Dodes’ka-den is described as “a kind of guerrilla filmmaking”. The 1970 production was month long exercise in rapid and cost effective design decision making. In the course of this exercise, Kurosawa established a bold new aesthetic for color and character driven storytelling. His use of color is iconic, and surreal, while never disrupting one’s emotional engagement with the narrative.

It’s tempting to interpret Dodes’ka-den as the foreshadowing of stylistic techniques yet to be fully revealed. Tempting; the film is minimal and schematic in relation to Kurosawa’s body of work. As strong as his feeling for color was in 1970, the thoughts come across as an emerging dialect, while later expressions “Kagemusha” (’80) and “Ran” (’85) - both of them - present formal and immersive master courses in a stunning visual language.

No blogging recently. My main project this year has involved regular writing about management, behind a corporate firewall. I’ve had no interest in practicing more writing here.

That project has been fun. For the past year I’ve been acting as a part time, remote, interim CEO for a client, while leading them through a restructuring effort. The project was another fine opportunity to refine a variety of ideas that I’ve been referring to generally as the “growth management” approach.

The areas of emphasis on this project included:
* collaborative planning and project management;
* strategic design and integration of tactics between departments;
* business process re-engineering, and
* financial management.

The restructuring was a success and an excellent learning experience for the whole team, myself included. I look forward to building on this practice.

You’re an independent artist, or a business, and you’re planning to produce a physical media product. First you should figure out which format is best. Don’t necessarily assume that a CD is the right format!

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume you’ve decided on CD. Let’s also assume that you’re going to work with a producer to help manage the entire project. Here’s a basic overview of some key details in producing a commercial CD.

Think of a CD project as having four management areas:
1.) content
2.) packaging
3.) promotion
4.) distribution

There are many different types of producers and some offer a broad scope of services. One of the roles a producer may take on is to make effective design decisions regarding the project’s narrative in all four areas listed above. In other words, the story of the content should be reflected in the packaging art, in the choice of packaging materials, the the types and location of promotion, in the sources of distribution, and so on.

Some producers will go so far as to match the sonic qualities of the recording with the style graphics (album art, web art, band publicity images, etc.) For example, they are aware that a certain microphone matched with a certain pre-amp will allow them to create a specific texture in the mix. That texture will translate through mastering as a design motif - and that motif or idea can be repeated in other management decisions across the full scope of the project. This may seem extreme, but repetition is a great storytelling technique, and great stories out-perform mediocre ones.

It’s usually not difficult to create a consistent set of aesthetics and related marketing decisions. Many artists enjoy making the decisions that most directly impact their creative vision. In the scheme of production obstacles, some producers will facilitate decision making, and if needed they can be called upon to make good decisions.

Other producers will join a project with the explicit understanding that they have creative direction over all areas. In this latter case, you entrust the producer to do a good job turning the vision into an product. You’ll likely have plenty of opportunities to provide input, but the contract will be structured around the understanding that the producer has decision making authority.

From my experience, the larger challenges with packaging, promotion and distribution have to do with market familiarity. Do you know the market? Meaning, the producer will probably have more and better information about the what, where, and with whom to get things done.

With manufacturing, for example, there are a wide range of vendors, near and far. A label will traditional be involved in that decision. But in the case of an independent act, you can either learn for yourself or search out someone who knows.

Another timely issue, one that’s difficult for artists and professional producers alike, is to stay current with the constantly changing state of online promotion and distribution. Questions to consider:

• Blog outreach?
• If so, which ones?
• Partner with an online distribution company?
• If so, which one?
• Partner with a label?
• If so, which one?

Some of the most technical questions have to do the bands web presence. Not every producer has first hand experience with social media, or web development project management. Nor should they! My point should be clear - different producers bring different skills to the project.

The point that I’m working towards is to establish narrative integrity in all aspects of the project.

Please remember too that you can and should handle as many of the production tasks as you’re comfortable doing. Do it yourself and you’ll have a great learning experience. Alternately, you can hire an independent producer with the skills you’re looking for.

The right producer will do much more than help you write, rehearse, refine and record your content. She’ll have a strong sense for all major decisions in the four key areas listed above (content, packaging, promotion, and distribution). This style of producer will bring a diverse set of skills and experience - ranging from songwriting, to engineering, to budgeting, to emerging technologies.

As distribution and production costs continue to change, I expect this style of producer to become increasingly common. It’s what I’ve done on the last three projects I’ve produced; not by choice (the creative process is often more fun), but by necessity. Artists have limited budgets and now more than ever they can use good advice for making the most of their ideas.

The Jomox “Resonator Neuronium”. Obnoxious name and I enjoy obnoxious names.

The Youtube comments are as funny as you’d expect - ranging from “This is bar-none the coolest thing on youtube…” to “very bored piece of hardware[...]”

There are other ways to generate atmospheric loops and I’ve never seen any that can be as dynamically and organically modulated; it has the potential for highly expressive if inherently unpredictable performances in the hands of a skilled tweaker. The video gives a quick impression of how the Resonator interacts with sequenced midi data and heavy delay. I believe it has 1/4 inch stereo inputs too.

In 1990, environmental economist Herman E. Daly published a work in the journal of the Society for International Development titled “Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem”.

The premise of this short article is straight forward; in a world of finite resources, indefinite economic growth is not a viable option.

In Daly’s words:

Impossibility statements are the very foundation of science. It is impossible to: travel faster than the speed of light; create or destroy matter-energy; build a perpetual motion machine, etc. By respecting impossibility theorems we avoid wasting resources on projects that are bound to fail. Therefore economists should be very interested in impossibility theorems, especially the one to be demonstrated here, namely that it is impossible for the world economy to grow its way out of poverty and environmental degradation. In other words, sustainable growth is impossible.

It’s unavoidable - the economy relies on a massive but not limitless quantity of natural resources and life supporting services. Common wisdom has been slow to catch on to this fact.

Business leaders are intelligent and well educated. They can conceive of the limits of growth. And then what?

Mentioned this enjoyable movie in an earlier post. The poetic true-life story treats time as a central character. Much of the footage is from the 70’s (it’s affecting to see the twin towers in their infancy). The scenes of New York are moving.

The perpetrators of the event were preparing a film from their earliest stages of planning. They spent 6 years planning the walk, and several decades producing the film.

Meanwhile, the spectacle itself is an exercise in total focus on the present, a moment which results only from a sustained vision into the distant future. Philippe Petit displays enormous organizational ability, courage, highly refined acrobatic skills and a zen like appreciation of the now moment.

“Siberiade” is a spectacular film by Andrei Konchalovsky. The four part epic story reveals many ancient and modern themes, in an ambitious effort to understand humanness in times of cultural instability.

The title of this post is in reference to Siberiade character Afanasy Ustyuzhanin, who abandons the social and economic responsibilities of his tiny village to clear a road through the woods, on course to a distant region told in folk stories as a source of great danger (”the Devil’s Mane”). His friends and family criticize this irrational pursuit. Society fears that the road will lead to spiritual ruin. The labor is backbreaking and his course is openly self-destructive.

Despite all physical and emotional obstacles, Afanasy continues until ultimately he is overcome by nature and dies on the job; pretty heavy stuff. And the question is clear - why? Why is he obsessed with this project? What drives a man to such madness?

Character Afanasy brings to mind a brush clearing fanatic down in Crawford, Texas.

Indeed, Oliver Stone paid tribute to Konchalovsky in his recent work “W.” Stone’s sequence of young W. working with a Texas oil crew invokes several scenes from Siberiade. It’s hard to not  view W’s behavior in the context of characters Aleksey Ustyuzhanin and his tree chopping grandfather Afanasy.

These two excellent films are essential viewing for anyone who seeks to understand the social, cultural, and environmental impacts of economic globalization. I encourage watching them both in succession, starting with Stone.

There’s a moment during one of the black power scenes in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Sympathy for the Devil” where the narrator speaks from the perspective of the economic elite about using drive in movies as a means to control the masses. Godard’s intent was to explore mass culture as an artsy intellectual critique of the failures of intellectualism. It’s a slow paced, abstract piece with many hidden layers of symbolism, beautiful recording studio footage and exceptional narration.

The story of the film production is interesting too. Not surprisingly there were conflicts between Godard’s original vision and the final product that went to market. It’s amusing to think that a studio would work with a known trickster like Godard, and expect the results to somehow not explode in their faces.

Unlike modern productions featuring trendy pop stars, Godard’s 1968 message was that consumers were obligated to engage in the culture. He argued that fans of the Stones shouldn’t be content with the mass produced and slickly marketed blues rock of that period. Rather fans should dig deeper and learn about the roots of blues music. What’s more, you can’t watch his footage of the Stones in rehearsal without sensing a sort of bemused amateurism in these pop art icons. It’s strong realism that brings the subjects down to earth while inspiring a different type of respect for their work and the work of their producers!

Speaking of great work, friends at the Disposable Film Festival are doing a fine job shining a light on an emerging genre of video art - video produced using non-professional equipment. Their second festival in SF a few months ago was a big success and they’re organizing screenings around the world. Currently they’re hosting a Bike in Movie screening on May 13, 2009 in downtown San Francisco. It’ll be a fun night.

You have to believe Godard would be pleased to learn of a bike in screening of cool new genre of DIY movies. Maybe someone on the internet will let him know.

Many have expressed confusion about the Banksters’ success in hustling ever greater piles of public cash.

The first Yakuza Papers film was released in 1973 by the Toei Company. “Battles Without Honor and Humanity” was so brilliantly written (Iiboshi & Kasahara), and directed (Fukasaku) that it inspired a five part series, countless filmmakers, and initiated a style of crime story that is popular still. A recent excellent example is Borrone’s 2008 “Gomorrah”.

How do otherwise well intentioned, hard working and responsible professionals become caught up in bad deals?

In the 1872 novel “Demons” (aka “The Possessed”, & “The Devils”), Dostoevsky’s character Stavrogin confronts character Pyotr Stepanovich with dangerous insight:

Here you’re counting off on your fingers what forces make up a circle? All this officialdom and sentimentality - it’s good glue, but there’s one thing better still: get four members of a circle to bump off a fifth on the pretense of his being an informer, and with this shed blood you’ll immediately tie them together in a single knot. They’ll become your slaves, they won’t dare rebel or call you to accounts.

It’s an extreme literary metaphor - written as dark caution against the risks of nihilism. Possibly also an oblique argument in favor of matrix management models; those where the benefits of transparency outweigh the inefficiencies/discomfort of chaos, complexity, and red tape.