Post-production on a movie takes you all kinds of places, internally and geographically. Baltimore is pretty high on DIY (and me, too), but last week found me in NYC working with some far-flung colleagues. For starters, I did some graphics & design work with PR and Marketing goddess Val Brochard. We tweaked a beta-logo design for Rows, and designed a prototype for the obligatory 4 X 6 postcard art. I work with a lot of screenwriters through my website, so we performed a long over-due re-build of the site. Content updating continues…

I also needed to work out some post-tech puzzles with Scott Chestnut. Scott was the cinematographer on Rows , and is also a feature film and commercial editor. Scott lives in Montana, but he has been in NYC since Rows wrapped, editing America in Primetime, an awesome PBS series airing Sundays at 8pm. We worked out some esoteric details about the best workflow for synching and organizing Canon 5D footage and double-system sound.

Aside from hitting a couple of restaurants, like Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill (bad) and Basta Pasta on 17th Street (great), we had little time for R&R while pulling all-nighters. But I did manage to get out: I needed some fresh images, so I picked up a camera and hit Occupy Wall Street and Central Park, flipsides of a New York coin.

In the shadow of the new World Trade Center construction, Occupy Wall Street was going strong and soggy in the cold rain. The Stock Exchange and Wall Street itself were cordoned off in police-state fashion (in anticipation of a nighttime march), but the cops were friendly. In New York and Baltimore, and so many other cities, the movement continues to bring out voices from the social woodwork, marginal to mainstream. The “rabble without a cause” snark from some quarters is bullshit. This is a movement, America’s only voice not corporate-mediated or sponsored. Take the time to experience it directly, unfiltered by news outlets. Bring a tent.

Next day was sunny, so I did Central Park. Every time I walk past the lagoon I think of Holden Caulfield and his musing: “I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.” This time I found myself wondering why all the trees in Central Park were still green, when down south in Baltimore the leaves are red and yellow and dropping off. Then we have a freak pre-Halloween snowstorm. Maybe the times are a-changin’. I hope so.