Eyes Wide Open

Eyes Wide Open from Kevin Co on Vimeo.

Here's a video I made for Memorial Day Weekend, at the request of a few non-profits in town. It's been a while since I've done a war video... a long while. it was a powerful event. Thanks to Anne Nixon who coordinated all the artists, and thanks to all the volunteers who put their time into the project. Here's the video synopsis:

A group of artists gathered on Memorial Day Weekend in Homer Alaska to remember Alaskan soldiers who had fallen during the Iraq War. 108 pairs of combat boots to symbolize our Alaskan troops and 400 pairs of shoes and sandals to represent the Iraqi civilians deaths. Here is a short video interview with Charlie Gibson, one of the volunteers who participated in the event.

Chiswell Ridge in HD!

Welcome to the Chiswell Ridge from Kevin Co on Vimeo.

OK. So we've seen this before... but have you seen it before on HD? I thought not! I have recently begun an affair with Vimeo. Benefits over Youtube and Google Video are being able to show your films in HD and 500MB max filesizes. All the others limit you to 100MB per file. Plus, these videos just look better.

Group Worksample for Alaska Statehood Grant

FMA Group Worksample from Kevin Co on Vimeo.

This is a group worksample that we submitted with a recent grant. The first piece is a excerpt from a video that was edited by Miriam Elizondo and shot with Kevin Co. Second piece is some animation work by David Nicholson, and third piece is a excerpt from Kevin's upcoming film about Bristol Bay that he shot and edited.

The project we've proposed is a historical documentary of Bristol Bay, exploring pre-statehood to the present. The film will be told through the personal stories and images of Violet Wilson, an Aleut Elder who has been fishing the Bay for 51 years with her family. Keep your collective fingers crossed.

I've also started to use Vimeo as our online broadcaster. I think you'll agree that the videos look much better.

HoopCon 2008

We've been in North Carolina for the past few weeks at the first ever Hoop Convergence. Try to imagine 7o of some of the best hoopers in North America coming together. It was an amazing experience, and I feel grateful for the opportunity to witness such a powerful moment in hooping history. We shot loads of video which will shortly be edited by Stefan @ GrooveHoops. Thanks to everyone who shared their stories, time and energy!

Archive Film: Nothing is Better, Nothing is Best

Nothing is Better, Nothing is Best from Kevin Co on Vimeo.

We love 24 hour film fesivals. Here is a film that we produced for the 2006 DramaSlam. The theme of the film was drawn out of a hat: "Nothing is better, nothing is best". Here was our documentary interpretation of that concept, illustrated by these 3 wonderful young men that we met on the road to Homer.
Enjoy.

Editing in the Studio

This past weekend we offered up our editing studio to the Homer Film Society for this year's DramaSlam. The mission was to create a film in 24 hours. It was great fun to have the building full of filmmakers, and to max out our editing bays with creative energy. Other groups in Homer's drama community labored to create 4 other original plays in the same period. Keep on checking back as we upload our videos!  

Disaster strikes!

It's been a long time since an update, but we have a good excuse. This is a picture of Apple's version of the "blue screen of death". Yes, Macs do melt down. 

In this instance my main system hard-drive on my video editing computer physically ground to a halt. The fine folks at Mac Service did a fine job at replacing the unit, although the data was a total loss. Fortunately I my back-up regimen saved my project media files (still working on Invasive Species videos) and parts of my operating system and applications. Despite the back-ups, it's still going to take a few days to get everything back in working condition. Deadlines? What deadlines?

Lesson: back everything up! Keep clones of system drives ready to go, as well as media drives. 

Geek out over, crisis over.  

Archive Film: Roosevelt Island

Roosevelt Island is one of the hidden gems of New York City. It's a small island nestled between Queens and Manhattan and can only be reached by an aerial Tram that parallels the Queensboro Bridge. Mystery surrounds it. Half of the island is sealed off from the public -- the ruins of a derelict psychiatric colony from the turn of the century. This film isn't about that though -- it's about my love affair with it's Tram.

I used to spend lots of time in New York wandering around with an old film camera. I'm happy to be able to give them new life here on the internet. This is from my personal archive, enjoy!

In current news I'm finishing up another project for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for their Invasive Species program. It's been an interesting process -- most of the work was done in the research phase where I gathered all my source images from a variety of research groups in the lower 48. It took a long time. For example, can you tell me where to get underwater images of a New Zealand Mud Snail? What about an escaped farmed Atlantic Salmon?

I thought so.

Homer to Amsterdam

I was recently given the opportunity to voice a piece/performance for artist/filmmaker Pablo Pijnappel in Amsterdam's lovely Rijksacademie. It was awesome to reunite with old friends in old Amsterdam and be a part of the art world again. 8 years ago, Pablo and I studied Media Arts together in Amsterdam at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Art & Design.

The show was a photography installation of Pablo's images of Homer. It was surreal for my family to travel half way across the world only to be suddenly immersed in Homer all over again. Taken in a European context, Homer Alaska is totally alien -- beyond the end of the road for sure. I voiced a wonderful story that he had written, and then performed live readings of the story for the start of the open studios (of which another 50 artists were having concurrent gallery shows).

I heard a rumor that 10,000 people from all over Europe converge at the Rijksacademie over a period of 3 days for the open studios.

Video: Exploring the Chiswell Ridge

We just finished this video for the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G). It was our first project to incorporate HDV -- which quickly turned into "render hell" since we were mixing SD and super huge images/animations with the new video format. Our older machines were pushed beyond the system requirements for sure. As in 8 hour plus render periods on the timeline. Ouch! Time to move on to the next version of FCP.

The video was made to shown on wildlife cruises (on Kenai Fjords Tour boats), science conferences and general "outreach" situations.

Rebecca Sheir of Alaska Public Radio voiced the piece. Kammi Matson wrote the script and Miriam Elizondo labored hard as the finish editor and sound/music engineer. Great team work!

Rough Cuts: Picking fish from our nets

Just to be clear, these videos I'm posting about Bristol Bay are rough scenes from a documentary film that I am currently editing (amongst other projects). It's my intention to get my vision of Bristol Bay out into the public sphere so that others can see what I've seen. That said, these initial scenes are just a few out of many many many that need to be cut and distilled into a finished form.

In 2006, the commercial harvest of red salmon was 44.3 million fish. This was the 8th largest return of fish in the last 50 years of Alaskan statehood. The wild salmon runs of Bristol Bay are unique in that this is the last place in the world where this natural phenomena exists.

All kinds of people depend on this valuable, sustainable resource. Native communities have subsisted on this fish for 10,000 years. Commercial fishermen have been here for the last 150 years and that tradition continues today. All fishing is still done by hand in a season that lasts for only 3 weeks.

Every fish that lands in the net needs to be picked out of the net by hand. In 2006, that means 29 million individual fish were killed by human hands.

Think about that as you watch this video.

Rough Cuts: Bristol Bay

This past summer, I traveled to Bristol Bay (western Alaska) to begin gathering material for a new film project. My film is an exploration of the people who depend on wild Alaskan Red Salmon, and the major issues that threaten our salmon resources and salmon cultures (Native and Commercial)

Major thanks goes out to the fishermen who took this filmmaker aboard, the families of Bristol Bay who took me in, and the Rasmuson Foundation for giving me the initial funds to begin this project.

I have finally made the time to go through and begin to edit! I'll be posting rough scenes as I go along, so that this project can get out there and I can start hearing some feedback.

I'm using Blogger to handle the video because it's user friendly, but the streaming video isn't the nicest looking or sounding. Keep in mind that all of the footage was shot on HDV.

In this scene, we set our nets aboard the F/V Teal and wait for fish.

Contact Info

Kevin Co
ikevinco@gmail.com

907-399-2326

127 E. Bunnell St
Homer AK, 99603

The Gathering

The Gathering from Kevin Co on Vimeo.

Bristol Bay B-Roll Selects for the WWF

WWF Bristol Bay B-Roll Selects from Kevin Co on Vimeo.

Alright. Thanks for the patience guys. Best practices on viewing this will be to view it full-screen and HD by clicking on the scaling button on the bottom RH side of the player. If it begins to stutter (on an older computer), play it back in SD.

YRITWC Ruby Turbine B-Roll

YRITWC Ruby Turbine B-Roll from Kevin Co on Vimeo.