SHELTER from Jason Sussberg on Vimeo.
In April, Jason Sussberg, a documentary film graduate student at Stanford, along with friends, made a 6-minute film of us and our home. They shot the film in 16mm film — pretty unusual nowadays. I asked Jason why film, and he replied:
“It was shot on 16mm color celluloid and telecined (scanned/color-corrected digitally) and edited in a Final Cut Pro (a non-linear editing software). The 16mm color film fits the subject and architecture quite well– both filmmaking and DIY homebuilding are beautiful artisanal crafts that are fighting for survival in a changing world. Film just looks better– better colors, textures, motion interpolating and feeling!”
It has been shown at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Fest, San Francisco Documentary Festival, Big Sky Film Festival, Cinequest Film Festival and Nevada City Film Festival.
Around 3 yesterday afternoon, I took my paddle board down to the channel and paddled back up into the lagoon. The tide was going out, and the water was about as warm as it gets, maybe 63°. Parked my board on this sandbar, stripped down, smeared black thick mud on every part of my body I could reach, then let the sun bake it in for a few minutes, then took 5-10 minutes to rinse off. Going back, I let the tide carry me along (plus ribs were not feeling too great). It was totally still, not a person within miles. A young egret with black beak and chartreuse (I kid you not!) legs was standing on the bank. I didn’t move a muscle, just let the current carry me, and I got within 20 feet of him. Back at the dock, fisherman-surfer Andrew was tying up his boat, and loading 3 halibut into an ice chest. Then he jumped in the water and swam around for a bit. A magic afternoon.
I’m going to post a bunch of pics from Vermont, 2005.
Gravel and Gold is a shop in the heart of SF’s Mission district. It’s called a “Magical Outpost in the Mission” by SF Station, which writes it’s “…where a hand-selected mix of artists and makers exhibit their crafts. You can find just about everything here from things to wear, to write or to work for your home.” Someone on Yelp says: “The clothing is really eclectic — natural fabrics, interesting patterns and designs, local artists.”
I’m going to show slides from Builders of the Pacific Coast and can talk about mini-homesteads and show some slides from our forthcoming book on tiny houses.
It’s at 8PM thus Friday, June 18th at 3266 21st Street, San Francisco.
For Gravel & Gold’s writeup of the event, click here.
First pic using my new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX7, shot an hour ago. I shoot a lot of panoramas, since I don’t like wide angles of the landscape. My eyes sees the world in about the same proportion as a 50 mm lens (old-style lens measurement). I’ll shoot a bunch of pictures, overlapping the edges, then stitch the shots together with Photomerge in Photoshop. A bunch of them are here and there on this blog.
I bought this little camera at B and H Photo in New York (world’s most amazing photo store). For panoramas, you press the shutter button, then slowly rotate the camera, maybe 180°. I think it makes a movie, then stitches it together to make a still. It’s supposed to work in very low light, and also shoots HD video. I’m just starting to explore it.
Tuesday I drove into San Francisco along the coast just after sunrise. I trurned right, right after the toll plaza and went along the ocean, then 25th Ave., then Geary out to Ocean Beach. My favorite route. Went to Trouble Coffee, had great latte and thin-sliced cinnamon toast, and had interesting discussion with the two 30-or-so -year-old guys working there about Bob Dylan and The Last Waltz. I was surprised that guys this genration knew Dylan’s work so intricately.
Ten years ago, Lew’s girlfriend Krystal asked if I wanted to go to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Did I! I had connections. First, I was born in San Francisco; second, my dad had walked out to the south tower on a wooden walkway above the net when the bridge was under construction in 1934. Krystal knew the bridge’s resident architect, and she and Lew had been to the top already. In mid-September I got a call and took off to meet Krystal and Bob in the parking lot on the San Francisco side. We rode in a little electric vehicle out to the south tower, and inside ascended in a tiny elevator, three of us crammed in, to the bottom plate of the top horizontal strut of the tower. From there it was a metal ladder to the top and Bob let me go first. I pushed open the hatch, climbed out, and was stunned. I was 700 feet above my hometown, seeing it from the top of this beautiful structure built 65 years earlier. It was a warm night, and we hung around up there for about 45 minutes, until the sun went down. It was surprisingly comfortable, at that height. The only scary part was when I walked out on an open-mesh metal walkway and looked down through my feet at cars 300 feet below.
Every single time I go over the bridge, or see it from the city, I think of that night.
This was the very first time I used a digital camera.
The panorama/collage is actually a 360, with Marin on the left, SF on the right. (Panoramas are way easier to do now, 10 years later.)
