YOUTUBE ATE MY ZOMBIES: A RANT

I don't use Youtube to host the videos that I post in this blog. I use Vimeo I have used Youtube in the past but I was never satisfied with the quality I got, no matter how I compressed the video. Vimeo allows me to use the Apple H.264 codec and get a very good quality video. The only downside to Vimeo is that using the free version as I do, I'm limited to how much I can upload in a week. Not usually a huge issue, but it can be inconvenient. The other "downside" to Vimeo is that it is not nearly as popular as Youtube.

The video of the Zombie Crawl in the previous post is hosted on Vimeo. But judging by the number (and variety) of motion cams I saw a the zombie crawl, I knew there must be a lot of video out there, probably on Youtube. Collette suggested I post the video on Youtube, so more people could see it.

So I did, and I got a couple of surprises. Firstly, I was pretty shocked at the quality of the video. I uploaded the same 315 mb H.264 file I used on Vimeo and the Youtube quality was good. Really really good. I was very happy with that, in that Youtube doesn't limit the number of vids you can upload and you can load very long vids too. My main purpose for hosting vids is to put them on this blog but it is nice to think that the vid will be hosted on a site accessible to so many people.

But my bliss was quickly demolished by a cold hard reality (isn't that always the way?) Now, I make these vids for fun, I don't use this blog to promote my business or showcase my commercial videos. It's just for entertainment. But i do have a certain standard I like to maintain so I spend some time creating the soundtracks; selecting the music, mixing it with the ambient sound from the video, making a nice mix between different songs, etc. Well, Youtube doesn't give a shit about that. I was totally shocked to find that Youtube had completely removed the audio from my video. All of the audio

The reasoning was copyright violations. Yes, I used commercial music, three songs I think. And yes, I do get the whole creative licence thing. I have had my own work pilfered by other studios and used as their promo, it's not good. But that's business. I'm certainly not making money off this blog or any of the videos on it and it would not be difficult for anyone to take them and use them as their own. I don't like that idea, but I can live with it.

And I get the legal ramifications. And I understand that sharing communities like Youtube are being spanked by entirely greed based entities like the recording industry (and if you think that this kind of legal action actually puts more money in the pockets of the artists, may I visit your planet some day?) So, OK, Youtube scorched my goofy little vid to protect themselves ... I've hosted vids on Google and they do the same thing. Though I have to say I have vids there whose soundtrack Youtube didn't remove and one video they removed entirely for copyright infringements... and since it was home video of Hayley, I'm wondering who's being protected here ...

So, now, what to do. I thought I could always go back and re edit the video using only the natural ambient sound. Creatively, this doesn't appeal to me and it was more work than I was willing to do. Then I find was looks like a solution, a Youtube feature called Audio Swap. They have a library of music that you are allowed to use. It's a pretty good library, with recognizable songs and artists. So although I had put a lot of thought into my original music choices I was willing to live with what the choices with which I was provided. But of course, there is always a rub ...

The problem with Audioswap is that it replaces your entire soundtrack, not just the music. So all the ambient sound was gone as well. So I wondered, was there a way I could download this song from Youtube and use it as my music bed, still maintaining that ambient sound? The answer was yes ... if I was willing to buy the song from iTunes.

OK, take a long pause here. Let's think about this. Youtube removed my audio because it contained music to which I did not have publishing rights, for a video from which I have no expectation of making money. Their solution: Pay them to use a song in my non profit hobby video.

You have to love greed, don't ya?

So the video is living there at the moment with a song from Audioswap, looking dorky because there are moments in the video where people are speaking and even singing but you can no longer here. It's too bad, cuz something has changed at Youtube and I'm finally able to get the quality of video I like, and I like the fact I could post much bigger files and more files there. But you know, I just don't think I can deal with this kind of bullshit. A file sharing site should be about people expressing their creativity to other people, it shouldn't be about said site imposing their concept of economic correctness on to you.

So let's all love Vimeo. Great quality uploads, freedom of expression and a real sense of community.

As for Youtube, clearly, the zombies ate its brain

TORONTO ZOMBIE CRAWL: "BRAINS! WITH A SIDE OF CHEESE"

I don't have much time. I think they're near. I can hear them, their feet shuffling in the hall, and the drone of their moans and groans, that makes my nerves go on edge. And I can smell them, a rancid combination of rotting flesh and freshly consumed brains ...

Zombies! Toronto has been taken over by zombies! Thousands of them, lurching through he street, eating flesh and screaming "Brains! Brains!"

I stumbled upon them quite by accident, gathered at a downtown park not far from the Ontario Art Gallery. Hmmm, is there some correlation between gov't sponsored culture and a lack of brains?

At any rate, there were thousands of zombies, being trained for their assault on the city.

I'm not sure where they come from but apparently this happens every year around this time, perhaps it's connected to some arcane astronomical event or perhaps an ancient redundant curse. It doesn't really matter. All that counts is that my city has been inundated with the shuffling undead. They're leader, a seemingly charming young lady who must secretly be some kind of Voodoo High Priestess, gave her minions their marching orders or, rather, their lurching orders. A route through the city was laid out for them. I noticed they bypassed City Hall and Queen's Park. Clearly, not enough brains to satiate their hunger.

I noticed a police presence. Hooray I thought. We're going to vanquish the undead horde! Alas, that was not to be. Apparently the Metro Police have fallen under Zombie Queen's spell, they were assisting the zombies! Perhaps it's voodoo. More likely it's time and a half.

The zombies began their crawl through the city, nibbling on each other and slurping down the liquid sustenance that supports them .. apparently this is Tim Horton's coffee.

I managed to sneak in among the horde and although several of them made hideous attacks on me, nobody ate my brain ............................. I won't ponder on this for long. But I was able to observe and record the horrible assault on tape. It's a good thing zombies aren't very observant. They missed my Canon XL1 , and the mid range HD cams and the broadcast cams and the super 8 cams and the 16 mm cam and ... there were a lot of cams, that's what I'm saying.

Strangely enough most of the citizens seemed to welcome the brain eating throng; hey it's a parade! Torontonians are so easy.

Finally the zombies ended their crawl at a place where they could kick back, relax and enjoy themselves in all their mindless glory. They went to watch horror movies.

Toronto Zombie Walk from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THANKSGIVING 2: TURKEY IN THE BUSH

OK I'm going to let you on a secret, held so dear that after I reveal it, I may have to go into Witness Protection. I'm going to tell you how they do Thanksgiving up on the Georgian Bay. Every year, the hearty plaid-coated males camo paint their faces and wrap their Canadian Ale neck ties around their heads, Rambo-style. They arm themselves with combat knives and cans of ale and go out in search of the rare Northern Ontario wild turkey ... but since there are no wild turkeys in Ontario, they slink on their bellies down the aisles of the nearest Sobey's Supermarket. Once the elusive prey is caught, they bring it to their hearty women who forthwith build massive bonfires and toss the birds into the flames as they scour the countryside in search of stuffing and potatoes and Bailey's Irish Cream ...

OK, none of that is true. But a Georgian Bay Thanksgiving is still attractive.

Normally we don't do much for Thanksgiving, we stay at home, I cook a turkey, we invite anyone else who isn't going home .. but this year we went up to Springhaven Lode, owned by Collette's family.

Collette's sister in law Karen was serving her usual delicious dinner at the lodge, but her brother Dennis was organizing a boat ride out on to the bay. He does this every year. Takes out his big work boat and we go to an island where he is building one of his cottages for his clients. There we have a lunch and play games but the weather this year was pretty bad, our niece Billie Marie had her newborn, David in tow and Dennis' daughter Jen was expecting .. as a matter of fact she had her son the following Tuesday.

But Dennis is a resourceful guy not so easily defeated. On the road that leads from Dennis' house to the lodge, there is a little clearing marked by some of the high, heavy rounded rocks typical of the Canadian Shield.

If you follow the rocks back, it opens into a small clearing, where Dennis set up a lean to, picnic tables and had a fire going, where we would have our lunch.

If you walked past the fire, the clearing opened up onto this enormous wetland, or swamp depending on point of view, that went on for miles. There were several beaver dams, the ominpresent rocks, tons of pine and birch trees.

Down at the lodge, less than a mile away it was cold, grey and blustery but here it was mild and mostly sunny. As you'll see in the video, it was a perfect day to bask on the rock over looking the swamp ..er .. wetland.

And a perfect day for grandads to connect with granddaughters ...

... and for grand nephews to enjoy some quiet time with a snack in an Adirondack chair ..

After a lovely day out in the bush, we went back to the lodge for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. One of the guests of honour, you could say, was our niece's Billie-Marie's newborn, Mr David Hunter.

But as beautiful as Mr David is, as far as his sister Addison is concerned, nothing beats the attractive power of cake ...

Particularly when the cake looked like this. Addison decided that all the little people on the cake were the tastiest parts

So it was a fun Thanksgiving in the bush ... even if we didn't have to catch the bird with our hands ... Here's the video of our lovely picnic in the bush.

A Canadian Thanksgiving from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THANKSGIVING 1: THE GIRLS

Been pretty busy with work lately so I'm behind on my posting. So here is the first of two posts on our Thanksgiving earlier this month. We were delighted when Collette's brother Garry invited us up to the family lodge to celebrate the holiday. The entire family would be there including David, our latest nephew of a niece so we were very eager to attend.

Besides seeing Collette's family and being able to enjoy the beauty of the Georgian Bay in Fall, we had another inspiration to go up to Pointe Au Baril; Terra had never been there before.
Hayley has always loved going up to Springhaven Lodge; the water, the bush, the road and this time of year there aren't many guests staying there, so she usually has run of the place. We knew Terra would love it too, this dog is nuts about water. It has an undeniable affect upon her, it's like border collie crack.

She took to it like a duck to water, or a border collie to sheep or .. well, there's a video attached, check it out.

Of course Terra was a fanatic when it came to fetching the ball out of the water. That was a given. But she also got to indulge in one of her favorite sports: Herding ripples. In the video you'll see her pawing at the water but what she is actually doing is using her paws and mouth to make the ripples go where she wants them to go. No, she's not nuts, she's just a border collie.

Besides the water, the new experience for Terra was the bush. Trees. Lots of trees. Terra loves trees, squirrels live in trees and it's Terra duty to chase them out. But here in the Toronto parks you have little groups of trees, say three or four, scattered about. Up there .. well, there's a tree every foot or so. At one point Terra was pretty much spinning in circles, barking her fool head off.

Then there were the smells. Although we live in the middle of Toronto we do have a lot of wildlife around here; squirrels, raccoons, skunks, possums, foxes, rabbits .. there are even coyotes not far from here. But up north there are deer, fishers, moose, bears ... the latter of which almost said "hello" to my plastic car on the drive up. Their smells drove poor Terra crazy. Hayley of course is a good bear dog. I remember the first time she found bear scat. She came up to it, gave it a sniff and started to circle it, till she ended up behind me, pointing in the opposite direction as if she was saying "Dad, let's get the fuck out of here."

And yes, Hayley was still able to enjoy her beloved Springhaven even with an annoying puppy in tow. The old girl has, actually, come to appreciate the puppy; hey damn, I have my very own sheep to herd ..

So water, trees, critters, long walks, fetching, herding .. a very successful weekend for our girls. And us. Next post: Turkey in the bush.

Terra & Hayley Up North from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

NUIT BLANCHE 2009: HAVE YOUR SPECTACLE(S) READY

There is nothing better to make you question your definitions of art than Nuit Blanche. This was our second time attending Toronto's all night downtown arts festival and it has quickly become one of our favorite events.

We love this event but we had fear we may have to miss it this year. Saturday was terrible, every time I took out the dogs it poured. When I had them at the off leash in the afternoon a cloud rolled over us that was so dark and rainy and lighting-filled, I expected Toto to come tumbling down to visit us. But by the time Collette and I got downtown after sunset, it had turned into a dry, slightly cool, very lovely autumn evening.

We tended to stick mostly to the outdoor installations, partly because the weather was indeed so good and it was cool to see "art" in the closed off streets but also because the line ups were usually massive for these interior events. Judging what to see is always a dilemma. There were over 130 exhibits, scattered all around the downtown core and slightly to the east of it. It's a cool thing to wander along and spot one of the tall white Nuit Blanche flags and say "Hey, here's something, let's see what it is" They also provide you with a booklet but sometimes interpreting what an installation may be from these vague descriptions can be a dicey affair.

I don't know if a lot of the exhibits we saw this year were art. I think the more appropriate term may be "spectacle" In the sense of something big and unusual and designed to engage the public. The first installation we saw was entitled Ice Queen, Glacial Retreat Dress Tent.

The book described it as "a towering ice berg dress animated by Butoh-inspired dance and glacial imagery ... global warming ... as well as the dress explores desire, body and land from a female-centered perspective"

But basically, you know, it was a chick in a big white tent.

The next installation definitely qualified as spectacle. A giant, sliver rabbit balloon hanging inside the Eaton Centre may not be art, but spectacle it certainly is

The booklet talks about the giant balloon as being able, through its size and its reflective qualities, to transport us through the looking glass. Sure. Maybe it's not a carrot that the rabbit is holding but something that requires a flame

From the giant bunny we went on to an installation that really does define spectacle. It was called Battle Royal and it took place at the downtown bus terminal. Again, referring to the book, "Occupying a space between literary representation, wrestling spectacle and art performance, Battle Royal is an unscripted event ... manifesting the artist's own personal fear of societal invisibility"

When we got there, the giant cage they had built in the middle of the bus depot was not filled with gladiators. It was filled with volunteers, blind folded, stumbling around, bumping into each other and tossing each other to the ground as a narrator proclaimed "There is no contact during this round"

Art? Spectacle? Audience participation, certainly. Did it meet the aspirations of the book's eloquent description? Not hardly. But we learned that the "real wrestlers" would fight later, so we decided to come back. The nice thing about Nuit Blanche, it runs all night, we had plenty of time.

Back into the crowd, into the night, large stretches of Bay Street closed off, people milling about, searching for the tall white flags and wondering what they would lead us to. Cool. Cool. We passed by a couple of other installations. Pwn the Wall was a kind of electronic graffiti, where people stood in a little tent and used a digital "spray can" to create images on a screen that were projected, in real time, on the giant wall of the Canadian Tire store across the street.

Over at Nathan Phillip square, these giant LED's had been hung between the two towers that make up City Hall. Words were being created by the lights, all of them only four letters in length. And no, we didn't stay long enough to find out if "that" four letter word was among them.

As I state, it's fun to wander around, seeking the flags and seeing what you've stumbled upon. At the old Court House, we spotted the Nuit Blanche flag and a huge crowd milling about. Up on the steps, was a bearded guy with this word balloon sign over his head:

This was something pretty cool. It was something very simple. It was a guy called Dave, and his friends, who wanted to connect with people the old fashioned organic way. So while many of the installations employed technology to deliver their message, there would be no cell phones or texting here. You want to talk to Dave, you walk on up and say Hey. Nope, this wasn't art and I'm not sure it was spectacle, but it made me smile and struck a sympathetic nerve. Now, the line up was huge so I didn't actually get to say Hey to Dave, but brother I loved this idea.

From the City Hall area we wandered down Bay St into Toronto's financial district. This was the first time for Nuit Blanche that they blocked this street off. At night, even on the weekend, Bay St is like a ghost town. So it was very cool to see it crowded with people, walking, talking, laughing ... for me, this was spectacle in itself, and maybe even art.

The normally quiet street got even more raucous the further south we went. We stumbled upon a little carnival; rides, cotton candy, hot dogs, all down the middle of the street. But this is Nuit Blanche, and of course it wasn't just a carnival. This was an installation, called Wild Ride.

The rides and concession stands were all manned by financial sector workers who had lost their jobs. The idea seemed to be it's all just a game, played for fun, except the stuffed bunnies are real people and the game represents people's lives.

Just the idea of the carnival on Bay St was enough for me to like it. Isn't Bay St a kind of carnival already? So spectacle, with cotton candy. That's my favorite kind.

At that point we went back up to Yonge & Dundas for dinner and from there, decided to slide back over to the bus station to see what was happening with the Battle Royal. Oh, a spectacle of roman (please note the small "r") proportions. The pro wrestlers were in. A battle royal is an event where they load the cage with wrestlers and they begin to throw each other out. Last man standing, wins.

Well, no blindfolded wrestler was throwing another blindfolded wrestler out of this huge cage. There were ref's but they were your typical pro wrestling refs, apparently as blindfolded as the wrestlers and drunk but I'm assuming they were acknowledging tap outs and tossing out fighters.

This round of the Battle Royal may have come closer to the concept of Roman spectacle. Not so much for the wrestlers themselves, though they were going at it hammer and tong, but more for the audience. Collette found herself surrounded by some die hard wrestling fans. Diehard, because they knew all these guys and trust me, this is the very shallow end of the pro wrestling pool, if you know these guys you are diehard indeed.

I still don't really know what the artist intended here, but this was spectacle, especially as the crowd got into it, chanting and gesticulating, as you'll see in the video. There is no way on earth that you could have thought this was real, but the guys were selling with all their hearts and I don't think the fans cared; they wanted this involvement, they needed this connection. Perhaps there is an art in that.

From the bus station we wandered back down Bay St to Larry Sefton Park to view an installation called Ghost Chorus, Dirge for Dead Slang. The book describes it as: "ghostly apparitions raise their voices to the driving melancholic baseline from the beyond to revifify outmoded slang of the long and recent past"

But what it was, was a bunch of people in sheets reading stuff in voices so low that you couldn't understand what were they were saying even when right next to them. Art? I don't know, but a fail on the spectacle.

From the park we went up to BCE place to see The Witches Cradles. Apparently back in the witch trial days, they would hoist women up in these shrouds to torture them and they were later "reclaimed" by witches. In this exhibit, you could have yourself put in the cradle, blindfolded, ears plugged, like a sensory deprivation chamber. People were hoisted up in these pods and slowly swayed. I'm a bit too claustrophobic for this experience but it's an interesting idea. Not much artistry here, everything was contemporary and functional and from an audience stand point, not much in the way of spectacle.

Down the street, in the Royal Bank Plaza, we found a brightly coloured mini van with furniture on top of it and an animal skull stuck to the hood. It was part of Gone Indian 2009. The performance featured a male dancer in fairly traditional fancy dance and a woman in dungarees who added some kind of dramatic commentary.

The woman had bags of pennies, which she sliced open, dumping on the ground. At one point in his dance, the man kicked the coins, scattering them about. In front of the gigantic Royal Bank building, with its windows that contain real gold, the significance of this act by these First Nations people were not lost on me.

From the plaza we went down to Union Station for the final installation of the evening. It was called Imminent Departure and it became one of our favorite exhibits of the evening.

The Great Hall in Union Station had been transformed. Wreathed in smoke and miss, dark, the big clock seeming to float in limbo. Sounds skirled through the cavernous space. Voices, bits of conversation, the sound of trains, footsteps echoing on the marble. Ghosts. Travellers, their spirits still travelling, as if their bodies had long departed this space but their voices still lingered, forever caught in transit.

At one point one of the ghost trains came into the station, the sound of the wheels rumbling, actually shaking the floor, great gouts of steam spewing across the huge room

We really really liked this piece. It was just filled with emotion and feeling and portent. We could have lingered there for an hour but at this point it was almost 4 a.m. and definitely time to make our way home. We had dogs to walk in a few hours.

All in all a very successful night. Great weather, great crowds and some pretty cool stuff to see. So, was it art? I don't know, Art is probably just some guy. But a lot of it was certainly spectacle: Something unique that attracts audience attention. And ephemeral. Hard to think that in a few hours after we left Union Station the mist and the ghosts would be gone. The carnival would have disappeared from Bay Street. The cage full of sweating men would no longer be in the bus station. The city would return to normal. With only the memory of the ghosts and the spirits and the singing lingering, if only for a while.

So here's the video. It features the exhibits we visited. Music by Sarah Brightman and Enigma. Forgive the grain on the ghostly reading exhibit, it was damn dark in there, but I wanted to give you a sense of the audio, or lack of it. Other than that, I love some of these images, especially the city at night, and all the people wandering through it. Can't wait till next year.

Nuit Blanche 2009 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

AUTUMNAL

It's coming. It's not obvious right away, but it's happening. You have to be vigilant to notice it. It's subtle. Sneaky. Ninja like. But as John Wayne said in The Searchers "Son, you got to learn to read the signs"

Some signs are obvious. This morning I went around the house flipping all the calendars to October. Mostly a delightful experience. The adult border collie calendar in the living room, the puppy calendar in the bedroom. The adult is a brown and white border, the puppy a tri colour, both different from our two black and whites. But collies nonetheless. You have to smile, just looking at them.

In the hallway I flipped to the new month and picture in the Tom Thompson calendar. An oil painting of a northern river, cold and blue and about to be iced over. Beautiful.

In my office, a rather bittersweet experience, as I change the month/picture on my When Darkness Falls fantasy women calendar. Miss October is some kind of autumn wood nymph with purple fairy wings and a stripper's outfit (yeh it's that kind of calendar) She is lovely, but Miss September and I were, I think, just beginning to connect. Ah well.

Other signs. The weather is changing. Walking the girls I've gone from shorts and tank tops to jeans and sweaters. Still, this morning was sunny with very little wind and there was warmth on my face. The evening walks are different of course; as the sun sets you can feel that coldness, that turn of the air you don't feel in any other season. Fall. It's sneaking in.

Autumnal. I love that word.

There are leaves down in my backyard but you can't really see the leaves changing here in the city, our neighbourhood has too many pine trees. If I drove west and south into the Niagra valley I'm sure I'd see it, as the orchards and farm trees become set ablaze. We're going up to the Georgian Bay for Thanksgiving and I know we'll see that full riot of colour, much as in the Tom Thompson print.

This weekend is Nuit Blanche, a Toronto autumn tradition. Which means art installations to see and cold pellets of rain to dodge.

When is Fall? September seems too early. In the last few years Sept has been our last gasp of summer. Sun, temps in the high 20's. It's only begun to get cool in the last few days. November seems too late for Fall. It will be cold then. In years past I wouldn't have expected to see snow in Nov in southern Ontario but these days, that is more than possible. November is winter, no matter what you tell me.

For me, October is Fall. Thanksgiving. The harvest. Halloween, when you feel that cold wind skirling around your ankles as the kids scurry about in their costumes. That special wind. Not of summer, not of winter, but something all to itself. Cool, but with the dying summer still faintly warm on its back and redolent of dead leaves and black earth, once powerful and rich, not getting ready to rest.

Autumnal.

I get nostalgic during this season. I always think of Kingston, it's such a perfect autumn town. The grey limestone buildings and the cold lake battering against the breakwater and the leaves falling down in the parks, skirling around you as you hug the collar of your jacket around your neck; the leaves falling like sparks falling downward, the colour hot and vibrant but the leaf cold as they touch your face.

I think back even further, to the fall I experienced in Thompson, Manitoba. Land of permafrost. Jack pines and birch trees. In the morning, standing by little Moak Lake, looking across its placid surface, wraithed in mist, to the endless miles of wooded hills, the deep placid green of the pines occasionally disrupted by the boisterous yellow of the birch trees as they waited to shed.

Or of Collette's home up on the Georgian Bay, a wide variety of trees, greens and yellows and reds, smeared through the vallies like an oil painting gone amok. The big lake becoming dark and still and silent, filled with cold and power and secrets.

Autumnal

I moan about our lack of real summer but I do love this time of year. Cool and clean, the parks emptier, but still not winter, you can still smell grass, the scent of the leaves. Me and my dogs and my lady walking the trails, small puddles gleaming like dark glass. The sky its own colour, the colour of fall, of harvest, of autumn.

It's coming. Close your eyes.

It's here.