Artists and accountants are not always motivated by the same forces, but there are often more crossover forces between artists and accountants than first glance might suggest. Clearly this is a matter more about aesthetics; I cannot fathom a life in accounting, but I’m sure glad I know a good one when I need her to sort things out. Success for artists, accountants, and everyone else too, is often a function of figuring out how to get something completely done.
Read MoreCONVERGENCE
Convergence suggests that many seemingly novel ideas are probably similar to solutions developed for entirely difference circumstances. What works here….will probably work there, too. That’s a profound insight if you spend your life doing creative work. Rather than re-invent the wheel, consider how that well proven device might enable you to discover someplace entirely uncharted.
Read MoreTHE AMATEUR MOVE
The amateur move is to abandon a project when it’s hard to know how to complete it well. The amateur move is to say you don’t know how to find a conclusion, how to find more energy to finish a long simmering project, how to cut out parts that you know, deep down, simply gotta go.
Read MoreWHY GOV’T MEDIA BEHAVES DIFFERENTLY THAN COMMERCIAL MEDIA
No matter how vital the message, dull messaging all but guarantees that a viewer will change what’s playing. For government media, that means balancing info the public may need to know against production design that holds audience attention.
Read MoreMANAGING IMPERFECTIONS
Quoting the folksinger Arlo Guthrie here, “You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.”
Read MoreYOUR OWN PRIVATE HEISENBERG
Figuring out where you’re going matters profoundly if you’re serious about reaching somewhere interesting. The more interesting your intended destination, the less precisely you can account for how you’re going to get there, and the less likely it is that the arrival will reveal something extraordinarily special and sublime.
Read MoreCLOSE UP
A close up is the ultimate special effect, the trope that asks our complicity in telling a story so that it matters.
Read MoreHOW TO COLLABORATE
To be clear, multi-tasking in the great fallacy of the age. Nonetheless, people continue to talk themselves into believing that it works, that they can do it.
Read MoreSAVE OR EJECT?
What if that seemingly irrelevant shot, blurry and showing no discernible subject, is the downstream neurological spark of some elegant surrealistic moment?
Read MoreWANTING REALISM IS NOT REALISTIC
The reason something looks real is because a production team has gone to pains to present visuals and words and other narrative elements that suggest realism to the viewer.
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