Laughing Squid Video Archive Digitization Project

Way back in the early days of Laughing Squid, before I launched this blog, I used to shoot a lot of video, documenting events in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the country. You may not realize this, but Laughing Squid originally started out as a film and video company, producing documentaries on the surrealist painter Alonso Smith and The Cacophony Society’s Portland Santacon ’96 event.

I’m finally working on digitizing all of the old video I shot during those days, the bulk of which was on Hi8 from 1995 to 1999, with some MiniDV from 2001-2003. It’s taken me 15 years to finally get this project going. In a way it’s been worth the wait. File storage is super cheap now and it’s really easy to share online. In the old days I would make VHS dubs to give to people, so we’ve come a long way.

The plan is to slowly work through my stack of tapes throughout the year, occasionally sharing interesting clips as I along the way on the Laughing Squid YouTube channel. The first project is digitizing all 48 hours I shot of Burning Man 1996, both before the event in San Francisco and on the Playa.

I’ll occasionally be sharing some of these videos in blog posts, but if you want to see everything that is uploaded, be sure to subscribe to the Laughing Squid YouTube channel and our Facebook group.