Philippe Sainte-Laudy: I love this photographer's work, especially these textured images. That I can embed this slideshow here is such a gift! Though do click on the link below and look at them in screen-size.

direct url to Philippe Sainte-Laudy's photostream

I joined scriptfrenzy.org where you undertake to write a 100 page script in the month of April. As is my way, I approach this project without any ideas for characters, plot or any other preconceptions, preferring to let the story tell itself. I begin where I am, the title riffing off of a necklace I recently beaded, the opening line off a line of a recent post. I am also presently taken with some of Bill Brouard's digital art images, which I find inspiring, and which form a visual core for the description of the two characters in this section.

If I complete the challenge, I intend to condense the hundred pages into about fifteen and perhaps make a little video of some sort, not sure. I'll only leave this up for a few days, Blogger stripping all the correct script formatting that it's written in. This is yesterday's effort - and to me, today, it reads more like a Greek play. It's meant to be a poetic dialogue, that's what I wanted to write. Anyway, sharing...


EXT. BEACH, OCEAN TO ONE SIDE, FOREST IN DISTANCE ON OTHER SIDE - NIGHT

A woman walks on a deserted beach. She is dimly lit by spotlight. To one side is the ocean; in the background on the other side we see the shadows of a dense forest.

She is wearing a mid-calf length white cotton dress that has a pale floral pattern; it is loose but revealing of her curves, cleavage. She wears a head-dress that is composed of partial faces, eyes, shards of mirror, images projected and pasted, like a lantern in that it emits light yet also lit from without. Whispering sounds that rise and fall with the waves accompany her.

She is laughing. She is speaking out loud to herself, and thus introduces herself to the audience.

ESMARELDA
I laugh hysterically like a hyena let out of the zoo. It’s as if I am about to fly apart into my components.

I am a kaleidoscope that spins and bits of colour and sound are reflected everywhere in ever-changing fractal patterns.

It’s as if I am not a whole but a composition of varieties held together aesthetically.

I carry spirits with me. I have many seeing eyes. The eyes are all around my head, some of them are men’s eyes, or women’s, or children’s. I don’t know how they came to be there. I have eyes in the front of my head that have dark brown iris’ and blink. The other eyes never sleep.

Everywhere I go voices whisper. Voices telling me about worlds I know nothing of. Voices telling me what is to become, what has been, what will never be, what has always been.

Was I divinely ordained to the sun, or the moon? Both of which glisten on my ear lobes in lustrous earrings, though I do not know where the jewels came from. Perhaps it is the ocean that is my compatriot spirit. My name is Esmarelda- a Spanish name meaning emerald, but mar means sea, briny, ocean, the blue, the deep, drink.

Was I born out of the ocean foam? Perhaps I was born under an artist’s hand.

I don't have blood or bones. I’m composed of images, translucencies and opacities, pastel pencil lines and oil paint, planes of motion move when I walk. The eyes all about my head watch. I am a vision become real.

Or perhaps I’m not sane. Or perhaps I am very, very sane.

Sometimes I hover above the ground in the forest, alone. I converse with angels.

I bleed like everyone else.

If you cut me, I’d fall away like paper.

Esmarelda leans to pick up a stray seagull feather on the sand. She brushes it over her wrist, holds it like a stylus.

ESMARELDA
Why don’t I have paper, a pencil when words form, already distilled? That I listen to even as I speak them, that appear like the wind of their own volition?

A male angel in silhouette flies towards her, lands beside her on the beach. He wears only a white thong. He is young and muscled, though he has a purity about him.

AARON
I have come from the mountains that are dissolving into sand deserts. Chameleons appear everywhere with their tongues flicking, eating sand bugs. Otherwise the terrain is empty. It is high up, in the place they call the Himalayas. I fly through the future and between peaks are hot deserts of fire.

ESMARELDA
Lie with me, angel. Lie with me here on the sand. Fold your wings around me.

Aaron moves towards Esmarelda, his arms open. They embrace. Their hands glide over each other’s bodies. They lock their bodies together, undulating with passion. There is fierceness in their lovemaking. As they slide to the ground, her legs open around him, and they make love. His wings are held high behind him; her headdress is visible. They are a beautiful, exotic couple.

Distant choral singing and natural organic sounds of ocean, sand and shells accompany their love song on the beach. After orgasm, Esmarelda lies back and speaks.

ESMARELDA
As beautiful as making love to a divine song… such passion on the crest of a wave, you bring me up to it, and then wash me blissfully over. You are my sea-light.

AARON
Angels are like bonobos, my dear! We make love anytime we wish with anyone we wish. It’s an orgasmic heaven!

They laugh. Esmarelda pours sand from her hand onto his thigh.

ESMARELDA
I like it when you fly by. You’re beautiful and fun. But who am I, Aaron? No one else sees you. They think I imagine you, that I am a troubled woman who is consumed by imaginary spirits and voices. When I told Cheri about you, she laughed. She said I was afraid of men, that men were afraid of me, that I made you up.

AARON
Only a few have the special sight to see the angels who protect all creatures who live in time and space and are subject to the whims of fate and to entropy, to decay.

There are many levels of worlds within this one. At one time they thought of it as hierarchies, stacked on top of each other, from the bestial to the angelic.

But we all exist in the same continuum, you and I, and all the other beings. The only true differences between us are that our perceptions are opened to varying degrees.

Your eyes, my beautiful Esmarelda, are more open than most.

ESMARELDA
I have too many eyes! No one else has so many! Yet no one but you and the other angels see the eyes in me which are always looking.

Aaron shakes his head.

AARON
People do sense what appears as a headdress that emits light and colour and seems to be composed of translucent moving images. They feel not watched, but witnessed. While they are fearful for you with your visions, there is also comfort emanating from you and this is why you are left to wander freely. You have a power about you. Everyone feels this.

Esmarelda, interjecting, points to a flock of angels approaching in the sky over the ocean.

ESMARELDA
Shhh… my philosophical angel! Where are the angels flying? There are so many.

Aaron’s massive golden wings open and as he lifts into the air, he caresses and kisses Esmarelda’s hand.

AARON
A gigantic tidal wave has swept over half the earth. There are many dead, many grieving.

The angels of the earth are congregating to help the dead in their mystical journeys, and to help sustain the spirits of the living so they may have the courage to continue.

Esmarelda waves to the airborne angel who turns in his flight towards the flock of angels and joins them as they fly along the beach. They fade into an altocumulus mackerel cloud sky - their wings becoming clouds - which fade out as they disappear. There is a deep sound of angelic music, choral voices in a Philip Glass-type composition of layering of similar sounds until a tonal density is achieved.

Opera Face Gestures for Controlling Your Browser. A droll tech Opera blog entry here. It's gotta be the best April Fool's joke I've found on the World Wide Net today. Or maybe they're seriously developing this technology.

Watch the video, then try the facial gestures out on your own screen, then imagine everyone in Starbucks doing this.

I laughed for a long time. I laughed hysterically like a hyena let out of the zoo.

Am I writing? Am I painting? Am I watching a film? Am I laughing with friends?
No.
I'm beading.

Some of us become true hippies late.

The 'home-office' (studio/bedroom/meditation space), as is, without any tidying up! Yes, that's a thick plastic sheet on the desk for the painting that's not happening, and another one under the layers of dog blankets. See, I am like a "little ol' Italian lady in that way - with my plastic-covered furniture'! I buy it at Honest Ed's for $3./yard, what a great price - anyone'd go crazy with the stuff! Great for painters and pets. Hey, not tooo much knicker-knacker clitter-clatter on the desk; it could be cleaned up in minutes for a painting space, now couldn't it? :::Grins::: How about your workspace?

Beautiful, powerful, affirming, and, wow, can these folks dance!

A video of dance & disability, a mind-heart opening for the viewer who may be stunned to see the (im)/PERFECT body in ecstatic motion like this, yet we love the courage, energy, expansion of self, and feel, ourselves, joyful in our participatory watching...of an energetic release into what is a sophisticated aesthetics of dance and an accompanying joy.

Source: video.nytimes.com

A New York City dance company called Gimp turns a prevailing notion of physical handicaps on its head. Then comes a leap, a pirouette, a lift....

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(NYTimes doesn't give an option to share with Blogger, but I wanted an image of the video, so copied and pasted it. While the image seems to be an active link, please note that the titles are definitely active links, or click here.)

For days I have been trying to upload an image to tile like this on my home page at Twitter, but Twitter is hesitant, no, downright resistant.

Actually, there are currently issues with uploading background images and their technical department is 'working on it.'

Being impatient, I made a tiled image of my little discus thrower to see what it would look like!

(click on image for larger size)

If you have 8 1/2 minutes, this is an amazing GuZheng, or Chinese zither, performance. Such musicianship!

This woman, who plays the GuZheng, and whose name I am not sure of, the Chinese is impossible for me, is a true virtuoso. A pure artist: a "living angel." Her performance is a dance, sensitive, powerful, and above all, graceful, with the Chinese zither, what an instrument, who is like her lover. A lover who sings to her. I've watched it over & over, transfixed.

direct url: here.

A day later, after reading the comments at YouTube I discover her name is 毛ㄚ Maoya, that she was born in Beijing in 1979, and that her latest album was issued 6 years ago in China. The piece that she plays was for a competition and is actually not Chinese, but Japanese (why I probably like it so much). As one commenter said, "Just found out that this is actually a Japanese piece that was written by a Japanese Master. Which was not meant to be played on a Chinese guzheng but rather a Japanese one. 毛ㄚtook it to another level and proved the master wrong and inspired us once again that nothing is impossible. Not only her dedication to this instrument but the way she carried herself while playing is truly masterful. Too bad she's not a performer but a music researcher. A true one-of-a-kind treasure."

I do not make any money from my videos at YouTube, I am just an artist sharing my work. I recently posted this at a community board at YouTube:

I am wondering, since it's only one of my videos that has a view count frozen at 201, if it's because after I uploaded the video I sent links to all my friends through my private email (rather than YouTube's service since some people had complained about their addresses used for spam by YouTube).

If I sent a link to that video, which is a small 'dance/art film' piece of work to 50 people in Toronto, where I live, and they all dropped by to view it, would that appear as spammers?

Which they most definitely are not.

I spent some time writing and editing the comment in the editorial, and I've posted that video quite a few places and hence have started the viewer on it myself a number of times each time I go in to grab the code.

Meaning, is either of these two possibilities- a number of views in a short time span in one location, the city I live in, or personally going in to the site and starting the viewer each time -why that particular video's view counts has been inexplicably 'frozen'?

Or have I been targeted by actual spammers, and YouTube just hasn't informed me that my work has been hit by that kind of attack?

I'd personally like more information on what is going on with the frozen view count - re: telling us exactly what it is that's caused the lock down.

Thanks!

Brenda

Oh, the video in question is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Fgg1mx2sA&feature=channel_page

Can anyone at YouTube tell me exactly what the infringement on thisparticular video is? What exactly has caused the frozen view counts?

_____
Also, I earlier posted this query:

Besides the view count issue that I'm currently having with YouTube, and that hasn't been addressed, or even acknowledged, I am wondering why this site is able to post one of my videos when I have DIS-enabled embedding? Why is YouTube allowing this?

http://video.baamboo.com/watch/1/video/nOlfVVwa5BE/phim-video-clip-On-Butoh-based-Dance-A-Saturday-morning-amble-Brenda-.html

I am not happy with YouTube presently.

Problems. No response. Equals Unhappy YouTuber!

Addendum: YouTube suddenly released the view count on my video today, March 19th, 4 days later, without any explanation.

Addendum 2: YouTube froze the view count at 307 views on the same video, White, for 4 days about mid-April, and then resumed without explanation.

Why is YouTube picking on this small video?

A strange man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves. This is a short by filmmaker Bruce Branit known also as the co-creator of 405.

Filming took one day, and post-production two years. A Michelangelo of our times? As creative as painting, writing, composing... the artist is using digital tools, creating worlds, merveilleux!

An architect's dream!

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Direct link: World Builder.


Update March 13th:

Awww, this is so sweet! This video has been viewed over half a million times, and he has time to send out these tiny batches of thank-you's...an amazing guy, clearly.

bbranit has sent you a message:

World Builder Thanks

To:[about 20 people, including me]

Thank you for your support and your kind comments. Really an overwhelming and amazing response. Now I am speechless. It's been a real pleasure to see everyone embrace this movie. The feedback has been tremendous!

If you are on Facebook please stop by and become an official fan of the short. I hope to be able to expand upon the story of the builder and his love in a larger feature film as many of you have asked about. Everyone here and their response may help make that happen. So check out....

http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Builder/73936485659

...I hope to have some updates and inside info on there every now and then.

Bruce Branit