Michio Ito now available on Amazon

The short doc I completed last year with Bonnie Oda Homsey is now available for sale on Amazon. 

I loved working on this one. As a force on the cultural scene in pre-WWII Los Angeles, Ito was fascinating: a truly multicultural artist whose interracial company prefigures art-making from the end of the 20th Century. Not only that, but as a young performer Ito rubs shoulders with the giants of modern art, performance and literature like Pound, Yeats, and Shaw...he dances with Pavlova, confounds Stokowski, and trains a generation of modern dancers including Lester Horton and Bella Lewitsky in extravaganzas at the Hollywood Bowl. 

But with the coming of war, Ito falls under suspicion as a spy and provocateur. His Irish wife and Nisei sons can only watch helplessly as this supreme Modernist is interned and then deported.

He's an amazing figure and little-known outside the modern dance community...one of those people who seemed to be everywhere and know everyone for a time until darkness overtook him.... Check it out!

Video Design for Long Beach Opera

Tonight is the closing of a pair of Surrealist operas, TEARS OF A KNIFE (that's the picture) and THE BREASTS OF TIRESIAS: another fun collaboration with Ken Roht.

Interesting contrast here: TEARS had a single, slow cue...a pair of dying roses. BREASTS was an almost endless parade of gags and buttons and craziness...marching storks and pearly gates and 50's appliances and so on.

These two pieces are probably more craft than art for me, but so much fun nonetheless! The crazy, kitchen sink design of BREASTS had me pulling stuff out of mid-air. Those roses in TEARS were really lovely...but some of the BREASTS cues were among the most, well, ugly stuff I've ever done (see below).

Mark Swed in the times wrote a review that couldn't be bothered to engage with anything aside from what you'd see in a chamber version of these pieces...this one, on the other hand, is a little more interesting:
Surrealism or Bust

On the craft side: with the help of Chet Leonard we managed to run this show out of QLab...but I'm thinking I would like to try Isadora or even Watchout (given the budget). Next up will be some experiments with Isadora and a new Cannon I just bought.

Masters of Production...opening

Here's one I've been meaning to post for a while...the opening segments of my PBS doc on Production Design: MASTERS OF PRODUCTION. I think this is the thing I'm most proud of from my years working on arts/cinema docs: wrote, directed and edited this one myself in association with KCET (in the person of the wonderful Joyce Campbell) and with the unflagging support and excellent counsel of Citzie DeMille Presley.

My idea was to use the movies that everyone really had affection for: CHINATOWN, CITIZEN KANE, GONE WITH THE WIND, BLADE RUNNER, THE GODFATHER and so on...and to explore that Hollywood art that's hidden in plain sight.

The interviews were the most enjoyable ever: bar none. Production Designers are, as Jack DeGovia says, "The ultimate dilettantes...." They have to master everything, and they have to make it all fit. They tell the story in amazing and surprising ways.

The film is dedicated to Dick Sylbert...like I used to tell people on the project, "It's Dick Sylbert's Hollywood...we just work there." We spent a whole day with him, shooting all over L.A., and I learned a great lesson from that. The next day he wanted to know if we could get together and just record some audio: he had more stories to tell. I was up to my neck in production, and I begged off. Maybe later?

He was dying of pancreatic cancer, and that shoot was the last chance I had to talk with him. What had I missed by not taking him up on it? By not stopping and taking the time? I'll never know.

Karim's Bug Camera

For Christmas, we gave Emilien and Lucien (our neighbors) a little Praying Mantis hatchery...and the critters popped out the other day!

Their father Karim, who's done some amazing motion graphics for me, saw it as a golden opportunity to shoot some bugs! We added some crickets to the mix a little later in the evening...

SAME-O ... Extended!

Great (and wholly expected) News! SAME-O has extended!

For those of you who haven't heard of this phenom, director/writer/choreographer Ken Roht is mounting his SEVENTH "99 Cents Only" show: SAME-O! The sets, props, and costumes are all constructed from items from the 99 Cents Only store...only this year, Ken's shooting for a wholly sustainable/recyclable show.

I'm very pleased to have the chance to join the spectacular creative team Bootleg Theater has assembled...Ken gave me a giant screen upstage to shoot all sorts of interesing stuff at...and I've got video a few other places as well. Here's a little promo I just did...

SAME-O ... Extended!

99 Cents Only Show research: CicLAvia!

I'm working on the next edition of Ken Roht's 99 Cents Only show, and (like always) I've gotta do something new. That was always going to happen on a show involving Ken, but now that he's decided it's got to be totally sustainable/recyclable...well, that's really interesting, no? The 99 Cents Only show is the height of plastic and plasticity ...

Video is, of course, an analogue for plastic: it's bright and hard-edged. So how do you create theatrical video that is at once video, but also somehow speaks to the feel the show is now reaching for?

Here's one avenue I went down...I shot a stroll through CicLAvia last week with my wife Risa, our strolling buddy Jeann Young, and a whole mess of Angelenos. It was a spectacularly pastoral event on streets usually ruled by autos, and I wanted to do something with the video to capture that sunny mood.

Here's that video...using CartoonR and Sony Platinum to give it just the right heightened reality. Seems like it might work for some aspects of Ken's new show, SAME-O.

CicLAvia 10-10-10 in Los Angeles... from John Flynn on Vimeo.

John Joseph Flynn ... a short for the Memorial Convocation

This one pretty much speaks for itself, I think...

John Flynn - April 10, 1936 to Aprl 11, 2010 from John Flynn on Vimeo.

No No Boy Projections

I was cleaning up some old projects and came across these great photos from NO NO BOY...including the way the prouduction team used my projections.


See the Flickr stream here!

Working on video for NO NO BOY...

This has got to be my busiest year since creating Story Tactics: half a dozen projects in theater/opera/film, and half a dozen new multimedia commissions for various other clients.

First up is NO NO BOY, a project I have been working on and thinking about for over a year. Ken Narasaki has done a wonderful adapation of John Okada's groundbreaking novel about a Japanese American draft resister from WWII. Everyone knows about the internment of Japanese Americans during the war, many people know about the famed 442nd "Go For Broke" batallion that was covered in honors during WWII, but not so many people know the story of the people who resisted the government's loyalty oath because their freedoms were taken away. The scars within the Nisei-Sansei-Yonsei community are still there: I'm very intrigued to hear how people inside the community react.

So I am creating a lot of video for the piece, mostly video to set scenes and moods, but I'll also be doing a couple of pieces like this one. I'll be updating it when the (inevitable) good reviews come in...it is a first-rate cast and crew, and Ken's script is fantastic.

No No Boy, The Play from John Flynn on Vimeo.

Castro Declassified...the original version

I stumbled on this special edition of our doc about Castro in the Daedaelus catalogue the other day. I'd previously thought that History was only offering them as part of their special DVD sales site (where they sell DVDs on demand).

This one looks like someone spent a few minutes designing a cover for it (although I'm sure Kosh would have done FAR better in half the time), so I'm plunking down some bucks for a copy or two. It'll be a collectible in at least one sense: History had me re-write the ending about six months after it first aired. Castro was undergoing surgery and the thought was that he might not make it: they wanted to have CASTRO DECLASSIFIED ready to roll if he died, and so they had me re-write the final segment to change a few verb tenses.

So when Fidel does finally shuffle off this mortal coil, turn on History and you'll hear the revised version...until then, you can get the FIDEL LIVES version right here!

Lab Rats and Pit Monkeys

Last weekend I had a chance to do a sort of sketch for a doc I'd love to do...it's about the "Fishbowl" at the Page Museum where my good friend Catheryn Clarke works as a volunteer. The Page is the museum next to the famed La Brea Tar Pits, and the Fishbowl is where visitors can go to watch the Lab Rats clean up the mastodons, sabre-tooth cats and so on.

I think it's interesting that I just rolled this as one take...there's SO much to look at there. As Catheryn says, "It ought to be considered the Eighth Wonder of the World...there's nothing like it anywhere...."

See for yourself!

In The Fishbowl at the Page Museum, La Brea Tar Pits from John Flynn on Vimeo.

Places to Look for A Mother

Another audio piece...a section of Nicole Stansbury's award-winning novel PLACE TO LOOK FOR A MOTHER.


I don't think Nickie would mind if I mentioned that there's a lot more reality to this piece than you'd expect...and it is a pretty harrowing story. It reminds me of one of Chris Offutt's definitions..."Short Story: An essay written to conceal the truth and protect the author's family."

I love this book because it's about a place that I know so well, a West that I grew up in. It's a true West (Sam Shepard pun intended): full of dreamy and desperate and tough people. And the girl at the center of the story...well, she's true too.

The music is Ry Cooder, from a couple of different scores...and the recording was done a while ago (almost a year and a half ago).

Listen to PLACES TO LOOK FOR A MOTHER (Streaming MP3)

Nicole's Wikipedia Page...

(picture by Jack Sperry...that's Otis behind Nickie & I)

So wonderful they named it twice...

Well this one is a little overdue, but I have been up to my ears all during the Fall...and here we are knee deep in the Yule.

Another experiment with shooting on the run...still needing to solve some audio problems. It can't be long before something approaching pro audio gets fitted to something light and rugged enough for my purposes. Next up: I've got an ultra-light Manfrotto I plan to use for shooting some running events.

And about New York: the spectators just made this marathon. California marathons are prettier and (yes) more spectacular, but for sheer energy you cannot beat the New York crowds. Even someone who's relatively slow like me (I run a 12 minute mile) has plenty of spectators cheering in the last 5-6 miles.

The choice of song was really easy....

New York Marathon 2009 from John Flynn on Vimeo.

MINIVAN GALACTICA!

A couple of weeks ago I these two words occurred to me while I was tooling around in my "production vehicle," the beloved Dodge Caravan formerly known as "The Tuna Boat." Lucky for me, I live next door to a design genius (Karim Sahli or logicalnot) and he was able to execute it for me.
He's also a BSG fan and had in fact bought their auction catalogue.

I tinkered with his design to get it to fit the template of makestickers.com, and a couple of days later, the Caravan was rechristened the Minivan Galactica. Spin up the FTL!








Separated at birth?

Downloading YouTube: Video Mashups are Here!

I haven't had a chance to mess with this yet myself, but by friend Catheryn recently sent me the link to a site that DL's videos from YouTube. You can then use them for your own mashups...

http://youtubedownload.doremixy.com/

Very handy...and a reminder that utilities are becoming something that lives on the web, not on the drive.

Taking in the view with a Lumix ZS3

Having destroyed a couple (well, three) cameras on various adventures in the last couple of years, I've set out to add a couple that will be versatile and tough. This one's very versatile, not so tough...but that's what my marathon camera's for (see older posts).

In the Lumix ZS3 I found something I can whip out and record HD with...whenever, wherever. I won't be carrying it on any runs, but it does a nice job with portraits and candids: it's small but has a great 12x zoom.

The day after I got it, it rained in L.A., so I knew right where I wanted to go. The new Baldwin Hills Overlook, one of the parks that will eventually create a sort of super-park in western Los Angeles running from Kenny Hahn Park to the east, through Culver City Park, and down along Ballona Creek and out to Playa del Rey.

The view is spectacular....almost a 300 degree panorama from LAX to the SW and then around to downtown in the E-SE. I should have brought sticks, but then again...how cool that this is without sticks!

And the music...by my old UCSC friend, the lovely and talented Eva Weidema who's in Utrecht nowadays. I have begun a campaign to get her back in the concert hall and/or recording studio: click play and you'll hear why!

Baldwin Hills Overlook - L.A. After The Rain from John Flynn on Vimeo.

Through the Labyrinth - a Microdoc

One of my favorite production phrases is "It just fell off the truck that way." That's the case for this microdoc, but not its subject.




My friend Lorien Eck and her students at West Adams Prep on Vermont in Los Angeles went through a pretty elaborate and interesting process to create their West Adams Prep Labyrinth. You can read all about it here...and you can see some great photos of the thing taking shape.

I am a gardener myself (I do most of my best writing out there), and when I heard there would be a ribbon cutting I jumped at the chance to attend. Just as she was heading to the front of the crowd with the scissors I asked Lorien who was shooting video and she said, "Aren't you?" Which is true--I had said I would, but didn't have a camera aside from my marathon-proof Olympus. I'd brought it to shoot panoramas. I rolled with it and... "that's the way it fell off the truck."

This is a very static film, but I love that it has beginning-middle-end anyways. I walked around the outside and then I followed the crowd into the labyrinth: all the way in and all the way out again. There is a narrative to the order in which the people go through: I love the little kid in red, and then all the students who built it, followed by the guys from Inner Gardens, West Adams staff, friends and family, etc. I love Noh plays, and this reminds me of Noh...there is a theatrical convention in Noh (and also Peking Opera) where a character indicates a journey by walking in a small circle onstage. There are many people on a journey in this one: the little boy in red, the students, younger and older folks, couples, a pregnant woman...seeing them looping back and forth...well, there's a story in there somewhere.

The music is from a site called http://www.inbflat.net/, which must be seen to be understood. It's a mashup I created myself on the fly...loads of fun.

Through the Labyrinth from John Flynn on Vimeo.

Athlete Alert

John Flynn, 01:20:23 (NET) @ 10K Pace 12:56, Predicted 05:39:05.00. Powered by SAI Timing.

Active Athlete Alerts

Thank you for signing up to receive free athlete updates on race day. In order to complete the signup process, you must confirm this address by going to the following link:

<http://live.doitsports.com/ow.tcl?c=50828&d=40239>

Alternatively, you can call 877-228-4881 for assistance. In either case, you will need your confirmation code:
=======================
Confirm code: C68C
=======================

This message was automatically generated by our service. For assistance, reply to support@active.com.