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 Deviants Of Reality - MystikalJanuary 25, 2007 09:36 AM Get the Flash Player to see this player.  Here is the final on the Deviants Of Reality Music Video for their European hit "Mysitkal." The artist asked for a retro 80's feel to the video so we shot with warm saturated colors with a close intimate feel with the artist and the extras. For some reason, people seem to really like this throwback style video - it really appeals to women with it's non-threatening vibe and crystal clear simplistic lyrics and warm visuals. We shot the video over a one day period in Red Bank, NJ, which I had never even heard of. The feature girl, Mounia was flown in from Europe for the occasion, a model who was a favorite of Dj Alex J. There are two effect shots in the music video, which were composited by Johnathan T. Winbush. They should be easy to spot. There was a scrapped scene due to time constraints imposed by a restless bar owner where the feature girl, Mounia would have walked backlit by a glowing ring almost like a body halo toward the music artist. Hopefully that scene reappears in another video one day. The original treatment I submitted for the video included a climatic scene where the feature girl ultimately lure DJ Alex J to the kitchen and cooked him on the grill and ate their innards as he still performed - now that would have been mystical! In retrospect, maybe the whole cannibalism thing wasn't really right for them - but one day!
Comment Spam, Image Verification and the sweet spot in between.January 22, 2007 04:19 PM 
I recently had abandoned this blog for a while because I had become overwhelmed by comment spam. It had put me into a tail spin because I couldn't find the focus to write a script that would stop the comment spam. Of course, once I actually sat down to write it: it took 5 minutes. However during the process of testing the code, I accidentally deleted all the frigging comments in MYSQL via a clumsily placed less than sign. The lowest of operators had felled my comment database. 700 Comments gone, just like that... So the current battle goes something like this chronologically. Phase 1. Comment Spammers appear with automated scripts that post on blogs repeatedly by filling out forms or using unprotected query strings. They had free reign and life was good for spammers. Phase 2. Comment and Registration verification images appear, to psych out robots. Random words or number strings appear in regular text that need to be input in the form to complete the process known as CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test). The Robots add OCR to their toolbox and circumvent this.  Phase 3. Comment verification images now include dots, smudges. lines,wave distortion, grids, and mismatched letter sizes and fonts to fool OCR script spammers. The technique works for a while but the OCR got even more sophisticated and they got around that.  Phase 4. Now comment verification images now include everything from phase 3, but now include multiple color patterns so they now look like Technicolor yawns or good LSD trips in little portable network graphic boxes.  Phase 5. We'll need to order stereoscopic 3d glasses to read verification words like the robot stats on the back of the original transformer toys. Hold everything! Let's not get to phase 5. Why is everyone using a single image for CAPTCHA? Why not use a series of images automatically generated but sliced up and put together? All their software is concentrated on finding a single image. If the slices happen across letters, and the image names are random, the OCR would have a devil of a time finding the images and then putting them together in the right order in order to scan them. Just stitch them together and it will fool the robot spamming software for quite a while. You could even make the number of slices random, to further confound the process. They would have to do OCR on each individual image, if they can correctly source it out of the code. I've instituted it here, let's see if the theory bares fruit. So far so good! The harder part will be if people post on this site again after such a long hiatus. :) Whats your idea?
Video Mashup: Beyonce -vs- Betty BoopJanuary 22, 2007 04:16 PM Get the Flash Player to see this player.  Downtime between directing gigs is no time for slacking. I cooked this up while waiting for film to get back from being transfered. It's part art, part social commentary, but mostly just fun. Video mashups! The first episode is a re-imagining of the music video for superstar Beyonce's (featuring Jay-Z) megahit "Crazy in Love." It combines that song with sexy moves of Betty Boop. Cut on Avid, this piece achieves sync from various editing tricks of the trade including but not limited to invisible speed ramps. The real secret is that the origin of many things have a common starting point, but myopic thinking and limited world views sometimes obscures those origins. I'll expand upon that theory later. The truth is.. the kids love video mashups. It's the new form of communication. I plan to incorporate mashups into a new secret project I'm casting for even as we speak. Check it out in: Windows Media | Quicktime| Flash| PSP PS: Cartoon Network or Boomerang has on a Betty Boop mashup that was, well, just ok. I wonder if it predates mine, or did someone see it and rip the idea off.  This post has been screenhead approved!
Video Mashup: Amerie -vs- Betty BoopJanuary 22, 2007 04:08 PM Get the Flash Player to see this player.  The second installment is a re-imagining of the music video for Georgetown University's Amerie summer anthem "One Thing." This video uses high energy cuts, transitions on movement to keep the energy level high. There is also some other tricks of the trade to keep the mouth in sync. Oh yeah.. I Showed it to Amerie, she loved it! She even put a comment on my myspace page. Hope I get to direct a video off her next album! Check it out in: Windows Media | Quicktime| Flash| PSP This post has been screenhead approved!
How to handle your first IMDB EntryOctober 30, 2006 07:27 PM 
I got my first IMDB entry and like most people, I feel like at least one or two other things I've done should be on there already, so it's a mixed bag of elation of cracking the professional director's circuit and the ennui of the now blank creditless slate in pantheon of notable directors in imdb's SQL databases. I felt compelled to make a list of things that you will inevitably do when it happens to you.1. Send the link via e-mail, instant messenger, txt message , blog post and any other eletronic medium to not just your friends and family, but estranged aquaintences. The irony will be that the estranged aquaintences will be more likely to want to re-assess being closer to you rather than stewing in the juices, while your close friends who should be happy will be stewing in their juice and re-assess being so close to you. Go figure. 2. Search for a free way to put up an image. You'll go pretty far before IMDB let's you realize that you aren't going to be able to put up a picture without paying a small fee. It's tantalizing, but it's probably better to wait till they deem you big time enough to have one, or your publicist does it for you and amortizes the cost. 3. E-mail IMDB hounding them to correct your name, credit, and to recognize your greatness. The truly obessive and rude will plunge ahead and do this. No particular ill will come from it, and in fact, it will probably kickstart the negative karma that you inevitably need to be a huge star. 4. Follow every link to see who in connected to you and wonder why they have so many more credits than you! 5. Whatever you do, don't post a message to your own board - you'll live to regret it very shortly after. The jubiliation will soon pass, and whatever you post can and will be held against you later. 6. Remember, at the end of a day - it's just a database. It's an extemely useful referrence tool - but it's just about as important as let's say amazon's inventory database or the IRS tax returns - ok maybe it is fairly important - but try not to lose sleep over it. If your entry is empty - it just means you should be making more films!
Bio-Warfare @ Brooklyn Acamedy of Music ?June 26, 2006 02:09 PM 
80 Hanson Place. Home to the venerable Brooklyn Academy of Music expansion plans. Inside this building is the MoCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts) and other BAM related projects and art spaces. It looks like amazing architectural building in a upscale neighborhood that is handicap accessible as well. This seemingly benign countenance is haunted by dark side that no one seems to be aware of.In the early eighties crack ruled the streets of Brooklyn and as you can see from this image. Hanson Place was very different. The overgrown lot on the top right of this image is where the Atlantic Mall complex would eventually rise. The street was a drug dealing haven and many abandoned apartments were stash houses. The street was roped off because something dark happened that day at 80 Hanson Place.  Anyone who lived here during this time remember that when you walked down Hanson Place at night, the howls of monkey's in pain could be heard up and down the street and that security at the building was odd for a block that was dominated by the crack trade. In this next shot, men in environmental suits are entering 80 Hanson Place removing bodies of animals..  Over time, several of us had become friends with some of the people that worked in the building. When pressed about what they did for a living, they would dissuade us from asking about it. They would hint that it was a laboratory when their guard slipped. Then one day, one of the workers we were friendly with disappeared. We asked what happened to him, and his co-workers mentioned he died suddenly. They seemed really spooked about his death and stressed, this caused them to slip even more about what was going on. In this shot, the police go back in. You can clearly see the beautiful but dilapidated 4 family brownstones that were knocked down on Hanson place to make room for the newest development detailed here.  Shortly after that, more workers in the lab began to die. They just packed up quickly and moved out. The howling of the monkeys fell silent. We assumed they took them all with them, but we were disturbed to see them bring out human and animal body bags from the building and put them in two different vehicles.  What happens is that we speculate that 80 Hanson Place was actually a bio-warfare research lab. I really didn't think about it during that time period otherwise I would have done some research on it using alternative means available to me at the time. What they created in there is a mystery, but we do now that there were unexplained deaths among the staff working there and that they pulled out rapidly and cleaned up the bodies and medical equipment later. Did a Andromeda Strain type scenario play out in this building?  This was the time frame that AIDS first appeared on the scene, although I wouldn't want to feed any conspiracy theories, but certainly something was at play here. After BAM purchased the building, it seems as though they did a thorough clean up, but is it really safe? I attended the opening night of the MoCADA which I really enjoyed and I think everyone should check it out, but I must say I am concerned. What if the clean up wasn't that good? Should I wear a face mask to First Friday's? What if I got biological contaminants in my martini? I knew that olive looked funny.  I can't possibly answer all the questions that this raises, but I was there and live through it. Ask anyone from Fort Greene who was here before the gentrification and they will tell you about the painful blood curdling screams that erupted every night from 80 Hanson Place, echoing down to 4th Avenue on a quiet night. Was Brooklyn home to a BioWarfare Lab? Maybe they were developing biological agents like AIDS, or maybe they were putting the finishing touches on Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds. Shame on them for unleashing either one of these things on the world. 
Things That Don't Mix: A PrimerJune 19, 2006 09:02 AM Get the Flash Player to see this player.  Check out this flash cartoon that I made a while back. It explores things in this world you absolutely should not mix. I decided to post it because the other day I saw some pigeons eating vomit and it reminded me the horrible conditions here in the city that they have been forced to endure. They gobbled up that vomit like they hadn't had a decent meal in ages. The worst pigeon story I remember was once time they took us on a class trip to the Bronx Zoo and we were transfixed by the elephants. I mean Pachyderm's are usually a site to behold in person, but all of a sudden Dumbo just took a giant dump. It litteraly fell out like a huge brick the size of a small cathode-ray tube television (remember those?). The pigeons decented on it like someone dropped off a box of Beluga Caviar in front of Lincoln Center. The huge flock literally devoured it in seconds as though it was a gourmet treat. Yes.. you can blow pigeons up with Alka Seltzer. Their tiny stomaches can't hold the full force of ant-acid tablet in action that even a peice of Alka Seltzer can provide. They tend to try to fly off before they explode with a sicking pop into a rain of organic debris. Sometime's they don't explode, they just distend outward and lay there thrashing around in a painful death that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemies, but maybe on someone who skips you in line at the supermarket.
Harry Allen interviews John Threat On the RadioJune 09, 2006 09:30 AM 
Today June 9th: 2pm - 3pm on WBAI. Harry Allen will have me as a guest on his show NON-FICTION. We will chop it up about Dead Prez: Bigger Than Hip Hop and other weirdo topics that are evidently all true.It's on 99.5 fm on your radio dial here in New York, or you can listen to it via internet streaming radio using mp3 or real media streams. Check it out, cuz chances are I will be mentioning you!
New York Premiere Of Dead Prez: Bigger Than Hip HopMay 23, 2006 11:20 PM Get the Flash Player to see this player.  The New York Premiere of Dead Prez: Bigger Than Hip Hop went off down at B.B. Kings. It was a lush affair with very tasty Hors D'oeuvres, top-shelf open bar all night, and gift bags with more than just a t-shirt and a magazine. All the usual accoutrements one expects from a shindig like that. I rolled up in the Jeep down 42nd street playing Alice Smith's "Dreams," as all the teeny-boopers and bridge and tunnel throngs queue on line for movies turned their head and wondered who was that nicely dressed asshole pumping alternative rock. My pockets were turning up rabbit ears, but I didn't let that deter me, the red carpet beckoned me and I just knew I would be ushered in to the VIP area sipping on $30 mixed drinks with gold flakes and eating carmelized truffled stuffed mushroom caps with fish eggs on it.  I parked the jeep, walked up the front of B.B. Kings, where I was promptly ignored by the bouncer with the list. I stood there smiling vacantly as he artfully articulated his neck in an astonishing number of permutations in order to not acknowledge me. Luckily several people came to the door and mentioned politely that I was the director of the film, to which he replied "I don't care, he isn't getting in." So I spent the better part of the premiere standing outside purposely. I just gathered up a huge crowd of people who knew me until it was cleared with the bouncer that I could come in, and I just bought in an entirely too large entourage. I later shook the bouncers hand. No hard feelings, it's just a frigging party. I had more important things to attend to! I had to get my all access pass, but for some reason, my all access pass had been given to someone! I didn't really care about having one, but it seemed I needed it to walk people in who were supposed to be on the list. Unforuantely, the person who had my pass didn't want to give it up even after being asked to reliquish it several times. They wanted to perpetrate with it all night. Seems as though a laminated placard on a lanyard is worth a puglistic episode these days. I finally got it and I promptly zipped up my coat to cover it so that I wouldn't seem so pretentious. They only showed a short trailer which was good because most people were fully buzzed if not totally inebrieated by the time the projector went on. I couldn't bare to watch because the projector really didn't do the HD footage justice. One of the network execs asked me while I was ignoring the travesty of low-res lcd projectors, where my girlfriend was and I sheepishly said I was single. It's been so long I forgot how I ended up single, but luckily after a few peices of catfish, temporal amnesia set in. Dead Prez jumped on to perform and the rocked the crowd. Then my surrogate pops Melvin Van Peebles jumped up and did an impromptu rhyme! Gotta give it up to MVP, he is the man. We finally rolled out around 1am, and I had to bum some cash to get my jeep out of the parking lot. I was exhausted, so I skipped the after party for the comfort of home, kicked back and watched The Cartoon Network and drifted off to sleep counting apple martini's as they danced in my head. Side note: There was also an Atlanta Premiere that was a lot of fun, as well, although not as laced as the NY Premiere, I had a lot of fun, since it included drunken relvery, bluffing into $50 clubs for free, high speed car chases in Macon, GA, crashing cribs, rescueing pretty girls from down-low barflys, and raucous recollections over hatless sushi dinners with unlimited bottles of white wine: Thanks to those special people who made my trip more than just a pit stop. Watch Dead Prez: Bigger Than Hip Hop - June 9th 10pm on Starz in Black!
HTC Wizard / T-mobile MDA Review: Best Phone Ever Created?March 22, 2006 01:21 AM 
I've had the MDA now for a few weeks and I have to say that it's the best smart phone I've owned to date. I used to have the Handspring Visor with the phone attachment because I was so desperate to have a smart phone. The full, back-lit keyboard helps me use my favorite function, text messaging at full capacity. It has Bluetooth, robust Word, Excel and Outlook syncing ability and WIFI! So you can surf fast when you can't get a slow EDGE signal. It has a 1.3 Megapixel camera which is ok, and a SD slot for up to 2 gigs of storage. A lot of software rounds out this package that makes the palm-based Treo old news. I currently use emoze to help me achieve instant push e-mail with the device. It also syncs my contacts and calendar remotely as well. It has worked for me on business trips, but the software is still beta, so don't expect mission critical solidiness yet. It also tags on a message about emoze at the end of the outgoing email, which I could strip out, but it's free software for now, so I'll let them ride off my back for now. Always a crowd pleaser is talking to the MDA to make it do stuff using Microsoft's Voice Commander. It works really well in even noisy conditions, so you can operate truly hands free. It also plays video and mp3's very well and the storage allows me to bring tons of music and listen to it on a stereo Bluetooth headset. Bye Bye IPOD. (not that I had one, I'm anti-Apple! I learned computers on a Apple ][+, but I had a negative experience as a child at a user group meeting that I will never forget!) One issue that hasn't been solved with anything mobile running windows is the battery life. It's the best unit so far, but it's still going to drain out if you do anything cool being text message and the occasional phone call. It's highly customizable by nature, or you can go further by hacking the registry or update the firmware and really get your device humming uniquely to your tune. Yes, my business productivity is up nearly 50% after investing in this unit! Other than that, WM5 is finally stable and this year marks the rise of Windows as a viable mobile platform with seamless integration into the desktop. If I was Palm? I'd seek investment money and develop a full scale desktop/laptop OS. The world could use a third OS with enough resources behind it to bring it to market. Without this? Apple will bring a PDA evenutally to market as the IPOD just won't be enough and it will be Microsoft -vs- Apple.
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