new non-fiction work. DevlinPix is honored to present our newest project, The Front Man, in its first semi-public screening at DocuClub.

If you're in New York City this week, come join the fray:
Thursday July 19, 7PM at DCTV, 87 Lafayette Street, New York. Admission: $6 for non-members, Free for members.

Post by Paul Devlin& Ernie Fritz:

Before video editing could be done on a laptop, it often involved a complicated tape-based off-line/on-line process. A music video, for example, would be worked on for days on inexpensive equipment and low-quality video, generating an edit decision list (EDL). That list would then be used to on-line or conform the final edit on the high-end very expensive equipment and tape. Lot’s of time off-lining, quickly as possible on-lining.

I on-lined edited dozens of music videos back in the day. This one was off-line edited by my friend Ernie Fritz, who has the back story:

If there is a video that is the definition of "fucked up", this is it - - and looking back at it now, that's why it's great. I was the editor and this video, and I must admit, I thought it was doomed the first time I saw the footage. My friend Drew Carolan directed and I had no idea what he wanted or what was on his mind. I don't think he knew either - - no let me rephrase that; he clearly didn't know what he wanted but he was director who loved to have fun and always pulled something out of the hat.

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We hope you're all as excited about the London Olympics as we are!  To get in the spirit, we're sharing a spot Paul created for the 1996 Summer Olympics while working for NBC. Enjoy and get ready to watch the opening ceremony tonight at 7:30PM on NBC!

Posted by Paul Devlin:

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“It’s better than fighting and it’s better than shooting and stabbing each other.” Freestylers hone their skills in healthy, head-to-head competition.

The Making of Freestyle (continued)

I heard that Kevin Fitzgerald’s movie, Freestyle – The Art of Rhyme, had been accepted into the 1999 Urbanworld Film Festival in New York City. I went to see it. It was still messy, but it had been cut way down, and included some incredible performances. The movie won an award at the festival. I finally met Kevin at the screening. He had heard about my project, and we hung out, talking freestyling and movies. It seemed there would not be room enough for two freestyle movies, and Kevin clearly was way ahead. I decided to abandon my project.

Check out Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme.
Buy the DVD.

Posted by Paul Devlin:

Here’s Regie Gibson on the Finals stage at the National Poetry Slam in Portland Oregon. An accomplished writer and performer, Regie went on to become an individual National Poetry Slam Champion. He is also featured in the New Line Cinema film Love Jones, which is also based on his life.

Posted by Paul Devlin:

One of the amazing things about the shoestring movies made by independent filmmakers, is the disproportionally vast reach and impact they can have.

BBC World News is available in over 120 countries. Impossible to collect ratings information but based on surveys, they claim an overall viewership of 70 million per week across the planet.

After BBC World started acquiring independent films from BBC's Storyville strand, both Power Trip and BLAST! had what amounts to GLOBAL broadcasts on the channel, 4 screenings over a weekend.

When they also invited me to do this interview for the news program Weekend World I jumped at the chance to reach that many people.

BLAST! DVD
BLAST! Trailer

Posted by Paul Devlin:

Love these little pieces - short and sweet, high energy and easy on the eye. Made lots of them during my many years working on site for CBS's U.S. Open Late Night Show.

And then the Late Night Show got cancelled and I haven't been back. Oh well. That's the nature of these gigs - they come and go. I still get my dose of tennis, putting together the US Open Preview Show at the CBS Broadcast Center.

Posted by Paul Devlin:

Great example of an identity poem from Andrea Thompson. This one was an extra, but another, “After Kissing,” made it into SlamNation to show how hot the rookie Vancouver team was, almost beating Taylor Mali.

I was able to catch up with Andrea a few years ago in Toronto when I was shooting parts of BLAST! there. You can catch up with her too, in this interview.

Posted by Paul Devlin:

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Otherwize is a fierce competitor and shows just how brutal Freestyle Battles can be. “Noone cares who came in third place. If you’re gonna do it, DO IT.” 

The Making of Freestyle (continued)

Soon after I met Kevin Fitzgerald, his producer Henry-Alex Rubin (who later went on to co-direct Murder Ball) contacted me. Kevin was having trouble selling his movie. The cut was good enough for festivals, but not for broadcast. It needed to be re-worked. They wanted to know if I would join them and re-edit the movie.

Check out Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme.
Buy the DVD.