Archive for December, 2011

We’re back for our (almost) weekly CBC Radio 3 playlist installment. This week we’re featuring Calgary talent, along with a few groups making their way through our awesome city, and a couple of favorites thrown in for good measure. Feast your ears on musical stylings from the likes of locals Lab Coast, Cowpuncher, and No River and stick around for bangers from Jesse Dee & Jacquie B (Golden), Hey Ocean (Vancouver), The Sheepdogs (Saskatoon), and Locomotive Ghost (Nelson). Then be sure to listen to Hannah Georgas (Toronto):

Playlist

A few words with Brittany Baxter, co-producer (along with Josephine Anderson) about “The Sticking Place”, the first Calgary-based interactive documentary.

Trailer at www.thestickingplacefilm.ca/kickstarter

CIA: Let us begin… Three sentences, “The Sticking Place”, go…

Brittany Baxter: It’s an online interactive documentary experience about the journey of Calgary-based wrestler, Leah Callahan as she tries to make it onto the 2012 Canadian Olympic team. We started following her story after she lost at Nationals last March in a really close match to the 10 time National champ, Ohenewa Akuffo. Leah’s had the last 8 months to prepare to face this same wrestler at the upcoming Olympic Qualifiers, which are one week away!

CIA: Would this make it the first-ever interactive doc based out of Calgary?

BB: Yes – It’s def the first interactive doc of this kind to come out of Calgs – Very cool new way of telling stories and bringing together a ton of awesome media formats (animation, video VHS home videos, motion graphics, audio, soundscape, collages…) Also, it’s really not so much a sports story but rather a story about what it means to have an all-consuming passion and to follow it – the kinds of sacrifices you have to make, the kind of support system you need to have, the kind of will power that it takes to keep on doing it even when you hate it.

The site will be flash based, which makes it possible for us to  be really creative with how we present the video/audio- viewers can have a lot of fun clicking around the site, activating hidden cues that will pop open videos, audio clips, etc. and allow every user’s experience to be unique.

CIA: A video game/documentary? Sounds like a candy bar with veggies in it, Calgary veggies.

BB: Hahaha. Well who doesn’t like reading another person’s journal or peeking through their email inbox? Or seeing a personal video message from an old best friend, it’s a very voyeuristic experience.

CIA: Journal entries? Anything juicy?

BB: Hmmmm… Don’t want to give away the juicy details… So many juicy juicy details…

CIA: We don’t have to worry about spoiler alerts here because this is still in the works, when will “The Sticking Place” launch?

BB: We are hoping to launch it in June/July around the time that Olympic hype is reving up and everyone who is cool wants to experience it in a different kind of way instead of through the eyes of CBC, etc.

This will be a really amazing way to get into the head and heart of what life is actually like for an Olympic athlete – it’s like tweeting with Ashton Kutcher.

CIA: This is also a Calgary-first from a funding stand point. The first Calgary related project to be seen on Kickstarter, pre-tell.

BB: A quick google search has told me that this won’t be the first Calgarian Kickstarter-funded project, but it will be the coolest. It’s hard to get on Kickstarter. First you have to have a great proj, then you have to have an American resident who is willing to vouch for the proj. We were lucky enough to have both.

Crowdfunding is an awesome grassroots way to get industry classified “niche” projects up and off the ground running. You can directly engage the people who will be watching your project, invite them to actually invest in the project to make it happen and bring them along with you for the whole journey, start to finish.

CIA: If our CIA readers want to see a sneak peek of Calgary’s first interactive documentary, where do they go?

BB: They head the hell over to our kickstarter page www.thestickingplacefilm.ca/kickstarter. We also have a blog where we have been telling all and facebook + twitter of course.

CIA: Before we cut over to the clip do you want to set it up (à la late night show guest)?

BB: Which clip are we cutting over to?

CIA: This is getting too “late show”, the guest doesn’t know the clip? Classic. The one on the Kickstarter page…

BB: Haha, well there are three. The first one you will see is a glimpse into the silly minds of the filmmakers- get ready to see double? It’s three minutes long, so if people want only a shorter hit, then they can scroll to suplex and get some shivers. They can also scroll to portrait and feel the epic passion of what it’s like to be Leah.

CIA: Before we close, an interactive doc… How do you premier it? Maybe at one of Calgary’s internet cafes? Bevs? Red carpet? 100kbps?

BB: Hahaha. That would be awesome. This is just a crazy dream at this point but we were thinking of trying to get a dual meet organized- the most exciting wrestling to watch, and have a big like, um, boxing night (what are they called at Casinos when its a really big deal and all the rich people go to see the fight, even the casino owners?) something like that, sell tickets, have the website set up at a few different computers while the meet is going on, something high energy, something Monster might sponsor, hint hint.

CIA: Or a Calgary based energy drink… Beano?

Happy holidays folks! It’s been an awesome year for Calgary is Awesome and we couldn’t have done it without the support of you, our awesome readers. As a special thank you to our loyal followers, we have a special prize to give away. Take part in our Holiday Giving contest for your chance to win a $100 gift card to shop at WagJag.com and their new Holiday Gift Shoppe.

There are two easy ways to enter the contest (and if you do both, then you get two entries!):

1) Like us on our Facebook page and post on our wall what your awesome holiday gift ideas are.

2) Follow us on Twitter and tweet the following: Join the @ciawesome Holiday Giving Contest! Follow and RT for a chance to win a $100 @WagJag gift card http://bit.ly/CIAContest

It’s as simple as that! Get your posts and tweets in by December 15th for your chance to win.

This contest is open to residents of Calgary, Alberta.

Our CBC Radio 3 – Weekly playlist is here again. Perhaps you can buy your loved ones  a few songs or albums from one of these great Alberta bands. Lots of fabulous music this week from local Calgary (and a couple of Edmonton) bands.

Enjoy!

Playlist

This holiday season, why not give the gift that keeps on giving? Ok, it may sound a little cliché, but finding meaningful, alternative gifts for the person who already has everything can be hard to do. Look no further than Calgary’s very own UEnd, a local organization that empowers people to give a new kind of gift—one that helps eradicate extreme poverty and changes the way we think about giving through the redirection of a small portion of your gift spending.

UEnd allows participants to give 100% of their donation to one of over 50 active extreme poverty-ending projects. Projects take place all over the world ranging from clean water campaigns in Sierra Leone to school construction in Guatemala.  What’s cool is that UEnd offers gift cards – but instead of buying something at the mall, recipients can choose the project they want to support with their gift card.  To date over $730,000 has been put towards 149 projects affecting over 430,000 people – all by giving over 12,500 gifts differently.

UEnd will have pop-up shops at a number of local cafes to pick up a gift card in person. Find a list of dates, locations, and times on the UEnd blog.  Gift cards are also available on the UEnd website – get yours today!

To help warm up the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra Chorus this season, Tourism Calgary asked Calgarians to tweet their tips on how to keep warm in Calgary’s winter wonderland. From November 21 to November 24, 2011 they reached out to twitter users asking “How do you stay warm in #YYC?” The submitted tweets that used the hashtag #cpowarmup or replied to the @Calgary twitter handle were compiled and turned into a tweet compilation sung by a philharmonic chorus.

Normally tweets are temporary, gone in the span of minutes. Now such classic winter warm-up tweets as “Raw Bar cocktails. Hi-fi clubbing. Wine Bar down in Kensington. Try hot yoga! Calgary Flames shirts.” have been immortalized in a dramatic choral arrangement ready to be viewed by the whole world.

Chorus Master Timothy Shantz arranged 20 tweets into the riveting song performed by the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus. The performance, set to the classic song O Fortuna from the cantata Carmina Burana, was recorded on Tuesday, November 29 at the Jack Singer Concert Hall and is being used to promote the last weekend of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra’s Virtuosity Festival.

Follow both on Twitter: @calgary and @calgaryphil

We have some very exciting things happening over at CIA; the first of which is our new Calgary Is Awesome – Coat of Arms designed by local illustrator and all-around talent and inspiration, Terry Irwin.

Terry spent some time thinking about what Calgary means to him, and what it means to all of us who call this city home.

We sat him down for a few minutes to provide us with more details on his creative thought process.

‘I felt that the CIA – Coat of Arms really needed to incorporate the Calgary music scene and our growing food culture in the city. These are the most prominent elements in the design – the deer and his guitar and the coyote and his pint and snack. I know the burger is a funny choice but you can go out and get a pretty damn good burger or even old favorites like Peters Drive-In, which still seems to be on a lot of peoples ‘must’ lists when they think of Calgary.”

He also mentions the incorporation of other elements to the overall design: “…with the mountains and prairie being such a big part of our skyline, I wanted to be certain to feature them. The horseshoe and wheat are a testament to Calgary’s western heritage without being so…in your face.”

Terry had a great time depicting our city and some of the things that make it unique. We LOVE Terry’s interpretation of our city in Coat of Arms form, and can’t wait to show it off.

Please share this with everyone you know, and send us your own Coat of Arms designs.

A little bit about the artist:

Terry Irwin is a mixed media artist from Calgary, Alberta. As an artist,
he pulls influence from the northern Alberta wilderness where he grew up,
Saturday morning cartoons, graffiti, science fiction films, ghost stories, comics,
and breakfast foods combining them to create his distinct style.

Terry’s Blog

Terry’s Art