Thanks Chuck

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case." Chuck Close

(via JMc's FB status update)

Best Writing Software. Ever.

Like most of you, I procrastinate. Otherwise, why am I writing this and why are you reading this? No doubt, a part of my motivation to have a blog is to somehow legitimise the amount of time I spend fucking around on the internet, and not doing the things I actually want and need to do. While I love the internet and all the great things it has brought us, I hate the way my already gnat like concentration span can be even further reduced by the constant and nagging promise of something awesome that might be just a few simple clicks away. But... I have found some heavy duty artillery in the war against time wasting. A little bit of 'free' software called Self Control.

It essentially does what I can not. It cuts me off from the endless stream of distraction that the interwebs provides. Sure you could unplug yourself, or switch off your wi-fi. But as I have found there will always be a valid reason (best cat youtube clip ever) for you to 're-connect'.

The genius of Self Control is that once you start it up and you bar yourself from the internet for the allotted time you have set, there is NO WAY of unblocking it. You will get no email, no web, no nothing, not even if you quit the software, not even of you restart your computer!!! Once you are offline, you stay offline until your time is up. So be really careful before you start off with setting the time limit to the maximum of 24 hours!

It works!

There's a story on every corner

This clip has been doing the rounds a bit, but I think it's a great reminder that stories (and characters for those stories) are found in the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times. I wonder if this guys '15 minutes' will help him get off the street and into a recording booth somewhere. I hope so.

THIS WEEK

Finished the offline with Pete at The Butchery for the commercial we shot last week...

Then jumped in the car for a two day solo road trip through country Victoria and New South Wales to my home town of Tamworth...

More photos after the break...

Arrived to find my father in-law Keith, waiting patiently for Santa.

And Super Natalie and the kids who flew up a few days before.

Three weeks holidays! yipeee!

LAST WEEK

SUMMER MOVIE GUIDE

THE QUEEN OF COOL

I think I have contributed to a hundred or so hits to the you tube clip below over the past few days. It's one of the coolest live performance clips I've seen. I saw Blondie last week on tour with the Pretenders and my friend Adalita supporting (who by the way is releasing her debut solo album early next year and it's amazing! More on that later though...)

Blondie may look a little different these days, but man she is still the Queen of Cool!

I want this song in Cherry Bomb!

THANKS JJ

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic."- Jim Jarmusch

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROSEBUD

4 years old today!

Above with her best buddy Tilly.

MORE HAIL

Some more photographs I took on the set of Amiel Courtin-Wilson's Hail. A bunch more over at the Hail website.

THE CAMERA IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE CAMERA.

I find it interesting that Alex Roman who directed the short film The Third And The Seventh below decided to portray the cameras you see in the film as antique and definitely antiquated. The 'prop' cameras are in the frame perhaps only as an a novel and aesthetic reminder of a device that once was the best and perhaps only way to capture 'reality'.

It's interesting because the film is entirely created in CGI. Nothing new about that I guess, but I dont think I have ever seen entire 3D environments look and 'feel' quite as real as this. Nothing has been photographed traditionally in the film. It's all created via computer and Roman's amazing aesthetic, lighting, modelling, textures and no doubt, obsessive attentional to detail. The film has no narrative and is more a formal exploration of architecture that doesn't exist (in the real world) and the second half drifts off in a more surreal and less 'realistic' direction, but there are some sequences in the first half that are really impressive and make me think that the way we make films really is changing forever.

I guess this 'shooting live action' thing was fun while it lasted...

A short 'making of' can be found here.

Thanks for the link Collin!

Take cover

I know very little about this film apart from what it's beautifully raw trailer tells me. Which isn't much. It makes me ask a lot of questions and gives me very few answers. Which makes me really want to see it! Add it to the top of my 1500.

Is there anything more eerie sounding than an air raid siren? Can anybody translate Vincent Cassell's monologue?

AN ISLAND, A ROSEBUD

Burning LEaves

I wrote about The Burning Leaves a while back. I used a song of theirs called Home on the closing credits of Last Ride. I was totally obsessed with that song for a long while and I still feel lucky I was able to make it part of the film. It's been a long time coming but I recently received a copy of their self titled debut album. I thought it would be good, but was I wrong. It's freaking sublime! Recorded at home with vintage gear, listening to this album feels like discovering a forgotten classic from the 70's.

The Burning Leaves to quote one reviewer "make haunting, melancholic vignettes that sound like they might break if you listen to them too loud." It's an accurate description. For me they tap into something so achingly beautiful with such simplicity that it seems all to effortless, but I'm sure they have sweated over every heartbeat of the 41 mins of the album.

My one complaint is that the album is only available through their MySpace page (Fifteen bucks! Free Postage!) For better or worse these guys are fiercely independent and so far have done everything themselves. No label. Which I'm more than impressed with, but it's a crime that this album isn't in every record store, in every city (both on and offline). I fear it's going to become an undiscovered masterpiece. But what do I know... I'm not a musician nor am I in the music industry. Enough rambling.

I didn't take the photos below, but I wish I did. I hope to work with Indie and Craig again soon.

Photos by Elena Heatherwick. Cool work on her blog!

stuffed

Last week I went to a taxidermist to research an element of a film I'm developing which I haven't mentioned here (yet). Needless to say the place was pretty fascinating. I've always found taxidermy and the process itself interesting. This particular place was large and sterile and they delt with a huge number of dead things from both here and over seas. It was very 'factory' like. I'm actually looking for something a little more, shall we say 'backyard'.

Also... on this same day while riding home from the office I crashed my motorcycle when a driver changed lanes and didn't "look left, look right, look bike'! I ended up slamming into the gutter and breaking my arm. So while I may not be as stuffed as our little friends above I am a little battered and bruised and will be typing with one hand for the next five weeks or so. Bummer.