May 2012
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April 2012
8 posts
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Orson Welles on Work-Life Balance and the Gift of... →
I didn’t know what you couldn’t do. I didn’t deliberately set out to invent anything. It just seemed to me, ‘Why not?’ There is a great gift that ignorance has to bring to anything, you know. That was the gift I brought to [Citizen] Kane… ignorance.
Orson Welles on Work-Life Balance and the Gift of Ignorance (1960)
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Letter from Hemingway to Fitzgerald →
F. Scott Fitzgerald asked Ernest Hemingway to read his newest novel at the time. This letter is Hemingway’s critique.
For Christ sake write and don’t worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what. I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.
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“The important thing is this: to be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are...”
– Charles Dickens
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Fish: a tap essay →
Want to read something wonderful?
Think I might love it.
“Fish: a tap essay” by Robin Sloan
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Is everyone entitled to their opinion? →
If we’re going to do great work, it means that some people aren’t going to like it. And if the people who don’t like it don’t have an impact on what happens to the work after it’s complete, the only recourse of someone doing great work is to ignore their opinion.
Is everyone entitled to their opinion? by Seth Godin
March 2012
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David Fincher and his designers discuss the Dragon... →
It’s got to move the heart, or the mind, or the groin. It’s got to engage you on some other part of your being than just your eyes.
— David Fincher
There were other things that were tangential and totally foreign to the final, but you’ve got to hit all of those dead ends in order to find something different. You’ve got to go down that road and fail – a lot.
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I...
WatchCharlie Rose talks with with Mexican filmmakers Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron. The only way this could have been better is if Emmanuel Lubezki had been there.
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WatchIs Television the New Cinema?
An interesting panel discussion put together by The New Yorker on whether TV is replacing Film.
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How I Made My Films Site
Building my films site was a really exciting and educational experience for me. I gave this presentation about it at a creative team meeting last week.
Title.
I want people to see my stuff.
The Problem: My portfolio site does a decent job of featuring my design work, but my films get lost in it. Alternatively, Vimeo is a good place to find all of my videos, but it’s not exclusive...
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“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”
– — Linus Pauling, an American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He was one of the most influential chemists in history and ranks among the most important scientists of the 20th century. Pauling was among the first scientists to work in the fields of quantum chemistry and...
February 2012
14 posts
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“Why’s this so good?” No. 32: Darcy Frey on the... →
Laurie Hertzel analyzes the pace and language of good suspenseful writing.
He keeps this tension going by sprinkling the narrative with reminders of how terrible things are. He doesn’t clump it all together in one blob, but every few paragraphs, every few scenes, he rolls out another reminder that everything could fall apart in an instant.
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Pixar Story Basics →
Pixar story artist Emma Coats has tweeted a series of “story basics” … — guidelines that she learned from her more senior colleagues on how to create appealing stories.
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Make Your Thing: 12 Point Program for Absolutely,... →
Essential for anyone who makes things.
Read it.
via @austinkleon
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“Direction is a matter of emphasis. In telling a story, the task of the director...”
– Alexander Mackendrick in On Film-Making
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Talent Evidently Matters →
Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers was hugely eye-opening and motivating to me. It’s core message is that hard work is what actually determines success, not talent. This article doesn’t negate that message, but it does attempt to balance it some.
In fact, it would be nice if they [intellectual ability and the capacities that underlie it] weren’t important at all, because research...
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“Best advise I got when I was trying to make Brothers McMullen. ‘There are...”
– Edward Burns
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“In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin...”
– Philip Glass, interviewed by his cousin, Ira Glass
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WatchRob Legato, Jacob Rosenberg, Vincent Laforet, and Sharlto Copley discuss how technology is changing the way movies are made.
January 2012
10 posts
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Spike Lee's co-writer James McBride writes open... →
When George Lucas complained publicly about the fact that he had to finance his own film because Hollywood executives told him they didn’t know how to market a black film, no one called him a fanatic. But when Spike Lee says it, he’s a racist militant and a malcontent.
Also check out Steve Mcqueen’s thoughts on the use of black actors.
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Lindsay Doran on Happy Endings →
Lindsay Doran analyzes what makes the audience happy at the end of a movie.
I think the thing that they’re getting out of it is that the ‘happy ending,’ the one that is most memorable and might make people go back to see the film a second time, might not be about winning. It might be about not winning, about finding something deeper that means more than victory.
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Ti West on supporting indie filmmaking →
It’s not the money. Personally I don’t care about the money. As sad as it is to admit it’s very unlikely I will make a dime off of the release of the film.
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Every time you purchase something you are making a statement. You are creating physical evidence that something has value. If something has a high value, then it becomes in high demand.
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I am...
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“I asked him if he [Paul Rand] would come up with a few options, and he said,...”
– — Steve Jobs on Paul Rand. Paul Rand, an American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Westinghouse, ABC, and Steve Jobs’ NeXT. He was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design.
Quote Vadis - Quotes, Inspiration,...
December 2011
6 posts
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Charlie Kaufman gives an incredible lecture →
Charlie Kaufman gives an amazing lecture on writing, relationships, art, and life. So honest. This lecture is essential for anyone who makes things.
If you’re not into watching the 40 minute video, there is a transcript you can read.
So rather than being up here pretending I’m an expert in anything, or presenting myself in a way that will reinforce the odd, ritualised...
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“I always feel like, for me, writing is easy; it’s not writing that’s...”
– Aaron Sorkin, from THR: Writers Roundtable [1-hour video]
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Stanley Kubrick's guide to the art of film-making →
I don’t think that writers or painters or film-makers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form: they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I don’t think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even...
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via Frank: I am Neil deGrasse Tyson. Ask me... →
viafrank:
A few questions and answers from the excellent thread on Reddit:
What is your favorite short science fact you like to tell people to really make them think?
That our bodies’ atoms are traceable to supernova stars that scattered their chemical enrichment across the cosmos, spawning the birth…
November 2011
22 posts
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“A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of...”
– Anthony Burgess, quote from Advice to Writers