So you want to be in a band, lessons from reading, etc

Some lessons from Past Cornerstone's and a few books I read.

I was out on a "rap music" tour with a local performer and we ended up at a famous Christian Rap band concert event. All the rappers knew each other and they were doing some outreach events in a small weekend tour. Some comments about signing with a label were made by the more experienced in the "signed bands" to the less experienced "unsigned artists". This was some years back.

Also I attended some Cornerstone seminar sessions for "musicians" and question and answer sessions with artists on the Christian music scene and questions to artists in particular about being in a band or starting a band.

Also I've read a book called "The Business of Music" which was about the music business in general.

Here's a few things I learned from all three.

Keep in mind that this was from over a decade ago, so some things may have changed, with self published labels and do it yourself records. But some things are still the same.

Think about it from a business perspective. You are a studio and you have a lot of equipment and technicians and engineers working for you. And you're goal is to create a nice product. It's to produce good music or at least commercially viable music with talent and a lot of expensive equipment. Yes everyone wants a record deal, but they have to pay for that studio expense somehow. This is a business, a kind of business machine. So they need to recoup the costs of the album/CD production. How do they do that. With the most popular bands, not the average band.
1. (Business of Music) Most of the profits are from the superstars and the top 5% of the bands. The big sellers, not the majority of the artists or acts that are signed. 90% of the bands and acts will not sell enough music to cover the cost of production. The real profits are from the bigger acts that hit it big.

What does this mean? It means they are gambling that you might hit it big. If they cover costs of production, then they are happy. You as a band might see a small signing fee to sign to a label, but that will be deducted from record sales. The average artist gets $1 a record sale, through normal channels, but this is deducted from their advance and promotional costs often. So the average artist will see nothing from the sales of their albums. They make profit from "retail markup sales" from CD and music that they sell at their concerts and that's about it. They make money from T-Shirt sales and sometimes more money from the markup and profit from T-Shirt sales than from music sales. They may make profit from the concert. That is what keeps them going.

2. (Cornerstone comment from an artist, I believe it was Jimmy Abeg). Question: What would you say to the average Christian artist that wants to go out and perform? Jimmy A: I'd say don't do it. It's not worth the trouble (I'm paraphrasing it.) There is not enough money in it and you will be older and living in an apartment while your friends live in their own houses. Because you can't make enough money to be successful. But he added, if you are really into performing and must perform, you'll do it anyway and I can't tell you not to and expect you to listen. (Note this comment is paraphrased a bit from memory of that interview, I haven't looked at video footage of that recently.)

3. Comment to artists from a past Cornerstone festival on the business. You have to understand that running a band is a lot more like running or owning a Pizza Hut than the glamour you think will be involved. You will have a lot of money spent on making phone calls, paying the band members and support staff and for the cost of a vehicle to travel from concert to concert. Even a small buss can cost a ton of money to fuel up to travel around during a tour. You could easily be needing $300,000 a year for expenses to tour, and this is for a smaller band that isn't using a ton of equipment.

4. Comment from rappers to others. The record labels in Nashville will treat you like royalty when they are trying to get you to sign with them. They will pick you up perhaps in a limo and hang out with you and will seem to be your best friend. Then once you are signed they will not want to talk to band members and you will feel like your a stranger. What happened? You were signed and now the label only wants to talk to your manager. There is a reason for this. The reason is the record label wants to give honest advice to the manager of a band and they don't want to deal with the band and hurt their feelings directly if they are giving criticism. They want to tell the manager and the manager can break the bad news of some critical comment to the band. The manager can say, "yeah the label doesn't know what they are talking about, etc" and be on the side of the band. This helps insulate the band from criticism and still allows the label to have some control over the final product.

This is some of the lessons I learned in reading about bands and labels. This is not meant as a criticism, but merely as statements of facts of the way things work. You have to be ready for this. The band is also giving up some creative control to their music of course, because they sign record deals giving power over their music to publishers and the record labels. This limits what they can do legally with their own music. I'm not saying this to say labels are bad or this is a bad deal and there should be an alternative. This is just the way things work and the nature of the music business. I'm just stating this as the way things are.

It may sound like I'm going to make some kind of sales pitch and offer some kind of alternative to the typical label route. I'm not really doing that here and that is not the intent of this post. I'm just posting this as some knowledge you may want to study and think about so you realize how things work in the music business if you're looking for that big chance and record deal.

Now for a few photos from the Kye Kye edit.

Kye kye edit continued. . . The concert experience

When Kye Kye came on stage I had a lot of fun taping them. This band had a different sound and I never heard of them before the festival. They had a techno feel, but not just a pure drum machine mix, but a live drummer, guitars and keys. They definitely had a Euro sound and seemed to be influenced by that kind of sound.

I found out later from the Kyr Kye website that three of the band members are siblings who were born in Estonia, this might explain the euro sound. The last Christian band I heard that had a euro sound was a band called Code of Ethics, but I haven't been listening to Christian techno bands lately.

The lead singer moved very well. She almost danced in one song as if she was charming a snake or something. Se had this hairstyle that almost had a Medusa like quality to it, while she performed. Very interesting and mesmerizing. I really enjoyed the bands performance and actually the words were easier to hear in the live sound up front than in the recording. MY camcorder audio confirms this, but it's distorted from high volumes, so it's no use for audio post processing.

I mixed the video and let it sit because I don't have an address to send the tape to. I also wanted to review the mix in more than one system and see how it sounds. I showed the video to my friend who is a DJ and he looked up the band on Facebook and found out about the Estonian connection. We have a little history or knowledge of Estonia. A friend of ours who was into Christian live sound production went to Estonia on a mission trio and actually stayed over there for a year. This friend married a Christian Estonian gal and brought her back to e US.

Also I went out on some dates with a bible smuggler who smuggled bibles to Estonia back in the Soviet days. When I say dated I mean in a Christian sense (Christian dating, means i went out with this lady, I was not sleeping with her).

Anyway I recall many stories about the Bible smuggler and even have a watch she brought back from Estonia which she sold to help someone over there raise money to buy a washing machine or something.

So the Estonian aspect of the band is also interesting to me.

I edited the footage and went over to my friends house to play it. And my friend said, you remixes the audio to much and we can't hear e band enough. I reduced the stereo effects by doubling a d panning e tracks. I applied EQ to both sides differently. It didn't sound good to him on his giant screen tv. This was a second review of the video edit with audio corrections. my friend John had received the Kye Kye CDs in the mail and he said let me show you what the cd sounds like. He put the cd into his stereo system which is in the living room under his giant screen tv. He flipped a few switches and out came the band Kye Kye. This was through a Bose surround sound system.

The sound was so good, it was amazing. I told John, "wow that's great, I gotta order a cd as soon as I get home.". Then my friend John said, hey check it out the audio matches the video. I said, well your a DJ and you probably lucked out and picked a spot that matches the video. We sat there and I said, they probably used a click track and it matches the album. Because they had ear monitors and there is some sequencing in their performance. This means I mint be able to sweeten the mix or at least a video mix separately with the cd audio. Wow the audio even has background vocals. We watched the video for another couple of minutes and John yelled out to his wife, to come out and take a look at this video. Then talking about cornerstone matched the video and it dawned on us, this wasn't the cd playing, but my sound mix. The sound was so much better in the surround system it fooled both John and I. We thought the video was a CD. Looks like the video sound is done and I can mail this off.


There is one problem which is I could set the DVD compression better in iDVD. I will do this next. Also since the sound track could be original or my mixed track and the concert was only 30 minutes I can put a repeat performance on the DVD I send the band. One with original sound with no audio changes and the other my video mix.

I asked John if he knew their address as he bought the CDs from the band. John said, I threw away the envelope. I ordered a set of cd's from Kye Kye's website. When they arrived I had a return address to mail the DVD to.

I'm going to write the band first to verify the address and burn a final copy of the DVD to mail it to them next.

I'm actually mailing the Kye Kye video after my initial mailing to Iona as that video is pretty much finished at least for now.

More on the Iona video edit in a future post. I will also edit this post and add some screen shots from the Kye Kye edit session. It was relatively easy, with only the audio sweetening giving me trouble.

Now to start talking about the editing - The Kye Kye edit

First I did a quick edit of "The Choir". This was really a test edit and that video will be revisited.

Then I decided to do an easy video and one I wanted to see. I wanted to edit the Kye Kye concert. This was only 30 minutes long.

I started editing this and worked on it for a short time. I ran into a problem which is the vocal volume on the recording is to low. This might be due to the way the band performs or the live mix. It sounded okay on the cameras near the stage and we were hearing more of the vocal monitors, the band monitors up front which is where I was standing. I didn't know if the actual live mix had enough vocals in it. But Kye Kye has low volumes in their mix for their singer. The lead singer is excellent, but she has one flaw perhaps, which is the mix doesn't have her voice up high enough and she perhaps sings in a way that is a little bit like a little girl singing. I love her voice, don't get me wrong, it's like a separate instrument. But she might be able to pronounce the words better by opening and closing her mouth more, change her delivery a little. It might change her sound and singing style a little, but it would allow us to hear the words better.

So the audio mix was a mess in a way. It sounded good from an overall sound perspective, but people would say to me when I showed them the band video quickly on my laptop, I can't hear her words. They would say she sounds good and can sing, but also that the singer isn't singing good enough for them to hear the words.

I know they are a cool techno style band and have an Estonian background, but it would be nice to hear the actual words.

My Christian DJ friend saw the video and immediately ordered a set of Kye Kye CD's off the internet.

So I continued to edit the Kye Kye video tweaking the sound and actually losing some of the stereo separation in the mix in an attempt to digitally enhance her voice an bring it out using digital parametric EQ settings inside Media 100.

This took about a week as I wasn't doing this constantly. Then I sat aside the video and wanted to play it on a number of systems and see if I should make more adjustments.

This story will be continued in another post. I'm going to run out and meet a friend for lunch now.

If the video shoot doesn't kill you, maybe the edit will.

I'm going to change my initial page and edit this further to reduce the (Peak Oil and economy) tangent, part of this first post.

This to reduce the reading and size of this opening posting.

I'm better off mentioning that briefly and giving external links or a link to a separate blog (youtube videos, etc.)

I may create a youtube video to mention that theory later.

Some quick facts about my background:

1. I purchased a camcorder in 2009 to create a simple and free overview of Peak Oil, but put in different perspectives, throw in my 2 cents and more about the subject. I never did this.

2. I had a day job as a computer programmer/lead analyst and did video on the side for about ten years.

3. I travelled to Cornerstone 2012 in a kind of last minute rush, videotaped a bunch of artists at the Gallery stage and I'm editing that video now. That's a quick summary.

(You can stop reading this post now, for the quick read.) The rest is details.

DETAILS
I used to be involved in video production (as a videographer) and taped a lot of Christian concert events, like Cornerstone Festivals. And I drifted away from that, but returned at least to tape part of Cornerstone Festival in 2012 . When I heard this was to be the last Cornerstone and Iona would be there, I decided to attend. I've seen many other bands, but Iona rarely visits the USA and that is one of the reasons I decided to attend. I've seen many other bands locally that are regulars at the festival, so Iona was one of the reasons I decided I better go to the festival, because they put on an excellent show.

THE FESTIVAL
Cornerstone festival ended for a variety of reasons depending on who you talked to. The actual reason the festival ended was the poor attendance due to the economic downturn.

With only 4000 attending in 2011, and 6000 attending this year; we can see it's an economic hardship to put on a festival like this. Bands reportedly played for free at the festival this year.

They couldn't even afford to pay the bands.

This was due to the economy (and likely the price of gasoline as well ). If you are young and busy trying to find a job that doesn't exist (due to the poor economy), you don't have time and resources to drive out to a remote festival far away. Some say "youtube" and free stuff on the web killed the festival. I actually heard this. I guess that even makes sense, if you don't have money you'll look for some kind of footage perhaps for free on Youtube. You don't have the money to go to the festival so you might search for some free entertainment. That's not the same as going to a festival and meeting people.

Overall the economy killed the festival. It was not sustainable.

The festival is another sign of a failing economy and the high cost of fuel. There are of course other reasons which some will say or guess that contributed to the ending of the festival. The stated reason is one of economic sustainability. If you need $400 piece for small crowds to attend and make it profitable, and it costs hundreds more to drive there, people can't afford that in this economy.

I talked with a young local Christian guy who was "in a Christian band" tell me he didn't attend Cornerstone for years. When I asked him why, he said, "it costs to much". This guy lived 13 miles away and he claimed he couldn't afford to go. If he can't afford to go, I'm sure others can't as well. Maybe this was just his overall reason, he also said "I went when I was a kid". So maybe part of the reason was he felt he outgrew the festival. But he was still in his college.

If the cost of the festival to be sustainable from an economic perspective is $1.5 million a year (my guess). or perhaps $200 a visitor with 10,000 visitors, and maybe $400 a visitor for 5,000 visitors. JPUSA clearly can't fund the festival with low attendance. It's a miracle the festival lasted as long as it did.

To continue, the festival organizers might need rich donors to underwrite this. Perhaps set aside money up front (perhaps in a kind of non-profit fund). That seems unlikely in todays economy.

Most people who attend a festival like this don't plan or pay ahead of time. That's the nature of a concert goer. A poor ministry in Chicago probably won't find a bunch of rich donors.

JPUSA was stuck in a financial rut. They were going way beyond the extra mile. They probably needed to retire from that festival. It was a gift to the churches by a poor church. It wasn't financially self sustaining, but dependent on the gifts from a poor church doing all it could to keep the festival going. (My first thought about the festival being much smaller was, why not take it back to the state fair grounds near Chicago.)

Historically from what I heard through the years, JPUSA was putting more money into the festival than they were getting from it. So they ended up spending something like $100,000 or more per year on average and this was a gift and drain on this poor ministry. It's easy to lament the end of the festival when you're a person who enjoyed past festivals.

JPUSA had dozens if not hundreds of volunteers from their church and that was a labor of love. It was a gift to the church world at large. Can the festival be self sustaining and actually fund itself? Can there be a way to fund it? During the lean years, it's likely that this festival would require significant funding and donors, perhaps a different organization structure that would simply raise funds framing the festival as a gift to the donors. It after all is a creative party of sorts, there are benefits to the festival, but do those benefits have a return that would make the funding of the festival (up front) more desirable. I could spend a lot more money trying to build up another Cornerstone festival and fail if I started from scratch. So I think it has value, but finding that value and marketing it to (rich donors) or whomever, would perhaps be a tough sell.

There might be alternate ways to raise money, but this would require a lot of planning. What if we could get 50,000 people to attend video webcasts of the festival with live streaming video? If they would each pay $10 per internet pass, that would raise some cash for the festival. But things like that require a lot of technology and planning and expenses. And that brings up the dreaded worry of copyright and free video going out on the net and piracy and all those concerns that record labels and bands need to worry about as well. So I don't claim to have an answer to make the festival sustainable. It needs to be figured out and looked at from a more sustainable point of view in the economic framework. I think the LLC and donor model would be the best route. But don't try to over-reach and do another Creation festival. Just plan for a small cut down Cornerstone and make it economically viable.

If some rich Christian (like Pat Robertson?) were to donate tons of money to a fund or LLC to "keep Cornerstone going", what would be the long term plan be and how could you justify it? If I was standing in front of a rich donor, how would I sell this? Aren't there other charities that are more worthy of their donation? Why struggle and worry about a music festival? Am I as worried about feeding the homeless in the inner city? Is this blog post a plea for helping inner city Chicago folks? It's easy to be blinded by the "need" to go to a concert event, but is that really a need?

Would the goal of a different financial approach be: setting up an LLC organization, and make it profitable for JPUSA to run the festival and pay them as consultants to run it. We need to make it profitable for JPUSA, an asset rather than a financial burden. Ministries as a whole need donors and sponsors. How would you frame a LLC or funding project, with perhaps a goal to have $10 million for the next five years. That is how museums are funded.

Museums get rich donors and companies to give them budgets up front and they are always money losers. They don't make money from ticket sales, they will usually lose money. If a museum loses to much money it will close. Rich donors and companies sponsor museums, and sometimes taxpayers.

Is the Cornerstone Festival (cultural experiment and camping party) worth saving? How do you we get donors to fund it? That's the $2million question.

One story on the net has stated that someone offered to buy the farm and give it back to JPUSA if they would continue running the festival. That could be a good sign.

What would the financial goals be? I'm thinking a goal would be something like $2 million a year toward a festival by some kind of charity LLC or foundation. Simply fund it and let's JPUSA run it. That LLC would simply hand over $2 million to JPUSA and the goal would be to put on the festival on for a $1.5 million budget. Don't go overboard, plan for a profit toward the "consultant". JPUSA would get $500,000 in profit per year to put on the festival. Make it a positive balance sheet item for JPUSA instead of a negative one. To me that would be the goal.

I'm sure JPUSA hasn't stated this as a goal or even looked at my idea. (I didn't walk up to a tired Glenn Kaiser and say, "hey Glenn, I have an idea, let's save the festival." ) And I'm not saying this is a sustainable business plan, I'm saying this is something that would be funded by donors up front, because they thought the festival should continue.

FESTIVAL TANGIBLES?
This is more of a wish list goal, to save the festival. I think the motivation or sales pitch to those (rich Christians) who might fund such a thing would be to look at the tangibles that happened as a result of the festival. By this I mean the exposure and donations that other charities received from the event. For example Compassion International reportedly had 5000 children sponsored at the festival during the past 29 years.

If each Compassion sponsor stayed with a child sponsorship for ten years on average, then that could be $1.5 million in sponsorships per year overall from the Cornerstone Festival. That's a pretty good payback on investment for running the festival. (That's probably a dollar for dollar return on the festival in donor income to Compassion alone.)

There are intangibles as well, which is the simple exposure to all the "ministries" and the simple interactions that happened discovering other Christians from all over the country. These don't have a dollar value, but in reality there was a dollar value to the festival and the economic downturn, and possible the price of gas likely stopped the festival. I thought I would hate seeing the festival with a small turnout. Actually I found it quite refreshing, there was less competition for campsites and a far more intimate experience watching bands on a smaller stage, it was better than the larger main stage from a video perspective. I could walk right up next to the stage and tape the bands. This was like being on the stage with the band in the front row. Almost impossible to do in past festivals at the main stage during the "boom years".

ON TO MY FAN VIDEO DISCUSSION
I have a small Sony HD camcorder and some video software. I've taped festivals in the past, back in the "good old days" and even had a cable access show that showed some band video in the old days. In the past, I would tape events with friends and volunteers. We used to use video mixers and create a live mix most of the time of concert events. I bought all the equipment that I used to create my public access shows. I did this because I couldn't guarantee the video I taped could be freely used by the cable company and become their property. I had to have the ability to limit the usage of the bands video, so I never used Cable access equipment, this due to copyright restrictions and the need to respect the bands and their labels. So I paid dearly in expenses to have options and keep video from being put out that might make the bands look bad or threaten the profit potential of the labels.

I also was involved with live video concert support, we ended up doing giant screen feeds to video projectors for some local events and even a couple of years at the main stage. One grateful band manager came up to me after a concert and told me the video that I gave them was used and helped their band get a record deal. "I know it's not much but we wanted to give you something." He gave me $38 dollars, actually a nice sign of thanks. It was unnecessary, but it was the profit I received from those years of Christian video production. I can remember one concert goer yelling up to me on the main stage, back in the 1990's between sets. He said, I want to know how I can get up there and be you. He wanted to be on the main stage and holding a 14 lb camera on his shoulder when he was older. I thought, you don't know how much money it cost me to get up here, how much I had to spend and give to get to this point. I thought you don't know what it cost. But I didn't say anything to him.

My video taping at the festivals was done for free and as a gift to the concert events. I was just another below the line donor and volunteer. Because I had to buy equipment, it cost me more than most cable access producers to do my show.

I stopped doing video production or taping Christian bands around 2003. When I heard about the last Cornerstone, I decided to go there and video tape some of the festival. A last video memory capture of a great event. It's impossible to go back and tape history, so maybe this video would have some value to the bands or festival organizers, maybe just a nice memory video for them.

I wanted to do so much at the last Cornerstone. I hoped to enjoy the campgrounds, maybe take a swim. Perhaps check out the old main stage area. (Someone told me they have a garden whee the old stage used to sit, but I didn't have time to see that.

I had a lot on my personal wish list. But the heat was really unbearable this year. So I stuck close to the Gallery stage and decided to take as much video of the acts as I could.

If getting the video didn't kill me, perhaps the editing will.

After the festival I was really exhausted. I'm a little bit older than I was in the old days. I started attending festivals in 1987 and attended each one from 1987 through 2003. When I quit attending the festival seemed to be running strong. I was a little bit shocked that attendance fell off to such a great degree in recent years, but this is understandable with todays economy.

This year I attended the last four days of the festival. I brought two Sony camcorders (1080i video) and a digital audio recorder. I also had three point and shoot handheld cameras that could take 720p video as well and used those handheld. This for the first day I taped at the festival. I purchased much of my equipment for the festival on the way out to the festival, it was spur of the moment purchases. This meant I had to learn about some of the equipment on the way out to the festival. (Last minute planning doesn't work very well.)

The second, third and last day I added another Sony Camcorder. So I had up to five cameras running during my video taping of a Gallery event. (I usually only had one additional camera angle running handheld.) Sometimes I shot with a Canon EOS up front, sometimes with an iphone and sometimes with a Fujix w3 3D camera, taking a 3d video clip of most of the acts I taped.

-- 3D video a different subject
I might have enough video for a short 3d review of the some bands and the festival. This is very limited as I didn't have time to tape much with the 3d camera and I don't know if or when I'll edit the 3d video footage. That's another project. This blog will refer to the regular video edit. (3d video requires different software and I'm not setup for that at this time.) And how would you release 3d video? In Anaglyph with glasses? In MPO format for those who can download it? On 3d blue ray encoded disks? I don't know how that would easily happen. Maybe Anaglyph on the web?

-- Survival mode, like working in a sauna
I was unable due to the heat and exhaustion to visit much of the campground and stages. I just survived and stayed near the Gallery tent. I wanted to go to other tents, but I had the problem of not having enough budget to have enough SIMM Cards for the entire festival and had to charge batteries each night changing them because I didn't have AC power. And I had to download the SIM cards to a hard drive an erase them for the next day of shooting. This meant I lost about 3 hours sleep a night and I was averaging maybe 2 or 3 hours of sleep each night. It was extremely exhausting. And I shot only perhaps four bands per night, which still was difficult. It was so hot out I had 5 chocolate shakes for dinner one night. I just kept getting another chocolate shake, held the cold cup on my temple or neck and then drank the shake. No time for dinner but I could cool off with shakes and lemonade refills. I would use up to 3 cameras handheld and man one camera on a tripod once in a while.

I focused on the Gallery stage, because of the heat and the need to stay in one area. I camped inside my car with the AC running much of the time. This to keep from complete heat exhaustion. I was trying to shoot footage for perhaps four hours each day. Shooting video without a crew for four hours a day could kill a person,I don't recommend that. I was glad I didn't have any friends along who would have to endure the heat. I felt sorry for my friends, but also happy that they didn't have to suffer through that hellish heat.

I survived, but was completely exhausted by the end of the festival. I was even hallucinating the last day, due to lack of sleep and going into a dream (REM state) during the daytime. I decided at 4PM the last day, I had to get more sleep. I saw a person in my vehicle that morphed into a car seat. Dreaming while your awake is a bad sign.

After a two hour nap, I started to tape video the last day of the festival. I had a lot of little technical problems during the Choir concert. I was really exhausted by that time.

I was so tired by the end of the festival, I put my car in accessory mode, not realizing it, and promptly drained the car battery. I thought I killed the battery through the normal use of my hybrid car, that the constant charging of batteries at night and constant running of the AC system perhaps killed the starter battery. A jump didn't work.

So I had my car towed to Macolm Toyota, and ended up staying two nights at a motel in town. This cost me an extra $500 in expenses. So being exhausted had it's added price. I guess one side benefit was getting a ride to the festival and being there very late. The tow truck even died near the gates, he ran out of gas. This gave me the chance to walk back to the car and actually see the remains of the Viking ship which didn't sink.

I might have been the last visitor at Cornerstone. Others who were there by Monday were volunteers breaking down the tents and cleaning up. Perhaps I was the last visitor of the festival.

I was there Monday walking around before my Prius was towed away. At the end of the festival everything was peaceful and only crews and JPUSA folks were there tearing things down. I was too tired and busy that last Monday after the festival to go down to the lake and take a last swim in the lake. I was even to tired to go swimming at the motel in Macolm

I went down to the lake to take a picture of the Viking ship that was "sunk" as a sign of the end of the festival. They fired arrows at a viking ship model that was sitting upside down during most of the festival. It looked like some kind of art project near the Gallery stage. It turned out it was a Viking ship to be sunk, representing the death of the festival. A friend of mine mentioned he heard from a fellow festival attendee, that the Viking ship didn't sink at the closing ceremony and it was a "good sign" perhaps that the festival couldn't be sunk. A symbol that Cornerstone might keep living, it might not sink and go under. Maybe the festival had a life of it's own and could be saved. My friend suggested I should go down and take a picture of the Viking ship still floating in the lake. I did and created a little caption for a test video with a couple of titles.





Not getting much rest is a festival tradition and people often leave the festival in a kind of "Cornerstone zombie" state. This results in high creativity, but also plenty of emotions. And we rest up after a festival in the glow of all that happened. The good and also the nature of an extreme camping experience, coughing up dust, and trying to forget that 140 degree heat that would great you when you stepped into a Portable Toilet at the festival.

This year was like working and surviving in a Finnish sauna. During one of the events I drank five chocolate shakes for dinner. I had a flow of sweat running down my forehead burn my eyes during one of the nights event. I was shooting video almost totally blind, due to the heat. It was almost like Desert Storm or something. A survival through extreme weather and heat.

Now that I have the video, the goal is to survive the edit process and get the footage off to the bands. I'm hoping to get a DVD of each band I taped sent off to them as a free gift. I'm also hoping to give a copy of this video to JPUSA. Of course JPUSA and I both know that there are limits to what we can do with the video footage and all the usual disclaimers apply. Due to copyright limits, there is a real limit to the size of a video clip that I could display on youtube. I understand this and unfortunately it's likely impossible for me to post long sequences or even complete songs from any event on the web. So this is a diary of the edit process, but it won't include links to complete concerts or anything like that.

OTHER POSTS will deal more with the editing process, with a few extra comments thrown in from time to time.

I tend to write long posts. I hope to make this a diary of the edit process. I might go off on tangents from time to time which are off the topic of the Cornerstone video I took and the edit process. I'll try to keep the size of the posts shorter and more readable.

The fastest video edit is the one you don't have to make.

Taking a break from rushing to edit The Violet Burning video as the band can edit their own video. Mike returned an email to me saying all they need is the raw footage and they can edit the video themselves. This is the fast way to edit, let others do it.

With the break I'm reviewing some digital assets and decided to look for 3d video from my pc of the Cornerstone concert. It looks like the 3d video is transferred as avi files to the computer. Some programs will display it as 3d and possibly others as 2d. Maybe the Macintosh is showing the same file as 2d instead if 3d.

More to learn I suppose.

Here is a unrelated still to the edit process. This is just a still of a table in one of the merchandise areas. Here is a group of folks in the merchandise tent. I chatted with some of them. This is a 3d photo from the 3d still. One in red/blue anaglyph and the other as a cross eyed 3d photo.








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