Starting Out...
...is the hardest thing to do.
I am an artist, a film maker, a musician, a philosopher, a theologian, a poet.
I'm currently finishing up an album of original music, which I'm about 2/3rds of the way through, directing a play that's going up in North Hollywood in a couple of months, finishing editing a feature length documentary about babies, about to start on a TV show pilot for the Sci-Fi channel that I would be a producer on if it gets picked up, finishing up a feature-length screenplay that I've been working on for the last 3 1/2 years, and starting up a new romantic relationship with a beautiful actress that I've been best friends with for years, and whom I'm directing in the play.
Plus, I've got friggin' jury duty next week.
So, in all my free time (and you know, I don't really like multitasking... hmmm...), I figure I'll try to get my thoughts down here, to share with you good people out there.
I got my MFA in film directing from the University of Southern California, and my graduate thesis film got some attention. It played on the Sci Fi Channel, came out on DVD, did well on the festival circuit.
I got a feature deal out of it that I eventually dropped out of when I finally realized that the producer who hired me was never going to come up with the money. I'd been writing a screenplay and scouting locations, etc. for 9 months, without a cent.
Now I freelance as a producer, editor, and director.
I am a kind of new breed of film maker, I can do all of it. I write, direct, produce, edit, shoot, do special effects, and now, for the first time with the doc I'm working on right now, compose the music.
I don't have Robert Rodriguez sized budgets, and I've been doing a lot of documentary lately, but I like doing it all. With the digital technology, if I wanted, I could make an entire feature length film without leaving my house. If it was just me, it would take me years, but in a J.R.R. Tolkein kind of way, I appreciate that. That's pretty new as a reality. The computer allows me total control, which just didn't use to be possible. Much more than the average viewer is even aware of.
I don't know that I work all that fast, because I feel that, as an artist, once you've put the work out into the world, it's going to have a life of its own, and it better be the best you can make it.
Perfectionism is its own reward. Shakespeare and Mozart weren't sloppy.
That doesn't mean that I don't try to work spontaneously. All my best work comes from a totally intuitive place. Sometimes I like to create music or write fiction stories from an almost trance state, where the ideas coming out come more directly from my subconscious, without as much conscious intervention.
It's hard to do that within collaborative processes. It's mainly only in the quiet moments, when I can shut out the noise and the distractions of outside, and be able to go inside, and listen to what the muse has to say.
That's the only way I can find the truth. I understand what Salvador Dali meant when he talked about his working technique. Without trying to emulate him, I think I have a working method which is similar. It's about being without thought, allowing the mind to wander, respecting the reverie, the daydream. Programming the subconscious to come up with the ideas I can encorporate in the work.
Sometimes it's enough just to let my mind wander into some kind of interesting wave form.
But I'm going to try my best to keep it interesting on here for you good people.
Thanks for coming!
I am an artist, a film maker, a musician, a philosopher, a theologian, a poet.
I'm currently finishing up an album of original music, which I'm about 2/3rds of the way through, directing a play that's going up in North Hollywood in a couple of months, finishing editing a feature length documentary about babies, about to start on a TV show pilot for the Sci-Fi channel that I would be a producer on if it gets picked up, finishing up a feature-length screenplay that I've been working on for the last 3 1/2 years, and starting up a new romantic relationship with a beautiful actress that I've been best friends with for years, and whom I'm directing in the play.
Plus, I've got friggin' jury duty next week.
So, in all my free time (and you know, I don't really like multitasking... hmmm...), I figure I'll try to get my thoughts down here, to share with you good people out there.
I got my MFA in film directing from the University of Southern California, and my graduate thesis film got some attention. It played on the Sci Fi Channel, came out on DVD, did well on the festival circuit.
I got a feature deal out of it that I eventually dropped out of when I finally realized that the producer who hired me was never going to come up with the money. I'd been writing a screenplay and scouting locations, etc. for 9 months, without a cent.
Now I freelance as a producer, editor, and director.
I am a kind of new breed of film maker, I can do all of it. I write, direct, produce, edit, shoot, do special effects, and now, for the first time with the doc I'm working on right now, compose the music.
I don't have Robert Rodriguez sized budgets, and I've been doing a lot of documentary lately, but I like doing it all. With the digital technology, if I wanted, I could make an entire feature length film without leaving my house. If it was just me, it would take me years, but in a J.R.R. Tolkein kind of way, I appreciate that. That's pretty new as a reality. The computer allows me total control, which just didn't use to be possible. Much more than the average viewer is even aware of.
I don't know that I work all that fast, because I feel that, as an artist, once you've put the work out into the world, it's going to have a life of its own, and it better be the best you can make it.
Perfectionism is its own reward. Shakespeare and Mozart weren't sloppy.
That doesn't mean that I don't try to work spontaneously. All my best work comes from a totally intuitive place. Sometimes I like to create music or write fiction stories from an almost trance state, where the ideas coming out come more directly from my subconscious, without as much conscious intervention.
It's hard to do that within collaborative processes. It's mainly only in the quiet moments, when I can shut out the noise and the distractions of outside, and be able to go inside, and listen to what the muse has to say.
That's the only way I can find the truth. I understand what Salvador Dali meant when he talked about his working technique. Without trying to emulate him, I think I have a working method which is similar. It's about being without thought, allowing the mind to wander, respecting the reverie, the daydream. Programming the subconscious to come up with the ideas I can encorporate in the work.
Sometimes it's enough just to let my mind wander into some kind of interesting wave form.
But I'm going to try my best to keep it interesting on here for you good people.
Thanks for coming!
8/19/2004 06:18:00 PM permalink
Email me.
2 Comments:
Hey thanks for commenting! I just started the blog up, so I'm glad at least one person read it so far! :)
For me, art serves a number of purposes. Some art I make intuitively, reflexively, from the unconscious. Whatever it means comes directly from inside me and certainly reflects my preoccupations, but I never rationally tried to frame it in those terms. When I compose music it is usually done this way.
Sometimes I have a specific message in mind, but I think, as artists, we have to be careful about being didactic. I think when a work can stir something universal in the viewer and cause them to have a deeper feeling or understanding about something, then I've accomplished something. If I am trying to make a logical, rational argument, documentary or an essay is far better than more intuitive forms like fiction, poetry, music, the graphic arts, etc.
Sometimes the message can be couched in metaphor, which some people will understand, and some people won't (some people's minds are too literal to really understand deep metaphor).
Sometimes I make art just to get a feeling out, or because the Bush administration has pissed me off so much.
And sometimes it's because someone's paying me money and I have to eat.
I think that, when creating popular forms of art, film and TV shows, for instance, that keeping the audience in mind is critical.
Other times I'm just making something for me, and if other people like it too, that's okay, too, but I made it for me.
It depends on the work in question.
"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe." - Thomas Paine
A notoriously difficult thing to do in LA and this business we call show.
Be true to yourself, 'cause once you sell your soul it's almost impossible to get it back.
So, what is it you want to say with your art?
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