Watch my first short documentary since 2017. Entitled Somos Artesina because I think it speaks directly to the content including their message. They are a Colombian-American couple and homeowners in Philadelphia. Together they call their brand Grupo ArtesinA. They tell their own story and it speaks for itself in six minutes.
Often, when an English speaking subject has imperfections or goes against a strong accent, the filmmakers will subtitle in English. I decided that if I was able to understand them enough to do the interview, then you would understand them, and the people who really needed subtitles were the spanish speakers.
This also gave them the opportunity to write their own subtitles to better articulate what they were saying. Because I am a spanish student, I was able to comprehend them and even edit a little bit.
The production was straightforward. First, I met them at home to capture their studio and conduct an interview. Then I captured scenes at Open Kitchen Sculpture Garden, both at a potluck and at their own garden brunch benefit for ProAnimal Sanctuary in Ecuador.
I also made a music video with the B-Roll. I wanted it to be gritty like those old music videos I grew up on. Because it’s getting harder to find free Creative Commons music, I am producing my own music for my video projects currently. That strategy will find its limit when I do larger projects, but I know musicians and it will be good to work directly in my network. That is what THRU is all about.
This is my first THRU project since shutting down the magazine and moving to Philadelphia in 2018. In 2017, I managed to land one commissioned project (that means it paid) and completed some really good work that ran in rotation at Open Signal television channels across the Portland metro region.
I’m basically picking up where I left off, hoping to lift off. Your support is much appreciated at the value for value page.
“Somos Cumbia” is an original song for the Somos Artesina short documentary.
This is one of the easiest, free flowing pieces of music that I have ever composed. I called it “Somos Cumbia,” because it is for a short documentary called Somos Artesina, which I also produced.
The film is about a Colombian couple in Philadelphia called ArtesinA. Cumbia is a Colombian music form influenced from immigrants the world over and has extended to every corner of the world. The title translates to, “We are cumbia,” because we all have access and the right to this musical form. It is a lot like jazz in that way.
ArtesinA is an art project and a startup brand. Learn about them by watching the film here.
Also, I made a music video using b-roll film.
Music video for “Somos Cumbia.”
All of this is my comeback to THRU Media. That was the magazine that I launched in 2016, which you can learn about here. The magazine is still dead, but the media channels are reviving slowly.
As for this song, I had completed editing and mastering, but I needed to add in/out music. I am not the type to run a music bed throughout. It’s lame, in my opinion, however, given my limitations in terms of licensing music, I cannot really do it anyway.
There used to be the Free Music Archive, but that was bought from the non-profit radio station WFMU by a for-profit company called Tribe of Noise. I don’t know how that is legal.
The real problem is that none of that music is free anymore. Free to listen, sure, but who cares? Now you have to pay substantially to license the music for your short, no budget film.
That is why I decided to produce my own music for the picture. I heard the cumbia beat in my head, it’s a standard form, so that was easy. I laid that down first, followed by bass, and then the accordion. The synth track capped it. It all flowed so naturally.
I was also very sad when I wrote this. I was powering through some real disappointments, some rejection. It has that sad sound, but also happy. I’m just happy to channel my issues through work, I love music more than anything, so it always improves my vibe.
That’s the song and the story behind it. Thanks for listening.
One of the first books I recall reading to educate myself on multimedia was The Gutenberg Galaxy, by Marshal McLuhan. The author that coined the term “global village” and “hot/cold media” should be every journalist and web programmer’s required reading, to build a clear foundation of what the hell they are doing. In this book, he analyzes Don Quixote as a character, and a story, in the early age of print media.
The gist of it is, when Quixote set out to become a “knight errant,” he was reaching back to an older time, a time before the printing press when knights ruled the land by unwritten laws, when literacy was wholly uncommon.
Hilariously written by Miguel de Cervantes, published 1605, Don Quixote is contemporary to the author’s time, and it is a fictional study on the psychological phenomena that trails the advent of major technological advancements in media. When a new medium is introduced, it changes media, and consciousness is affected.
I am currently reading both The Adventures of Don Quixote and Understanding Media, by McLuhan.
Quixote and Pancho riding together. Original painting 1754, Hulton Archive.
By the extraordinary power of this new form of media (mass-produced books) and its disruptive affect on the senses (oral culture versus literate, auditory versus visual), a regular householder in some village hallucinated himself into a knight and set about for a new life of heroic adventures and chivalry.
The most famous scene in the book is within the first tenth of its volumes. That is when Quixote is fighting the windmills he has mistaken for giants, against the alarms of his squire, Pancho de la Mancha. Quixote is an older man, probably experiencing dementia, but a specific kind influenced by books. He believes in a world that he never lived in, because he’s become expert to it through books.
I failed to recognize McLuhan’s lesson about Don Quixote when I engaged in the pursuit of starting an internet-based media corporation.
The modern medium shift today is electric technology. The evolution of new forms of media resulting from the new medium has been rapid. From signal transmissions by wire, to radio, to cable television, and now fiber-optic internet, we are living in the equivalent stage today as Don Quixote was then, as the whole structure of society is being rewired, pun intended.
We are changing and we don’t see it changing us until it has already taken a grip over our behavior.
I reviewed The Gutenberg Galaxy, and the article is archived with the rest of THRU. To have the trail of my work from seed to flower and back to compost is a study of progress itself. The oldest posts there are mine, and very few have been edited since.
About six years ago, all content original to seanongley.com was transferred, along with my dreams, to a string of sites that would eventually become THRU.media My dreams would be supported, if not complicated, by pursuing the dream of building Thru Media LLC.
Today, I have personal insight into the media industry and the whole ecosystem that McLuhan saw coming is unfolding rapidly within my generation.
I’m watching the Quixote effect take people down every day. I would say that my story with THRU is like my own knight errantry, my adventure where I had no calling outside the fire in my heart, no rules except the abstract principles of justice, driven by the affect of a major advancement in electric technology: The Internet.
My Pancho was Kathleen Dolan. Unlike Quixote, I was in love with my Pancho, and we had a domestic relationship. Rather, she was that and my Dulcinea del Toboso, the subject of Quixote’s devotion and chivalry. As such, I both abused Kate by dragging her along into my adventures, and devoted myself to her, as I believed she was destined to be a great writer and that I was there to bridge the gap from bartender to Author.
Kate and Myself covering Bernie Sanders rally, 2015, at Moda Center.
I pulled a special little publication together with some big dreams, worked with other dreamers, and we took it on with a spirited campaign. We held ourselves to a standard that improved the quality of the content over time.
We came very close to launching a successful company, but as I humbly tell my story, I hope to illustrate that I was trying to stand on the shoulders of giants. But they turned out actually to be windmills.
Several years ago, we almost started a new series of videos inspired by Between Two Ferns, but the idea was that I’m couch surfing and interviewing artists at their home, preferably squeezed into a space not hospitable to an interview.
As of posting this, the world is being instructed to stay six feet apart from everyone. That makes this particularly nice to watch right now.
We produced this start to finish in one night, over beers, giving an authentic touch to the skittish editing. We did it with just two cameras and one lamp.
Estevan and Nicholas Munoz are a talented pair of dudes. They both still live and work in Portland. Nicholas is a comedian. Este wanted to be a filmmaker, but now he’s all in as a rapper, going by Chaz Matador. This however suits his other interests: Writing and Comedy. I met him because he was interested in writing for THRU Media. He joined up as an early “staff” writer and helped produce our Indiegogo video.
Watching this now, I think we discovered a good concept, but it was just the context of the moment. It was easy to perform, because back then, I was actually housing insecure, living the starving dirtbag artist lifestyle while posing as this sophisticated media guy. It could have been funny, each time finding a new way to crash at my guests’ house — like the only reason I’m doing this is to find a new couch to crash on.
