Filed by Bil at 8:36 pm under Shameless Plugs, The Arts

Coming off of the artistic high of Infamous Commonwealth’s marvelous 24-hour fest at the Vittum Theatre down in Wicker Park this weekend, I find myself once again at odds with technology. The organic flow of creative thoughts and human connection has ceased, and in its wake you see me, here, struggling to find a way to get the massive video file condensed into a web-appropriate file size and uploaded for the general public’s pleasure.

Remember that scene in Sleeping Beauty? Where the Prince has to pull out his broad sword and cut through a massive wall of thorny vines to get to the dragon, and then he has to fight the dragon? That was me. And uploading the video from my FlipCam to my laptop was me cutting through the vines. And then editing the HD-quality file of a poor-quality recording, using up all the disk space my poor laptop could afford, then using even more disk space to create a condensed file – that was me fighting the dragon.

And then the Prince gets to go and kiss Sleeping Beauty. So to the internet I hurried, thinking I’d find YouTube to be my comatose princess, waiting silently for me.

Close, but no cigar. Now – I love YouTube with all my heart, and I feel it is one of the single greatest advancements of the last decade, but the downside is you can only upload videos that are 10 minutes or shorter, and I really wanted to shamelessly display the video of the performance of my play last Saturday.

Enter Vimeo, the long form’s answer to YouTube. Vimeo, which I discovered recently (see post titled “This Too Shall Pass”), lets you upload as long a video as you want, provided you stay within the 500 MB per week limit they set. Totally reasonable.

So, with the help of the magical fairy Vimeo, I completed the journey. And now, I share that journey with you, beloved children of the world…

Two notes before you watch the clip:

1) the sound quality is terrible, so I apologize. Being a live performance, I wanted to ensure that no weird little red lights from the audience distracted the actors on stage, and on the FlipCam, the red light that means “It’s recording now” happens to be placed in the same exact spot as the microphone…What this means is that you’ll hear the scratching noise caused by my covering the mic with my fingers to hide the red lights. Also, I couldn’t see where I was pointing the lens…so…yeah. Totally sorry.
2) The song that precedes the play was written and performed by an amazing new band (new to me, anyway), The Real Jane Martin. Before watching the whole video, check out this higher-quality recording of them singing their song which was written for this play as part of the festival, “The Last of the Clean Shaven Boys.” It’s positively brilliant.

The Real Jane Martin - The Last of the Clean Shaven Boys

And now, without further ado…

Death at the End of the Beardlands from Bil Gaines on Vimeo.

I want to thank the director, Andy Baldeschwiler, and the actors, Joe Ciresi (Barkem), Edwin Unger (Segundo), and Tom Weber (Olaf). It’s not easy to put up a show with only a few hours to figure the play out and then memorize the lines, so kudos to you all. Also, thank you to: The Real Jane Martin (check out their website! http://www.realjane.com), the other playwrights, directors, actors, musicians, and the entire production staff and tech crew and everyone else at Infamous Commonwealth, especially Stephanette Smith for getting me involved in the first place. You guys are awesome.

When I have time, I’ll upload more videos from the festival. For now, all I have available is the play that I wrote. (I know, I know, how convenient.)