During the Fall and Winter months, I was involved in a number of behind-the-scenes projects, one of which was to help in the filming and production of a documentary about The Chapman Stick with veteran video procer and filmmaker Roy Plisko of Phoenix, Arizona. Roy’s work has been shown on MTV, VH1 and many other networks.
Roy and I met about ten years ago when I was living and performing in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was fascinated by The Stick and wondered why more people hadn’t heard of it. In the back of his mind he’d always wanted to make a documentary about this amazing instrument. Now, fast-forward 10 years: Roy found me through my website late last year and asked me to come back to Phoenix and lend a hand, which I gladly did.
A brand new completely re-edited, fast moving and action packed version (a ‘mini-documentary, if you will) that clocks in at about 6 minutes is currently posted on Current.TV for your viewing pleasure. Current.TV is a new concept; viewers may create content and upload it to Current.TV. Current.TV ‘users’ may comment on, critique and then “Green Light” videos they like the best. The higher the ratings and the more positive comments a video gets allows them to rise to the top- at which point, Current.TV will buy the rights to the video and then broadcast them nationwide on hundreds of channels in every major market in the United States.
Naturally, that’s what we’re hoping for, as we’d like to do a full-length documentary that tells the story of The Chapman Stick and finally gets the word out. So, we’re asking for your help. First, you can watch the video at:
http://www.current.tv/watch/23590124
If you like what you see and want to lend a hand to help us get it shown nationwide on Current.TV, simply become a ‘user’, go back and watch it again, give it a “Green Light” and leave some positive comments. That’s all you need to do. Simple. It only takes a minute or less to become a ‘user’ and it’s completely free. If you’d be willing to help us get on national TV, you can sign up at:
http://www.current.tv/login.htm?url=
I’m confident you’ll enjoy this great new video and be happy you took the time to watch it (and, hopefully “Green Light” it, too!)
4/12/07 – P.S. Please read the comment about this post that Roy recently added. He explains how to increase your point value on Current.TV to help push the video up further. As of this morning, it is in 15th place (out of over 2200 videos!) on the American site and 3rd place on the United Kingdom site. Our point value is just under 500 and we’re shooting for 999. Thanks for helping us out with your vote(s)!
5/7/07 UPDATE- The video is now in 5TH PLACE nationwide on www.current.tv. Thanks for your help in pushing us up there. Being on the homepage really helps and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Looks like we’ll be going out on national TV soon. Sign up for my monthly email newsletter and we’ll keep you posted…
For what it’s worth:
Videos on Current TV compete by collecting points. The points come from greenlights given by website members.
As a member of the Current website your greenlight is worth different amounts of points depending on how much you participate. If you regester and vote for 1 video and never visit again your greenlight is worth as little as 1/10 of a point. If you visit a couple of other videos on the site and greenlight a couple that you like and leave a couple more comments, your greenlight value will raise as much as 5 points just for that little extra effort. if you spend a couple days visiting and participating, you can raise your greenlight value as high as 10 or 20 points. It all depends on a variety of things.
I just wanted to mention this because even just a little participation can significantly improve the weight of your votes on this video. This process is also retroactive. If you have already voted, participating will still raise the point value of everything you have voted on.
Thank you everybody for your support. And thank you again Michael for getting behind this idea and putting a lot of your own effort into making it possible!
i’ll see you at arden fir mallkeep up the good work