The pilot episode of Shamans of the Global Village is now available to watch on Gaia.
Their aim is to share ideas on one of the world’s largest resources of conscious media to empower the evolution of consciousness. To create a new reality, one of mindful people living in harmony with our environment and each other. A noble goal.
April marked the launch date of the first two released video's for our next production company Only The Source.
Their original short-form filmmaking content aims to awaken, inspire and empower humanity to a more peaceful, delightful and loving life through original content and branded entertainment.
Check em out:
This has also been my first dive into using Vimeo Review which I must say are a great time saver for a group collaborating together.
We are having FOUR Shamans of the Global Village screenings with panel discussions in California in April & May 2017.
Full details below and links can be found at http://www.shamansoftheglobalvillage.com/events/
Joined comrade Ed Liu for Episode #43 of his podcast Psychedelic Milk to discuss the documentary series Shamans of the Global Village.
Ed Liu is a podcast host and a music producer - previously charted on the Beatport Top 100. He is currently the host of the Psychedelic Milk podcast, a long-form conversational interview with interesting and influential guests from all over the world to discuss topics of consciousness, psychedelics, and new emerging technologies.
This was a really fun free-form chat. From moment one it just flowed as Ed and I are on similar wavelengths. Thanks so much for having me Ed buddy.
Reading is very important. Wisdom and knowledge comes from life experience while information gathering comes from reading. People who are "well read" are generally more interesting to talk to and have a much broader range of depth than those who never read hardly anything. There has been a loss of reading skills in recent decades and a decline in classical literature. Many people in modernity won't even read this essay, or a magazine article, or a fluffy fun book, or a book of fiction, or a book of non-fiction, let alone a book of knowledge such as an ancient philosophical text or grimoire. Thus our insane clown president, Trumplestiltskin is the 45th Commander In Chief of the United States of America and the comedy Idiocracy has become a documentary. Which is understandable since we're so programmed to move a mile a minute and not ever slow down. Reading takes time and requires one to take one’s time and slow down. In order to be a good writer, you must read a ton more than you write. It’s baffling how unwell read many "filmmakers" are and a huge part of being a filmmaker instead of just a person with a camera is writing compelling fleshed out characters of depth. Hence, so much of the problems with indie filmmaking is a lack of good writing even though we’ve all heard the quote the three things needed to make a good film are a good script, a good script, and a good script.
Technology has made it so we get information a mile a minute. Sadly, most of it's crap because people seem to want to play app based games on their conflict mineral made, slave labor constructed, ovarian cancer generating, NSA spying enabled cell phones rather than read something juicy and yummy for their mind in analogue on physical and tangible paper. Some of the best, if not the very best, information one can consume on a page or screen comes from words and symbols of knowledge. Usually ancient books or else books which retell or reboot those old themes.
For example, "The Art of War" is not a easy book to read but instead is something that requires one to spend time with it over and over again over long periods. Much like university study, it can take a long time to sit down with The Art of War and really get information out of it. And that requires not only that slowing down, but also a focused mental concentration. So there’s no coincidence in social networking inspiring heavy amount of mental discursiveness, in which the youth of a nation have been bread to click onto the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. Which is horrible for for concentration, focus, as well as the esoteric ability to retain internal light.
As someone who is mildly dyslexic, reading in the past has been a struggle for this writer. The McDonalds for the mind B+ level accurate Wikipedia definition of dyslexia is "difficulty in learning to read or interpret words". Which sure as shit was true here in this brain’s real estate. When going through my 12 years of the mind control conform boot camp of public school, I would have so much problem not remembering what I had just gone over a paragraph before. This was mainly popped up when reading fiction whereas I would often be lost in place and time within the story, making hard to always know when and where I was in the story. However, it wasn't so much the information in the text itself but more the process of extracting the details of that info off the page and into memory. It felt analogous to a gears lodged in the mental cogs. However, being read that very same text out loud was a different story. Hence books on tape saved me in the 80's and 90's. But there was only a limited smaller percentage of content which has been read and recorded at that time/space vector.
Reading involves all your time. Listening does not. When you listen you are in your own world and can often times DO other things. I always have earbuds in my ears whenever I'm by myself in my spare time. Out and about getting chores done, exercising, doing various hobbies, etc... Either at home or on the move, if I'm alone and don’t have headphones in my ear holes, it feels as though something is missing. Leaving the house without the trifecta of the wallet, keys, and phone with earbuds causes sensations of being partially nude. If you are similar and are constantly plugged in on your own time, with headphones constantly attached, air tube headphones are recommended to research for their health benefits. A large percentage of the electromagnetic frequency radiation from your phone travels up the headphone wire into the speakers. These earbud headphones keep the small amount of micro radiation emitting from your battery powered device away from your head, which is important because these devices may not have our health as their primary concern.
Time is so valuable and life is short. When around others who have ears to hear, being respectful by not staring down at your phone and instead giving them your focus to engage with interest and eye contact is very important. Wisdom comes for places you may never suspect, and face to face wisdom is the most yummy of all. Our spare time is best spent taking in healthy and good tasting information directly from a source of experience. Life is too short to spend all your time listening to someone else's crap off a a pre-approved menu which they would be all too happy to spoon feed to you over some ghastly live broadcast full of deplorable corporate commercials. I'm allowed to say that being someone who has occasionally directed commercials and has worked on and off in the commercial industry.
Audiobooks and podcasts are much more ubiquitous these days. However, many old texts that are packed with excellence have not been transcribed to audio book. The modern version of books on tape is the spoken word version of text on the page. Either read by a human or translated digitally into an audio file, just like a book on tape. This is a technique called text to speech which is a secret weapon of excellence. Older versions of the Amazon Kindle allowed most if not all books you purchased on Kindle to also be transcribed as an audio book. An outstanding feature they very sneakily and quietly removed in later versions because of conflicts with publishing companies over copyright of audio books vs traditional books.
The best solution I have found to mimic this is text to speech. There are pieces of software which allow you to copy text and have it read out to you, often but not always by a robotic Stephen Hawking like voice. For numerous years I would highlight text and copy it into a reader and push play. The day this was discovered truly was life-transformative as it allowed for my world to open up to new heights which I always struggled to achieve in the past. So much to the point that I know my grade point average in school would have been better if the technology was around in my high school and university years. So even though the Trivium education system has been intentionally removed from modern schooling because schooling is not education and they don’t want free thinking autodynamics that are fiercely individualistic but instead corporate robots which are great at groupthink, it’s still a beautiful time to educate yourself through reading with greater ease due to the ability to have this technology at your fingertips.
These days I will believe it or not give credit to Apple and mention that more recent versions of the Mac OS operating system have an incredible feature where you can simply highlight any text, be it the full pros on an entire novel or a single article, then right click on the highlighted text and say "Add to iTunes as spoken track". After a short bit of processing... BOOM! You've got an audio file that's essentially an audiobook. Created quickly from ANY text you can copy from. Alchemical mind gold! A life-changing process for the autodidact we will all one day come to be.
Being a couple years into listening to self-created audio book files, I've started to incorporate a time-saving technique of listening to them at faster speed. A must have crucial feature for audiobook playback software and any video playback worth it’s weight in gold.
Music requires being listened to at proper speed but a human being's voice does not. In fact, most people's voices and speech patterns have caused them to deliver oral information quite inefficiently and work better sped up a bit. Rather than spending 3 full hours listening to that latest epic podcast at speed, try it at a 1.5x speed or even a 2x speed. You'll get just as much out of it in a much more efficient time frame. This process will allow your yummy intel sponging ratio to increase daily. It also works well on mediocre films. Such as kind of boring documentaries or Michael Bay action films where the dialogue just doesn't carry the visuals. Like all muscles, mental processes require exercise and building up the ability to listen quicker will rapidly move you to become more Jedi and less Muggle in no time.
With any piece of hardware that you use to advance an art, it's easy to get lost in the technology loop of acquisition syndrome. Caring so much about the latest + greatest newest thing. While there's an understanding of getting more for the same price, which is what happens with the latest model, in reality very little does change when you upgrade to any piece of technology.
For example, I use two cameras for street photography. A Leica M rangefinder series and a Panasonic micro 4:3:
Each has its own advantages and it's nice to switch it up between the two day in and day out. The Leica prides itself by maintaining and old design style, while the micro 4:3 camera is essentially a more compact SLR camera. Just like the rangefinder, the micro 4:3 is over 5 years old now and still producing great images. Getting battle hardened lots of use, but still there are only so many shots it can take before it will die. My motto of late, shoot it till it dies and only upgrade then and there. Zen minimalism all the way.
Transmutation is a documentary film I've been working on as the main side project for the last 3/4 years with my friend and colleague Neil Kramer. A British philosopher and esotericist. Neil explores the relationship between inner development and the many social and cultural factors that influence our lives. Attention is drawn to embracing truth, confronting challenges, and transforming self. Neil shares his ideas in writings, film, audio, seminars, and individual teaching.
At a surface level this film is about not following the "normal" prescribed path society and culture lays out for us in the first world. At a deeper level, it's about spiritual philosophy. At an even deeper level it's about Hermetic philosophy. At the deepest level, it's about the alchemical transmutation of the soul, changing the individual from lead to gold which is the purpose for each and every one of us over many lifetimes as we evolve and grow. Minus any woo or fluff.
It's been absolutely life-changing for me making it and the official site can be found here:
Fantastic chat with friends Michael Phillip and Michael Garfield (The Michael's) over at the Third Eye Drops podcast. Purveyor of interviews, outerviews and wonder-mongering for sentient sapein seekers.
We chat about my background and the struggled of transmuting your life energy into dollars for others while at the same time always wanting or trying to make you own content.
Check it out over at Mind Meld 38 | The You You Long For – Niles Heckman and Michael Garfield.
As a street photographer, I'm often out in public, lurking in urban areas in an attempt to find interesting subjects to candidly photograph.
Building up your guts to go up to people cold is a skill I will never stop needing to work on. Occasionally when photographing someone and having it go well, they'll ask me to send them their picture. When speaking to the remarkable John Siegel on the podcast, he mentioned that he's learned to have a business card to hand out. This gives subjects some quick insight on who he is and also writes the photo number on the back of his card when he get's asked by people to share their portraits he's taken of them. Genius idea. So here I am making my own.
As someone who realizes and appreciates the importance of one condensing and conveying their brand to others, it's important to solidify and streamline what you do professionally or for hobby. The further along I get in the craft of capturing still images of unknown subjects, the more I realize documentary photography is a major part of my life, if not the primary passion of my life. Outside of my spiritual development of course. Which if you're scared off the the word "spiritual" just switch if out for "life" and call it life development. With filmmaking being the occasional side hobby that only happens periodically. I've also come to realize how much my street shooting effects my directing style in the way I work with subjects and lens a scene. Being chipper and upfront and proactive to make those I've just met and are pointing a camera at comfortable being on screen, while at the same time developing a shooting style of cinematic documenting. With a kit of specific visual cues that re-occur as one finds their style. For me, that style is psychedelically influenced hyper-saturation with beautiful bloomy optics. High contrast ratios and ethereal skies. Think conscious multidimensional art meets Makoto Shinkai. All done lite and lean to support what is hopefully always paradigm-crushing content.
Rak Razam and Niles Heckman join Darren and Graham of the Grimerica podcast to talk about the first episode of “Shaman’s of the Global Village”. We chat about the making of this and about the global growth of shamanism. We also chat about many of the different medicines, holding space, duty of care, ancient practices, and the earth being a live ecosystem. People from all walks of life from all over the globe are finding various healing from this process. Addiction and PTSD just to name a couple.
Recently acquired my first Anamorphic lens. I've always loved the iconic look that type of glass yields and have been playing around with a way to shoot anamorphic affordably with adapters and what not for the past couple years with limited success. However SLR Magic recently released three true anamorphic lenses which are actually some-what affordable. A 35mm, 50mm, and 75mm series that come in both PL and Micro Four Thirds mounts. Here's the 35mm T2.4 2x Anamorphot-CINE Lens in micro 4/3 mount version which I picked off eBay barely used for under $2000. Not bad for a technology that 10 years ago would have cost $200,000.
Here it is on the Panasonic GH4:
Here's the first two initial still images tests from the rig. The 2x yields an aspect ratio twice the width of the standard 16:9 sensor. Which is over 3.50 : 1.
My entire life I've never understood why the standard film back and now image sensor is 16:9, or about 1.77 : 1 aspect ratio. Not just for moving, but still images as well. Even worse are resources like Instagram which think it's acceptable to have the native aspect ratio of images be a square as some gross attempted throwback to the vintage 70's era. I'd nearly rather stab myself in the eyes than look at square images all day. Same thoughts with paintings in galleries that were painted on square or narrow width frames. For portraits sure, but landscapes and vistas to not be in very wide aspect ratio canvases has just never computed with me. Now that I've shot these tests, I already predict this will be a life-changing workflow for what I shoot and going back to flat glass will be tough. Even the 2.40 : 1 aspect ratio I usually work in now seems like it could be wider. I'm ultimately thinking the perfect sweet spot is 2.76 : 1 which the old Ultra Panavision 70 anamorphic formats from the 50's and 60's resulted in.
I've also long since been searching for a way to shoot street photography in a native, much wider aspect ratio. My street photography always tries to be as cinematic as possible and it seems like most street photographers are perfectly fine with not only ugly stark black and white but hardly anyone else seems to be shooting street on wider native formats. Since the lens ultimately requires it's own custom camera body and rig build, the next rig built using this lens will aim to accommodate both video and stills in the smallest and most discreet way possible. Stay tuned...
Updated the logo for the production venture. HUGE thanks to Ben Wong for contributing his stellar aurora borealis timelapse he shot up in Yellowknife in Northwest Territories and Banff, Alberta.
Check out Ben's stellar Anamorphic work on his YouTube channel.
Rak Razam, host of the new online TV show, Shamans of the Global Village www.shamansoftheglobalvillage.com, chats with the show's director Niles Heckman about the resurgence in shamanic traditions across the world and why they made this groundbreaking new series. Indigenous people across the globe have used sacred plant medicines for millennia to heal, illuminate and connect them to the web of life. But each of these psychoactive medicines needs a healer to connect them to their patients: the shaman. This investigative-adventure documentary show examines not just these shamanic medicines, but the shamans that wield them–both indigenous and Western men and women learning to become shamans. We examine what drives them, what their backgrounds are, and why the role of the shaman is vital in the 21st century. If, as Marshall McLuhan said, we are now a “global village”, then we need our own healers that understand the deep power and sacredness these plant medicines can reveal. Tune into a provocative discussion about global shamanism, documentary filmmaking and the role of conscious media in our own awakening. Shamans of the Global Village is a independently produced documentary series focusing on indigenous entheogenic medicines and the Western shamanic resurgence. It is a project that has been a long time in the making, has gone through many challenges, but because of the passions and unique skill sets of its creators, is like nothing you’ve ever seen.
Chatted with KMO from "The C-Realm Podcast" on his live radio show "C-Realm Radio" on October 23rd, 2016.
KMO is one of the internet's most prolific podcasters, having conducted nearly 1000 interviews on topics ranging from organic farming and permaculture, peak oil and the collapse of industrial civilization, to psychedelic spirituality and drug policy reform.
The episode can be downloaded here.
It takes a tribe to raise a child and it takes a global village to support a 100% Independently made documentary series.
The pilot episode of Shamans of the Global Village will have its official world premiere at the 24th annual Raindance Film Festival in London. Complete with Q&A panel afterward being covered by Alexander Ward, Michael Wiese, and some of our colleagues at Divine Arts.
Directed four "music video vignettes" for the band Saso.
They're a Alternative / Instrumental / Piano minimal two man music venture made up of Jim Lawler and Ben Rawlins.
Trailer for our episodic documentary series 'Shamans of The Global Village'. We are working to have it picked up for larger distribution and seeking funding to complete all 12 episodes.
COME ON AN INTIMATE JOURNEY INTO THE WORLD OF MODERN GLOBAL SHAMANISM WITH WESTERN PRACTITIONERS AND SEE NEVER BEFORE FILMED FOOTAGE OF ANCIENT MEDICINE PRACTICES…
Each episode will follow a specific medicine person working with a specific medicine. This first pilot episode features Dr. Octavio Rettig & The Sonoran Desert Toad. More information and full cast and crew of this first pilot episode will be available on the official site shamansoftheglobalvillage.com which will be live in due course.
Our 2013 concept test short AURORAS has made Film Shortage's "Most Inspirational Cinematography Shots in Short Films" list.
It's quite and honor to see years of personal independent work so well received from a visual storytelling since. Especially since the competition these days with the tools being so democratized is so sky high. The short was originally made as a pitch for a much larger and deeper feature screenplay which mark my words - will be a project re-visited down the line when budgets are higher.
Am on the roster for the highly curated, better than stock, footage site FILMSUPPLY.
Along with Musicbed, Filmsupply is devoted to providing premium content to creatives. Their library is being built of aesthetic scenes from a new breed of revolutionary filmmakers. A premium stop for licensing quality footage.
Agencies, brands, and independent filmmakers alike now have quick access to stunning clips needed to complete their stories. Sourced by a global team of visionary cinematographers, we license a highly curated catalog of ready-made scenes and facilitate the creation of custom footage to round out any project.
