So I’ll just leave you with select quotes and thoughts from each day. Reading this again, it all rings true all over again; not that I agree with everything, but that he’s a living example of conviction and the pursuit of truth in his art.

January 9, 2010

There is something I have to tell you, it’s utterly rogue, and it has to do with the heart of man.

Go out where real life is. Make a living at the bottom of where life is, not an office job. Get a job as a bouncer in a sex club.

Sense the moral borderline when making your film.

There is such a thing as a “natural right” as a filmmaker if you have a clear story. Destiny.

Ultimately, filmmaking is outside all religion because you are the creator.

Write a story with all urgency. Without it, the audience won't feel it.

Sundance is pretty vile and debased.

Filmmakers are not historians. We are storytellers. If something is not documented, invent it.

The real art is to be ruthless with your research.

There are more important things than movies.

Unless you're doing a film with digital effects, storyboards are a tool of cowards who are not comfortable on set.

Film from an Iranian filmmaker: Where is the house of my friend?

David R. Griffith: greatest American filmmaker.

Freaks by Todd Browning.

Gorgics, translated by Ferry.

There is a certain dialectic of defeat.

The chain of defeats originated into something because I had taken the initiative.

There is always a market that will reject you.

The nature of the market is that it doesn't want you.

It’s initiative and solitude. You have to have the nerve to be alone.

I do not allow the quest for aesthetics on my set.

Tarnation: made for $260.

January 10, 2010

If you lose your curiosity or searching from your life, you will become stale and will stop being a filmmaker.

Look beyond the facts. They do not constitute truth.

You have to absorb massive defeats and move on.

I never thought about motivation for a character or “building an antagonist”. I have a story and I tell it.

Final cut is a myth. The only real final cut is if you’re doing your own thing, dependent on no one else. Final cut belongs to the test audience.

Understand what kind of fears are behind contracts.

January 11, 2010

I articulate images within you. A ship over a mountain is ordinary because it resonates with many people. The ship is a metaphor, of what I do not know.

Letting video run is a childhood disease you need to leave behind. Be disciplined and be a director.

I never let anybody to be in the eyeline of the actors.

Do not replay a take on a video screen. It's a false security “does it look good.” Be confident and know when to move on.

The climate on the set always translates into the film.

Anyone who appears on the screen is not a star, but royalty. Even extras.

Follow your fascination and meet people and something will come of it.

Physical courage goes hand in hand with spiritual courage.

The Ascent, by Shipitko, Russian filmmaker.

Here’s the assignment:

• SUBJECT: Comics.
• LENGTH: A minimum of 2 pages. Panel to panel continuity. No strips, gags, or spots.
• PAGE SIZE: Standard comic size: 6.625 x 10.25 inches.

Turns out that meta commentary as a subject is deceptively difficult. I didn't want to write something boring and philosophical, I wanted something entertaining that worked on two levels. And I wanted it to be very, very comic-booky; unabashedly over the top.

I hope you enjoy it. Note: one panel is slightly NSFW.

Download the PDF

I wanted a concept that would require significant effort with FCP X, without third-party plugins or external FX. One morning, I was driving to work and I used my iPhone to record part of the trip, ending up on the sideview mirror. That view touched it off. A few more trips later and I had enough footage to work with.

In FCP X, audio is much easier to deal with than in FCP 7, since it stays with the video portion of each clip. No more overwriting audio by moving a clip to a different track. Video is more of a mixed bag. The trackless editing environment is a challenge to work with when things start getting complicated. Anything more complicated than the above would require quite a bit of compound clips, which are the equivalent of grouping in a graphics program.

On the whole, though, it was a pleasant experience, and I can see myself using FCP X more in the future.

Tip #1: start with the desired length of your timelapse.

I wanted something long enough to seem substantial but short enough to watch. I settled on 1:30 at 30 frames per second. The calculation for total number of shots is simple, but you also need to calculate the amount of time between each exposure. I highly recommend using a dedicated timelapse calculator. I used MiLapse Moco Calculator, but anything that calculates total number of shots and time between shots will work.

Tip #2: be careful with HDR.

I had decided to go for HDR using the camera’s auto-bracketing feature. That means multiplying the total number of shots by 3. I had already wiped my card, but I had to also lower the resolution of each image in the camera settings to be sure the card wouldn’t overflow in the middle of the timelapse.

Tip #3: be careful with image numbering.

Set the camera to increment the photo number by one for each shot, and set the camera to start at zero before you start the timelapse. Why? Because for a long timelapse, you’ll have more 9,999 shots. When Canon cameras hit that number, they create a new DCIM directory and start the number over at 0001. When you’re sequencing those images into your timelapse, you’ll end up with more than one “first photo”.

Tip #4: add just a touch of movement.

Since I didn’t have one of those programmable, motorized dolly systems, each photo in my timelapse was from exactly the same angle and framing. However, the resolution of each photo was high enough to allow for a crop and zoom during editing without sacrificing resolution.

Tip #5: play nice with HDR.

Some HDR photography is way too much. When used tastefully, HDR can look very, very good. Had I not used HDR, the sky would have blown out at different times during the day, and the dark areas would have closed up. For this timelapse, all I wanted was for the viewer to get a feel for what a day in Boulder is like. Blown-out highlights would distract. But far more distracting is being far too heavy-handed with HDR. It’s cool the first time you see it, but after a while, it feels like armageddon.

Tip #6: follow the pros.

Start with Philip Bloom.

We “did art” for 45 minutes every Friday. That’s right, a timeless activity crammed into 45 minutes. In case you haven’t tried it yourself, it’s very difficult to do interesting and satisfying art projects in 45 minutes. And on top of that, I wanted to get across to the kids the idea that it takes time and effort to do something worthwhile.

So I decided to paint something with the whole class. Real painting, with oils and brushes and turpentine. Not that other mediums aren’t art, but I thought it was a great idea to have second-graders paint with oils. We started with a blank 30x40 inch illustration board, roughed out the picture and painted it together. I directed where to paint, but the kids did a lot of the actual brush work.

After about 5 weeks, we ended up with a painting of a dragon posing for his school picture.

Afterwards, the teacher had them each write a note to me. I had been a little concerned this crazy oil painting adventure hadn't worked out too well for the kids, but based on the responses, I’d say I was wrong. Here are a few.

Dear Mr. Brad.
Thank you for teaching us cool art!

Dear Mr. Brad,
Thank you for doing art with us. The dragon is my favrite. RRRRROOOOaaaarrrr.

Dear Mr. Brad,
Thank you for doing art with us. I rely relly like the Dragon that you did with us. If we did it with out you we would be good! But you were better. Thank you!

Dear Brad: I love how you be so so funny we all love the paintings with out you we would cry to sleep.

So why is it that masters do such amazing things with such primitive technology?

Andrei Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker who died in 1986. The pinnacle of camera technology at the time he died was the Canon F-1.

Someone gave him a Polaroid camera, and he used it often. To make Art.

Risk is not about the work itself. It's risking your own perception of yourself.

Factor that in with @austinkleon’s recent article on making art and you have a kick-in-the-pants artist philosophy.

Another Coppola quote, a cliché these days, but no less true:

Making art is not about making money. It's about self expression.

But more than self expression, it’s about accepting your own life, whatever it may be. A tip from someone who runs from inadequacy: timestamp your doodles, your notes, your half-baked thoughts. It anchors them in a time and place; it’s as if you can meet yourself all over again. Look back on them and laugh, or find encouragement, or use it as fuel for the next stage.

Acceptance of who you were when you made that ... thing ... is the corollary to the next Coppola quote:

The biggest barrier to an artist is self-confidence.

Which sounds grandiose and overly dramatic until one considers that Rank’s definition of neurosis encompasses most of life. Depression, personality disorders, anxiety; basically, everything in the DSM IV plus the full range of existential maladies.

To quote the man himself: neurosis is a manifestation of imagination and energy gone wrong. And that's where it gets interesting for Artists. It implies that the job of an Artist is to make the imaginary real, and in so doing, to heal. For me, I partake in another Artist’s healing process when I grapple with a piece of art. By grapple, I mean digging into it, trying to see below the surface, to make it my own. Sometimes, it’s difficult. Sometimes it’s easy. Rarely is it instantly overwhelming.

Here’s an example of instantly overwhelming:

William Turner, Death on a White Horse, 1830

Or how about this?

Maxim Vorobiev, Oak Fractured by a Lightning Bolt. Allegory on Wife's Death, 1842

Note the personal nature of that Vorobiev’s painting. And yet, when I see it, it’s my loss, my pain, my grief. To me, this is the power of art. Through it, we can understand each other. We can say “there but for the grace of god go I” and mean it.

The above is from a blog post filled with instantly-overwhelming art. It’s not for the faint of heart, but if you’re willing to grapple with each one, I think it will be a worthwhile experience. Weimar: You might as well live.

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“Anansi’s gift sent his insides somewhere and left the rest of him standing there. He folded up like a pillowcase and the Elephant Bird caught me as I fell,” said Ayana, the village’s newest Griot. She had been made a Griot by Kembe, who the village had asked to replace Nganga.

Everyone in the Round House listened to the whole story, and everyone had questions. And then everyone wanted to hear it again.

Because that’s what happens with amazing things. They become new legends.

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The two-hundred-foot-tall Nganga approached the village, his footsteps shaking the ground. The villagers stumbled out of their huts, still in their night clothes. It was the same throughout the village. Everyone would look up, scream and run.

Nganga laughed a deep, dark, scary laugh. “You’re listening now,” he shouted, lifting his foot to stomp a hut.

Just then, someone yelled, “Stop!” It was Kembe, riding on top of the Elephant Bird. Next to him was Ayana, riding on top of Danh.

He turned to meet them, laughing again. “What are you going to do, cry at me? I’ve already beaten your friends.”

Ayana jumped off Danh and ran toward Nganga. She yelled up at him, “You might be big, but you’re a tiny coward inside!”

He roared in anger and picked her up, holding her over his head. He said, “Why don’t you see exactly how big I am inside.”

He opened his mouth to eat her and that’s when Ayana threw the rest of Anansi’s gift into his mouth.

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Kembe and Ayana were distraught. Neither one knew what to do. Their childhood legends lay dead in front of them, and Nganga was about to destroy their village and their families.

They had to do something, but what could kids do against a two-hundred-foot Nganga? If even Danh and the Elephant Bird were too weak to stop him, Kembe and Ayana had no chance.

They tried to look out through the waterfall and they tried not to cry. Maybe their families would see Nganga coming and would run away. Or maybe something else would save them. But both of them knew only they could save their village.

But how?

Just then, Ayana noticed something on the ground. It was the piece of Anansi’s gift that Nganga had broken off. That was how he had made it into the cave. And that gave her an idea.

As she was telling Kembe, Danh moved, and then Kembe noticed the Elephant Bird was still breathing.

Her plan was going to work. It had to.

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From within the center of the beam of light, Nganga grew. He grew taller. He grew horns. He grew fangs. He grew fire from his headdress.

He looked very, very mean and very, very angry. He looked down at Kembe and said he was going to wipe out everyone in the village who had ignored him. They deserved to die for their lack of belief.

He asked Kembe to come with him, but Kembe wouldn’t.

He said his parents were there, and lots of people he liked. They didn’t deserve to die. Maybe if they just saw something amazing they would believe.

But Nganga wouldn’t listen. He stomped toward the waterfall, and Kembe and Ayana pleaded with Danh and the Elephant Bird to help.

They fought him, but nothing could stop Nganga. He stood over Kembe and Ayana, gripping Danh and the Elephant Bird by the neck, and said they should have come with him. Now they would have to die in this cave, along with these two useless legends. And he dropped Danh and the Elephant Bird, who fell to the ground and didn’t move.

Then Nganga walked right through the waterfall.

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The Elephant Bird folded its wings and became a giant rocket, going so fast that they barely got wet as they shot through the falls. They landed in a massive cave that was lit in hot orange from burning lava at the back of the cave.

The bird placed them gently on the floor and waddled away from them toward a pile of rocks. The pile rose from the floor, and they realized it was a snake, much bigger than the Elephant Bird.

Ayana turned to run, but Kembe smiled. He recognized Danh, the god of unity, the belt around the world that kept everything from spinning away.

Next to Danh was an altar with human-sized steps cut into its side. Suspended in air above the altar was a golden crown. It looked like Danh wanted one of them to climb those stairs, but which one? And what would happen when they got there?

Before Ayana and Kembe could move, Nganga leapt forward, knocking them to the ground and bounding up the altar. With a fierce look of triumph on his face, he placed his head in the crown. Instantly, a brilliant beam of light came down from above, transfixing Nganga where he stood.

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Ayana stood still, and the Elephant Bird picked her up and flew up into the sky so high it seemed they could touch the moon. Ayana knew this was supposed to be scary, but she was just glad to see Kembe again.

He pointed downward. She saw their village far below, and Mount Kilimanjaro beyond it. That reminded her of her climb, and she told Kembe about it. He looked impressed, then excited when he heard about Anansi and kind of green when she showed him Anansi’s sticky, yucky gift.

Kembe told her that the Elephant Bird had taken him to its nest where he thought it would feed him to its young. But the nest turned out to be empty, and after a while, he realized that this was the last Elephant Bird, and it was asking him for help. Kembe had then told the Elephant Bird that he couldn’t help without Ayana.

Ayana was still deciding whether to be flattered or angry. She looked forward and realized that they were flying a lot lower. Ayana suddenly realized where the bird was taking them. She screamed and pointed.

They were headed right at Victoria Falls.

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She was too scared to ask what it was, and too scared to turn and run. So she put out her hands and closed her eyes. The instant the gift touched her hands, she found herself back in Nganga’s hut.

He was very impressed with her gift, and said it would lead them to Kembe. So they prepared food and water and left. As they walked, Ayana noticed that Nganga was eyeing Anansi’s gift and she decided to keep it with her even though sticky yucky spiderweb was getting on everything.

They walked a long time, but after climbing to Anasi’s cave, she couldn’t go any further. While Nganga made camp, she lay down for a short rest and was instantly asleep.

She awoke to a great wind and the sound of huge wings. Standing over her was Nganga, and he was reaching for Anansi’s gift. Above them both, an Elephant Bird swooped toward them, one claw extended. As Nganga turned to run, Ayana grabbed the gift, leaving a piece in Nganga’s hand.

Ayana was about to run too, but she stopped in her tracks when she saw that in the bird’s other claw was Kembe.

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Ayana was a very brave and practical girl. The first thing she did was watch where the Elephant Bird carried Kembe, and then she ran as fast as she could back to Nganga.

He told her that there is only one way to deal with magic things like the Elephant Bird, and that is to find Anansi, the oldest and most powerful of African legends. She had never believed that Anansi was real, but if Elephant Birds were real, maybe Anansi was, too. She would have to look for his cave on Mount Kilimanjaro.

She climbed for a very long time. Just when she thought she couldn’t take another step, she tripped and fell into the opening of a cave. It was dark and damp, and it smelled funny. There were sticky, yucky gobs of spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling.

As she was scrambling out, she heard something behind her. It was a huge spider, much bigger than Nganga. She knew somehow that this was Anansi. He held something out to her. It was a sticky, yucky gob of spiderweb.

He said, “A gift I give you. You will know when to use it.”

They set up several kites near the wind billowing up from Victoria Falls. Then Ayana laid out their picnic. Just as she was inviting Kembe to join her, a huge shadow darkened their picnic spot. The shadow grew bigger and bigger, and Ayana looked up just in time to see Kembe standing still, looking up at the biggest bird she had ever seen. It was so big that it could be nothing but an Elephant Bird.

It swooped out of the sky, its massive wings whipping up even more wind than Victoria Falls. Without stopping, it grabbed Kembe and flew away with him.

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Kembe and Ayana lived in Africa, a place full of legends.

Some legends are places so big that people revere them, such as Victoria Falls, a waterfall so large that it makes its own rain storms, or Mount Kilimanjaro, a mountain so tall that it’s hard to breathe at the top.

Other legends are stories just like the ones Kembe and Ayana learned as they grew up. People revere the characters in the stories, such as Anansi the spider, Danh the snake god of unity, or birds big enough to fly away with elephants.

But in Kembe and Ayana’s village, the biggest legend of all was about what was behind Victoria Falls. It was said that behind the waterfall was the world’s biggest cave, and inside that cave was something important and mysterious that gave Africa its power. No one knew what it was.

No one knew, and no one cared, because no one believed in legends anymore. No one except Kembe. He spent all his time with the village storyteller and wise man, which in Africa is called a Griot. His name was Nganga, and Kembe liked to ask questions about African legends. Nganga was glad Kembe liked to listen, because no one else did. If people didn’t believe in legends, how could they believe Griots knew anything? Griots were not useful anymore.

Kembe knew this made Nganga sad and angry, but there wasn’t anything either of them could do about it. So Kembe kept asking about the legends and always planned ways to make them come alive.

Whenever he tried to find another legend, he always took his best friend Ayana. She was very practical, and didn’t believe in the legends either, but Kembe was her friend and they always had fun. Sometimes, they would disappear into the wilderness for days, and their parents would throw up their hands and hope they were safe.

I had volunteered in my kids’ classrooms before, but this time it was different. I had talked to their teacher about getting more art in the classroom, and suggested that it might be interesting for someone to write and illustrate a story with the kids. To be helpful, I had told her that my experience is that kids tire quickly of blank canvases, but that they are fascinated when there is a structure they can fit into. And that was when she asked when I wanted to start.

So there I was, on the first day of the story, holding a 30" x 40" slab of foamcore on which I had drawn the outlines of chapter 1. I had a very basic start to the story, but I had no idea where it was going to go. It turns out I would discover the story at about the same rate as the kids, both for each chapter and for the story as a whole. I was aiming at 5 chapters, and when it was all said and done, we had 9 chapters and a poster.

Well, the story is now done, and will soon be in the Amazon catalog. When I told the kids we were making a real book out of the story, they didn't believe me — or their teacher, for that matter. But when they finally grappled with the idea, their first thought was to send profits from the book to buy livestock for the poor in Africa. Since the story is about legends of Africa, that’s both a noble and a fitting thing to do.

Now anyone can buy The Unknown Legend. And yes, proceeds will be donated according to the kids’ wishes. But for me, it’s not about how much we can donate. It’s about building on the excitement the kids had about creating a story together. Imagine how the world of Possibility would open for these kids if they knew their book actually helped other people. Maybe they would go on to create other things. Maybe they would do better in school. Maybe they would be some of the few who Make Things instead of consuming everything. And maybe, just maybe, they would help other kids do the same. Now that’s a story.

Likewise all the other miracles we now take for granted. Flight. Mobile phones. Instant information. Our entire music collection in the palm of our hand.

The price we have paid for instant, unquestioned access to the miraculous is a ruthless loss of wonder. Not the sickly sweet wonder of certain new agers or the manufactured wonder of TV execs, but the kind that binds us humans together in mutual respect for a mystery bigger than ourselves.

That particular sense of mystery is the foundation of mythology, of the stories that give us a shared sense of identity. Lacking a personal and group framework that provides perspective, we flounder, devolving into relativism and substituting individual preference for value. In short, an oversupply of miracles leads to apathy.

Finding the Way

Joseph Campbell dedicated his life to uncovering exactly the mystery we have lost. He did it by finding commonalities within the world’s mythologies. In other words, by reading stories.

And what he found is that we humans seem to have an unquenchable thirst for stories. We invent them as a way of making sense of the world around us; of passing on information too important for facts; of relating. Even of expressing the desire for there to be more to this life than meets the senses.

And true to form, when the next miracle came along — the Internet — bringing instant, comprehensive information, we humans did what we always have. We ingested it and tried to make sense of it.

The first signs that we have actually digested something are beginning to appear. Just as we combine different functions on the Internet into something new and call it a mashup, we are mashing concepts together to make sense of our new, smaller planet.

• 
    

  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

  Jane Austen combined with the twentieth-century version of an old trope, the Zombie.

• 
    

  Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

  Expanding the already-impressive mythology of Lincoln into a twenty-first century action hero.

• 
    

  Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter

  She loved her country. She hated zombies.

  The mythology of the royals put to use in the service of something new.

But one of the most interesting to me is the latest in the Quirk Classics series: Android Karenina.

The last hundred years since its birth have not been nice to the android as a concept. It’s been done. Really done. It’s going to take over and kill us. It’s going to help us and entertain us. They’re just like us and they have feelings.
Each trope is used as a commentary on us twentieth-century humans, and after a while, we feel bludgeoned by the heavy-handedness of metaphor. What else is there to say with it?

However, a desirable female android set in eighteenth-century Russia says something else entirely. What exactly does it say? I have no idea; I haven’t read it. But look at the cover: an old trope for sure, but used in an arresting, interesting and particularly twenty-first century way, without defaulting to over analysis.

That’s fascinating and new.

He was on the cusp of two artistic breakthroughs. The first was the script itself. It felt like he was saying something, something that mattered, coming from characters who felt alive to him. The second is that he was saying something coming from his personal background; he knew whereof he spoke. The combination of the two was a heady tonic, one the gods do not allow lightly.

Or so he told himself to make the travails of everyday life easier to handle. His family was sick; had been struggling with seasonal cold and flu for months. The hard-won few hours he had carved out of each week in an agreement with his wife dwindled as he dealt with his responsibilities at home. And work — thankfully — was unexpectedly busy given his industry, season and the econopocalypse.

But it added up. It took its toll. It exacted its price from the one thing that makes it possible to create art in the first place: faith.

Which brought him back to the gods. He didn’t believe in magic any more. In the One God who walked on water to save him, it seems, from himself. But he did believe in the power of shared human experience. In recognizing himself in someone else. In sharing the burden with someone else.

And to him, that was the reason the gods want it to be so difficult to create anything. It’s not the work itself that matters, but the growth that comes from its creation. And they know how that growth breeds independence: “...and your eyes will be opened, and you will be like us, knowing good and evil.”

... back to work.

I'm also not a landscape kind of guy. I'm more of a portrait, internal-landscape painter.

What I learned:

• You're at the mercy of the elements. Wind, rain, sun.
• Mother Nature is nuts. My first attempt was hailed out. Yes, hail. In the middle of July in Southern California.
• Much more insidious than the obvious elements are the bugs. On the palette, on the brush, on the painting. In fact, you can see several parts of several bugs that strategically landed in front of my moving brush.

Suffice it to say that I now have a much greater respect for anyone who masters this whole landscape painting thing.

If you want to see how relentless the bugs were, take a look at the full resolution here. They're really visible in the water.

If you like what you see, share it with the little icons below. Or comment on the Vimeo page. Or follow me on Twitter or find me on LinkedIn.