Thursday April 24, 2008
Goofy Sony foam commercial shot in downtown. (via Miami Nights/All Purpose Dark)
Monday March 10, 2008
Another video of an Alley Cat Bike Race. Looks like fun. (via)
Monday February 25, 2008
Crazy video of the Miami Alleycat bike race. Via Rick to whom: 1) Where did you get the idea that this is a Critical Mass event? and 2) How is it a cyclist’s fault that some pedestrian walks out into the street without looking?
Wednesday February 6, 2008
“While you’re drinking diet Snapple.” First of all, NSFW, even though all the f-bombs are beeped out. Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel have been an item for over 5 years, and this is a video she made for him for his 40th birthday. I get to post this because of a sketchy Miami connection: the clip was filmed at the Delano.
Wednesday December 12, 2007
Miami Beach in the 1950s.
Monday October 29, 2007
The Jeff Weinsier incident
Last week, Channel 10 reporter Jeff Weinsier was arrested in front of Miami Central Senior High. By now everyone knows what happened, but let’s recap: 1) Weinsier and his cameraman, while shooting from the sidewalk, are ordered, and more or less forced, by police to go across the street; 2) Weinsier calls his station, who calls the police department, and they’re “given permission” to go back; 3) upon returning to the sidewalk on the school’s side, another confrontation with the police ensues, and Weinsier is arrested; 4) upon being searched, he is found to be carrying a concealed weapon, which is illegal on school grounds.
Well, WPLG 10 has now released the raw video of the incident, and C.L. Jahn breaks it down. C.L. Points out the obvious — that the video doesn’t show Weinsier ever setting foot on the school’s property. This misses the rather obvious point that we don’t know what happened before the camera started rolling. Video footage and photography are like that: our brain is tricked into thinking we’re seeing all there is to see. It’s completely possible that Weinsier was standing on the grass before the video we see was shot. And if he wasn’t, the police can certainly claim so, which may give some legal standing to their “lawful order” for him to stay across the street.
The law here is murky: schools are surrounded by a 500 foot “school safety zone,” and in some regards this zone is considered an extension of school grounds. Carlos Miller addresses the various laws that come into play here and here. It seems clear that Weinsier violated the law by carrying the gun near a school. But if that’s the only thing he ends up guilty of, it may very well overshadow the much larger issue: whether the police were right in ordering him off the sidewalk, and in arresting him. Carlos says:
According to Florida Statute 810.0975, which defines trespassing in “school safety zones”, a person is committing an unlawful act if he loiters in the school safety zone, but “does not have legitimate business in the school safety zone”.
The emphasis is his, and with good reason: a possible hinge-point is whether television reporting constitutes “legitimate business.” The common-sense answer would be ‘yes,’ but of course common sense is irrelevant. What’s relevant is how all the various facts of the case, and the relevant laws, are going to be interperted here. If the officer had a legitimate reason for ordering the reporters to leave (despite the fact that he doesn’t give one on camera, he of course had a reason — TV reporters file reports from schools all the time with no trouble), does disobeying the order actually constitute trespassing? Will they continue to insist that Weinsier stepped on the grass? Is it legally relevant that the Police Department’s own Public Information Officer told the station that it was OK for Weinsier to be on the sidewalk?
Perhaps most important: will the WPLG stick up for their reporter, and fight this case hard? On Friday, the station suspended Weinsier for two weeks for carrying the concealed weapon, a violation of their company policy. Fine; they may just be erring on the side of caution in preparation for the fight to come. But barring more information, this is a clear first-amendment issue, and the station — we all — need to pursue it to make sure it’s resolved properly. If the police were not right, there needs to be a major counter-suit. And remember: if the only charge that sticks is the concealed weapons violation, the police were wrong. In this case, that constitutes a technicality, because it wasn’t discovered until after the arrest. We’ve all seen how well police reports can spin police behavior even when it is obviously and clearly wrong. Let’s not stand for that this time around.
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Wednesday October 24, 2007
Jeff Weinsier, a reporter for Channel 10 news, was arrested for “trespassing” while standing on the sidewalk in front of Miami Central High. After the arrest, police found a gun on him, so charged him with possession of a firearm on school property. Police say he had previously stepped on the grass, but the video clearly shows them arresting him on the sidewalk (“which is usually considered public property,” as the report incredulously puts it) after he refuses to cross the street. (Via Carlos Miller, who unpacks some of the law around this.)
Monday June 18, 2007
Dark side of the Boom, a documentary about the housing crisis in Miami, is screening tonight at Barry University.
Monday June 11, 2007
Vehicular transportation: two contrasting case studies
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“Ingots were buried under the Miami Performing Arts Center by workers installing the subterranean infrastructure. The performance was photographed. The ingots remain.”
Saturday March 3, 2007
“Homosexuals are going to hell.” Annoying people on Ocean Drive. Note how this gets stranger and stranger as it goes.
Thursday January 11, 2007
2007 We Media Film Festival
OK, let me see if I understand this correctly. A conference, We Media Miami (that’s a link to a post on the conference’s blog about the conference), which is now in its third year, and this year includes an “online film festival,” We Media Film Festival, which is aimed at short YouTube-style amateur video (in fact, you submit entries by uploading or by YouTube link). Back to the blog, and here’s a press release about the festival part. All of this is presented by ifocus, a non-profit, and hosted by the University of Miami School of Communications to present the conference.
The conference is expensive, and the film festival can be entered by anyone (deadline: February 2), so no action required. I mention this mainly because it’s another example of something interesting the UM School of Communications is doing (Tuesday we noticed BarCamp), and because it’s cool.
Permalink · Comment · Tags: conference, media, um, video · Post to del.icio.us, digg, reddit
Wednesday January 10, 2007
A great time-lapse movie of the sun setting over downtown Miami, with an unnecessary Ocean Drive coda. (No sound.)
Saturday December 2, 2006
Things you CAN’T do when you’re NOT in a pool. Have a nice weekend, y’all.
Monday October 16, 2006
Driving with Mr. Alesh
I’ve been out of pocket the last few days, sick and in bed. Here’s a video I made a few days before, driving down an unnamed street in south Broward, among lots of police activity. I’ll tell ya, though: trying to film and control the ol’ vehicle is like driving drunk, or driving and talkin’ on the celly. Anyway, I hear there’s been some sports-related controversy lately, but I stay out of that. More bloggin’ soon.
Permalink · Comment [6] · Tags: meta, traffic, video · Post to del.icio.us, digg, reddit
Tuesday May 23, 2006
¡MAYDAY!
Oh, boy, here’s something everybody already knows about: local hip-hop duo ¡Mayday! teamed up with the amazing Cee-Lo Green and DJ Craze for the song Groundhog Day. The video, shot in Miami (it doesn’t represent quite to the extent of the Rick Ross video, but it’s pretty damned good), got uploaded to YouTube a week ago, and has become the most popular video there of all time. But nevermind the stats: the video is a funny tribute to Miami visuals (shot on Washington ave and around downtown, including shots on the Metromover), the song is a tribute to (I think) working in an office all day and doing coke all night (and samples a line about TPS reports from Office Space), and the beat is old-school and super-mellow. What’s not to like? (via R: 1, 2)
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