On Friday, April 13, @ 6pm, Bill will be playing at Cornelia St. Cafe with James Guastaferro and Mark Katsaounis.  They will be performing some of Bill’s new songs soon to be released on his two new LPs Laughing Together and Breathe.

I loved this book. When I first read it, I felt like I was on the cutting edge. Jonathan Safran Foer's experiments with the narrative were not only refreshingly innovative but harmonious and full of emotion and personality. Although I give a rowdy round of applause for the attempt, I can't help but feel that this film, written and directed by Liev Schreiber was an unfortunate letdown.Ok, turning this novel into a film is obviously a difficult endeavor, and one which I appreciate, but I feel like the attempt really shouldn’t be made unless the director can include what made the story so special in the first place. By far, the most disappointing aspect of the film wasn’t that it lacked the delicate complexity of the different narrative forms, but that half the story was missing. For those who haven’t read the book, a very large part of it was set back in history in the shtetl of our main character’s ancestors. That part of the story is incredibly moving and interfaces with the story set in the present in brilliant ways. To me, that was the heart of the story and it gave depth to the heart-rending climax of the story. I don’t know if it was timidity on the part of the filmmakers to open up their version to that level of complexity, an aversion to doing half the movie as a period piece, a limited budget or some other combination of factors, but the movie didn’t include the historical story and consequentially could only ever be a ghost of the novel. I generally enjoyed the rest of the movie, including the performances by Elijah Wood and Eugene Hutz (who was brilliantly cast as Alex) as well as the cinematography, costuming and music, but the above-mentioned story-thinning was like watching a beheading, and it limited any positive experience I could have. The film, however, did win some awards, so at least the filmmakers did get points for trying. Purchase these titles from Amazon

Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel Everything Is Illuminated (DVD)

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V for Vendetta The Lord of The Rings Watchmen – Proof That Fanboys Would Destroy The Things They Love The Most

It's no secret that Alan Moore stories always seem to be turned into crappy movies and V for Vendetta just may be the worst of them all.Let’s start with the topic of tone. In general, the filmmakers (Director James McTeigue and screenwriters the Wachowski Brothers) changed the tone to something comic, almost tongue-in-cheek. At times, the tone becomes a sappy, almost nostalgic tone. It’s not just that they created a less dark version, but they created a version that takes itself less seriously. As far as main characters, I will begin with V. In general, I didn’t dislike him too bad, except for his occasional melodramatic, overly light-hearted and cheeky attitude. When we first hear from Hugo Weaving, playing V in the film, he is delivering a long-winded monologue, apparently for Evey’s sake. Unfortunately, that sort of over-indulgence and phony intellectuality sets the tone for much of V’s presence in the film. Evey’s character was more destructively altered in the film. In the book, she is introduced to us as completely vulnerable, having barely survived the post-nuclear weather, the loss of her father and a childhood living with her widowed mother in a work camp after the nuclear winter. After all that, she then resorts to prostitution and is saved from rape and potential death by a group of Fingermen. Through the course of the narrative we see her drown in her suffering and self-doubt and eventually, aided by V’s tough love, redefine herself and come out self-reliant. In the movie, she is just like everybody else. She works a normal 9-to-5 job and hides any vulnerability from the world around her. She doesn’t seem vulnerable at all, except for some distant memories of her parents’ abduction by the government, and she might even seem content with her life. There is so much less of a story arc for her to travel in the film. But in an interesting twist, the screenwriters do make Evey weaker in one regard. They make her rat out V and his plan to the Bishop. The filmmakers also added an epidemic to the back-story, with a conspiracy between a pharmaceutical company and the government as an added plot-point. I may be wrong, but I think a good old-fashioned story about nuclear winter, and the rise of a genocidal regime over a weak and tired people still makes a compelling fable. I’m not ruling out that drug companies could be run by evil-minded people and that they could be in league with governments, but I am saying that they aren’t needed to make V for Vendetta a better tale. There was also a general difference between the two versions in regards to the outlook towards the citizenry. In the book, Alan Moore’s writing told me that the citizens were complicit in England’s current state of affairs, that they had become weak and lazy and content in their false sense of security, allowing injustices, no matter the cost to their neighbors and friends. In the original V actually delivers a rather explicit public address to that effect. In the film, however, all popular guilt and responsibility was written out and the masses were depicted as having been taken hostage, somehow unwillingly, by the state. In the movie V also delivers a rather explicit public address to that effect. I will now whine about a few things in the final moments of the movie. Why was there a mass of marching people in Guy Fawkes masks? Sitting through that whole “revolution lives in all of us” schtick was like drinking castor oil. Furthermore, why did the filmmakers have V take on a dozen or less heavily-armed fingermen and Creedy (practically the big bad) during an over-the-top, Matrix-like action sequence. Is Agent Smith behind that mask? Plus, Finch is not supposed to cozy up with V.2 at the end. He shoots V.1 and leaves ecstatic. To finish up, here is a list of characters or plot points that I enjoyed in the original, but missed in the film:

The song and montage in the Prelude to Book 2, The Vicious Cabaret The Prologue of Book 3, 1812 Overture and explosion The Vox Populi section Finch’s hallucinogenic trip at Larkhill and the image of him naked at Stonehenge The politics of the different coup attempts The look into the mind of the Leader, his heartbreak at the infidelity of Fate and his fall to assassination The homeless Guy Fawkes in the tunnel Finch walking off on the empty dark highway

Purchase these titles from Amazon

Absolute V for Vendetta (Hardcover) V for Vendetta (Widescreen Edition)

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Where The Wild Things Are (2009) The Lord of The Rings Watchmen – Proof That Fanboys Would Destroy The Things They Love The Most

Client: BMF Media Group My Role(s): Designer When this event was first presented to me it was to be a launch party, and we wanted to celebrate the content and design of the site. I wanted to reflect the nature of the blog and use boxes, borders, simple typography and otherwise HTML-looking elements. I used the CSS from the blog to get a clue on colors and fonts. The confetti and streamers and jumping image of Perez all reflected the “launch” concept. We were lucky seeing that when the idea shifted to a holiday bash the design still translated well into a holiday theme, so we didn’t need to change anything. I also created a bar menu, logo decals, pullup banners, media and guest check-in signs, and bar signage. Link:

Client: BMF Media Group My Role(s): Designer For this event I started with several different brainstorms on the themes of winter, escaping and chicago. The stylized snowflakes were one of the elements we kept from the brainstorms. In addition to using them in the graphic design, the client also chose to use them in the space design, making cutouts of them and hanging them from the ceiling. Also designed a bar menu, evites and a printed invitation, a stage banner, and a bar decal. I also created the logo, though I was closely mimicking the design of their other event logos. Kudos to BMF for putting all of it together. I also created some video elements, reminiscent of the banner on vitaminwater’s social club website, to be projected onto a wall. There ended up being no walls without windows in the room, so they weren’t used. I included some short low-resolution clips of them here just to get an idea. Link:

Client: BMF Media Group My Role(s): Designer BMF and I worked through several concepts for this event (rainbows, monsters, boardwalks, beaches, drag queens, etc), and they eventually came up with a simple design for the front of the postcard/poster which used justified text, in the Blackout font, masking an image of orange glitter. I ended up using that type treatment as the logo of the event and for emphatic text in the different collateral we produced, but I went in a tangential direction for the rest of the elements, deciding to go with a concert-bill sort of look. I created a back for the postcard, several evites for different sponsors, an online contest form and ads for different sites in varying dimensions, including a full site skin for perezhilton.com. I also edited the original postcard/poster design when needed. Link:

A few days ago, Ralph Lauren projected videos over two buildings, one in London and one in New York. The marketing campaign was called the Ralph Lauren 4D experience and it was really well done. The experience would have been great to see in person (I was in NYC just before it was displayed). The videos, which you can view on vimeo ( http://vimeo.com/16723278, http://vimeo.com/16722030) are still pretty immersive and one can see how impressive the projections are in the way they appear to manipulate the physical space and transport the viewer, almost magically, into another space and time. If you are interested in how they accomplished the feat, you can watch the behind-the-scenes video ( http://vimeo.com/16722548 ), also on Vimeo.

Ginger and I recently swung by New York City for a much needed visit on our way to the Green Mountain State. While there, we went down to the Wave Rising Series at Dumbo's John Ryan Theater to see a performance of SH2, a new piece by BARKIN/SELISSEN PROJECT.Chris Johnson and I, along with some help from Ginger, had spent a few weeks creating new audio and new scenic video to add the piece, which we originally completed for BARKIN/SELISSEN last year. The performance was excellent, the choreography was impressive in its scope and it was performed almost flawlessly by the talented dancers. They will probably eventually have video up, so check their website every so often for news, and definitely try to check out the piece, SH2, if you can.

Client: BMF Media Group My Role(s): Designer For this event, the client gave me a design with a green paintbrush effect and the Music Lounge logo; which I tweaked, changing the brushstroked to red, duplicated and moved them around and added the other type and logo elements. In addition to what is shown here, I also threw together bar menus, varying pull-up banners, a stage banner and a bar decal. They also had a nighttime event, sponsored by Rock the Vote, that needed an evite, so I used the original green coloration with the oldest symbol of the night, the moon. For the Behringer Podcast Station sign, I just wanted to create something that had substance in the large amount of vertical space and used the colors of the Behringer logo. Simple enough. I really liked the original concept for the step-and-repeat. It has the red only on one side, creating movement across the wall it sits on and the logos create a unique woven pattern, almost like a watch band. We ended up going with larger logos in the standard five-logo pattern on top of a relatively symmetric red and black background. Link:

Client: Agua Trip My Role(s): Image-sourcer, Video Editor, Musician There is just so much footage available on the web these days, and a lot of it is free to use, given by internet users everywhere into the stream of open media. I went to archive.org and found several clips of people dancing in various settings and put it to music, specifically the song “Happy to Change” by my band Agua Trip. I didn’t do any sort of manipulation to make it match the music, I just threw them on there and let the music match it as it may. I felt there was a sort of analog look to a lot of the footage, so I tried to match that feeling with the type for the titles and end credits.All the footage is attributed and credited at the video’s Youtube page. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w9C__D0iP4

We are happy to announce a new video for “Happy to Change”, from our album Genetics. Check out the video on our Youtube channel or watch it directly below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w9C__D0iP4

A while back we were interviewed by Charles Booth for a feature article he was writing for APSU Magazine, the publication of the University where Agua Trip first started. The article recently hit the stands and the mailboxes of all APSU alumni. Below, you can read the article in JPG form or download a PDF.

Client: BMF Media Group My Role(s): Designer This was a simple event. I didn’t do much except manipulate files sent by the client. There is something I like about the step-and-repeat. I don’t know if it’s that the elements are more imagery than logotypes, so they create a heavier color blocking effect than usual. The pattern is a simple one, but there is something I like in there. Link:

I came (back) to visual design after a long love affair with words. To tell the truth, I never left that love. I find myself yet again celebrating the art of poetry while reading "Communion", the latest poem from my pal and fellow East Nashvillian, Matthew Lavigne.The first stanza: In the Friday night catacomb of the word store, thick in the clerk’s nostrils like the smoke from a censer, wafts the woody-sweet breath of books, their phonemic scratch-marks whispering symbolic, the words of the dead, and the dead still learning to die. Words carved of flesh, words from the bowl of an upturned skull, words of bone, reliquaries, this one’s pinky knuckle, that one’s mandible, an amulet against indifference, the Eucharist that inculcates life among a world gone rife with blood shed, with statues and monuments, their raising and their razing. For the rest of the poem, head over to http://theglasscoin.com/?p=1646

Client: BMF Media Group My Role(s): Designer To accompany the Video Music Awards, Perez Hilton threw another of his “One Night” events, this time “in Los Angeles”. BMF Media Group, the firm producing the events, asked me again to design the event’s graphics. I jumped on board. The last few events have all used a similar design, with localized variations based on the hosting city. This event veers a bit wider from those designs. Instead of a silhouetted skyline, we chose to go with stylized architectural images from Hollywood and LA, some real, some fake. I also added a pattern, color stripes and lighting effects which added more depth of detail then the simpler color fields of the other designs. The step-and-repeat is large, like the one for Perez’s birthday, as 30 feet wide by 7 tall. BMF likes to go big with their signage, increasingly bigger with every year I work with them. Big design elements create environmental effects in the room, which interests me. I decided to use the diamond/pin stripe pattern on a larger scale than it was used in the other elements, creating more texture to the logo field and to the wall in general. Then we added wings with the LA imagery and event logo, creating different posing stations. If you see some of the event images on wireimage or elsewhere, the step and repeat creates a tangible mood. I also made bar menus, a basic web graphic, evites, rsvp forms, various outdoor signage, DJ booth and bar decals. I used the sunset from at http://www.flickr.com/photos/84263554@N00/2160218875/sizes/o/in/photostream/ as a background coloration to the diamond pattern. I really liked the images of the Hollywood Hills by Laura Bittner and used those. They can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfsavard/3463560457/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfsavard/3464385548/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfsavard/3463558285/. The “Coffe Bea” building was made up of a coffee cup at http://www.flickr.com/photos/srslyguys/1077817244/ and an image of Brewster’s Coffee & Deli, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_mcmt/3948994791/ . The chinese theatre was composed of about a dozen photos, then stylized and vectorized. Link:

Client: BMF Media Group My Role(s): Designer VINCE, a fashion company with a store in New York, threw an event for Fashion’s Night Out this year. I created an evite/rsvp based on one of their campaign images. I also created a music download card and a couple different window decals for their store front. Link:

Client: BMF Media Group My Role(s): Designer Tide threw a free concert in New Orleans commemorating the fifth anniversary of both Hurricane Katrina and the Tide Loads of Hope program. Faith Hill performed. In terms of conceptual design, we did do some initial brainstorming and conceptualizing, but Tide already had a marketing campaign for Loads of Hope using a grid of images from their travels around the country, so we ultimately decided to go with something similar, adding more “grout” between the tiles and using more negative space in general. There were three general visual designs happening throughout the space; 1) the face mosaic on white with pattern variations, 2) banners of solid orange with an occasional Tide Loads of Hope logo, and 3) a white field bordered by orange or blue with blue text. The event had a very strong brand presence. In addition to the signage, laminates and mezzanine banners, I also made long hanging banners for the alcoves and stage in the performance hall, inset wall panels for the VIP room, a step-and-repeat, various foamcore elements, window decals, stickers and directions cards. Link:

Client: Madison Harding My Role(s): Designer, Developer Hilary and Barri at Madison Harding decided they wanted to throw the colors into reverse. What was essentially a black on white design was to be turned to white on black. In addition to the color shift, I also made some internal updates to the PHP/XHTML and moved almost all occurrences of Flash off the site, using Javascript instead for any animations. There was also a new campaign thrown up. Link: http://www.madisonharding.com

Here is another post in the Faces and Logos series. I don’t know exactly what’s happening in this photo, but it’s interesting and worth sharing. This is a step and repeat I designed for Perez Hilton’s One Night in Chicago.

Lindsey Boise