Going Back To Go Forward

The Old Meets the New

One of my old teachers in film school, Tim Barr, was a master at special visual effects, even winning an Oscar in 1961 for his work on the great George Pal classic, The Time Machine. Tim was a wonderful mentor and I learned a lot from him, not the least being a professional attitude toward nurturing one's film career. One of my favorite platitudes that I have carried in the back of my mind all these years since being around Tim was his admonition that, "Sometimes you have to go back to go forward. And, you'll know when it's the right thing to do".

About a month ago, I got the bug to get back into playing music.

During rock n' roll's British Invasion of the 1960s, while a chronically disinterested student at Elyria High School in northern Ohio, I had taken up playing the electric bass guitar, mostly to impress the girls (which never really panned out). My musical co-conspirators and I learned every Motown hit, Beatles tune, and Rolling Stones dirge on the Pop Charts that we played mostly at basement parties where the 3.2 beer flowed like strawberry cool-aide at a Sunday social. Surprisingly, my conservative parents even supported my musical bent by buying me a little German short scale Framus bass and an all-American Ampeg Bass amplifier which I practiced with for countless hours up in my bedroom using headphones to play along with 33 1/3rd records while my parents thought I was doing homework.

When I went away to college at Kent State University, my bass and amp went with me, of course, and I played with various rock groups there, as well, falling in with some of the really more professional musicians of the area and jamming with the best around. Kent is where I let my hair grow and bought my first pair of bell-bottoms.

For a while, I wanted to be a rock star. But, then I found an interest that superseded my need for fame and riches - film making.

Not finding academic success (to put it mildly) at Kent State U enrolled as a pre-dentistry student (totally my parents idea) motivated me to move to LA and begin taking classes at Columbia College, a private school that employed working Hollywood film makers as teachers. That's where I met Tim Barr and dropped my aspirations toward the music business.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I gave the Framus bass away to a friend, put the amplifier in storage and got into screen writing, photography, and editing. I got married to the woman of my dreams, had three wonderful daughters, and even did a stint at a special effects production company working for a time for clients like Warner Brothers, all the major TV networks, and many of the nation's largest corporate entities. I think that Tim Barr, who died in 1977, would have been a bit proud of my efforts and the role he played in any success I achieved (although I still can hear another of his admonitions to me as he occasionally said, "Raddatz, you are full of it," (and by "it" he didn't mean unlimited artistic talent).

So now, I find myself nearer the end than the beginning of a pretty good run.

A few weeks ago, after hooking up with a couple of my old buddies from those rockin' days of yore, I had a kind of an epiphany regarding my past, present, and future. One of the few personal goals in my life that I never saw through was pursuing my musical interests to their limits. So, this past week I bought a new, beautiful Fender P Bass (shown above), got the old Ampeg amplifier out of storage (it still works fine, BTW), and plugged 'er in. I also bought a midi keyboard controller to use with the Garage Band software on my Mac. So, now I have no excuse.

As my old teacher said, sometimes you have to go back to go forward.

So, here I go again, Tim.

Reaching Across Time

The Akeley Hall of African Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History

I've heard stories about him all my life but he died ten years before I was born. He worked as a naturalist, taxidermist, and artist for one of the world's most renowned collectors of African wildlife in the 1920s and 30s. He also traveled with entertainment superstars Martin and Osa Johnson during the last Golden Era of African Exploration and is mentioned in several books about Africa. He reportedly shot a charging lion through his holster and carried a scar on his face to prove it. He died while on safari and is buried in Nairobi, Kenya. His life is the stuff of legends and I wish I would have been able to meet him . . . maybe even sit upon his knee while he related some of his adventures.

My fraternal grand father, Richard Carl Raddatz, born in Germany in 1879, worked for noted scientist Carl Akeley at New York City's American Museum of Natural History and Chicago's famed Field Museum. A paragraph on a AMNH web page about the artists that worked on the Akeley African Hall of Mammals describes my grandfather as follows:

Richard C. Raddatz (1879-1937)

Raddatz joined the staff of the AMNH in 1924, and was trained by taxidermist Carl Akeley. Raddatz accompanied Akeley on his last expedition to Africa in 1926, collecting foreground accessories. He returned to Africa in 1937 to assist in gathering materials for the ostrich and warthog diorama, when he died of a sudden heart attack in Nairobi, Kenya (then in British East Africa), at the age of fifty-eight.

Within the last ten years of my own life, I have become more and more interested in exploring his life, the people he associated with, and the times in which he lived. Since I never knew him, there is part of me that is curious about someone with whom I am so connected but know relatively little about.

As I write this blog post, I am sitting at a desk in a hotel less than 100 yards from the museum where my grandfather worked for many years. Today, I spent about three hours appreciating some of his handiwork: exquisite dioramas depicting examples of African animals in their natural surroundings of trees and grasses, materials that were collected "in situ" in Africa almost a century ago but remain as part of the museum's exhibits to educate and enthrall thousands of museum visitors even now.

The tangible physical results of my grandfather's labors have reached far across the limitations of time and even death to touch me and many others in the present like some eternal gift. A special thanks is deserved by Richard Carl and all the other artists whose years of dedicated work so long ago have left such a great, lasting tribute to their expertise and artistry.

I can only hope that even one example of my work in the media arts endures in a similar timeframe.

HD Video as Artistic Expression II

Well, there it is up on the wall with all the other Art in an Art gallery. So, it must be Art, right?

The above photo is a frame from a time lapse HD video I shot this evening at the CUAC (Central Utah Art Center) in my new home town of Ephraim where I entered a juried competition for their latest show built around the theme of Utah's Heritage Highway 89. While I didn't receive an award, I did receive many favorable comments from many generous attendees.

My video, the latest example of what I call floetry, is displayed on the 75 pound, 47-inch HD Vizio screen, which is the second frame from the right (dangling cables not withstanding). That's my wife, Anita, standing there watching it all the way through for the first time. She can personally attest to the fact that there are no glitches or faux-pas occurring during the whole 20 minutes of the program, which played as a continuous loop throughout the entire two hours of the show's opening artist's reception tonight.

I was particularly gratified to receive interest and praise from some of the other artist/exhibitors at the show who felt that my video had a soothing effect on them as they watched - just the effect I intended. One ceramic artist from the nearby berg of Spring City, an artist community where he owns his own gallery, suggested that business offices might use such videos shown on big screens to calm the work environment. I'm all for that. Sign me up.

And, of course, most of the children under 10 in attendance were stopped in their tracks by the movement and sound emanating from the screen, with some even sitting cross-legged on the floor, perhaps waiting for "something exciting" to happen, which, of course, never did. One little guy of about three actually stepped up on the Sony Blu-ray player on the floor beneath the giant TV and tried to touch the screen. When I rushed up to keep him from falling backward off the player, he looked up at me and said triumphantly in a precious moment of primally innocent discovery, "water".

What better testimonial could I ask for?

So, maybe I am on to something with my idea of high definition floetry videos. Next week I plan to head a few miles up the canyon I live on to capture some new images of spring flowers blooming near a rushing mountain stream. Maybe it, too, will turn out to be Art, or maybe I'll just have a wonderful outdoor experience in Utah's great outdoors.

Either way, I win.

Special thanks goes to CUAC and curator, Jared Latimer.

HD Video as Artistic Expression

Pleasant Creek as it meanders away from Capitol Reef

I recently entered a 20-minute HD video that I created entitled Pleasant Creek into the Central Utah Art Center's 2010 Heritage Highway Exhibition and just received an email telling me that it was accepted into the juried competition. The show will run at the CUAC Museum during Ephraim's Scandinavian Heritage Festival from May 28 through June 3. I am absolutely thrilled that my video has been chosen to be displayed on a 47 inch HD video screen along side more traditional forms of artistic expression and may be considered art.

The following Artist's Statement was submitted with my entry and explains my concept and motivation for creating the piece.

* * * * *

Bill Raddatz

Artist Statement

Pleasant Creek

The concept of what I call floetry, like my latest effort, Pleasant Creek, is based on exploiting the human psychological phenomenon called the Willing Suspension of Disbelief: an aesthetic theory intended to characterize an audience's relationships to art by allowing them to overlook the limitations of a medium (like video), so that these limitations do not interfere with the acceptance of the premises of the work. This is why we can allow ourselves to laugh or cry in a darkened theater by becoming emotionally engaged in a story. And, why watching floetry will calm a viewer's mind and body with its relaxing, soothing images and sounds. My goal in producing floetry is generally contrary to the goals of the creators of the conventional fare available on TV or in the typical theatrical movie house.

By shooting and displaying the programs in High Definition video I am attempting to give the viewer an authentic experience to simulate the reality of actually being at each location. While treating the subject material with subtile color adjustments, a changing perspective, and realistic sound reinforcement, I attempt to weave a braid - a progressive combination of sight, sound, and movement to give a feeling as though one is looking through a magic window into one of nature’s finest aesthetically pleasing environments.

Editing the shots into at least a twenty minute presentation with each shot being about one minute allows the viewer to absorb their experience as they might by actually being on-scene - able to look around at the details of each composition in a leisurely manner free from stress and conscious purpose. I want to lead my audience with a gentle hand to experience the freedom of exploration that being in unspoiled nature allows.

* * * * *

As a visual artist with some experience in entering my paintings in juried art exhibitions, even winning some awards and selling a few of my paintings, this is the first video I have entered into an art competition. But, I don't care if I win an award since I feel I have already won by the mere fact that some of my video work is being accepted by artists as art.

Now, the hard part - standing by nervously as people watch my video and verbalize their reactions to my efforts to touch something in their psyche that they can relate to as art. I've been there before but it never gets any easier.

Unexpected Results

About four years ago my wife, Anita, was given a new assignment by her employer at the time, Washington State University, to become a trainer/coach for the Horizons Grant given to small communities in Washington and seven other western states. Her job was to train volunteer residents in four rural communities in leadership skills related to community activism like fund raising, public educational programs, healthy living skills, and the like. Since some of the towns were more than an hour away from our home, I decided to drive her to many of the community meetings.

Since she really didn't need my help with her meetings, I decided to take the opportunity to pack my still camera with me and walk around the small towns for a couple of hours each trip and snap pics. One such town, Sprague, can be described as past its prime, mainly because the railroad line passing through long ago discontinued scheduled stops at the train station. This, along with the fact that Interstate 90 bypassed the main street of the town by a mile or so, caused Sprague to wither on the vine, lose population and many small businesses that keep such a place alive and well.

Anita's meetings were mainly orientation and training sessions for the volunteers in Sprague and were scheduled about every week or so. I thought I'd gotten some pretty good shots of the old place during my first visit and put together a five minute slide show cut to some garage band music I made that I thought the Sprague volunteers might enjoy seeing.

At the next Sprague meeting, I set up my iMac next to the sign up table, set the computer to loop my shots and let 'er rip. Then, I stood back and noticed that most of the folks entering the community center where the meetings were held actually did double takes as they passed my presentation. In fact, many stopped, walked back, and watched the entire five minutes.

Most smiled and a few even remarked things like, "I didn't think our old town looked so good."

I might remark here that I have been a commercial photographer for over 40 years, trained and practiced in showing things literally "in their best light" so these shots were no exception. But, since most work in my career has been used in mass communications like publications, TV, or marketing and sales presentations where I am absent, I rarely see personal reactions to the application of my photography.

Their comments were quite striking and gratifying to me and I came to the conclusion that these people could see the value in the scenic nature of their town through my pictures because they had never seen it that way before: through the eyes of someone (me) looking for underlying beauty and exploiting it as a positive aspect of their community. The every-day views that they took for granted as the background of their lives were artistic when framed in a way that separated them from reality that communicated a simplified aspect designed to be noticed by the viewer.

Through my years of experience I like to think I have developed an "eye" for photography. I want my pics to look like paintings and my video like commercial TV or feature films. I think that this is what most professional photographers and cinematographers aspire to. Through this simple slide show exercise, my interest was piqued, so I went one step further. That night, much to their dismay, I took shots during the meeting. As I suspected, many of the resulting shots had a kind of Norman Rockwell quality to them. Hard working, rosy-cheeked, salt-of-the-earth folks engaged in a worthwhile cause of improving their own community through collective action.

Then, at the following week's meeting, I showed a newly edited version of the Sprague photos edited with insert shots of the town-folk at the last meeting. This time their reactions were comments like, "Hey, we don't look so bad." But, there was also a subtile psychological payoff to my experiment. Participants could see the intrinsic value and unique personality that their town possessed and their own connection to it. I repeated this formula in each of the four towns Anita and I visited and I believe my photography, used as a method of feedback to the members of the community, had a tangible positive impact on the success of the Horizon program and its commendable, long-term goals.

Because of this experience, I have come to more fully respect the potential for photography to impact viewers in positive ways that need to be explored further in the future. If you take pictures or shoot video for a living, realize the impact that your images can have on individuals and take responsibility for the power that you can wield with your camera.

Note: This particular post is dedicated to Christine Stanton of Hunters, Washington. Christine, probably more than any other participant in the Horizons Grant that we were involved with, acquired the skills of leadership and community activism that the Horizon Grant embodies and used them to better her community in many ways. Christine passed away unexpectedly from cancer soon after her involvement in the project ended. We miss you, Christine.