Dogs Dying, Jesus Found, Inspirational Stories: Phos Pictures

The internet is a magical place, a rabbit hole that for whatever reason I get lost down on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s music, other times it’s literature. I do a fair amount of investigation on people, topics or locations I find interesting, and of course it’s a great source of Friday’s Friend and other random internet nonsense.

Today I fell deep into the work of Phos Pictures and the projects they are involved in thanks to a link from @amymaybe to one of the most amazing web videos I’ve seen in a while and the overall winner of the Vimeo Video Awards. After watching the video I realized two things. One, dogs are WAY fucking better than cats could ever dream of being, and secondly, I was in for some research. So much in fact, which I realised after five minutes of searching, that it’ll probably take up most of tonight.

Be amazed/saddened/inspired after the jump.

Last Minutes With Oden (prepare to get emotional).

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.

How incredible is that. They didn’t even need to make Marley and Me, they could have just screened this. Job done. Dogs loved the world over.

So from there I went searching for James Woods and came up with another video – HERE, but that was it. I’m at a bit of a dead end with James, besides the fact that I know he grew up in Long Beach (the American one) and had a dodgy past, but I’m sure a bit more searching will give me the background I need.

From there I hit Phos Pictures and came across the beginning stages of their 8 LIVES project. They’re documenting the lives of eight people and eventually putting all the segments into one documentary. It works very well on the web at the moment so it’ll be interesting to see how they take it further.

Take a poke around their Vimeo page and their blog, here and here. Make sure you check out ‘Pennies Heart’, I must warn you though, it’s another emotional story.

Then watch ‘The Uprising’, I did and was sucked into that. It’s a reality series set in LA (where the rest of these stories take place) about a society that has been written off, they’re not the most savoury character in terms of societal norms, which I think is why their stories appeal to me so much more, and their fight to better their lives. It looks so incredibly interesting.

And the weird thing? It’s religious. All the people featured have ‘found God’ or are born again believers. It’s not weird because it’s religious, it’s weird that I find it remotely interesting. Usually I won’t watch anything religious unless it’s an unbiased documentary or something disproving organised religion. This though, I’ll watch. From what I can tell, and this is from a very uninformed soap box (till I get to find out more), the message is more spiritual, focusing on friendship and love rather than religious dogma. Far more relevant to me.

the UPRISING from phos pictures on Vimeo.

Whether it’s a story of a wasted community turning blindly to faith and hope or a true story of companionship and life altering changes remains to be seen, but from what I’ve seen it looks like the latter. I want them to be good. I’m not religious so it shouldn’t matter, but I don’t want the story to reaffirm my thoughts on organised religion.

You can watch all episodes here.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Nash…
Out!