Many years ago, I harbored a dream to make movies. Lacking any budget, actors, and time, my roommate and I decided to film something with what we had around the apartment; the result was this silly film titled “Bottles and Cans.” It’s a lot of fun, but, obviously, very cheap. It was filmed with a simple family camcorder and the sound was recorded with the least expensive home recording setup available. Still, I like it. And should thank Jonathan Lawoying for writing the introductory song; it’s a tune we used to play in Jazz groups and sounded a lot better with his keyboard.

(That’s me on the guitar and drums.The best ideas for the puppeteering came from my co-director, Andrew Armstrong, who is very talented at film work and had really good ideas for making the bottles and cans appear to be moving. If you can tell how we moved them in any scene it’s probably something I set up.)

Since you’re still here, here’s another thing I did with Andrew, two years ago – and they actually let me on the screen this time. This was entered into a Heinz Ketchup contest; their response was something like, “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” You can hear a guitar line that I wrote and my wife’s voice comes in at the end. I thought it was a cool song.

This was filmed with some really good equipment (XL-2’s at 24 fps and a professional lighting setup attached to ceiling pipes) but didn’t make it through the YouTube compression very well.

Whatever you do, don’t watch this one. I no longer get asked to speak lines.