The last organic instrument I tried playing was a ukulele. When I say organic, I mean, non-amplified, non-electric, non-digital. In Costa Rica that dream was shattered, along with the Ukulele, in a strange shamanic ritual involving some green tree frogs and lots of Cuba Libres. Wait, maybe I should start from the beginning here. This piece is perhaps about my oldest, unrealized passion: creating music and sound. Yes, all those that know me well, know not that, really, truly, I want to be a musician. In middle school I tried the viola. That stint lasted about two weeks, in which time my parents declared me talentless and thus, I lost my motivation to try and live out my dream.

Yes, as is almost always the case, it was all my parents fault. Had this happened a few years later, perhaps I would have rebelled, just for the sheer pleasure of rebelling against my beloved family, and subsequently, society at large. But, that didn’t happen and I was forced, for years, to live in denial, in repression, in the shadows of my unrealized dreams. However, all that was about to change in the month of April of 2011.

This is the place, the space, loyal reader, where I shall reveal the most formal, all encompassing, intrinsic truth about all of the 6.8 billion inhabitants of this world. I hope you are ready to confront yourself because here it is – EVERYONE WANTS TO BE A ROCK STAR! Everyone! Even your toothless grandma, your gay uncle, and that terrorist next door, Osama Bin Laden. Especially your Gay Uncle. Everything you do in life is just a compensation because you are not a Rock Star. Trust me. I meditate for 12 minutes a day. I’m giving you the facts. Here is how I confronted my own self deception and how you can too.

All those bongos, ukuleles, flutes, pianos, and such just weren’t for me. They required formal musical training and time, which I had squandered because my parents didn’t believe in me. From high school on I wanted to be a DJ. I envied those that could mix music live, that could scratch, and make mixtapes. But all that equipment was pricey and my parents just laughed at me. I tried to make them believe by making mixtapes using an old dual cassette tape JVC boom box, but that just added more resentment towards me. No immigrant son of theirs was going to do something so preposterous.
Later when I had a chance to practice on some decks, I discovered how hard it was and realized that I had squandered the time it takes to become a DJ. Such is life, huh bub?

my parents, or should I say, dream crushers.

No, if I was to make music it had to be with something I could understand, something cerebral and self-organizing, something with it’s own computing power. Flash forward to present day. I had heard of these things called,”apps” and as luck would have it I inherited a machine called the, “Ipad” that utilized these apps to run all sorts of tasks.

Searching through the musical apps, I came across The Electribe by Korg. For only $9.99 I could have a digital version of The Korg Electribe R released in 1999 as a dedicated electronic drum machine. What does it do I wondered? As I manipulated the Ipad’s touch screen, I discovered in no time this explanation which magically entered my mind: the sound is generated by digital signal processor circuits but can be manipulated in realtime (analog modeling synthesizer principle). No shit. Needless to say, in one fell swoop I had entered the music making arena. For the first time ever, I felt confident that time was relative and that dreams do come true for little manboys who dare to dream.

Adventures in the Electric Tribe pt1 by freakcast

It was an honor to introduce the Roger Smith Shorts at the venue in which they were created, to an audience of film creators and enthusiasts. In August 2009, 6 films were created as part of the Roger Smith Shorts FIlm Festival Workshop. The Roger Smith Hotel is a perfect venue to bring together creative individuals to explore the film-making process. The 2010 Roger Smith Shorts Directors and collaborators are; John Knowles, Aleks Degtyarev, John Birdsong, Abianne Prince and Melissa Gonzalez.

I think it is important to thank and recognize Paul Farkas and Sally Golan for putting together Social Cinema Week, better known as SoCin. It is a festival style gathering that will create platforms, networks and relationships that will help facilitate the convergence social media and cinema.

About SoCin
Social Media has changed the face of virtually every consumer-related industry. It is now a primary tool for marketing and distribution running the full range from webisodes, TV shows, networks, and major motion pictures alike. In socializing cinema, the very way audiences view and enjoy entertainment itself has changed as co-viewing evolves along new social platforms and added screen involvement. By situating cinema, programs and movies are moving outside beyond the theater and living room in real-time and becoming living media alongside our daily lives. Profound social good and edutainment increasingly results from the global connection and information provided by dramatically lower barriers of entry, user generated content, word or mouth and viralization.
SoCin recognizes the game-changing impact of Social Media and the web on the Film and TV industry. Its Social Cinema Week aims to provide balanced panels of leading experts from both Film and TV as well as those with social expertise. Importantly, SoCins new approach to industry networking parties provide intimate environments to take these conversations further, spark academic debate, and begin building Social Cinema best practices.

In the new world of the Social Internet it is a pleasure to be involved in its evolution. As a creator, an enthusiasts and a facilitator, I am thrilled to see the excitement and momentum happening in Midtown at the Roger Smith Hotel. We dare to follow our dreams and begin to believe that we should expect results. Destined and determined to achieve greatness we are humbled by the community and film-making process. What I have learned is that there is little time to sleep and all the time to dream.

Feedback is very important for our growth and community engagement. Be sure to follow our Roger Smith Short Tumblr account and reach out with comments.

http://therogersmithshorts.tumblr.com/

Thanks for your continued interest.

Panman

Roger Smith Popup Shop Reviews

Bluebox Gallery RS POP review by Julia Kaganskiy

Having our gallery opening and show up at the RS POP shop was a wonderful experience! The location is amazing — in the middle of Manhattan and right by Grand Central station for easy access to the shop. There are always lots of passersby, both locals and tourists, and the window front on Lexington is an incredible draw. People were always stopping outside our window display to admire Gabrel Barcia-Colombo’s video sculptures, then wander on inside (so be sure to have an eye-cathing display!).

As a brand new pop-up gallery, we were focused on getting as much exposure as possible to help build our clientele, and RS POP certainly helped us do that by putting us front and center in a very elite neighborhood. More importantly though, the hotel’s strong art focus was a fantastic match for us and helped us connect with our target audience. It seemed like there was always some sort of arts-related event or opening going on, whether it was at the LAB Gallery installation space on the corner or the Solarium Room in the hotel, and the people in and around the hotel were all art enthusiasts, including the owner, James Knowles, who is the artist-in-residence there.

The staff is also a remarkable asset and support system. John and Melissa and the Panman Productions team were a pleasure to work with and helped us ensure that everything went smoothly. They also checked in often to make sure we were having the best experience possible and gave us notice when an arts-related event was happening at the hotel so we could be prepared. As a new business, it was so helpful to have that kind of support system in place, and we really can’t thank them enough for all their efforts.

In short, we highly recommend booking the RS POP shop! Great people, great space, great location.

Roger Smith Pop Review by Gail Travis

“Participating with the RS Pop up Shop team has undoubtedly helped to promote and expose my new knitwear label, N:F:P. Such a unique experience being able to build out my own boutique the way I have envisioned for my brand. It is rare to find not only a space to create as your own for up to a months time, but also have the expert support staff to help execute a special trunk show/cocktail party event, and social media tools such as videos, links to blogs, etc. to gain diverse promotion of any new art form.

Melissa Gonzalez is truly an amazing entrepreneur who was always there to help. She was never without an idea to creatively launch my first two collections to the public; either through the shop or online promotion. Melissa, and lets not forget her dog Mila, are the most adorable team with the most motivating and energizing spirit. No matter what the idea, she was ready to make it happen.

I am looking forward to continuing a strong partnership with John Knowles and his RS Pop Team to launch and promote my future collections of New Form Perspective. Their service has become an integral part of the N:F:P selling and branding platform. The midtown location has grown my customer list to include numerous new international clients and contacts, as well as a growing local NYC customer base. Truly a wonderful experience and encourage anyone starting their own business to look into the opportunity. The possibilities are endless and the team thrives on new creative techniques to try!!

Thank you John, Melissa, Abi, and Alek for everything!! Can’t wait to work together again soon!!”

Marc Schiller was the opening Keynote Speaker who launched the first ever SMartCAMP at the Roger Smith Hotel.

Click to Play

It is a military notion to centralize communication tools so that everyone within an organization, community or ecosystem is operating within a similar structure. With many blog platforms to choose from, I believe that tumblr is the right fit to increase our community engagement. John Birdsong has written a very thorough explanation of the platform and its functionality which will be able to help you understand how this system really works.

Click here to learn more about the platform.

What am I talking about?

Distribution!

In an effort to expand our internal communication, I look to have all of the participants within our broad community to utilize the same platform.

Here is a list of tumblr blogs to follow

John Knowles

Adam Wallace

Brian Simpson

James Knowles

Ek

Melissa Rodriquez

Lily’s nyc

John Birdsong

Aleks aka Freakcast

Abianne Prince

Others to follow

Julia Roy

Gary V

Frank Wallace

Panman Gallery

Panman Productions

To look internally and think locally is the objective. The people on this list are members of the greater Roger Smith Community who interact with you on a daily basis. It is my goal to broaden our community engagement and open the flood gates to the potential of our team as a whole.

I encourage you to sign up and follow anyone you know in an effort to increase internal awareness of our online presence. If you have any concerns of questions, please don’t be too shy to ask. It is a sharing platform that will allow for media to spread efficiently within our network.

What can you expect? When Panman Productions began its relationship with the Roger Smith Hotel we engaged in a series of dailies which were quick snapshots of the the work that were engaged in at the moment. It is my goal to re-instate the daily notion and open the interactions to all members of the Roger Smith Community. Know that you can be a simple observer or an active participant in content distribution. If you have any question on how to engage in the process I am happy to help facilitate you interests.

Hi peeps it’s been a minute since I’ve written this column, “Tech Tuesday” The Birdsong Review (like the new title??).  Anyway…This week I review Ustream’s new standalone broadcasting program, Ustream Producer.

Ustream.tv allows you to broadcast LIVE video on the internet. “Ustream Producer” is available for Mac and PC, but here’s the deal; Flash Media Encoder (FME by Adobe) has been around for PC for quite some time. So, this is the first time one has been able to broadcast to Ustream using HQ Flash 9 H.264 video. Pardon mon Francais, but Ustream looked like total shit when you used a mac for broadcasting before this. The only program out there that could broadcast to ustream in HQ was Wirecast by Telestream, which cost around $500. So, it should come as no surprise that Telestream is the same company behind “Ustream Producer”. The cool thing is that you can now get it basically for free.

Ustream producer comes in two versions: free and premium ($200). Check out the chart for the deets on what’s different.

Wirecast is a pretty great program, and this version of “Ustream Producer” seems stable enough. The free version will only allow you to use one live camera. If you have a setup where you’ll be using a analog video switcher then a canopus or deck to output firewire into you’re comp, then you’re in luck. If you’ didnt check out the chart yet, the main dif here is: lack of titles, SD bitrate only, single cam (one source).

Here are some pics of the program.

Here is a LIVE (pre-rec) VJ set with Panman and Freakcast.

Test #1

If you’re an internet broadcaster and you use macs (for FCP), and havn’t shelled out $500 bucks for wirecast yet, this is GREAT for you. If you have shelled out the ca$h rest easy; wirecast is still a great program. You can broadcast to places other than ustream with wirecast, use titles, plus many many other features.

“Ustream Producer” offers a high quality solution for broadcasting without using a CPU power hungry browser and flash app; it’s far more efficient with it’s use of system resources. If you have high end GPU, you can use it to enhance video compression as well.

As you saw from the pix above, the app allows you to transition from one shot to another using: cut, smooth, and cross-dissolve. These are pretty much the only transitions you should ever use BTW, and you should rarely use anything ither than cut anyway. As I said before, if you use a analog video switcher, and output a mixed signal you can absolutely use multiple cams with the free version.

Overall Rating: pretty cool.

I’ll leave you with this video of some kid making his own show using ustream producer. Kids are hustlers these days.

Click here to download USTREAM Producer.

John Birdsong is a video Producer Director Editor with Panman Productions and lives in Hipsterville, BKLYN with his Girlfriend Morgan-Jo and their cat Fanny.

Tumblr is a popular short form blogging service; it was founded by David Karp in 2008 and has grown since then to 3 million plus “publishers”. The number one reason to use tumblr as a blogging platform is that it’s really really simple, like even my cat could use it.

Here’s what Tumblr has to say about Tumblr…

“Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML.”

Get started. Register as a user. Tumblr’s registration should be a model for all. It takes thirty seconds and skips on asking your blood type and your mother’s maiden name. Easy.

Once you’ve registered you’ll want to name your Tumblelog. If you change your mind you can change the name later. Tumblr uses a dashboard setup, and if you’re familiar with wordpress you’ll either find it’s simplicity refreshing or leaving you wanting more.

Tumblr will allow you to post a picture, text, video, link, or song from your desktop or mobile. It will also syndicate that message to twitter and/or facebook. In other words it makes sharing your, or someone else’s, content really easy. The other great thing is custom themes. Tumblr allows you to choses form hundreds of custom themes to completely change the look and feel of you r tumblelog.

Following and being followed…

If someone is following you, your posts will show up in their dashboard feed similar to the news feed in facebook or twitter. This makes keeping up with what your friends are doing/saying pretty easy.
Tumblarity is tumblr speak for popularity. Tumblr is a bit of a social network as well as blogging platform, as it allows you to follow other people and vice versa. If your tumblarity goes up, it means you have more people viewing and interacting with your posts.

Sign up for tumblr, and get blogging. It’s free (and there are no ads)!!!

Seriously, it is…well, cable TV to be precise.

I was watching “Six Feet Under” the other night, which I’ve just gotten into and is so far pretty good, and I thought: A couple years ago this wouldn’t even be possible. I had just downloaded the show on itunes, for a couple of bucks, and it doesn’t even have to fully download before you can start viewing. It already seems native, but think back…a few years ago I would have had to clean the snow off the car (it was snowing like crazy) drive fifteen minutes to Blockbuster, only to find that someone had already rented it, and I was out of luck. BUMMER. Not anymore. There are so many ways to ingest on demand media now. There are the legal platforms: itunes, hulu, vimeo, youtube, netflix watch instantly, amazon on demand, abc.com, southpark studios (there are a bunch more, but you get the point). Then there are the illegal ones: bittorent (alas pirate bay is dead), and gnutella (aka frost/limewire), and all the bizarre flash based overseas American TV video hubs (awful quality). You’d think the name of the game here is you get what you pay for, but hulu defies that. (at least as of this writing). Hulu has hinted that there will be a pay model, but I’ve read you won’t lose shows like “the cobert report” and “the office”. They (hulu) has hinted at upselling premium content such as HBO and showtime shows. I say go for it. The keyword here is on demand. If I want to watch a movie and I have the choice of renting it on Amazon on demand and being able to watch it immediately, or downloading it from bittorent and having to wait for it. I’ll take amazon everytime. Here is a brief description of some of the free and pay on demand media services available on the internet right now.

iTunes

Who hasn’t heard of itunes? Aside from offering digital music downloads, itunes now also offers movies and movie rentals. I suggest the rentals if you have a bluray and decent TV, becasue if you are going to own a movie itunes downloads don’t match the quality of bluray.

Amazon on Demand

Amazon is making hand over fist tax free $$ with their retail business (I did all of my Xmas shoping with them online.) So why shouldn’t they compete with apple? They should. Competition is good. Competition means lower prices and a wider range of products/service. Thank god itunes has competition. I think the quality of video is little better here on amazon, but it’s a close tie. The video codec they use seems to be a little easier on you computer as well if you have an older system.

Hulu

Free doesn’t get better than this. Seriously, everything here is free. Hulu is my go to place to watch shows like 30 rock. People my age (28) don’t really have landlines. Services like Hulu allow us to get rid of our cable subscriptions too. Screw you comcastcablevisiontimewarner.

Netflix Watch Instantly

Some great movies and TV here and new ones everyday. You have to pay for this, but if you’re into movies you already have netflix and this comes as part of your built in service. Plug you’re laptop into you’re TV, and you’re good to go. Great stuff here.

YouTube

Funny cat videos and people getting hit in the balls is hilarious! I never get bored of it. Check out their screening room for more highbrow content, plus they have a new tv and movies section with a bunch of content (most not that great).

Vimeo

Art house YouTube. Cool stuff here.

Daily motion

Youtube uncensored. Kind of a cool platform, but aside from showing boobs (which is great) I don’t really see how it separates from the pack.

12Seconds.tv

My grandmas spoiled chihuahua on 12seconds.tv (sorry the embed wasn’t working here : )

Cool platform. Short videos.

So…check out these platforms. Invest in a cable to hook up you’re laptop to you’re TV. Cancel you’re cable subscrition. Take a trip with the money you’ll save. Besides, you watch WAY to much fucking TV.

John Birdsong is a Producer Director Editor with Panman Productions and lives in Williamsburg BKLYN with his girlfriend Morgan-Jo and their cat Fanny Fae McNamara.