I’ll have much more to say on this one as this deal evolves. But it looks like our little online show – KayvonTV.com – is going to become a full length 30 minute show on the new AUX.TV digital cable television network in early 2010.
When watching this clip of Kayvon interviewing big-time U.S. rappers Talib Kweli and DJ Hi-tek – the questions Kayvon is asking become almost secondary, it’s the reaction of Talib and company to Kayvon that becomes the priceless stuff to watch. The wondering …

Did my annual gig at the Toronto Jazz Festival again this year. Pretty happy with most of what I shot. Jamie Cullum was the show that really blew me away and was my surprise of the festival.

Two cool photo opportunities crashed together on the same day this week. The world’s media was focused on Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt who was making an appearance in Toronto for a race this week.
Over at Toronto’s City Hall – Legendary rapper KRS-one was holding down a town hall. A classic KayvonTV episode went viral from the event. Besides seeing the video picked up by lots of music news blogs, I also noticed that Toronto Mayor Miller’s right-hand man sent the link through his twitter network.

Working on a new web project this summer – www.cntowerfoods.com
We’re creating a web news portal for visitors to the area around Toronto’s CN Tower – and a way for the community that visits the area around CN Tower to connect to the local restaurants and services.
I’m thinking it’s time to take the idea of selling banner ads to local business to the next logical level – into the era of blog postings, news stories, and social networks.
The site is being heavily optimized for search around all those keywords peeps be …

Watching the final season of The Sopranos again (for maybe the 5th time?) and I almost forgot how much I loved this line…

The Scrawler, Mr. Joe Warmington, of The Toronto Sun picked up on my Diane Keaton at Union Station story and published a photo in today’s Saturday Sun. Nice, big, and in colour – which is always nice.
Its been good to see my Keaton story travel to so many news sites – and make it into print in a couple of nice places. But I personally will never be totally happy with that shoot. I will always feel I blew the Keaton exclusive. My shots should have been better considering the …

Al Jazeera is again trying to enter the Canadian broadcasting market. This time though an English service sister channel. Tony Burman, the former editor-in-chief of CBC News now runs the English version Al Jazeera news service based in Qatar.
Five years ago the CRTC granted the Arabic-language Al Jazeera permission to broadcast in Canada – but with strict provisions that proved too burdensome that no cable carrier would touch the channel.

The Toronto Rap Project

 
When certain politicians and media started to question whether rap music had anything to do with rising gun violence in the city – I decided to produce and direct the feature length documentary, The Toronto Rap Project. It premiered at the 2006 ReelWorld Film Festival where it went onto capture two awards.

It was a little surprising to see the Billy Bob Thornton interview blow up into such a big story. But when it did – and realizing he still had another show to do at Massey Hall hall that evening, I decided to head to the venue and see what the scene was like before the show. Sure enough, the story was now big enough that a large group of media and fans were buzzing about the stage door at Massey.

I’ll be writing more soon about our little media experiment we conducted during the 2008 Toronto Film Festival. But I will say this…

www.tiff.shovine.com was set up by 4 people (all partners in a web design and marketing company) to use technology to report breaking celebrity news stories from the Toronto Film Festival. A news blog was set-up, and laptops, smartphones, digital cameras were packed and used with texting, email, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Google in the world of the Toronto Film International Festival to report celebrity news. In …