Page 4 of 25

Posted on

From Page to Stage: Newark in Black and Blue in 2004

In the Fall of 2004, I was teaching a course at Rutgers University in Newark called “From Page to Stage” where the idea — as I was teaching the course — was to take original scripts written in class and present them in live performance to learn how the process of active creation worked.

The final project was a series of group presentations where students shared their lives as they were living it — and the alarming result of one racially diverse group was: “Newark in Black and Blue.”  That group’s bruising presentation was tough and blunt and dramatic and I decided we had to record that performance in audio so we could preserve the truth of the moment.

Continue reading → From Page to Stage: Newark in Black and Blue in 2004

Posted on

The DiJiFi Review: Film, Video and Audio Restoration, Preservation and Translation

[UPDATED: June 26, 2014]

I have been writing and working in film and TV and radio all of my life.  I started young and I’m ending old!  I recently decided to upgrade part of my Boles.com website into a Prairie Voice archive of some of my previous work so it is more readily accessible and referenceable by collaborators and others.

I have so much film and videotape and audio stored that I didn’t know where to start the archiving process.  Then I decided to just get the scripts and other documents online that I had within hands reach — and that included some film and video and audio, too!  I contacted Parlay Studios in Jersey City for help transferring all this analog work into a digitized form for web streaming and Parlay pointed me to — DiJiFi in Brooklyn, New York — and that was best piece of pointery I’ve received in the last decade.  Continue reading → The DiJiFi Review: Film, Video and Audio Restoration, Preservation and Translation

Posted on

New York City Union Square Street Performance

Yesterday, I was fortunate to watch a live Memorial Day weekend performance in Union Square in New York City. The performers were wild and quite enjoyable and I have some video tidbits of the event to share with you.


Continue reading → New York City Union Square Street Performance

Posted on

A 21-Second Memorial Day Weekend Blow Up and Beat Down in New York City’s Union Square Park

Yesterday afternoon, I was hanging out in Union Square Park in New York City and I captured this cool, 21-second bite of musical blowing and beating you can enjoy after the jump!

Continue reading → A 21-Second Memorial Day Weekend Blow Up and Beat Down in New York City’s Union Square Park

Posted on

Relaunching Boles Dot Com as a Preservation Portal and Restoration Reserve

Since uploading over 500 videos to Vimeo PRO — I’ve been thinking about content and production and restoration and preservation of all the things I’ve worked on over the arc of a lifetime — and I decided now was the time to start digitizing the mountains of paper and film and video and audiotapes that engulf the small gully of my world.

Continue reading → Relaunching Boles Dot Com as a Preservation Portal and Restoration Reserve

Posted on

Poopy Chicken: A VideoPress, YouTube and Vimeo PRO Streaming Test

Hi there! This is a “Poopy Chicken” streaming video test for VideoPress, YouTube and Vimeo PRO. Poopy Chicken in a 14-second video shot in HD on an iPhone 5S. Nothing was done to the videos on any service. No enhancements. No editing. Straight from the iPhone to getting uploaded to the video services.

Continue reading → Poopy Chicken: A VideoPress, YouTube and Vimeo PRO Streaming Test

Posted on

Soviet Year 1987: The Making of Amerika by ABC Pictures

The year was 1987 and Lincoln, Nebraska was still fresh off its Oscar-winning buzz for “Terms of Endearment” in 1984.  The new high was a 14.5 hour, seven-nights-in-a-row, mega-miniseries called “Amerika” to be shot on location around the outskirts of Lincoln and aired on the ABC Television network.

Continue reading → Soviet Year 1987: The Making of Amerika by ABC Pictures

Posted on

The Unrepentant: Hart Bochner Would Rather Kill You than Kiss You

Hart Bochner is one of those deliciously rare character actors who can grab a role and make it belong only to him. Danger is his essence.  You love to loathe him.  Hart usually plays the bad guy in a movie and he does the dark side so evilly well.

Over the weekend, we watched the middling 1998 movie Break Up on Netflix starring the always fantastic Bridget Fonda — who has been sadly missing in entertainment action since her 2003 car accident when she broke her back — and the always infamous Hart Bochner.

The movie stars Bridget, but the story belongs to Hart.

Continue reading → The Unrepentant: Hart Bochner Would Rather Kill You than Kiss You

Posted on

Superman, Batman and Spider-Man: How Murdering Loss Creates Comic Book Character

Over the holiday break, I decided to watch the newest Superman movie and I was certainly disappointed in the silly story, the rebooting of the franchise, and the awful acting of the lead character.  Superman should be wily, and funny, and tough.  He never preens.

It’s always boring when movie production houses feel they have to re-start a story that’s been never-endingly told for generations.  We pretty much know the backstory of Superman and we don’t need to re-live, over and over again, every 10 years or so, just how the star child becomes the Superman on earth.

In my short life, I think I’ve lived through at least a dozen iterations of Superman in film and on television and I would be perfectly fine to have a new Superman just appear in media res.  We get it he’s special and Superhuman, so just drop him in and let the story start with no explanation necessary!

Continue reading → Superman, Batman and Spider-Man: How Murdering Loss Creates Comic Book Character

Posted on

The New Rude Millennials

The “Rude Mechanicals” play a major role in Shakespeare’s beloved A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

I think we’re on pretty safe ground in saying that the only purpose the Rude Mechanicals serve is a comedic one. The question is what kind of humour is being elicited, and is it possible for us to ‘get’ all of the comedy of the play today?

Well, some of it’s plain and ageless enough: Their repeated oxymorons, “most lamentable comedy”; Bottom’s diva-like behaviour, “That will ask some tears in the true performing of it”; and the complete hash that is the product of their attempts at amateur dramatics.

Today, I argue we have a whole new class of “Rude Mechanicals” in real society — but they’re Millennials, not Mechanicals — and they’re new, and rude, and play the same role in the drama of our lives as the Shakespearean mechs before them.

Continue reading → The New Rude Millennials