Links to webcasting sites.

Lately The Porchlight Sessions has been asked to move into live webcasting of music-based events. In considering the future of “The Porchlight Sessions Live”, here is some research:

http://livestream.com/ - Livestream, formerly known as Mogulus,^[2] is a live streaming video platform that allows users to view and broadcast video content using a camera and a computer through the internet.

https://watershed.ustream.tv/ - Ustream’s paid service

http://qik.com/ - Qik is a mobile live video streaming and two-way video conferencing application that allows users to stream live video from their cell phones to the internet.

LADY MADONNA

A year ago exactly, Chris and I followed a non-profit based in Ft. Collins, CO called WADSO to help chronicle their efforts the help a small community in Umuahia, Nigeria. A film about the hospital that WADSO is building, the Nigerian healthcare system, and people helping people half a world away, Lady Madonna is a project near and dear to us. So help Chris raise the funds to finish editing!

MARCH 2012

Alright, so we’ve launched the Kickstarter campaign for The Porchlight Sessions, which is the feature-length music documentary about Bluegrass that I have been working on for a long time now! Some really awesome perks have been donated for the cause so you will just have to check it out to see for yourself. I’m in the middle of working the cut with my editor, Chris Cloyd, sending out as many emails as I can about licensing, while trying to maintain all the websites that we have to look out for now. I’ll be headed to SXSW next week so if there are any of you out there who would like to meet up, be sure to reach me ahead of time!

In other news, life in Los Angeles has become very routine as I now live next to Chris and we are in the editing room all the time. I’ve been keeping up with my personal yoga practice over at Hot8 in Santa Monica and Breathwork at The Hub. For all of my yogi and fire friends out there and down in Costa Rica, I’m looking forward to sharing some fun workshops and festivals with you again once things calm down in regards to putting the pieces together for The Porchlight Sessions. I’ll be working as stage crew at Shaktifest in May and will announce the festivals for April. Keep me in the loop about what you are up to and hopefully we will see each other out there! - anna

DECEMBER 2011

It’s about mid december and we’ve been fairly nonstop with working on the The Porchlight Sessions . I’ve been too overwhelmed with responsibilities pertaining to maintaining that website that I’ve decided to put this one on hold. I’ll be building a new site in coming months to update my website and the past few years of work. You can always keep up with what I’ve got in my Visual Diary, which I use for personal reference. My personal Pinterest site with current vision boards is here.

In the meantime, we’re about to launch a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter asking a lot of the community to come together and support our film. We need folks coming out of the woodworks to announce their pride and say “hell yea, I’ll donate!”. We’ve been scraping by to keep the train moving in post-production with the resources we have. All this is compounded by the sheer amount of research and coordinating that has to go on with sourcing as much archival footage as we want to use. We know that its all going to be worthwhile and possible. We are so close to the end of this epic journey in finishing this film. Its been a labour of love all along the way and there are just too many of you counting on us to succeed…so we just have to! I mean, we didn’t wake up before dawn to climb a mountain in Telluride to get the sunrise over the concert grounds for no reason. It was too darn cold for me to ever let that footage go to waste!

To the family we’ve built in the past few years of our lives through working at festivals, going into musicians’ homes, camping, or even just along the way, we appreciate your support and allowing us to get this far. Thanks to all our sponsors (still working on more) too - we will be releasing the list of their fun gear they’ve donated for the cause as part of the incentives/perks program on the Kickstarter campaign.

with gratitude, anna

I’ve been following these guys since the beginning. Love their work! Support it!

NOVEMBER 2011

We are currently in Post-Production on the Porchlight Sessions.
Please visit www.porchlightsessions.com for all relevant information and to follow me in the process.

AUGUST 2011

June/July/August has been a 100% commitment to Porchlight Sessions. June we filmed at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, July and August was filled with filming in Nashville. I’m losing track of time and space. Even though its about 92 degrees outside here I cannot help but wonder what season it is. Weekdays blur into weekends, time-zones are meaningless, and sleep is super precious. Yup. the rough cut is due in two and a half weeks and wait a second…I’m still filming! Be sure to stay posted with my whereabouts on the Porchlight Sessions blog as well by following us on twitter and becoming a fan on facebook!

In other news, I’ve gotten my hands on some Polaroid 600 replacement film for my old SX-70 through the Impossible Project and I’m taking instant shots again!! Even though each shot is about twice the price of what it used to be when Polaroid was making the film, I’d have to argue that this Color Shade ISO 640 stock has better color and quirks than that last batch of Polaroid 600 that was being made by far! Well worth it!

anna

MAY 2011

First off, I must mention that I am writing to you from my childhood room in Nashville, Tennessee where outside my window there are large cicadas flying everywhere. With the heat that has come this week, the population of the 13-year cicada has risen. When I was a child, I remember these cicadas being frightening as they are absolutely everywhere and that they liked to swoop down on us. Although their collective “hum” sound is constant during the day and seems to freak out my dogs, the cicadas themselves are not as “everywhere” as I remembered. They mostly stick to their schedule of flying from branch to branch in the trees, mating, and leaving their larvae for the next release. Oddly, I never thought I’d want to experience this again but since having been here for two days now, I am quite interested in them and their reason for being. As my mom says, “isn’t the circle of life just beautiful?”. She thinks the cicadas are here for human’s auditory enjoyment. I’m on the fence about this one though.

I am here in Nashville as tomorrow I am embarking on a journey to the Smoky Mountains in S. Appalachia for filming some pastoral landscapes for the film, Porchlight Sessions. It is going to be an interesting time, leaving the computer and all these unnecessary distractions behind, to be one with nature and to experience the isolation of the mountains that so many people speak to in this film so far.