Cornerstone Omnibus

Well I am down to the last several programs...this image of Quentin Drew from Sid Arthur seems like an appropriate one for this juncture.

I just poked around at what I've put up for the past several months (including Sid Arthur, added today), and it's pretty staggering.

Of course it is something of a mess...needs cleaning up all over the place. I wish I could have just scanned everything in, but of course there's not and OCR program in the world that would have made sense of those cast lists. It had to be hand crafted data!

I also asked Shishir a little question about the program and got some good recollections: that will be my daily task from now on. As I'm editing and adding, I'll fire off questions. Need to get some more people thinking about this...and I need to collect more about the shows I know little or nothing about.

I've been telling people for a while now that eventually this thing will acquire its own gravity...perhaps that could begin to happen? It's like a planet...it needs to start pulling together now. "Planet Cornerstone," I think that would have been something Leslie T. would say, no?

BubbleShare: Share photos - Lead Free Toys


Fun, huh? Just added this to the wiki last month...I think I found it via Simple Spark...or was it Lifehacker?

At long last, video!

The powers that be at Cornerstone have released my C20 video for your enjoyment and edification. It's half the length of the previous Big Cornerstone Video, but packs in still more info.

My plan is to shoot a couple of stand-up interviews with key staff who will talk about the Institute, Education programs, etc.

I've finished a couple more programs...I did LOS BIOMBOS/THE SCREENS most recently. It was huge: multiple casting for some roles, different actors in roles in each scene, etc.

I realize now that what's missing is a space for comments from the participants, so I will be adding that. Also: links to reviews or online resources about the shows. I know there have been a couple of pieces about LOS BIOMBOS. I'd also like to be able to put a couple of minutes of video from each online, but that's a ways down the road.

The C20 video is now done...more on that when it's Official. I'll post a You Tube link when the company's ready for it to be seen.

I've started doing direct entry of all the Cornerstone programs I have...I'm hoping that eventually I can get a bunch of data in files. I was able to copy and paste a bunch of material when I started, but now I've got to just transcribe it myself.

I loved fishing out all those programs...I got to look at some of the hundreds of programs for other shows I've collected over the years. If I'm not careful I'll end up sitting on the floor of the garage just re-reading them all.

I've got Cornerstone programs going back to LOS FAUSTINOS...I'll have to get into the files after that!

As of 2007 the Cornerstone wiki has passed 120 pages with no end it sight. I've even had some edits from interested parties, although I haven't really been pushing this out there. I wanted to build the basic structure first.

I just came across another interesting variant on this which might be useful: Folklore.org, which is devoted to collective historical storytelling. Their pilot project is devoted to the story of how the Mac came to be, and it's very intriguing. I'm going to monitor the site and see if it offers any possibilites for Cornerstone and the Omnibus. Maybe we could convert the Durfee transcripts into story segments and then build a collective history that way.

Meantime, I'm just adding bios and cast lists and whatever else I can get my hands on.

I heard that he wrote Babbit 15 minutes at a time. It seems to be working for the Omnibus: large parts of it are being structured, and I think in a couple of weeks I'll start inviting people by to edit and add and so on. I think it's going to be very useful.

Meantime, I've just built a brand new Dell XPS to handle the many videos I am working on, and editing Cornerstone bits into the current skeleton is my first task with that thing. I'm doing a couple of photo montages, and once we shoot a last interview, I should have all the pieces.

August was a rough month, so I've had a hard enough time getting the C20 video in gear. I finally digitized the selects from the trip and got close to a final rough, but it's been a haul.

Meantime, the whole idea of an Omnibus has languished. I've decided to use the Sinclair Lewis method of composition to get that project in gear. I don't take the subway, so what I'm going to do is 15 minutes of the Cornerstone Wiki at the start of lunch every day.

I just roughed out a basic structure...

Visit it here if you like...and add something!

I've done a first pass on the C20 video string-together...at last. There are some really wonderful moments in the video thanks to people like Ben Cameron, Dora Hardy, and Teeko Parran. I am still trying to get some of the video I shot in the spring logged.

There is so much more material now than there was five years ago: acres of miniDV tapes. Where once we might have had one tape of a show, now there are three or more camera. Luckily, I think we're just turning the corner on the time when all of that lives on drives. And of course, the software is much cheaper. My $70 copy of VEGAS on my old $1000 homebrew PC does more than my old $100,000 AVID did back in the day.

One more exciting thing...I have been building a Wiki for another client, and I am using Cornerstone as a test case. That might just be the next phase of the Omnibus.