Welcome to Frogband Productions. This blog will keep you up to date on the latest projects that Tyrel Ventura and L. Jeffrey Moore have to offer to the world. thanks for visiting and come again.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Flash!!!! Ahhh Ahhhh Worst show on television. Pt 1
When I was a kid there were a handful of movies that have sent me on the road to becoming a filmmaker/actor. Superman, the Star Wars trilogy and the little sleeper movie Flash Gordon circa 1980. When the Sci-fi channel announced that they were revamping flash gordon, I was excited. and then.....my seventh sense (able to sense a bad show or movie) kicked in and I tried to fight it. then I started to see pictures on the set and then when I saw who they chose to play Ming the Merciless (and yes he is the merciless) I ignored my seventh sense. No disrespect to the actor playing (hey any work is good work) but dammit where's Max Von Sydow? Even then I said to myself just wait until it plays and give it shot. So I set my dvr to record it and then i watched it.... This show is ultimatly the worst science fiction show I have ever stomached. I'll write more later as I am packing in preperation to drive down to LA but I promise to give a detailed reason as to my displeasure.
Lj
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Untitled Documentary....a slow process
As some of you may know I am working on a documentary about the urgent need for young African Americans to know more about their culture and the story of Owen Sound Canada and the descendants of run away slaves who have settled there (for those of you who don't know this town is the northern most point of the underground railroad). I have just logged about 10 hours of footage and I am certain that I am not done interviewing in the least. The hardest part is just to sit down and start sifting through everything. I have to tell you though for a few days I have been taken back about the amount of work that is laying ahead of me. It's a bit daunting. But as the African proverb says: "how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." So today I have started to look at the first tape shot by Kelly at her old apartment (picture above). She is the catalyst that has started me on this journey. For the longest time I have been struggling as to what I am going to talk about. I mean I am not the first Black person to tackle this subject and I know I am not going to be the last. But what I hope to gain personally is to give another prospective to our country's biggest problem, and that is learning to live together as Americans and to help redifine the African American dream. And that ladies and gents is the question I am posing to myself, being a person of colour and to other people of the African diaspora.
Lj
The Camanche Cry For Self Expression
Where have we gone and what are we coming to? Even down here south of the border the stench of unoriginality comes crossing over like stagnant elephant dung on a white carpet. Maybe the observations and testaments forth coming are without merit or research so please educate and point this poor slob in the right internet direction so that my dictations are unfounded and made without merit. I'd rather be proven wrong than right on this score ladies and gentlemen. Here we live in a world of oppression, chaos, and warlike tendencies complete with a touch of boredom and a cherry of apathy that sits atop this sundae of inadequacy. A world of intelligent creation of means has given a canvass for storytellers like no other time before us and yet no one is acting on it beyond the chuckle inducing images of human stupidity and or the icy taste of viral marketing. In my scans of this vast menu of downloading and streaming of one and zeros all the storytelling I've come across are lonely girl fifteens and JJ Abrahms giant gila monsters of viral marketing. The Sixties and Vietnam brought us the golden age of cinema. Here we sit with the world burning, soldiers dying, and politicians proving that the Watergate job was small time dime store political hackery compared to the full on rape of the political processes their pulling off today. And yet we can't get beyond the "America's Funniest Home Videos" version of storytelling. Are there any kids out there creating something from the heart? We have the technology, we have the forum, yet we do nothing. All we do is bitch, myself included, but alas I'm not technology savvy like some of you kids are. I come from the first generation to grow up with computers. Some of my generation have the know how, most of us are still teaching ourselves how to use this great tool of communication. But I can't believe that those wonderful creative types younger than myself have no sense of self expression or the need to tell a story. Or are they too busy dressing their Myspace page and playing Halo 3 to take the time to grab a DV camera and a few friends and relieve the pain in their lives by creating something personal to them. It would appear with all the video sharing websites out there that we have the means to distribute without focus groups telling us what is right and what is not. Yes it's true we don't have the ability to make money creating these stories yet, but is that really the reason holding us back? Have we become so dependent on financial gain that we have given up creation for creations sake? Maybe the future titans of self expression are out there on this web of mediocrity but the gods of media do not promote them and the size of this internet beast prevents us from seeing their work. Maybe that last strange thought is the real vortex bitch of the issue. However it's been proven through history that if the expression is heartfelt and from a place of truth it will find an audience. And is that not the ultimate goal of expression? To find others stranded in life rafts sharing this vast ocean with you? So with guilt and sadness I write this next line. Maybe no one is out there trying to tell the truth and if they are then the souls touched by them are not doing their part to share it with the rest of us. If that is the case, than the audience that has found a piece of pure honest heartfelt storytelling on this net of insane means and meaningful insanity have violently dropped the ball in sharing it with the rest of us or are so egotistical that they'd rather keep it to themselves. Like I said prove me wrong in what I write. Give hope to a tall skinny kid on a writing tangent fed by cigarettes and moonlite waves.
T.
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