Friday, November 30, 2007

Smooth Feather Headquarters- Middlebury, Vermont

So recently a few people in the Smooth Feather posse, Sean Goodwin, Seth Herman, and myself all decided to hunker down for a couple months and crank out some Smooth Feather magic. :) Sean pulled some strings to get an amazing house in the cozy town of Middlebury. We're super excited for this amazing opportunity of creative collaboration and when we're not working on projects we will surely be tearing down the slopes of the glorious Green Mountains. So with that said, if anyone finds themselves anywhere near Middlebury you're more than welcome to drop on by. We've got working space upstairs and a screening theater in the basement :).

In other news, if anyone is near Dartmouth NH this weekend there is a great "Lose the Shoes" soccer tournament which is being held by Grassroot Soccer. Following the event there will be an awards dinner as well as a screening of Lusaka Sunrise. The soccer is from 12-4 and the dinner is at 6 in anyone is interested in attending.

For the next few weeks we're working on finishing up the editing & scoring of our next film "Joe's Journey". We'll soon ship it down to our main man Jay McKay in NYC whom I'm sure will create an amazing score for the film. We'll keep you posted as to when it will be released online.

Seeing as though it always seems complete to post a video as part of the blog,... I thought I would pass on this hilarious clip that our good friend Justin McLennan took while hiking in Peru a while back. He couldn't figure out who was yelling until he came across this little guy :) Happy Friday!


Monday, November 12, 2007

Margaret Mead, Couch Surfing,.. Generosity :)

Last night Jenny Douglas and I were part of the Margaret Mead film festival and it was a fantastic event. Jenny spoke to the crowd of 200 about KarmaTube and rocked the house. I told a few stories of Smooth Feather and the best question came from the crowd at the end. One gentlemen asked, "So Silas, how do you afford your apartment?" I smiled and responded with, "Currently I don't have an apartment :)" I have a feeling I may have been the first filmmaker at the festival without a home. Although these days my home seems to be defined by the many glorious couches & kitchen tables that have been generously offered to me over the past months.

Speaking of offerings, a recent friend of mine Laurie Meadoff made an offer to Smooth Feather that was over the top! I recently got together with Laurie at her production house NextNext Entertainment in Manhattan . Their work is fantastic and their latest project called Hometown Baghdad, is an online documentary series about life during wartime. If you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it out. At any rate, last Thursday we were sitting at her beautiful office in midtown and I began to explain the spirit behind Smooth Feather Productions and how we all resonate with giving with no strings attached. And at the end of the conversation Laurie says with a smiles, "well, we've just had a few people relocate and we've got some extra office space if you'd like it." A ridiculously generous offer! :) So now the Smooth Feather posse may be meeting up for a bit at W 38th on the 18th floor! :) The joys of the gift economy.

And if that wasn't enough, Laurie then offered her expertise to help distribute "Back in Life" to many of her network connections at MTV, VH1, HBO and the like. My only request was that we give it away to the networks at no cost, with no strings attached...well one string attached...that no adds interrupt the films :)

In other news, we just re-cut an old promo video for CouchSurfing.com over the weekend. 6 Years ago Casey Fenton and I put together a video in my backyard in Maine when CouchSurfing was only a crazy idea in Casey's head. Today the site has over 350,000 members world wide and been featured in the NY times and covered by NBC nightly news. CouchSurfing is an amazing worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit....and its free:)

Due to some copyright issues of a Sublime song we used 5 years ago I offered to recut the promo piece for CouchSurfing and add a bit more flare to the video :)

Feel free to check out the promo here.



Big Smiles from NYC,...next Couch...The home of the Jones Street Boys!

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Bill Clinton Meets "Lusaka Sunrise" Cast


Completed at this time last year, "Lusaka Sunrise" continues to generate amazing energy in all directions. Bill Clinton recently met up with Victor Mawere in Lusaka and partook in a few Grassroot Soccer games highlighted in the film. Read more about it here.




"Lusaka Sunrise" will also be screened this Sunday at the Margaret Mead Film Festival in NYC. The event is held at the American Museum of Natural History and begins at 4:30 on Sunday. Myself and Jenny Douglas will be there as part of a panel discussion focusing on user generated content in relation to the internet. It should be an amazing event and it would be great to see all of you there. I'm sending big smiles from the wild city of NYC. -Silas
P.S. Our Smooth Feather Powerhouse Composer Jay McKay, finished the NYC marathon in glorious form today. :) You're the man Jay.