Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
This building’s side looked amazing. It’s not art, but it does look like it. We were walking around downtown Chicago in the art area, and I wonder how many students must stop and trip out on this. Now that I shot this photo, it’s ready to be tagged, bombed, and added on to. Get to it kids. Eugenia and Emily Wang (the mini heart beat of FAAIM) She looks 12, but no, she is not. Give her a minute and she can code a website or edit down a video. Smoque is a BBQ spot that’s pretty good. This is the brisket. Aside from the tasty everything, I dig the cole slaw. Why is cole slaw so good sometimes? That’s Michael Aki and Eugenia Yuan before their film, Strangers was set to start. Something must have been great on Eugenia’s cell phone. The ceiling of Longman & Eagle. Done by artist Cody Hudson – one of the rad artists in Chicago. It’s been a while, since I heard from him, but he’s definitely working. It’s all pieces of wood. Cody Hudson Art at Longman & Eagle. He’s part owner of this place. The food is quite great. That’s Mirai Itamae san Andy and Goh Nakamura standing in front of Longman & Eagle. This is punk rock. At first I thought it was a leftover tire, from a pillaging of a lone bike. But no, this is how they roll in Chicago. This too is a fixed gear. ——-
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That’s Tim. We were on Vocalo.org radio which is an NPR show at89.5 Tim Hugh fights the good fight. That should go on the t-shirt bearing FAAIM – the film festival. While others need huge staffs, this fest gets done with the tiniest crew. I’ll guess that this has to be one of the indiest film fests in the Nation that’s been around for 15 years. This year, it’s been looking great. One of the most easy going guys is Goh Nakamura. Give him a venue and he’ll play. In this shot, we’re 43 floors up doing a streaming concert. While people are stressing, Goh can always sit back with his guitar and just play. Most of us can’t do that. We stayed at a spot that overlooked Lake Michigan. It’s almost an ocean view but not quite. Look at the view we had. That’s Goh doing his thing at the radio station. Mind you, he got rockstar and broke some gear in the studio there, but overall, he played a nice song. That’s Tim and Helga. ——-
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Giant Robot, filmmaking, and whatever comes with it, takes you places sometimes. Today, it’s Chicago. A film I made is showing tonite, a panel discussion I’m on comes up on tuesday. Meanwhile, I’m staying in a great high rise, which has not much in it. That means, I can get work done in this insanely cool setting. It’s cold outside, which means, yes, I’ll stay in. Chinese American brutha, Tim Hugh runs this film festival. It’s stripped down, quite indie, and sort of walks to it’s own beat. In a way, that’s how I do things – for better or worse and it’s fun to meet others who mesh well and do things their own way. The film will even show at the Siskel Center which by name has to be the greatest film center in the world! Right? Siskel of Siskel and Ebert! Although it’s an honor to be invited places, which actually happens often, but it’s usually for work that I’ve done. I’m now working to hopefully get invited for the things I’m doing tomorrow. What lake is this anyway? I should know, but I don’t. ——-
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Sunsets coming to a DVD store, rental shop, and even Netflix. Imagine, this film has been sitting for over ten years, we re cut it, and now it’s finally going to be on DVD. This is the box cover. Pretty cool, I’d have to say, and the cover actually went through some revisions. This is the coolest and it sort of has that BlueNote feel. We recorded the director’s commentary in the GR office on recent night which was fun, yet it’s doubtful I’ll ever listen to it. But if you’re into film, I think it’ll be interesting since we do explain our process and how everything worked. Sunsets is also showing this friday in Chicago as part of FAIIM at 10:15pm! Get tickets! I’m scheduled to be there, so if you come, hit me up, say hello. Also it’s on Amazon! Here’s the trailer: ——-
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I don’t have an IPad. I’ll probably get one. Yesterday, at GRHQ we had our first meeting about the IPad. Is it our future? Maybe? It’s still a frontier, and you’d think when Apple releases an object like an IPad, it would get publishers involved in it early, but instead, it’s sort of like the first Macs. They released it without much software. IPad luckily can be adaptable from iPhone apps, so there’s a headstart, but how do you navigate a magazine on an iPad? Many have seen the Sport Illustrated Youtube video. It’s impressive and something most print publishers have seen. How easy is that going to be? If you’re a huge outlet, millions are going to be poured into an app like that, but for an indie, what will it be like? My main worry is that it’ll end up looking like a blog post, much like this one. You already get plenty of blog posts for free. We can easily place a whole issue online as a series of blog posts, which would be sad. Our magazine is far from a blog post. There really is a lot of work going into each article – much more than the text you’re getting right here. So the difference is presentation is navigation. The SI thing you see above is super thought out, it’s probably taken a team of consultants, designers, and more to create something like that. We don’t have that, but I suppose we can take bits and pieces that we like from everywhere to create our own. But at the same time, there’ll probably be tons of out of box solutions to make this easier. It’ll always take customizing time much like a Dreamweaver, Expression Engine, etc. Then hopefully it’ll be easy. It’s always strange when a new technology comes out, and the software and usability isn’t quite thought out yet at least for the indie folks who are a larger part of the consumer base than the SIs of the world. Meanwhile, at GR, we’re making our print publication, and I can’t quite see a quick switch over to a pad like device, but we have our eyes on it. ——-
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