Kabuki Geisha

wish me luck - submitting this here and there over the weekend, along with a few sub-5 minute works to Art Screen. i have been so preoccupied with this that i have not done much else besides the daily drudge. this would have taken a lot of sweat and restraint, however, even if i had all the time in the world. Michael Lewis was Second Unit Director.

Flowes

 

Mid-Market Street, near Guerrero Street in San Francisco. This lake has been growing ever since a weird, unusual early summer rainy spell last year (2011). However, our part of the country is now in drought pattern. Now that there's a sump pump on the site, suspect aquifer?

Agoraphobia on the farm

Work in progress composed from B-roll shot of the panoramic view from the building my paralegal day job is in, Financial District/San Francisco CA. i was fortunate to be able to take advantage of shooting the disappearing day at the time of day there is just enough natural light to shoot it. Having such an odd artist's gig, i am indoors a lot and since i'd rather shoot anything at all than nothing, i have grown to love the distortion that window glass creates. However if i ever get a chance to go up two flights to the roof ...

Shot on a Vixia HG 20 with an Opteka wide-angle lens, and a Flip Ultra. Indoor footage shot approximately 15:00 to 17:00 standard time on two different days. Outdoor footage shot by Michael Lewis at 13:00 standard time (Patricia's Green, the Hayes Valley Park in San Francisco).

CV of sylviatoyindustries

Nena SylviaToy St. Louis Lewis

           

INTRODUCTION

I am a lifelong artist who has always had a day job. My art videos can be watched all over the Web: (http://sylviatoyvideo.blogspot.com, http://vimeo.com/sylviatoyindustries, http://keskarelamovie.blogspot.com/). I am grounded, happy and flexible, and am delighted that I continue to learn new things, using both right and left brains.

SKILLS

·      Microsoft Office Suite: Word, Excel & Powerpoint.

·      Legal Writing (discovery, demands, briefs, motions, trusts).

·      Knowledge of California Superior Court procedure (local rules, San Francisco).

·      Legal Solutions.

·      Videography: Pro and consumer cameras; Final Cut Pro, IMovie, Quicktime Pro.

·      Internet: research; blogging; SEO; basic HTML; YouTube; Google Docs; Google Sites.

·      Maintenance IT for PC.

·      QuickBooks.

EXPERIENCE

Filmmaker, September 2006 – Present

Currently in pre-production of my second feature film, a performance art movie based on my play, Indigo Lady, which was produced by the Lorraine Hansberry Theater in 1994 (http://indigoladythemovie.blogspot.com/). My video Depression As Geography premiered in CologneOff 2011. My portfolio is on the curated sites, videoart.net, under the artist's name, Sylvia Toy and http://www.artchannel.info's Art TV (Paris).

Director, Keskarel, A Movie November 2010 – November 2011

Conceived and directed a feature-length, live-action storyboard developed entirely through actor improvisation. Strengths: Supervised an intern writer, who created a script for the 2012 filming of the movie.

Founder & Emeritus Artistic Director, Jump! Theatre, 2005 – 2011

Actor, writer, producer, communications manager, videographer and grantwriter. Strengths: SEO, artist management, small business, event planning and marketing.

Sculptor, Professionally Represented Artist, 1985 – 2009

My work is in approximately 50 private collections throughout the United States. Over a 25-year period, I have been represented by commercial galleries in Omaha, San Francisco and Los

Angeles. Strengths: Business skills, time management and self-promotion.

Actor (Small Stage Theatre), 1990 – 2007

I toured professionally, primarily as a solo performance artist, for 17 years - including, Cultural Odyssey’s African-American Performance Art Festival, Afro Solo, Brava Theatre’s Taking Shape and Solo Mio. The Lorraine Hansberry Theater produced my play, ESSAYS ON ANGER AND CUSTARD PIE in 1994. I was a participating artist in the Artist Diversity Residency Program at the University of Nebraska from 1998 through 2003. My solo play SCHOOLS!, a story about home protest school during the Civil Rights Movement, premiered at the Afro Solo Festival in San Francisco in 1997, and toured theatre, schools and other venues for 6 years. I

acted in staged readings, radio plays and black box theatre productions in both new and extant work in San Francisco between 1993 and 2007. Strength: Mimicry, improvisation and voice work; self-promotion.

Paralegal, 1980-present

Writing, editing, document management; strength: Writing and client contact; business skills, and time management; self-employment (2008-2010).

May 2011 – present, Paralegal/Office Manager, Harry Gordon Oliver II: Paralegal assistance in drafting trusts; secretarial assistance in tax matters; weekly maintenance IT, basic troubleshooting, updating and backup for two PCs; bookkeeping; collections (cold call and correspondence); interfacing with vendors; and basic SEO (set up/maintenance of blog and LinkedIn pages), San Francisco, CA.

November 2010 – March 2011, contractor/Technical Writer, Rocket Lawyer: Coding and light editing of legal forms created for online use by consumers, San Francisco, CA.

September 2010 – December 2010, Paralegal, Robert Half International: paralegal support in default judgments and collections for single solo corporate practitioner, San Francisco, CA.

October 2008 – December 2010, Independent Paralegal Contractor for Attorney and pro se clients: Assisted in Bankruptcy & Personal Injury; Discovery, Pleadings, Demands & Briefs, Motion. (Clients include Guru.com; Hermin A. Dowe/9 months; Pro se client/8 months), San Francisco, CA Bay Area.

March 2004 – August 2008, Paralegal, Choulos, Choulos & Wyle: Assisted plaintiff personal injury, pleadings, discovery, demand letters, and briefs; medical records summary; research, San Francisco, CA.

July 1997 – March 2004, LexisNexis, Editor: editing/indexing legal publications, San Francisco, CA.

1980–1996 Litigation Paralegal, New York; Lincoln, NE; San Francisco, CA.

EDUCATION

·      Internship (Digital video production for Community Vocational Enterprise), January-June 2009

·      Legal Videography Certification, American Guild of Legal Videographers, 2009

·      Video Editing, individual tutoring by Darrell Holdaway, 2007-2009

·      Paralegal Certificate, Institute for Paralegal Training, 1980

·      BA (Art/English), University of Nebraska, 1974

HONORS

·      VideoArt.net Artist, (since 2008)

·      Art TV (ArtChannel.info, Paris), beginning in 2011

·      Exhibitor, CologneOff 2011 (September 2011)

·      Gallery Artist, Altered Esthetics/Minneapolis, (2008-present)

·      Editor's Choice, 22nd & Harrison, National Geographic Everyday Explorers Videos (2008), which has been discontinued by the host

fear

fear 2009, Friedhelm Fischer

i broke my rule about watching art video without sound on a first viewing, and watched Friedhelm Fischer's little movie Fear with my headphones on. I am glad I did, because the music, urgent voices vocalizing suspenseful terror, is well-matched to the video's compelling imagery, particularly the slow but resolute footsteps of the antagonist. The best thing about this movie is the humanization of the protagonist (played by Nina Fischer) by showing her very white face in an otherwise dark monchromatic setting of blacks & grays. i would have liked 1 or 2 tight shots of her face - we only see long and wide shots of the protagonist (i.e., at some distance), which weakens our ability to empathize with her and creates static tension in the video. perhaps the director wants us to side with the antagonist ... 

fear by Friedhelm Fischer http://vimeo.com/8426827 1:30 minutes

My camera takes me on adventures on the way to work by seeing things that i just wouldn't give a second thought. The spoken word in this video is taken from the readout on the console of a MUNI subway train's console. The view of the train is a loop of the subway driver's announcement of a 1-minute delay that lasted 10 minutes.

Roots on the Wall

If I could draw like this, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

New Vimeo Channel

As much as I like TV, and as many episodes-with-a-similar-theme that I make, should have done this sooner, A****le On Vimeo.

NANO-REVIEW: Women's Health Film

Women's Health Film - WHP from Running Cow Films on Vimeo.

i often watch videos in the middle of the night with the sound off if there are no headphones within easy reach. i have learned that if a video is engaging with the sound off, i am usually glad if i watch a second time with stereo. this chick flick is an Indian film, quite recently uploaded by Running Cow Films, that has no subtitles but tells a story of a modest young woman, distressed by, as i learned to call it from my polite Southern mother, "female troubles" - sympathetically and with a warm flavor of family dynamics that can be universally understood.

Women in India are modest, shy of dealing with physical ailments peculiar to women. This film tackles this issue.

Director: Anushka Shivdasani Rovshen
DOP: Samir Mahajan
Editor: Navnita Sen
Music: Rajat Dholakia
Client: World Health Partners

Weighing in as an artist in retirement from most of my art forms

just commented on a younger artist's Facebook post, and since almost all my friends and a lot of my relatives are artists who are younger than me, i am reposting my comment:

i'm weighing in from the pov of someone as a person who's shamelessly promoted herself in numerous mediums. i still and always wear all black because i used to have to go from day job to art opening to call at some black box theatre a...nd back home after my performance to paint a sculpture and or rewrite a new script and or work on publicity for my next show and or research new opportunities. i arranged a successful Pac NW tour of my last evening length solo show by working on the Net (dial up!!!) on my IMac after 1 am for months. i would say i would not do that again if it were not for the fact that if i Google "Sylvia Toy," who as you know is my filmmaker persona not even a real person, she has top listing in the search, and usually appears as the first 2 or 3 search results as well as the 6th and 7th. that happened because of shameless self promotions and keywording "sylvia toy" and "sylviatoyindustries" and all syl's stuff ALL OVER THE WEB, which includes videos made when all i had were acting and storytelling skills and no technique (embarrassing, but a link is a link), watching and commenting on other people's stuff, having 6 (i think) blogs, AND:

****trying to get exposure in different venues!!!!! [example: i have gotten better results on the more competitive artist's sites like deviant art-which i highly recommend to anybody who's learning how to have presence on the web-and Vimeo than Revver, Youtube, Google video, Blip, etc] and NOT!!! to put the same flavor of work on each different site.****

also, as a more senior visual artist once told me: there comes a time when you have to pass on an opportunity because you are past the point of showing in "alternative" venues. that's only part snobbery - it's mostly about risk taking, focus and strategy.

when i used to send out slides (which i absolutely hated doing), i imagined being at one end of a long table and at the other end were a panel of curators - i ALWAYS put faces on them and gave them personalities. i really believe that helped me market myself.