He Walked Among Granite Spires And Heard Celestial Music: short by Joaquin Baldwin

Filmmaker Joaquin Baldwin shares a beautiful new short film with us: composed from footage shot with the Sony HVR-Z5U at some of California's most beautiful wilderness sights.

The title "He Walked Among Granite Spires And Heard Celestial Music" came from a tombstone we found up on a graveyard on a hill north of Mono Lake, contemplated by a Saint Francis statue. It can seen in a few shots of the video. Sigur Rós' heavenly music fit perfectly with that image.

More at Joaquin's blog here, and here's a direct video (YouTube) link. The song is All Alright, by Sigur Rós.

• [Anonymous]

  It is worth noting that these are not federally designated Wilderness Areas. Wilderness with a capitol W is a wonderfully strong level of federal protection for certain undeveloped public land, and much of the public is unaware of this distinction. It irks me when the media uses the term wilderness loosely, because you end up polluting the connotative well held by the word with visions of paved nature trails. Federal Wilderness does not have paved nature trails, nor should it.

  That being said, these are some of my favorite places and this video makes me home sick.

• [penguinchris]

  Get a tripod! (and a microphone wind screen)

  Some nice stuff – having been to most of those places myself, I know it won’t always easy to get good footage, so I can’t fault him too much :)

  How does BoingBoing feel about the use of non-CC music in this way? It’s clearly well beyond fair use… yes it’s non-commercial, but the rights holders don’t seem to care about that.

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    You’re making the mistaken assumption that the filmmaker hasn’t acquired permission from the band.

    • [bpc]

      Out of curiosity, how do you know the track is used with permission? The filmmaker mentions an edit time of 3 hours on his blog, so I would sorta doubt he managed to obtain permission from EMI to use the track. (I could be wrong, is there something you see that I don’t?)

      This raises a broader question for me: I’m a videomaker and I strongly resist using commercial tracks I don’t have clearance for, even on short films and videos for Vimeo. However, few of my peers have the same issue and use awesome, big label tracks that really elevate their videos (even commercial work). To me, that’s a clear ripoff of other creative artists, but few other videomakers seem to feel the same way. Does it strike you the same way?

      (to be clear, I’m speaking specifically about scoring a video with an essentially unchanged track from your iTunes library. I feel totally differently about remix, mashup, etc where you’re using the work as an ingredient for something new, instead of using it wholesale).

• [Anonymous]

  Forgive the pedantry but that would be wilderness sites… although they are a sight to behold.

  Gorgeous. We are adding California to our road trip plans for this year.

  • [imag]

    True that. Another option would be to change the “at” to “of”.

    (commenting while waiting for the 1080 version to download)

  • [adamnvillani]

    Fair warning: The entire state doesn’t look like this. But yes, there is a wealth of beautiful scenery here in the Golden State!

• [Anonymous]

  exquisite: superlatively tender, tinged with pain, and leaves you wanting more.