cheers hope y’all have nice weather, its spring rain here in Chi-town
Candy

Ed, thanks very much for those details. I remember looking at some of the Converse ads and thinking, wow, some of this is really good. I’m with you and Mr. Seeley. Except of course that we don’t need to teach this sort of thing in schools because people manage to learn it on their own. So you could say we have even learned to learn with new sophistication. What happened? Floride, possibly? Yes, that must be it. Best, Grant

We received about 1600 entries after 18 months. More interesting was the geographic diversity- we’ve gotten! films from Austria, Italy, South Africa and we thought early on it was going to be US only. This number is small compared to GM and Mastercard, but they invested heavily in promoting their efforts ATL. All our efforts were WOM and grassroots.

While on the subject. I remember a lecture from John Seely Brown (ex PARC) where he showed the class the most moving film he had ever seen- it was a 6 min short made by an American teenager who was distressed with ow much pressure her parents were putting on her to achieve good grades.

John’s conclusion- filmaking is a new language and should be taught in all schools.

Cheers.

Ed

The only problem is…and I hate to reprise my role of representing “the coomon folk” or “regular folk” or of which I am…but we always were talented! It’s not that we suddenly got all talented one day. I’ve been to endless weddings and almost all of them had wicked funny speeches(but then thats the national identity of Canadians, self depricating humour) No the human soul and experience makes each one of us intelligent and artistic. But we have had centuries of academia and caste systems that restricted voices. Technology tweaking has helped us regular folks come into the mainstream again. The most famous “regular folk” was perhaps Shaespeare and he was memorizing Ovid at nine years old ause children CAN and that used to be considered a good education. Now with reality tv shows like Survivor and Top Chef, we see how much intelligence(and folly ok…) there is in regular folks. But we’ve seen this before the shock… of a Dolly Parton or 5oCent or Eminem coming from “nothing” and writing poetry and incredible lyrics. Web boards have exposed the myth of the “layreader” as another example. I’ve participated for ten years on what began as a forum for profs and professionals who were fans of Cormac McCarthy. Often there was heated debates and resentment because of the internet the public and so-called layreaders were beginning to particpate and how could they possibly have a “close reading”. It took awahile but a slow mutual admiration society has built up between the “experts” and the non-professionals at that book forum.

What about the blues? And rock? Quintin Tarrantino?

No we were always here, just now we have our own cameras and venues.

I think maybe we’ll see more and more grass roots kind of feel in product making and in consummerism. I don’t know, I’m lousy at predicting the future but I can imagine that people will want to have a cache of something not mainstream…homespun, but not on the level of macrame or grannies knitted torture slippers…but in music and art. More and more people understand that it isn’t institutionalized education or corporate beliefs that make one talented, or an “expert’. Those things sure don’t guarantee making a living either. Anyone really can be a star.