Here’s a quote from Alan Fletcher’s book “The Art of Looking Sideways”:
Ivan Chermayeff does much of his thinking in taxies, Lon Dorfsman on planes, Steve Guarnaccia on the subway. Designers also talk of getting ideas when they are on the sleep borderland...”
Challenge: Can you successfully not pick up your smart phone in a taxi, on a plane, on the subway, or in that sweet transition from sleep to wakefulness? Can you do this in the service of idea generation?
Ideas can be subversive, especially when I’m trying to fall asleep.
Madlib - Pill Jar
In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield describes the ways in which we doggedly resist being creative. He sees resistance as the biggest hurdle to overcome in living a creative life. It’s my understanding that I must intentionally engage with a free act of creativity everyday, beyond judgement, blame, fear of negative consequences, without expectation of either reward or result.
In other words, I don’t care if I win or lose.
A page of score sounds twice as elaborate as it looks.
George Frederick McKay
Found dedication inside a used book entitled How To Be An Explorer of the World by Keri Smith
Love this: “Art, whose divine expression flows impartially from the fingertips of a cowboy or dilettante emperor, had chosen for a medium the Boy Artist of the San Saba.”
Source: Clockwork Music, Arthur WJD Ord-Hume, 1973
I love this little plant.
Two very good friends of mine, David and Sissy Hobizal of Firstmates.tv, asked me if I wanted to compose the music to an animation they were developing for Gradifi. Gradifi makes paying back your student loans much more affordable (something this country desperately needs), so it was with pleasure to create the music that worked to support David and Sissy’s incredible animation work:
Not too long ago, I joined a band in Santa Fe, NM. We eventually got into the studio to record a bunch of songs. And now, Miguel (drummer) tells me that the EP has been released!
Also, Miguel told me that this is the #1 album in Santa Fe, NM. Sweet!
You read that correctly... This album is not sugar-coated candy pop. It’s a full expression of the complete sonic spectrum of your listening station. I designed the music to sound excellent at 85db. Enjoy!
For audio enthusiasts and sound adventurers only, this four song album is dedicated to exploring the full sonic spectrum of your carefully built audio listening station.
As I've mentioned many times on this blog, film industry people can't go wrong with attending the Austin Entertainment Business events. I've happily been attending these events for many months, and I just started to volunteer to help get more people there. This past meetup was the third installment of three series of presentations called "Tunnel to Hollywood," all organized by Jennifer Hutchins, a madly-connected and hard-working producer. Her guests were awesome: Neil Landau and Laura Brennan.
Neil Landau has a Hollywood pedigree to die for! He is not only a producer and award-winning screenwriter whose credits include Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, and Doogie Howser, M.D., but he is also a bestselling author. He had some great stories about how scripts that he was told were "trash" ended up being amazing. The best story was how he was told by an agent that this one script that he co-wrote would end his career if anyone read it. The script ended up underneath some old shoes in his closet until a very well-respected director friend of his asked to read it. That same script ended up netting him about $500,000 in a sale, and launched his career. Moral of the story? Don't believe everything you hear!
Neil's approach to getting his work out there was interesting: He used a golf metaphor (fortunately I wasn't completely lost considering I don't play) to explain that with a script you need to get closer and closer to the hole. It's rare to get a hole in one, so with each successive draft, you get closer and closer. He also mentioned that he has a group of very well-respected writers that he brings his work to. If the work excites his friends, he knows he's onto something. If each of his friends is lukewarm, he has some work to do. If all of them dislike it, likely, he'll not waste time on it anymore. It's a pragmatic, smart approach to the creative work you would do as a screenwriter.
Laura Brennan is a pitch consultant in Hollywood, a writer, and her work has appeared in television, film, theater, fiction, and news! I found that she had an excellent sense of humor regarding the relatively dour experience of pitching, and after watching her presentation I figured out how to pitch to other people as a composer in a way that is ridiculously compelling. Here's the secret:
Tell someone what you are currently doing, and never, ever tell them your job title!
So, instead of saying, "I am a screenwriter," you could say, "I am currently writing a script for a science fiction series on Netflix which involves statues in Washington DC coming to life and eating humanity off the face of the planet." A lot more compelling, no?
Here's another example. Instead of saying, "I am a costume designer," you could say, "I am currently designing costumes for a full-length narrative comedy that involves a twisted story of betrayal at the Rennasance fair."
I was really proud of my own: Instead of saying "I'm a film composer," I reworked it to say, "I'm beginning to compose the soundtrack for a full-length felt-animation movie about an animal's journey across the pacific northwest." All of it is true, and it seems so much more compelling
Laura's advice was priceless!
Between the guest speakers, the networking, and Jen Hutchins' fantastic work as a presenter and organizer, I just can't say this enough: You need to come to this event.
Using found footage of an eruption of Capelinhos in 1957, this video presents the terrifying blurriness of an eruption of a volcano, and really, the effects of that on a civilization. The music for this was such a joy to create!
Video: Capelinhos
Author: Alzira Simas
URL: https://archive.org/details/MarleneAn...
Copyright: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 CC
I found a video of a very dilapidated ghost town. It reminded me a lot of some creepy scary movies I've seen lately. This miniature film score is meant to accentuate that feeling of a creepy loneliness.
Original Video: Gerry Fialka Super 8 Movies Cottage Cottage Cheese
Link: https://archive.org/details/GerryFialkaSuper8MoviesCottageCottageCheese
Author: Gerry Fialka
It's August, and in Austin Texas we need everything we can get our hands on to stay cool. What better time than to publish this citrusy miniature film score, eh?
All footage was found on www.videvo.com, and with the exception of the two videos below, all have the same “Royalty Free License.” The two that do not are
https://www.videvo.net/video/fizzy-summer-cocktail/6651/ “Videvo Attribution License”, by author: Videvo
https://www.videvo.net/video/fresh-lemons-on-tree/6027/ “Videvo Attribution License”, by author: Videvo
